Random Notes on the Day

With more to come later

• Given that Charlie Kirk was shot on a college campus, and that his Turning Point USA organization is a student-based campus organization, you’d think university administrators would be issuing statements of concern and sympathy and offering support for anxious or traumatized students—as nearly every university did after George Floyd’s death, not to mention after both of Donald Trump’s election victories. (Strange, isn’t it, that universities never issued such statements after John McCain and Mitt Romney lost. Years ago, M. Stanton Evans joked that young conservatives like himself in 1964 had to get over the Goldwater defeat without grief counselors. Thirty years later this became the standard practice on most college campuses—at least for fragile liberal students.)

• Here’s a thought: How about a class action lawsuit against the fraudulent Southern Poverty Law Center, on behalf of Charlie Kirk, Charles Murray, the Family Research Council, and every other person or organization SPLC has slandered with its designation that they belong to “racist hate groups”? This would be a great time for a conservative benefactor to step up and fund such a lawsuit, as Peter Thiel did for Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker.

• I’m working on several more pieces about Charlie Kirk and his wider meaning, some that will appear here, and some in other outlets. But for now, one of the best deep dives into the events of the last two weeks comes from my pal Brad Thompson, at his own very fine Substack “The Redneck Intellectual.” His piece today, “Nihilism and the Crisis of the West,” is superb. (And if you haven’t signed up for “The Redneck Intellectual,” today would be a good day—even if he is the competition for this intellectual space.)

• And now for something completely different. The Feel Good Story of the Day comes from the Wall Street Journal, which reports that “Joe Biden Is Struggling to Cash in on His Presidency.” Gee—I wonder why? The story avoids the real reason, which is that no one wants to hear from a senile old fool. The story reports that he is getting few paid speaking gigs, and in those few cases he is often having to settle for much less than his requested fee of $300,000 to $500,000. His memoir only garnered a $10 million advance, versus $60 million for Obama. Jill Biden is working on her own book, but so for without a publisher. The Bidens have considerable debt on their various real estate holdings, and son Hunter is millions of dollar in the hole, with his income from speeches and art drying up. (Gee—I wonder why. . .)

The little detail at the end of this sentence sounds entirely typical of Biden: “Instead of private jets, Biden has been spotted with a book on his lap in the first-class cabin of American Airlines flights or (talking) aboard Amtrak’s quiet car.” Of course he would talk on the quiet car, his life-long logorrhea not yet extinguished by his senility.

It will be curious to see, when his memoir is complete, how he explains his choice of Kamala Harris as his running mate, and whether he will use the opportunity to hit back for the trash talking Kamala is rolling out about Biden and his people in her forthcoming memoir.

• Finally, since several people asked for more original video content, I have put together a six-minute highlight reel of the best of Iceland’s waterfalls that I was able to visit last week—a nice respite from all the awfulness around us right now: