RYAN ZICKGRAF: A tombstone for Obamaism.

What it resembles most, I’d argue, is a mausoleum, the Obamausoleum, if you will. The tower is clad in New Hampshire granite, rises in a faceted, asymmetrical mass with almost no windows, and looms over a grassy public park. It even has words carved near the top, giving the whole thing the unmistakable air of the world’s largest headstone. But what it marks — unintentionally — is the final resting place of Obamaism: a politics after politics, a monument to the fantasy that if enough institutions speak pleasant bromides in a reassuring voice, if politicians act like noble characters from The West Wing, some ineffable thing called “the arc of the moral universe” will bend and everyone wins. Who needs culture war when you can have culture peace?

That’s not what was originally sold to voters. When Obama was elected in 2008 — almost 20 years ago — he promised a sharp political pivot from the neoliberal consensus of both the Bushes and the Clintons — “change you can believe in.” But then he spent much of his presidency convincing everyone that massive structural change was impossible in the face of Republican opposition. What he offered instead was the thin gruel of himself: Obama as symbol, Obama as cultural ascendance, Obama as proof that America had already become better simply by recognizing him. Now the Obama Center represents a near-billion-dollar effort to convince visitors that the symbolism of the first Black president was not a consolation prize but the victory all along.

Obama was always about little more than Obama. The Obamausoleum is just the unmissable eyesore expression of that.

UPDATE (From Ed): In its summation of a recent time that leftists look back upon as a bygone era, the Obamausoleum resembles the media’s attempt at building the “Newseum,” which lasted from April of 2008  until the end of 2019 in Washington DC. John Podhoretz correctly dubbed it “The News Mausoleum” in the May 2008 issue of Commentary:

The rise of the Craigslist model has devastated classified advertising in newspapers, once the only place in a city to sell a used car or list a job opening. True, today’s newspapers have duplicated all their classified ads on their websites, and they have attempted to best Craigslist and its emulators by offering different features, new ways to search, and so forth. But the result is harder to use, and in any case why should you spend $100 putting something up for sale in the paper when you can post it on Craigslist for free? Why list a job for $200 when you can list it for $10?

There is no answer to these questions. The only solution is for newspapers to lower their prices to Craigslist levels, but at that point someone else will come along and restore the entirely free model, and the end result will be the same. Last year, classified advertising dropped nationally by more than 16 percent; overall, it is down 34 percent since 2000. Over the next ten years, the cash cow of any newspaper will dry up entirely.

Feverishly anticipating the demise of their 19th-century industrial product, newspapers are once again renewing their efforts to take advantage, somehow, of the growth of the Internet. But they are uniquely ill-positioned to do so. When it comes to reporting the news, their greatest competitive asset is the size of their news-gathering and news-writing staffs. But they can afford those staffs only because of advertising revenue. And, on the web, they will generate only a fraction of the advertising revenue they have been able to generate in print as an effective monopoly. Moreover, and unlike the case with every other rival they have faced in the past, the technical cost of competing with them is astonishingly low.

All they will have left is a very powerful brand—the term we now use for what used to be called a name. That brand will be worth a very great deal, but it will not be worth enough on its own to produce the kind of comprehensive news portrait that has been the defining purpose of urban and regional newspapers for a century and a half. That is why, to many observers, it seems a certainty that these brands will eventually be bought out by Internet monoliths, like Google and Yahoo, which are hungry for “content.”

_____________

The prospect is a very stark one for people who work in, write, and edit newspapers. For these people do not think of themselves as “content providers.” They think much more highly of themselves than that. They believe they play a vital role, perhaps the most vital role, in the defense of the freedoms of every citizen. After all, who else is there to keep a vigilant watch over the official custodians of society? Who else is there to protect the people from the depredations of business and government? Is not freedom of speech—the very freedom that enables journalists to ply their trade—the first of our freedoms, primus inter pares, and who will guard it if not they?

The middle of 2008 was when the DNC-MSM* were in full swoon for the man who, once in office, as Michael Barone wrote in 2013, would crack down “on journalists more than any since Woodrow Wilson,” three years before going all-in on the Russian collusion hoax against Trump:

* QED:

NEW: NBC News' "Today Show" is co-anchored by Laura Jarrett, who has been covering the opening of Obama's presidential library, which is overseen by Obama Foundation CEO Valerie Jarrett, who happens to be Laura Jarrett's mother. #MediaBias pic.twitter.com/dElZWlp9rN

— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) June 19, 2026

THE NEW SPACE RACE: ‘It’s quite a bit more than we expected’: Satellite reveals immense scale of GPS signal tampering.

The data surprised the team behind the project and indicated that satellites orbiting far from Earth aren’t the only ones that experience degradation of their positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) signals, which could affect their performance and the safety of their operations.

