You Will Anyway: When you've lost the Mercers...

Saturday, July 25, 2020

When you've lost the Mercers...

Four years ago this summer, with Donald Trump's presidential effort floundering, the impossibly wealthy, poker-loving Mercer family played their winning hand to make America great again.

Led by billionaire hedge-fund manager Robert Mercer, they poured eight figures into a pro-Trump super PAC.

They plugged Cambridge Analytica, the trendy data company they bankrolled, into Trumpworld.

[...]

Robert and Rebekah Mercer ranked among President Donald Trump's most influential backers in 2016. But they've all but abandoned the embattled president and aren't likely to help him in the home stretch for 2020, five people who know the media-averse Mercers tell Insider.

"They're 100, 100, 100% out," an associate of Rebekah Mercer said.

A billionaire, Robert Mercer has the financial resources to spend tens of millions of dollars to help Trump — if he wanted to. That kind of money could play a major role in swing states such as Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, which are critical to Trump winning reelection.

[...]

Their lone contribution toward Trump's reelection came on February 14, when Robert Mercer sent a $355,200 valentine to Trump Victory — a joint fundraising entity that splits money among the Trump presidential campaign, the Republican National Committee, and 22 state Republican committees. Of that, Trump's committee got only $5,600, the legal maximum for a primary and general election combined.

Rebekah Mercer, who has herself spread hundreds of thousands of dollars among dozens of Republican committees over the years, hasn't given a cent to Trump's reelection cause.

[...]

The symbolism of the Mercers ghosting Trump, beyond just bankrolling his presidential ambitions, is also stark.

Business Insider

I'd say the symbolism may make the bigger impact.

Rebekah was a big Bolton fan and promoted Cambridge Analytica in the Hillary Clinton email debacle. The Mercers funded Citizens United.

I'm guessing Trump won't be going to any more costume parties at the Mercers.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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"It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the people who run the country know what they are doing." -- Howard Zinn

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"Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause.” -- Howard Zinn

"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

"We should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace [Stasi style] mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundation of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.” ~ Edward Snowden

"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising." ~ LACUNA

"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

"There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack." ~ Molly Ivins

"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." ~ James Thurber

"The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plane....When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, 'Except in wartime.'" -- George McGovern

"I’ll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one." ~ Bill Moyers

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Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.