“What are we to make of Allen Ginsberg, and of Howl, on the 70th anniversary of its publication? The poem seems to belong more to popular culture than high culture, closer to Elvis or Easy Rider or ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ than Elizabeth Bishop or John Berryman. … Ginsberg’s magnum opus is brash, insistent, and unsubtle. It has never attracted the kind of critical scrutiny that other 20th-century poetry has …. Changing sexual mores have done to the Beats in this century what sniffy articles in National Review and Partisan Review failed to do in the last one: made them uncool, cringey, Bad Boyfriend Literature. … But Howl endures, and part of what keeps it alive these seven decades on is its pure musical quality. … it is perhaps the best-sounding American poem of the century.” (10/19/26)
“Elon Musk said Monday he’d give one of his shares in SpaceX to every ‘kid’ in America next year. … Per the Census Bureau, there are just over 72 million people under 18 in the U.S. If each got one SpaceX share, at Friday’s closing price of $146.03, that’d be a market value of a little over $10.5 billion. …Musk’s announcement comes one day after Anthropic said it was setting up a new public benefit fund with 5% of the company’s equity, an entity potentially worth $100 billion or more. Musk responded to Anthropic’s news by saying ‘I recommend giving the shares directly to the public,’ later adding ‘This is what I will be doing.'” (10/19/26)
“Elon Musk debuts ‘flying car’ :: ‘Irregular’: the company behind the rouge AI attacks :: Sarah in NM calls about the poor, unsalaried state reps 🙁 :: Tim in FL calls about the Jehovah’s Witnesses buying a data center :: Skeeter calls and makes false claims :: DST debate :: Houthis use Claude AI to develop missile guidance :: Tom in NH :: three reptilian beings allegedly killed near area 51 :: black market delivery for In-N-Out burger :: 2026-10-18 :: Hosts: Stu, Riley O’Bill, Rich E. Rich.” (10/18/26)
“In battleground races across the country, Republicans have lost access to one of the president’s most salient — and longstanding — campaign slogans.” (10/19/26)
“All Iran must do to win is to survive. It has done so. The monstrously swollen heads in Washington and Jerusalem did not dream that would happen. They committed the fundamental error of believing their own ridiculous propaganda and in so doing committed a crime and worse, as they say, a blunder. So Trump’s useless fulminations against Iran will continue, but the jig is up, because Washington can’t win against either Tehran or Moscow, whom it has thrown into each other’s arms. Along, of course, with China.” (10/19/26)
“French President Emmanuel Macron has declined Interior Minister Laurent Nunez’s offer to resign after nationwide demonstrations by students protesting educational conditions and groups angry over the high cost of living turned into widespread riots and looting, the Elysee presidential office says. Macron said Nunez should stay in his position to ensure the chain of command is maintained within the police and security forces and asked the interior minister to establish new methods to deal with looters, the Elysee said in a statement on Monday. … The Ministry of the Interior said more than 2,300 people were arrested and almost 1,000 police and gendarmes injured in protests on Saturday. Injuries were also reported among protesters, with one demonstrator’s hand blown off by a police crowd-control grenade.” (10/19/260
Source: The American Conservative
by Peter Van Buren
“The struggle over who is better at the job, political appointees or careerists, will never conclusively end. It has been a factor of American diplomacy for decades, under all flavors of administrations. The mainstream media negatively focus on some of Trump’s ambassadorial choices, but to anyone familiar with diplomacy it is nothing more than another round in a century-old political argument. The new question, unique to the second Trump administration, is whether or not the president should appoint anyone at all, career or political, to a particular ambassadorial job. … Ambassadors are increasingly curiosities left over from the 19th century, a past when Washington, DC, needed trusted representatives empowered to make decisions a world away. Embassies as they exist today were created for a world without Zoom, encrypted messaging, presidential and cabinet travel, celebrity special envoys, global media reporting, and easy direct leader-to-leader calls.” (10/19/26)