The new measurements were made by Pulsar-0, the first satellite of the novel Pulsar navigation constellation developed by California-based Xona Space Systems. The experimental satellite orbits 310 miles (500 kilometers) above Earth, testing Xona’s technology before the company begins deploying its navigation constellation of 300 spacecraft in low Earth orbit (LEO) later this year.

The purpose of the Pulsar constellation is to provide a more resilient PNT service compared to the United State’s GPS network and other global navigation satellite systems (GNSS).

Faster, please.

VICTORIA TAFT: Ten Years After Antifa Attack, a Reporter Seeks to Win Back His Second Amendment Rights.

BE PREPARED: Prepared Hero Emergency Fire Blanket. #CommissionEarned

CHANGE: The Professional Guest Is Dead. The Need They Filled Is Not.

Charles Nelson Reilly, a Tony winner before he ever sat down at Match Game, became known almost exclusively for that seat. Paul Lynde, a Broadway force in Bye Bye Birdie, was reduced in cultural memory to the center square on Hollywood Squares. Rip Taylor had a fake mustache and confetti. Nipsey Russell rhymed couplets between commercial breaks. Zsa Zsa Gabor presided over the ecosystem with what may be the most durable case of evidence-free celebrity in American history. Rock himself appeared on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show as many as 84 times, usually with nothing to plug.

The architecture that produced them was specific and quantifiable. The daytime talk shows — Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, Dinah Shore — ran five days a week, 52 weeks a year, each needing three to five guests per episode. The celebrity panel game shows, Match Game, Hollywood Squares, To Tell the Truth, Password and The Gong Show, needed several panelists at a time. Latenight talk needed two or three guests a night, five nights a week.

The arithmetic produced a structural demand for warm, entertaining bodies that the supply of A-list stars could not meet. The Professional Guest filled the gap, and the medium rewarded a specific craft for doing so: the compressed bit, the affectionate self-caricature, the ability to enter a crowded format and command three minutes without disrupting it.

What made these performers a new species was that their fame exceeded their act. Each had a defined craft: a bit, a routine, a signature. But the craft was eclipsed by the persona that carried it. Corey was not famous as a stand-up; he was famous as “Professor Irwin Corey.” Rock was not famous as a hairdresser or a singer; he was famous as “Monti Rock III.” The persona was the product, and the product was infinitely renewable as long as the formats kept buying.

And then the medium stopped buying. The ecosystem collapsed in the 1980s, killed by a convergence of structural forces every executive reading this column will recognize. The daytime variety talk show declined as syndication economics shifted. Issue-oriented daytime shows, Donahue first, then Oprah, found that ordinary people’s confessions drew larger audiences at lower cost than celebrity banter. The classic celebrity panel game show went extinct as audiences fragmented to cable. The habitat disappeared, and with it the species.

At least until YouTube and TikTok came along. As an old line in 1990s-era Wired magazine went, in the future, everyone will be famous to 15 people.

IT’S TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN, XI: China says ‘spy turtles’ are snooping in its waters. “Large living marine animals are hung with sensors, swimming in specific areas, collecting sensitive data on the nearby water temperature, salinity, ocean currents and other marine environment in real time, and transmitting them abroad through satellites.”

Honestly, it would be pretty cool if we were doing that.

JUSTICE: Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down race-based college scholarships.

ANOVE AND BEYOND: Marines, Army Announce Three New Medal of Honor Recipients.

LIMITED TIME DEAL: Carhartt Men’s Iconic K87 Pocket T-Shirt. #CommissionEarned

THIS IS WHY PEOPLE LIKE ME HAVE BEEN PAYING CLOSE ATTENTION TO CAMPUSES: Anti-Semitism is transitioning from college campuses into the workforce.

Campuses are the main place in America where toxic ideas start. They’re basically producers of intellectual toxic waste. We need to do something about that.

WHAT JUNETEENTH MEANS: The Left tells us incessantly that the presence of slavery in American history proves our system is based on White Racism and that this nation’s unparalleled prosperity from an early date was built “on the backs of slaves.”

But here’s a thought – what if slavery in the South actually retarded the nation’s economic expansion? Rod Martin suggests that the North’s Civil War victory was attributable in great part to the fact freedom produces innovation, productivity and creativity, while the slave-based economy of the South was far behind in development, economically and otherwise.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Starting to Get the Feeling That We May Never Get Along With Iran. “I will say that I’m glad we’re not harboring any ‘better living through nation-building in the Middle East’ fantasies these days. Had President Trump and his administration gone down that path to madness, I would have been consumed by Bush HW and W flashbacks.”

HAPPY JUNETEENTH!

UPDATE: From the comments:

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: How Vermont Became Ground Zero for the Anti-Israel Movement.

Rachel Feldman, who co-founded pro-Israel group Shalom Alliance, told me Vermont was particularly vulnerable to a campaign like AFSC.

“It’s a Trojan horse,” Birong told me. “They’re just wedging the door open a little bit with words that sound ‘peaceful’ and ‘anti-war.’ And that is the ever-evolving nature of antisemitism.”

In most towns, the pledge under consideration comes from American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a tax-exempt Quaker organization that launched the so-called Apartheid-Free Communities network in spring 2023. It states that their goal is “not necessarily” to push towns toward boycotting and divesting from Israel—just toward any actions against “Israeli apartheid.”

“How to do that is up to your community and your context, and many can choose to engage in boycott or divestment actions.”

Late last year, Israel announced that AFSC—along with 36 other international organizations—could no longer operate in Gaza after failing to turn in a list of their Palestinian employees, along with their addresses and contact information. AFSC, which has been working in Gaza since 1948, called the new regulations a “part of a systematic effort” to “inflict further harm on Gaza’s civilian population.”

Just look at Senator Bernie Sanders, she said.

Polls consistently show that Sanders, a Jew and frequent critic of Israel who has called the country’s war against Hamas a “genocide,” is the most popular senator in America. All three members of the state’s congressional delegation are critics of Israel and boycotted Netanyahu’s 2024 address to Congress, including Rep. Becca Balint, who has described herself as “Jew-ish” and said that her “spiritual life is an amalgamation of Judaism, Quakerism, and Buddhism.”

When Sanders “walks through Montpelier, it’s like he’s a rock star,” Feldman said, calling him a “folk icon.”

“People want someone to look up to, and Bernie is that person for a lot of Vermonters.”

Vermont is a state of liberal superlatives. It is among the whitest, most elderly, and most progressive states in the country. It “takes seriously the concepts of institutionalized racism. We were fertile ground to be convinced that Jews are the oppressors,” Feldman told me. More than 80 percent of Vermonters live in towns that have adopted a Declaration of Inclusion, a pledge that “condemns racism” and is intended for “everyone to feel safe and welcome in our community.” No state voted more heavily for Kamala Harris in the most recent presidential election. And unlike the anti-Israel movement on college campuses and in major cities like New York, the activists driving this campaign are often boomers—retirees with a long track record of anti-war activism and nothing but time to kill. Catherine Bock, a 77-year-old Burlington resident, falls into that camp.

Vermont stalwart Howard Dean has also fallen in line with the left’s current hatred of Israel:

● Shot: Dean defends Middle East remarks.

Under fire for saying that the United States should be even-handed in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, 2004 Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean Wednesday said he would not abandon the long-standing policy of strong U.S. support for Israel.

The former Vermont governor said criticism of his remarks by presidential rival Sen. Joseph Lieberman was a “despicable” attempt to divide the Democratic Party, which has long enjoyed the support of many Jewish voters.

“We do have a special relationship with Israel. We would defend Israel if necessary. I think that is well-known,” he told CNN. “However, we are also the only country capable of bringing peace to the Middle East, and when we sit at the negotiating table, we do have to have the trust of both sides or we will never succeed.”

—CNN, September 10th, 2003.

● Chaser: Former Vermont Governor calls Israel an Apartheid state.

—The Jerusalem Post, October 3rd, 2021.

In 2003, Jonah Goldberg wrote about revisiting David Brooks’ “Latte Town” image of Burlington, Vermont during the Clinton-era 1990s:

In his Weekly Standard article, entitled “The Rise of the Latte Town,” Brooks highlighted Burlington, Vermont as Exhibit A in what he identified as a profound transformation of American liberalism and American society in general. Brooks declared, “One of the striking things about Burlington is that it is relatively apolitical.” He noted how the bookstores downplayed overtly partisan books in favor of tomes which explained how individual citizens could help the homeless. “Bulletin boards are everywhere,” he reported, “but most of the fliers advertise rock bands, not rallies.” He saw only three political bumper stickers there: two simply said “Bernie” (a reference to Vermont’s only congressman, an Independent in the House and a socialist in his heart) and the third was a sticker for Rush–which he found on the outskirts of town on a pickup truck, so maybe the owner was an out-of-towner making a delivery.

All in all, Brooks discovered, Leftists didn’t care much about national or international politics. They wanted to be left with their expensive-but-necessary homes, cars, and clothes. “So these upscale liberals have retreated from national and urban politics and instead concentrated their energies on the local politics and small-scale activism to be found in the Latte Towns.” Moreover, while this retreat may be literal for those who voted with their feet and moved to Burlington, Austin, Texas, and Portland, Oregon, there has been a broader psychological retreat by the Left in general. “In this sense, Latte Towns represent a fundamental transformation in the American Left, the shift from the adversary culture to the alternative culture.”

