Bernie Sanders as Carrot, Hillary Clinton as Stick and Progressives as Easy Marks for Manipulation

June 10, 2015 in Montana

by William Skink

In a few flurries of tweets between myself and former Blackbird blogger, Jay Stevens, I’ve witnessed the ease in which progressives are manipulated. It started with his tweets about the FIFA scandal. I, of course, tried to point to the geopolitical implications, which obviously makes me a Putin fanboy. Here is one tweet from Stevens:

Can’t wait to see how @madpoet19 spins the Fifa-arms-for-votes story…

The story referenced in the above tweet is about arms deals being traded for World Cup votes, which the Guardian covered a few days ago. From the link:

The shockwaves from the corruption scandal that brought down Sepp Blatter continue to reverberate, with claims in Germany that the 2006 World Cup vote was influenced by a shipment of rocket-propelled grenades and allegations in Egypt that a Fifa executive solicited bribes during the 2010 bidding race.

As seven Fifa officials continued to fight extradition to the US over claims they were involved in a “World Cup of fraud”, Blatter’s right-hand man Jérôme Valcke remained at the centre of speculation over what he knew about a $10m payment to the disgraced former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner. And pressure on the Football Association of Ireland also grew amid the fallout from its admission that it agreed a secret €5m (£3.6m) payment after threatening legal action in the wake of Thierry Henry’s handball that led to the goal that ended their chances of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup.

Instead of looking at a geopolitical contrast to this latest iteration of FIFA corruption, we have no further to look than the cesspool of corruption the State Department became under Hillary’s tutelage. If Jay thinks the FIFA arms-for-votes story is bad, I wonder what he thinks about chemical weapons deals for Clinton Foundation donations:

The approval of American chemical weapons sales to Egypt as Mubarak’s associates were stocking Clinton family interests with cash is but one example of a dynamic that prevailed though Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. During the roughly two years of Arab Spring protests that confronted authoritarian governments with popular uprisings, Clinton’s State Department approved $66 million worth of so-called Category 14 exports — defined as “toxicological agents, including chemical agents, biological agents and associated equipment” — to nine Middle Eastern governments that either donated to the Clinton Foundation or whose affiliated groups paid Bill Clinton speaking fees.

That represented a 50 percent overall increase in such export approvals to the same countries over the two years prior to the Arab Spring, according to an International Business Times review of State Department documents. In the same time period, Arab countries that did not donate to the Clinton Foundation saw an overall decrease in their State Department approvals to purchase chemical and biological materials. The increase in chemical, biological and related exports to Clinton Foundation donors was part of a larger jump in overall arms sales authorized by Hillary Clinton’s State Department to foreign governments that gave her family’s foundation at least $54 million, according to a previous IBTimes analysis.

The State Department, the Clinton campaign and the Clinton Foundation did not respond to questions about the deals.

I don’t know if this constitutes me “spinning” the FIFA corruption, but it certainly provides an example of domestic corruption that a Democrat supporter like Jay Stevens may want to take into consideration as the inevitable Clinton campaign chugs along.

I can anticipate Jay’s response because in an earlier spat he distanced himself from supporting Clinton by stating he’s a Bernie supporter. Well, allow me to spin that as well, because there is more going on with Bernie Sanders campaign than meets the eye. Michael Arria asks a good question in a Counterpunch piece today, titled Why is the DNC Sending Out Pro-Bernie emails? Good question. And the answer may be found in Sanders’ promise not to run as an independent when he inevitably folds to the Clinton Juggernaut:

Ironically, it seems that the DNC and left-critics of the Sanders campaign agree on a very important fact: they believe Sanders will attract a number of young voters and activists, then dutifully tell them to vote for Hillary when he drops out. The DNC sees that outcome as a win and leftists see it as a loss, but both perceive his dropout as inevitable. “Hillary Clinton certainly doesn’t regard Sanders as a threat,” writes Ashley Smith at Jacobin, “She knows that the national election business follows the golden rule: whoever has more gold, wins.

The early disclosures of Hillary Clinton’s disgusting use of the State Department won’t negatively impact her candidacy because they are coming out at a time when progressives like Jay Stevens will default to his Bernie support. Bernie provides the progressive cover by getting attention for his progressive positions, then, when smashed by Clinton cash, he will bow out and tout the pragmatic lesser evilism support of the sociopath, Hillary Clinton.

Well played, DNC.