Out Out, Damned Email!

Guest Post by Jim Kunstler

The mighty Shakespeare in his direst night sweats could not have conjured up the Clinton family in all their sharp angles and dark corners, but we can try to reconstruct the scene last week on Loretta Lynch’s plane out on the Phoenix airport tarmac. Former president Bill steps aboard:

Loretta:   What the fuck are you doing here?

Bill:            I just had to tell you what Charlotte did last week.

Loretta:   Who the fuck is Charlotte?

Bill:           Our grand-kid. She’s turning into a good little earner.

Loretta:   We can’t meet like this. We’re about to depose your wife.

Bill:           Charlotte gave a speech to the whole Citibank C-suite.

Loretta:   I don’t give a fuck. Get off my plane right now!

Bill:           Well, I don’t know if ‘speech’ is the right word. She gurgles nice.

Loretta:     I guess you didn’t hear me.

Bill:             She pulled in fifty grand for that. Of course it was a hundred percent remitted to the foundation. Well, bye now. (Exits plane).

I have a theory about the Clinton family dynamic. Bill does not want Hillary to win because he doesn’t want to live in the White House again. For sure he does not want to live with The Flying Reptile, but he especially doesn’t want to be on display in that fishbowl where folks pretty much can see what you’re up to 24/7. For one thing, “The Energizer” can’t discreetly come and go. But he certainly doesn’t want to concern himself as “First Husband” or “First Gentleman” (title TBD) with deciding which fabric to choose in replacing the East Room draperies. So Bill decided to fix things for sure with that innocent visit to the US Attorney General’s airplane to talk about grand-kids.

It seems to be working. If there was any question that Loretta Lynch could just sit on her hands about Hillary’s email investigation through the November election, it went up in a vapor last week. It also left FBI director on the hot seat because now he will have to either cough up a referral to Justice Department prosecutors, or he’ll have some ‘splainin to do in the heat of a presidential election campaign. If you thought Watergate was a ripe peach, this one is beginning to look like a stinking durian (Durio zibethinus).

Both The New York Times and the WashPo are spinning the Hillary email scandal as being about security protocols, which is to say they are deliberately putting too fine a point on the matter as a ruse to deflect from the deeper issue: namely, did Hillary as Secretary of State use her office to shovel money from sources in foreign lands into her family foundation? It sure looks that way if you match the contributions from foreign lands to the arms sale deals she approved as part of her official duties. In any case, whatever connection there might be between those arms deals and the foundation revenue, is there not under any circumstances some obvious conflict of interest (and legal liability) about a secretary of state doing personal business with foreign governments?

This matter is swelling like an abscess ready to burst just as the Hon (?) Debbie Wasserman Schultz whacks the gavel to open the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Bernie’s troops will be ready to rock and roll both inside and outside the convention, with perhaps some diversionary skirmishes by the Black Lives Matter cadres. Throw in another “Lone Wolf” massacre, say, at a cheese-steak stand and you can kiss the Democratic Party goodbye.

Note that this convergence of bad karma will take place against the background of deteriorating events on the banking scene. The European banks in particular are melting away to nothing while European Union officials wring their hands in prayer. You can bet it’s going to affect all the global banks, daisy-chained as they are in counterparty obligations. Somewhere in a dark subterranean chamber, the magma of financial derivatives is getting ready to blow.

Happy Independence Day everybody! Who needs space aliens when we’ve got Hillary and Trump?

This week marks the official publication date of The Harrows of Spring, the fourth and final installment of the World Made By Hand series of novels about the post-petroleum American Future.