Visiting Burlington in 2003 one discovers a very different Latte Town, and not just because Brooks seemed not to notice all of the drug addicts and facially pierced ne’er-do-wells. Oh, by the way, Latte Towns (Alan Ehrenhalt coined the term) are exactly what you’d think. I describe them in my forthcoming NRODT piece as one of those clever, crunchy, condescending college burgs crammed with students–and professors–with open-toed shoes and closed minds. The kids can name 50 different espresso drinks but not one reason to cut a tax, a tree, or their hair.

Anyway, Burlington is hardly the “apolitical” hamlet Brooks encountered. These days the bookstores front a lot more Noam Chomsky and Al Franken. You can still find flyers for bands–if you’re willing to peel off the ones advertising trips to Cuba. Political bumper stickers are everywhere. “Impeach Bush” is particularly popular, but my favorite was one I saw while driving along the campus of the University of Vermont: “The Road to Hell is Paved with Republicans.” You can also find it for sale at the “Peace & Justice Center & Store” on Church street in the heart of downtown Burlington.

Fast-forward to Latte Town in 2026:

Correlation of HATE HAS NO HOME HERE lawn signs to anti-Semitism remains undefeated https://t.co/mppRYcZqkg

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) June 18, 2026

MOU UPDATE: Kurdish dissident group reports Iranian attack despite war-end deal with US. “Iran has launched a new strike on a Kurdish opposition group’s camp near Erbil, the group said on Tuesday, marking the first such attack by Tehran since it reached a war-end agreement with Washington. The assault is fueling concern that the truce does not include a halt to strikes against Kurdish opposition groups in the Kurdistan Region.”

A NEW LOW SO FAR: The SPLC Hits An All New Low With Cringe Sex Scandal.

TRANQUILITY BASE HERE, THE EGO HAS LANDED:

Obama has been, and always will be, a monumentally arrogant douchebag. https://t.co/hHzoU5ypC4

— Ned Ryun (@nedryun) June 19, 2026

NOVEMBER PREVIEW: Jon Ossoff Tried to Mock Mike Collins Over His ‘Daddy.’ Then the Receipts Came Out.

ADHERING TO OUR ENEMIES: Notorious, China-Based American Mogul Is Running Shadowy Influence Campaign to Undermine U.S. AI Efforts, Give Communist China an Edge in Technology Arms Race.

LIMITED PRIME DEAL: Amazon Kindle Scribe Premium Pen. #CommissionEarned

TO BE SURE, THERE ARE FAR WORSE THINGS IRAN COULD BE DOING DURING PRIDE MONTH:

Referring to someone as a nation's "disfigured and probably gay supreme leader" is diabolical lmao. https://t.co/UGGbGSZSKn

— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) June 19, 2026

COME SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: ‘Unofficial’ CU student group cheers for Boulder firebomber.

“He took direct action against the Zionist death cult festering in our city,” the site says. “He struck against the colonist procession that gathers weekly to celebrate the pretext for ongoing genocide.”

Calling it a “case of the chickens coming home to roost,” the group states:

“The colonists present at the Run for Their Lives procession each week carry posters celebrating war criminals who have served as the pretext for the systematic extermination of the Palestinian people since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” the site reads. “When community members confronted those … with cries of ‘Stop killing kids,’ the marchers responded with proud declarations that they wished death upon every child in Gaza. … Mohamed chose the only sane response available to a rational human being confronted with the normalization of genocide. He refused the comfortable position of the grateful immigrant and the role of obedient subject, choosing confrontation with a violent system over passive proximity to the comfort of the empire.”

The group’s official designation was revoked over multiple campus violations, including disrupting a career fair, amplifying sound, and a member being arrested for theft and harassment on campus, to name a few. Campus groups are banned from any activities that disrupt the university’s mission.

The group’s latest antics caused CU to issue a strong admonition of the group and its purpose.

But no expulsions?

EVERY LEFTY SLOGAN HAS AN EXPIRATION DATE:

The Left: “Believe All Women!”

British Women: “250,000+ of us were systematically raped and tortured by mostly Pakistani men from the 1950s to now with help from our police, social workers, NHS staff and politicians.”

The Left: “Yea, not you.”

— Alice Smith (@TheAliceSmith) June 18, 2026

OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN IN FAVOR OF SECURE BORDERS:

Europe just experienced one of the fastest religious conversions in political history.

For years they called basic border enforcement “fascism.” They called deportation “cruel.” They called any suggestion of returning people who had no right to be there “far-right extremism.”…

— Flopping Aces (@FloppingAces) June 18, 2026

HEADLINE OF THE DAY — AND IT’S ONLY 7 A.M.: The Banality of Keir Starmer: Chestless Bureaucrats and the Betrayal of Britain’s Daughters.