Roundup
(1) I haven’t written yet about Obama’s much-critiqued presidential center. But it’s about what you’d expect: the most expensive ever. I’m not a big fan of the presidential center/library concept anyway; we used to do just fine without them. See this, though:
Wow. The juxtaposition of the classic beauty of the University of Chicago with the Obama Library shows what an ugly abomination the new presidential library is. It's an absolute eyesore. https://t.co/zDL8QY3isJ
— Corey Walker ?? (@CoreyWriting) June 19, 2026
Just about unreadable even in closeup:
The words are from Obama’s speech at Selma. How ironic, given that Obama did much to hinder race relations in this country.
(2) Oh her way out, Tulsi Gabbard released documents related to Fauci and COVID:
Today, on my final day as Director of National Intelligence, I’m releasing never-before-seen communications and documents exposing how Dr. Fauci provided millions in US taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, worked with politicized elements within the Intelligence Community to suppress the truth about his actions and hide the virus’ lab-leak origins, and lied to Congress while under oath in 2024. It’s time you know the truth.
Seems to me we already knew that. But it’s good to have more documentation. I am fairly confident that the left will ignore it. Fauci was a real hero of theirs.
(3) Strait of Hormuz, open or closed? Here’s what CENTCOM says:
But Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, later said: “Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz. Traffic continues to flow, and U.S. forces are monitoring the situation to ensure this remains the case.”
Fifty-five commercial ships traveled through the strait on Saturday, according to the U.S. Central Command, the largest number of ships in a single day since early in the war, though still far below the 130 daily prewar average. It was not clear whether traffic had changed after Iran’s warnings.
Despite the fighting in Lebanon and the renewed Iranian threats to shipping, the next stage of U.S.-Iran talks appeared ready to start.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace …
(4) A Medicare fraud big guy is returned, and the scope of his crimes is impressive:
Herbert Leon Kimble, who pleaded guilty to orchestrating one of the largest Medicare fraud schemes ever prosecuted in the United States and then simply didn’t show up for sentencing, has been arrested in the Philippines and returned to face justice. The FBI had offered a reward of up to $150,000 for information leading to his arrest and conviction.
According to the FBI, Kimble’s scheme generated more than $1.2 billion in fraudulent Medicare charges and victimized thousands of beneficiaries, many of them elderly Americans who trusted the healthcare system.
The arrest marks the second capture from the FBI’s Most Wanted Fraudsters list, which launched on June 4, 2026, and initially featured eight fugitives accused of major fraud offenses.
Note the extended timeframe:
Herbert Leon Kimble was apprehended in the Philippines and is now back in the United States, on the run since 2024 after he allegedly orchestrated a $1.2 billion healthcare fraud conspiracy that targeted the Medicare system, particularly elderly victims, from 2014 to 2019.
And what did the fraud involve, specifically? “Marketing and distribution of unnecessary orthopedic braces”. A billion dollars worth of them, apparently. Think big.
Here’s a lot more about Kimble. He’s from Chicago but operated in part from the Philippines, which explains his fleeing there:
Herbert Leon Kimble was involved in a large-scale healthcare fraud conspiracy that targeted the Medicare system through the improper marketing and distribution of durable medical equipment (DME), particularly orthopedic braces. He operated a sophisticated call-center-based operation, beginning around 2014 and continuing to March 2019, that served as the marketing engine for a nationwide fraud scheme in which individuals contacted call centers in the Philippines, telemedicine providers, DME suppliers (the billers), and orthopedic brace suppliers (the drop shippers). His operations focused primarily on initiating contact with Medicare beneficiaries and persuading them to request orthopedic braces for pain relief, which were frequently unnecessary and prescribed through telemedicine consultations that often lacked legitimate medical evaluation. The prescriptions were then sold to DME companies, Kimble-affiliated suppliers would ship the braces, and the DME companies billed Medicare for reimbursement. His fraudulent healthcare enterprise resulted in more than $1.2 billion in Medicare charges and affected thousands of Medicare beneficiaries, many of whom were elderly victims.
