It turns out that, while we were all worrying about the mullahs' nuclear program, the Clintons' nuclear program was going gangbusters. Kazakhquiddick dominated the conversation on my weekly chat with Hugh Hewitt:
HUGH HEWITT: I'm looking at an extraordinary article – Cash Flowed To Clinton Foundation As Russians Press For Control Of Uranium Company. It's by Jo Becker and Mike McIntire from today's New York Times. It's almost unfathomable that Hillary Clinton would consider running for president after this article comes out, but what say you, Mark Steyn?
MARK STEYN: Yes, I agree. And I like Elizabeth Warren, and I want her to run. And when I say 'like', don't get me wrong - I think she would be a disastrous president for this country, and she would want to turn it into a socialist basket case. But she believes in something, and she wants to do something. And Hillary Clinton is an entirely hollow creation. She is basically just an empty vessel in which the dodgiest characters on the planet pour money in return for favors. And I regret to say her daughter is becoming much the same kind of thing, too. Her daughter's joined the family on stage with this Kazakh oligarch and all the rest of it. In fairness to Bill Clinton, he likes chasing nymphettes - he's the only Clinton with a human characteristic...
HH: Now I don't want to overstate the complexity, but in a nutshell, Russia has cornered the world uranium market.
MS: Right.
HH: They have done so through acquiring huge uranium resources in Canada and the United State subject to review by the State Department was given, and Bill Clinton pocketed a half million along the way, and the foundation picked up two and a half million bucks from interested parties...
I think I've mentioned before that, for a while, the US Department of Labor used to call up my assistant once a year and demand to know whether we "worked with uranium". And once in a while they'd insist on speaking to me personally and I'd say, "Hmm. Let me have a think on that. Did we use any uranium in my Christmas disco single? No, wait, that was bongos..."
And, when they'd gone away, I used occasionally to wonder how many American businesses the vast federal bureaucracy had to harass before they got a positive response to that question. But it turns out that, if the Department of Labor were to call up the Clinton Foundation, which Hill's impressionable rubes seem to think is something to do with reducing diarrhea outbreaks in Africa, and ask them, "Do you work with uranium?", the answer is yes.
On the radio, I made one of my very rare interruptions of Hugh - because the big cynical American lawyer guy was for once sweetly naïve enough to think that there is an actual thing called the "Clinton Foundation" that does "foundation"-type work:
HH: I'm going to ask after the break, Mark Steyn, Lindsey Graham, whether or not Senate hearings are in order, because I want to know if Iran has given money to the Clinton Foundation. Honestly, at this point…
MS: Well wait, but just a minute, Hugh, there is no 'Clinton Foundation'... The only purpose of this foundation is to enable this family to lead the lifestyle of a head of state after it has ceased to be head of state. They spent $70 million dollars on travel at the Clinton Foundation. By comparison, the entire Royal Family, to fly between their various realms - the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, that's a lot of air miles - the entire Royal Family in one year spent $7 million dollars. So in other words, the Clintons have ten times the airplane costs of the Royal Family, who are heads of state of dozens of bits of real estate around the world. The Clinton Foundation is a hollow shell foundation playing the usual shell game with U.S. taxation. There's no need for a Clinton Foundation except for them to rake in money from Kazakhs and Ukrainians and Iranians and Saudis and everybody else...
HH: Well, let me ask you. There are two questions. Which is more transparent – the Windsor or the Clinton family? And which is less tacky – the Windsors or the Clintons?
MS: Well, one can make arguments about the last point, but the House of Windsor is certainly, the House of Windsor is certainly more transparent. You can go to I think it's Royalty.gov.uk, and the Lord Chamberlain who runs the Queen's Household posts every itemized bit of travel. So if you were to ask the Queen, if you happened to be meeting the Queen and you happened to say why did Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Gloucester, spend $700 dollars getting from Calgary to Bermuda in 2009, she'll give you a straight answer. Whereas if you ask a similar question to Hillary Rodham Clinton, she'll say 'Oh, well, these are just more distractions from the right-wing Koch-funded media, and I'm just here to talk to everyday Americans as long as they've undergone a background check and have been pre-screened so that it's safe for me to pretend to interact with them...'
HH: I'm stunned. You are actually saying the House of Windsor is more transparent than the House of Clinton?
MS: Yes, because the one advantage of a real monarchy, Hugh, is that it comes in-built with a certain amount of chippiness. So for example…
HH: (laughing)
MS: …when the Duke of Cambridge and his lovely bride were in Canada a couple of years ago, and the Canadian press was going 'why do we have to pay for these pampered, disgusting royal deadbeats? what's it costing us to have to grovel in form in front of them?' ... and a master-corporal with the Royal Canadian Air Force revealed that she'd splashed out, she'd gone to the mall, and bought a $128 dollar comforter set for the Duchess of Cambridge's bed. And she said it was such a bargain at, you know, whatever branch of Wal-Mart she got it at, it was such a bargain that she bought one for herself. So you can know that the Duchess of Cambridge is sleeping on a $128 dollar comforter set from Wal-Mart, but you can't, but the Clinton Foundation, which is just a kind of big octopus sucking in through its various arms and legs money from all over the planet, if you ask Hillary about that, then she just sails by as if she's Cleopatra.
It was a pale blue-and-white comforter from the mall in Trenton, Ontario. And you'd never get Chelsea Clinton to sleep on that. If this sleazy uranium'n'jailbait operation is returned to the White House, the republic is over.
You can find the full interview with Hugh here.
~I'll be back on the radio next week for more interviews re Climate Change: The Facts. That's the new book featuring me and some of the world's most eminent scientists on the state of the climate debate - and it's currently Number One on the Climatology Hit Parade, and also Number One on the Environmental Policy Hot 100.
On the other hand, serial litigant Michael E Mann's new book is nipping at our heels at Big Hit Sound #511,770.
