AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) June 19, 2026
Author Archive: Stephen Green
June 19, 2026
GO EAST, YOUNG MAN: California’s billionaire tax officially heads to Nov. 3 ballot. “If you want a budget deficit in perpetuity, pass this,” Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach, told The Center Square. “What happens is, these folks are now going to Florida and everywhere else, and not only are they leaving, but they are the ones investing in a lot of these jobs. Those jobs now are fleeing California, and we’re going to lose them, dramatically, going forward.”
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE…: Tehran Mayor: War With ‘Great Satan’ U.S. ‘Is Ongoing, Existential.’
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Ariane 6 launches with more powerful boosters: a new record for Europe. “The flight featured the debut of four new boosters based on the P160C solid-propellant rocket motor. Holding 14 tonnes more propellant each, the larger, more powerful rocket motors allowed 36 Leo satellites to be placed into orbit on one launch – four more than the two Leo launches Ariane 6 has delivered before. The P160C-based boosters can increase Ariane 6 performance by 10% to 15% depending on the orbit.”
SARAH ANDERSON: Cuba Falling: Free the Kid Already.
FALLOUT: Hormuz relief may not ease the economic toll that’s already ‘baked in,’ analysts warn. “Higher energy costs and upstream supply disruptions would take longer to feed through to the downstream food and energy sectors. A backlog of vessels waiting to transit the Strait of Hormuz could further delay a full recovery in freight flows.”
ALMOST TOO ON-THE-NOSE TO BE BELIEVED: Houston ‘Financial Integrity Advisor’ Paid $127,000 To Show Up Twice This Year. “Sounds a little like a juicy sinecure for a political supporter, doesn’t it?”
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.
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.
ANOVE AND BEYOND: Marines, Army Announce Three New Medal of Honor Recipients.
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.”
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.”
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?
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.
June 18, 2026
DISPATCHES FROM THE SOY ZONES: Trump’s UFC fight a lot like 19th century lynching, Boston College historian says.
LIKE, FLAMING?
SCOOP: California is pressuring public utilities to award $633 million in special contracts to "LGBT-owned" firms. To qualify, residents must go through the state's official gay-certification program—and face up to a year in jail if they're not gay enough.https://t.co/rOcnPqYJrl
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@christopherrufo) June 16, 2026
More and more, the state is just a trillion-dollar grift operation.
UPDATE (From Ed):
UPDATE (FROM GLENN):
MURICA:
NEW: TSA warns World Cup visitors not to pack oversized bottles of ranch dressing in their carry-ons, as ranch mania spreads among foreign fans.
— Polymarket (@Polymarket) June 18, 2026
ICYMI: The Iran War Was Easy. The Peace Is the Problem. “There’s so much to pick apart here, but there are really only three things that matter: ‘Status quo,’ ‘End all sanctions,’ and ‘$300 billion.’ As for the efficacy of a denuclearization plan involving the UN… I just throw my hands up in the air.”
NOW THAT’S A LONG HAUL: Qantas to launch world’s longest nonstop commercial flight between Sydney and London.
Qantas plans to launch what it says will be the world’s longest nonstop commercial flight in October 2027, connecting Sydney and London with a journey expected to last up to 22 hours.
The Australian airline announced Wednesday that nonstop flights between the two cities will begin operating as part of its long-awaited Project Sunrise initiative, which aims to connect Australia’s east coast directly with major global destinations.
Qantas unveiled the first of its specially configured Airbus A350-1000ULR aircraft at Airbus’ manufacturing facility in Toulouse, France. The aircraft has been modified for ultra-long-haul travel and includes an additional 20,000-liter fuel tank that allows it to travel more than 16,000 kilometers, or nearly 10,000 miles, nonstop.
The Sydney-London route will become the first nonstop service between Australia’s east coast and the United Kingdom. According to Qantas, the flights will reduce travel time by as much as four hours compared with existing one-stop itineraries.
Four hours savings vs 22 hours on a single plane…
IT LOOKS LIKE THERE’S SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE TO DISLIKE: Hardliners in Iran Hate the MOU, but the Government Media Is Restrained.