The long holiday weekend has mostly been rained out around here, and even after a mostly dry but constantly cloudy Sunday the two rivers bounding our neighborhood are still swelling over the adjacent bike paths and the Big Ditch that the city fathers carved out on the west side to keep us above water at times like these is also full, but at least the forecasters are forecasting a clear and sunny Independence Day suitable for baseball and charcoaling burgers and drinking beer al fresco and shooting off fireworks without fear of setting off a grassfire in the still soggy fields. Most folks around here and around the rest of the country will happily take the day off from paying any attention to the stormy and soggy political news of this unprecedentedly crazy quadrennial presidential year, which is good news for presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The former First Lady and Senator and Secretary of State and formerly presumed First Woman President had another one of those disastrous news cycles that have so frequently interrupted the usual ongoing narrative about her historic and inevitable presidency, and she can only hope that most people weren’t paying any attention. First there was a well-documented and very damning report on her conduct as Secretary of State during the undeniably disastrous Benghazi incident, co-authored by our own well-liked Kansas Fourth District’s Rep. Mike Pompeo, and because it was already well-established that her conduct at every point was utterly appalling her more daring apologists were able to dismiss it was “nothing new.” Then came the news that her husband, a former two-term president and scandal-plagued disgrace in his own right, had happened to have a conversation about his grandchildren with the Attorney General who will ultimately decide if his wife is to be indicted on the very serious charges that her underlings at the Federal Bureau of Investigation are investigating, and that it happened in her private plane at a Phoenix Airport where he had been waiting around for 30 minutes before a supposed golf game that he intended to play in the 110-degree heat. Even the media that much prefer that storyline about Hillary Clinton’s historic and inevitable presidency had to admit that it looked bad and smelled fishy, and the resulting conspiracy ranged from the reliably left-wing Kathleen Parker’s worry that Bill Clinton was sabotaging his wife’s historic and otherwise inevitable presidency due to some subconscious impulse to the reliably right-wing Rush Limbaugh’s worry that Slick Willie is once again outwitting the hapless Republicans, but in any case the presumptive Democratic nominee can only hope that few people were paying attention.
While we were attempting to navigate our way through the least water-logged streets of downtown Wichita towards home on Saturday the presumptive Democratic nominee and formerly presumed First Woman President was enduring a three-and-a-half-hour interrogation by eight agents of the FBI regarding a drearily long and still on-going criminal investigation into her e-mail and “family foundation” fund-raising practices while Secretary of State, and it all looks so hopeful she can only hope that much of the country was too preoccupied to notice. Those who have been paying attention but are somehow not committed to her historic have already concluded that she’s guilty, guilty, guilty, so she’ll either be somehow indicted or suffer yet another awful news cycle of scandal when she isn’t and that private plane meeting will suddenly look all the fishier, and in this crazy quadrennial election year she might wind as the First Woman President in any case.
She’s running against the presumptive Republican nominee, after all, and the scandal-plagued Donald J. Trump managed to create a relatively insignificant “Twitter” imbroglio that allowed the media to offer another shiny distraction from the presumptive Democratic nominee’s ongoing scandals. That will be largely overlooked, too, though, and we urge that everyone take the day off from all of it and watch some baseball and charcoal some burgers and drink a beer al fresco and shoot off fireworks and enjoy what’s left of America’s stormy and soggy independence. At least it will make it all the harder to burn it to the ground, as almost every seems intent on doing.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 
One of the interesting things about Bud Norman’s comments is that you read them and it seems Hillary’s biggest fault is that her election is “inevitable.” This column is a good example. While there are references to scandals we are never told what those scandals are. Bud’s never shy about characterizing the manifold reasons for disliking Donald Trump, but when his gaze turns to either Bill or Hillary we get veiled references to “scandal.” Tom Wolfe hit it on the nose in The Right Stuff when he described the press as “proper Victorian gents.” The media, including our current scribe, become “proper Victorian gents” in describing what the Clintons did.
It’s not a “dalliance” that Bill had with Monica, she gave him blow jobs and he inserted cigars into her vagina.
It’s not hard at all to figure out how Hillary got a $100,000 bribe via trading cattle futures, but the proper Victorian gents of the press treat it as a mystery that will never be solved. They pass by with averted gazes.
It’s blatantly obvious that Bill and Hillary sold access and political favors – past, present and future – for hundreds of millions of contributions to their private foundation and for giving insipid speeches to people who know that they can depend on her to pay off like loaded dice.
In other words they solicited bribes and sold the offices they held. And in view of the upcoming election they got pre-payment for even more political pay-offs once she becomes President.
They were protected by a party that hates Western culture. And they were protected by the press, which glanced at this and decided to look away, calling a leg a limb. The biggest heist since the Caepio stole the gold of Tolosa gets a shrug by the press. The real story is whether the Clintons get away with it again …. and the press is rooting for the Clintons. They are protected by the proper Victorian gent who can abide the selling of the country with aplomb but can’t abide impolite language.
Happy Fourth of July, and it makes you wonder if it was all worth it to find that after 240 years we’re back to where we started.