Hold your nose

Mark Steyn notes in his week in review that

The week began with a cash-for-Cankles update: the Clintons somehow managed to wangle a $100 million finder's fee for facilitating the transfer of one-fifth of US uranium into the hands of Vladimir Putin. For most presidential candidates, this would be an unhelpful revelation, but apparently not for Hillary.

(Wiktionary tells me that a cankle is

An obese or otherwise swollen ankle that blends into the calf without clear demarcation.

Steyn continues,

One of the lessons learned by the Clintons back in the Nineties is that, if you're gonna have a scandal, have a hundred of 'em. And then it's all too complicated and just gives everyone a big headache, and they go back to watching "Friends" or "Baywatch" or whatever it was back then. When a scandal gets too easy to follow, that's where the danger lies.

As things stand, Vladimir Putin has wound up with control of 20 per cent of American uranium production.

That's almost too funny an update of the line variously attributed to Lenin, Stalin and others: "The capitalists will sell us the rope by which we will hang them." In this case, we've sold Putin the uranium by which he will nuke us.

The Clintons' defense:

...that all these Saudis are ponying up for Bill and Hill because they want to improve women's rights in Africa; that Kazakh oligarchs are so generous because they want to reduce diarrhea outbreaks in Africa. Which is why Chelsea gets 75 grand a pop to give dull speeches about diarrhea. But, assuming for the purposes of argument that the House of Saud really did want to promote women's rights in the Third World, why would they do it through the Clintons and see 94 per cent of it get sluiced off before it got anywhere near Africa?

What Charity Navigator calls the Clinton Foundation's "atypical business model" is, in fact, the point of the operation. The Saudis, Kazakhs, Canucks et al are giving to the Clintons - and that six per cent to emaciated Africans is merely the equivalent of that moment at the supermarket checkout when the clerk tallies up your $150 of groceries and asks if you'd like to give a buck to Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

But, as I said, let's keep it simple: As Sergei Kiriyenko told the Russian Duma, Tsar Putin now owns a fifth of US uranium - in return for Bill and Hill's slush fund getting a hundred million bucks.

To modify Lady Macbeth, not all the diarrhea in Africa can wash away the stench of the Clinton Foundation.

Pundits often talk about "clothespin" elections, where the voters are obliged to hold their nose in the polling booth and select a malodorous candidate. But never on this scale. If the Clintons are returned to the White House, you'll be holding your nose for the next eight years.

Read more here.