US Presidential Election 2020

[Marionumber1]

I imagine the Mercers stopped backing Trump in the same way that the CIA stopped backing foreign coups and USAID, the NED, the IRI and NDI, and too many other NGOs to name started backing foreign coups instead.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

There are other articles like that one—all a ruse?

Does corporate America subsidize news media in order to inform the public?

I imagine the Mercers stopped backing Trump in the same way that the CIA stopped backing foreign coups and USAID, the NED, the IRI and NDI, and too many other NGOs to name started backing foreign coups instead.

^^^^^^^^

That's ~80% of the game right there, packed in 2 concise quotes. Add in some 'sentiment' programming and 'groupthink' influencing via social media and other channels (with the help of AI/analytics and other related forms of modern-day sorcery, which includes video/audio manipulation).

From page 19 of Nervous States, by William Davies:

[Elvis]

https://www.penews.com/articles/private ... s-20200727

Industry news

Private equity executives pour $92m into 2020 US elections
Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, who gave $10m to a group aiming to defend the Senate’s Republican majority, leads political spending in the industry

By Chris Cumming

Updated: July 27, 2020 9:17 am GMT

The private equity industry is pouring millions of dollars into the 2020 elections, with some donors hoping to prevent full Democratic control of Capitol Hill and the potential for tighter oversight of their sector.

Employees of private equity firms and other investment firms, not including hedge funds, spent $91.7m on 2020 congressional races and presidential campaigns through 21 July, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that researches money in politics.

With a spending surge in the coming months, the industry could approach the record of almost $118m that it spent on the 2016 elections.

The private equity industry has in the past several elections split its spending fairly evenly between the two major parties, a trend that has held this year. Democrats have received 54% of the roughly $47m contributed to candidates and party committees by private equity industry employees. The industry has also given more than $44m to outside groups, which isn’t reflected in the party breakdown.

Despite the Democratic tilt, many in the industry have thrown their support behind vulnerable Republican senators, hoping to keep Democrats from controlling both chambers of Congress.

The erosion of popular support for president Trump since the coronavirus pandemic began has increased the likelihood that Democrats could take control of both the White House and the Senate, while retaining a majority in the House. Many who work in private equity prefer control of the government to remain divided as it would make major overhauls of their industry more difficult, YA THINK?? say people who work with buyout firms on government policy.

“Private equity is very invested in some high-profile Senate races, particularly as the polls have shifted and seem to indicate a possible Democratic sweep,” said Milan Dalal, managing partner of Tiger Hill Partners and a former Senate aide. “A number of people in the PE industry view the Senate as a potential bulwark against more aggressive policies.”

Democratic members of Congress have recently launched inquiries into private equity’s investments in the medical-staffing, private prison and for-profit education industries. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) last year introduced the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, a bill designed to overhaul what she calls abusive practices by buyout firms.

Employees of New York-based Blackstone Group, the world’s largest private equity firm, have shelled out the most on the 2020 elections, spending $21.5m, mostly in favour of Republican candidates and conservative groups, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Boston firm Bain Capital, co-founded by Sen. Mitt Romney (R., Utah), is second in employee spending at about $9.5m, almost all of it dedicated to Democratic candidates and liberal groups. Both firms declined to comment.

These totals include so-called soft money, or unregulated donations to groups considered to be independent of any specific candidate. This spending, unlike direct contributions to candidates, isn’t limited by law. Private equity employees have spent about $44m in soft money on 2020 races, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Blackstone co-founder and chief executive Stephen Schwarzman, for instance, has donated $10m to a political-action committee that aims to defend the Republican majority in the Senate, Federal Election Commission records show. FEC records show that he has also given $1m to a group supporting Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine), who has trailed her Democratic challenger in recent state polls.

In direct contributions to candidates, employees of private equity and investment firms have spent about $4.3m supporting Republican senators and just over $3m supporting Democratic senators. The industry prefers Democrats in House races.

Along with Collins, Republican senators widely considered on shaky ground for re-election are Joni Ernst of Iowa, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Steven Daines of Montana, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Martha McSally of Arizona. These six have collected just under $1.6m in total direct contributions from private equity employees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Three of the four top recipients of direct contributions from private equity employees are Republican senators: John Cornyn of Texas, Collins and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, according to the center’s data.

Overall, the candidate who has received the most direct support from private equity is presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who has received almost $1.3m from employees of the industry. President Trump has collected about $181,000.

However, private equity executives have also given to outside groups and fundraising committees that support particular candidates. Schwarzman has given $3m to the pro-Trump group America First Action and $250,000 to the Trump Victory Committee.

His Blackstone colleagues have collectively given more than $400,000 to the Biden Action Fund, a joint fundraising effort between Biden’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, FEC records show. Bain co-chairman Joshua Bekenstein, a prominent Democratic donor, gave $355,000 to the Biden fund.



Write to Chris Cumming at chris.cumming@wsj.com

From The Wall Street Journal

[Grizzly]

https://t.co/A93pAMMTux?amp=1

Movement for a People’s Party
@4aPeoplesParty
·
Aug 7
BREAKING: @ninaturner
and @CornelWest
will join MPP to headline The People's Convention on August 30.

Jimmy Dore, Ryan Knight and many speakers will discuss forming a major new political party in America.

Convention
https://peoplesconvention.org

I'll never vote Biden for ANYTHING. I wouldn't vote for him to be a dog catcher. (No offence to Dog Catcher's ) WE REALLY FUCKING NEED A PEOPLE'S PARTY!



