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News for the public, not the powerful.
Wall Street Insider Sounds Alarm, Warns AI Bubble Is About to Pop Just Like Dot-Com
Charles Gasparino isn’t some lefty economist. He’s the New York Post’s Wall Street guy, and this weekend he wrote that the AI bubble is about to burst and a big market correction is coming. He compares it to March of 2000, when the dot-com mania collapsed, a generation of investors got burned, and the tech market took years to recover. Back then, people who’d never read a balance sheet thought they were Warren Buffett. Sound familiar? Gasparino says the sales pitch today is nearly identical. Groundbreaking technology, which is true, that’ll make all of us rich and not just the oligarchs behind it, which really isn’t. He points to last week’s spiking interest rates after a bad inflation report, followed by a selloff in AI stocks, and says the smart money at hedge funds is already taking profits. He warns rates will keep climbing because AI borrowing is competing with the federal government’s massive debt, and the whole thing is built on debt, the main ingredient of every crash. His advice is to “take your profits and not get greedy.” When this bubble pops, the billionaires will have already cashed out. It’s your 401k that takes the hit. That’s how it always works.
Did France’s Prime Minister Just Blame the Left for a Mess Neoliberalism Made?
France just lived through its worst weekend of unrest in years. Around 550,000 people marched Saturday against the cost of living and crumbling public services. Nearly 2,400 were arrested, close to 1,000 police were injured, and at least 3,000 businesses were damaged. Protesters torched the city hall in Limoges. So what did Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu do Monday morning? He ordered partial curfews in city centers starting tonight, and blamed it all on the “ultra-left” and criminal elements. Here’s what he didn’t say. This movement started last month with high school kids in the working-class suburbs of Paris fed up with teacher shortages and crumbling classrooms. It grew because Lecornu’s government is pushing 54 billion euros in budget cuts while fuel prices climb and working families can’t make ends meet. He’s Macron’s seventh prime minister, and the last one got thrown out for pushing austerity. This isn’t the left’s doing. This is 40 years of neoliberalism. Cut taxes on the rich, cut services for everyone else, and then act shocked when people take to the streets. Marine Le Pen is now the frontrunner for next year’s presidential election. That’s what happens when governments answer economic pain with curfews instead of solutions.
Can Democrats Really Flip House Seats Trump Won by 20 Points?
Deep-red districts are now House battlegrounds. That’s the Washington Post’s headline this morning, and the numbers back it up. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report now lists 46 competitive races, 21 of them pure toss-ups, and 16 of those toss-ups are held by Republicans. Cook moved 11 more races toward Democrats last Friday, on top of 18 the week before, every one in the Democrats’ direction. Montana’s open 1st district, which Trump carried by 12 points, is now a toss-up. Upstate New York’s 21st, which Trump won by more than 20, is in play because Trump’s trade war with Canada has gutted the local economy. Cook says scores of districts Trump won by 10 or more are now firmly in play, half of them in Ohio, Nebraska and Kansas, where voters are furious about the economy. Two things are driving this. Open seats in districts Trump won by double digits, and mid-decade gerrymanders that aren’t holding. A district in eastern North Carolina that Republicans redrew to be safe is now a toss-up. Democrats need a net gain of four seats. The Republican House left town early with no more workdays before the election. When the gerrymanders stop working, all that’s left is the voters. That’s democracy doing its job.
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Why Are Canada and Europe Racing to Escape Elon Musk’s Satellite Chokehold?
Prime Minister Mark Carney told the New York Times that “Starlink, we will diversify away from, no question.” Ottawa has put 1.44 billion dollars into Telesat Lightspeed, a Canadian satellite network, and a 2.3 billion dollar defense contract in August pushed the planned constellation to 225 satellites. Ontario already killed a 100 million dollar Starlink deal last year. More than half of Canada’s provinces and territories buy emergency communications from Musk, including ambulance and wildfire response, and Musk once reposted a suggestion that he cut Canada off because British Columbia excluded Tesla from a rebate. Europe is scrambling too. The EU’s IRIS2 system won’t launch until 2029, so Brussels is pooling capacity through Govsatcom and leaning on Eutelsat’s OneWeb. And here’s the kicker. Semafor reports the American ambassador told the Financial Times that the EU would face devastating retaliation if it tries to curtail SpaceX’s market reach. Think about that. Our government is threatening our allies to protect one billionaire’s monopoly. That’s what happens when critical infrastructure sits in the hands of one man with a grudge and a social media account. Sovereignty means owning your own wires, even in space.
Republican Congressman Begs Musk to Keep On Starlink So Ukraine Can Stop the Missiles
Dan Crenshaw is a Republican congressman from Texas who lost his reelection bid in March, and in the Washington Post this morning he’s pleading with Elon Musk to activate Starlink over Russia. Why? Because Ukraine’s run out of Patriot interceptors, and the only other way to stop Russian ballistic missiles is to hit the launchers before they fire. Kyiv wants Starlink-guided drones to strike those launchers up to 200 kilometers inside Russia. Musk won’t flip the switch. Worse, the Telegraph reports Musk went to Trump and proposed slowing Starlink speeds in Ukraine, and Trump agreed. Drones got capped at about 160 kilometers an hour, half the speed of the Russian jet drones they’re meant to intercept. Zelensky says they couldn’t shoot down a number of them, and civilians died. Trump says he didn’t do it. Musk says the Pentagon did. Nobody will own it. Meanwhile Musk posted that Ukraine needs a new leader. Crenshaw told Musk that refusing is like “watching your friend die while you hold his EpiPen over him.” When a Republican has to beg a billionaire for permission to let an ally defend itself, we’ve handed foreign policy to a private citizen. That’s not a democracy. That’s an oligarchy with a launch pad.
Trump Strips Kennedy Center of Its Treasures and Hangs Gold-Leaf Portraits of Himself and Musk
A former Kennedy Center curator says his heart sank when he walked into the Africa Lounge and found it stripped bare in a single day. Josef Palermo, laid off in March and now a whistleblower, told CNN the room held dozens of works gifted by African nations, including 12-foot doors carved from a 700-year-old Nigerian tree. It’s a storage room now. Palermo says he was told last year to remove all the outdoor art because Trump wanted brand new art for the reopening. The “Blue” sculpture came down in September. Internal documents show officials drafted a plan for permanently removing artwork, including by public sale or destruction. Donors and artists’ families have been calling for months, some afraid to speak out while their pieces are still inside. One donor said, “I want to get that sculpture out of there.” These were gifts honoring John F. Kennedy after his assassination. Italy gave the marble. France gave Matisse tapestries. Austria gave a chandelier. So what’s going up instead? Gold-leaf portraits of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, courtesy of a brand new visual arts committee. The center, where Trump chairs the board, is closed for two years. Kings build monuments to themselves. Republics build them to ideas. Guess which we’ve got.
And that’s the way it is, Today Monday, October 19, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