(5) Is Starmer on the way out? I’ve asked that question before, and he seems quite tenacious. But here’s another report:
Starmer is weighing his political future as cabinet ministers push him to make way for Andy Burnham following Burnham’s decisive victory in the Makerfield by-election. Starmer’s net favorability has collapsed to -46, with 69 percent of Britons viewing him unfavorably. Reform UK leads Labour by seven points. The governing party of Britain is being routed, and its own cabinet knows it.
Who is Andy Burnham, and why is he doing better?:
Polls suggest Labour would run six points better under Burnham. A former cabinet minister and mayor of Greater Manchester since 2017, Burnham acknowledged what Starmer never could: that Labour lost touch with the people it claims to represent, on immigration, on the cost of living, on who the rules actually apply to. Compared to a prime minister who spent two years telling working-class Britain its concerns were misinformed, acknowledging the anger was enough. …
With 79 percent of voters telling pollsters they know little or nothing about Burnham, Starmer is betting that obscurity disqualifies his rival, while his own rating sits at -46.
So Burnham is the proverbial blank slate, Labour version.
In Item (1), writer Corey Walker describes the new presidential library in Chicago as “an ugly abomination.” Methinks “obamanation” may well be a very fitting description.
I don’t think the University of Chicago library is particularly handsome, just not hideous. If what’s been bruited about is correct, the architects of the Obama center had an initial design that was circumspect. The ghastly flak tower is a consequence of changes on which he insisted. That gives me the willies, as it suggests there’s a degree of ugliness in the man we haven’t yet perceived.
==
The degree to which the elder Bushes allowed Bilge Clinton to worm his way into their social circle was disconcerting. The affection of the younger Bushes for the Obamas seems downright creepy. I regret every word I ever uttered in defense of George W. Bush.
IMO, we should have a modular presidential records center in Kansas City and transfer the archival material in the presidential libraries there. You complete an administration, you add another module. They’re all connected by a concourse. The extant presidential libraries and the gewgaws within them would then be conveyed to the county governments where they are located and we never build another one. The Obama thing should be razed.
That picture of the Monument to Barack I actually does better than a stand alone picture of that hideous building.
I am sure Fauci will pay for his crimes against humanity some day.
Kimble is caught, but those hundreds of $1.2 billion is gone.
Britain will keep voting in Marxists hoping something different will happen. It won’t.
Skip (5:01 pm) said: “I am sure Fauci will pay for his crimes against humanity some day.”
Do you have any well-grounded reason for believing that? —
NOTE: a faith in ultimate and/or cosmic goodness and/or justice doesn’t count.
Another juxtaposition I noticed from a different angle awhile back – the Museum of Science and Industry:
https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/0b533d9/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000×2000+0+0/resize/1680×1120!/quality/90/?url=https:%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F79%2F15%2F76ada9034b2c8725c223d2451d5c%2Fobamalibrary-2604xx-6.jpg
Who knew that steel reinforced concrete was actually a metastatic tumor on the body of architecture.
And to top it off, logorrhea.
I haven’t heard anything about Burnham to make me think he’d be any better than Starmer.
The Obama monstrosity probably won’t even come down in a tornado, although I hear the construction may not be stellar. The building’s ugliness mirrors Obama’s. He didn’t even pay the contractors, some of whom are facing financial ruin.
Wow, 55 ships through the strait, that is about the maximum daily traffic for ships traveling through the new channel we opened near Oman. Everyone must want out pronto. The old channels aren’t open yet on account of mines. I wonder how much of that traffic was into the gulf? I think the MoU has changed perception of risk. What the real risk is, no one knows. But I suspect the original perception was exaggerated because of uncertainty.
Andy Burnham, same day, same S.
How much paper did his admin generate? What an ugly, Soviet Era eyesore.
You have to show ID to get in.
Having his words on the face is just another long line of Ego posturing.
Obama ” monument ” …the leftists i follow, of course, think his monument is absolutely wonderful, and wax often to return to wonderful days of the Light Bringer. It gets so tiring.
Skip (5:01 pm) said: “I am sure Fauci will pay for his crimes against humanity some day.”
MJR, “Do you have any well-grounded reason for believing that?”
Societally, it’s that or surrender to nihilism. As, if there’s no true justice, no balancing of the scales. If ultimately, there are no consequences for evil… No St. Peter @ the Gate. No karma or dharma.
Then “while you can, get all you can for you and yours… becomes the ONLY ‘rational’ moral principle. That inescapably leads to an irredeemable societal corruption. And, the “Melian Dialogue” becomes the way of the world.
“The strong take what they will and the weak suffer what they must”. Melian Dialogue in Book 5 of Thucydides’ “History of the Peloponnesian War”.
#1 – that building perfectly represents that twit’s presidency
Chicago’s skyline has been fundamentally transformed.
You mean the German Flak Tower.
During his presidency Obama said he was smarter than all his advisors.
Word is the Obama Library started as a tasteful horizontal design, but Obama was a smarter architect too.
What you see is what Obama wanted. A brutalist monument to his ego.
It reminds me of the Imperial Walkers in “The Empire Strikes Back.”
My Cat, Bela, just walked across the keyboard. I deleted what she wrote about BO’s library because it might offend.
“German Flak Tower” – LOL, that is the best description I have heard so far!
And others that I have heard were good too: broken fridge, concrete slab (or nightmare), Obamalisk, Klingon prison, insult to architecture, etc.
And, I agree with Neo – this “Presidential Library” thing is something we can certainly do without.
Steel-reinforced concrete “buildings” also without windows, that the public cannot enter, even with a picture ID.
https://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/CanyonFacilities
Pretty sure the rationale, such as it is, behind this ghastly eyesore is that it will likely be the only building left standing after Chicago is ultimately obliterated by on-going DPUSA
misrulesabotage.The precedent for such a “concept” is quite possibly to be found in Ann Arbor—the University of Michigan Admin Building—though Obama’s infernal Tower of Brutality is the Admin Building on steroids.
What I can’t understand is why the architect/s responsible for this terrifying nightmare didn’t resign upon being told that the Messiah insisted on implementing certain “ideas”….
(Who do they think they are?? Albert Speer?)
I’m sure Starmer will leave on the same day Iran surrenders.
physicsguy, thanks for telling us that your lefty friends think this awful building is wonderful. Even those who admire Obama ought to be able to see this thing is objectively ugly. That they can’t is an indication of how severely their thinking is disordered.
Here’s the architect’s website for the Obama Center.
Click photos for additional views.
https://twbta.com/work/cultural/the-obama-presidential-center/#
It’s modern.
MJR – well no, because while on this earth the Marxists will go to any lengths to protect their hero. ( See his Get of of Jail card for all crimes real or proposed)
If Mark Twain were around today he might update his critique of Wagner’s music and say, charitably (impishly), “I don’t think Obama’s Library Building is as ugly as it looks”.
Maybe the architects couldn’t get out of their contract and decided to troll Obama. Who of course doesn’t get the hint.
The Barack Hussain Obama Liberry and Bathhouse resembles a prison.
I pray that one day he will be in one!
It reminds of some of the less pleasing viewing angles of the Empire State Plaza here, only more so. As if the architect of that had had a really bad argument with his wife and drank an awful lot before sketching it out.
(I was just looking up the history of the Empire State Plaza, and interestingly, one of the churches that ended up demolished in that area of Albany was the original St. Sophia parish church. I’m sure they’re aware of the history of it, but I never knew that before.)
Here’s the architect’s website for the Obama Center.
==
They design ugly buildings and he buffaloes them into making it worse. I luv it.
— huxley
To be fair, Trump has said similar things about his own circle.
To my eye (and I’ve seen others say this too) the Obama tower looks weirdly like one of the turbolaser batteries seen in the original Star Wars movie on the Death Star.
I agree with Neo, there shouldn’t even be Presidential libraries. The entire concept is wrong. Their public papers and such belong in the National Archives. Their personal stuff is their concern.
HC68: “… the Obama tower looks weirdly like one of the turbolaser batteries seen in the original Star Wars movie on the Death Star.”
Obama was in his mid-teens when the first Star Wars movie came out. Maybe something lodged in his subconscious …