FUCK THE PEOPLE, WE'RE GOING ON VACATION!


Pelosi Gives Prayers Instead of Leadership After Bailing Out The Wealthy

[Iamwhomiam]

The first video is pre-2016 presidential election; what was known about Trump before he was elected.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khmw54IAEPs

The rest remind us of the man he is today.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Xv3c3a7JQ



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to_zc5x0WgM




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu9D9EIHX5g

[norton ash]

Hey, yankee friends... can you save the US Postal Service? You're looking a bit Belarus lately.

[DrEvil]

^^Maybe their big neighbor to the north should intervene.

For the yanks here, even if you fucking hate Biden I think you should vote for him. It's going to be either him or Needy Amin, so protest votes are effectively useless, only serving to increase The Thing In The White House's chances of staying on. Priority number one should be to completely and utterly annihilate the republican party and then start picking up the pieces and try to reform things. That is marginally more realistic under Biden or Harris. I doubt there will be much meaningful reform from either one of them, but it will be a small step in the right direction, laying the groundwork for bigger things down the line when, hopefully, there are more democrats like AOC and fewer like Pelosi or Biden.

[norton ash]

Doubt we'll intervene, but we'll brace ourselves for refugees.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

Welcome to the death of the age of reason..

[Iamwhomiam]

Doubt we'll intervene, but we'll brace ourselves for refugees.

Doubt we'll intervene, but we'll brace ourselves for refugees caravans of illegal aliens.

Fify.

Well, BS, this is another case where the real world is stranger than fiction. You see, there is no Tea Party takeover of either party in House of Cards, that after taking control, intended to dismantle government after rendering it ineffective.

[Belligerent Savant]

^^^^^

Indeed, IAM. A largely post-satire world.

The commentary in the following is interesting.
Excerpt:

The Victor/Victoria Von Dimwits of the overclass have spent the entirety of 2020 cutting off their own nose (and other protuberances) trying to spite Trump's face with orchestrated shutdowns and choreographed riots.

How's that working out for the self-appointed Masters of the Idiotverse? About as well as you'd expect.

Seeing how everything ultimately traces back to Mesopotamia, I can't help but be reminded of the Lugalzagesi/Sargon era of the Sumero-Akkadian Empire. Like the American Empire today, Sumer was essentially a loose confederation of city-states constantly at odds with each other and with what passed for central authority.

Zagesi, a bonebreaking strongman of the old Sumerian dynasty, took it upon himself to hammer the whole mess into a coherent nation-state, amid endless internecine warfare and rise to power of the Akkadian usurper-class.

Sargon, who legend has it was the "gardener" (read: "boytoy") of a local governor who was said to actually have pissed himself when Zagesi and his legions showed up at the city gates. Sargon was all too happy to offer up his shivering sugar daddy over to the warlord, who he'd later put in shackles, as legend has it.

My point is that the American Empire has become a lot like the late Sumerian Empire and is composed of a fractured clutch of regional power centers.

The "Democrats" (in reality, rebranded Rockefeller Republicans wearing the skin suit of the old Democratic Party. or RRDs) have risen to unparalleled power in the past thirty years by seizing control of key city-states like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, as well as a number of smaller, formerly-Republican city-states in the Midwest and upper South.

The Rockefeller Republican Democrats-- rather the megabillionaires who own and run the party-- followed the old Akkadian playbook of consolidating power by gaining control of key economic sectors and by displacing native populations through mass immigration. Something works, you stick with it.

But they ignored the lessons of history, because like all usurpers, they're shrewd but unwise.

See, Sargon's immortal dynasty lasted just a bit more than a century before the old Sumerian ruling families regained power (the so-called "Ur III Dynasty" of Gudea et al) following the fall of Akkad to the nomadic Gutians. The Neo-Sumerians would only last a little over a century themselves before the entire region collapsed under the combined pressures of natural disaster and the eventual rise of Babylon.

So we can argue about COVID but it's beyond any reasonable debate that the billionaire class opened the civic unrest Pandora's box and had a jolly old time fanning the fires of fake rebellion, not realizing that Frankenstein will forever turn on his creator. And now, if you believe the reports, all the great RRD city-states -- and many of their corporate patrons-- are looking down the barrel of existential crisis.

The bullets they shot at Trump seem to have all ricocheted and hit them square in the groin, or so it appears.

Of course, people much smarter than myself would argue that the crumbling began long before Trump took the reins, with entitlement crises breaking bulging Blue budgets. Interesting to note how COVID seemed to take aim at the elderly, with their long-promised pensions and bank-breaking Medicaid bills.

COVID sure helped take some of the burden off lawmakers in states like NY and NJ, who've been desperately scrambling to keep themselves solvent, no?

https://secretsun.blogspot.com/2020/08/ ... -will.html

[stickdog99]

https://politics.theonion.com/alexandri ... 1844764034

[Elvis]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkZTFMR3ov0

[Grizzly]

Is it possible that creepy Joe's mumblings and bumblings are an act or tactic (to throw Trump off guard) and he's going to come off articulate and witty and smart in a public debate or interaction or series of interactions with the cheeto in Chief ?

[JackRiddler]

.

I'd say there was no Tea Party takeover of either party in the real world, either.

After 2008, the Republicans, as a logical consequence of how they intentionally developed their party and program over a period of about 50 years (since Goldwater and Civil Rights, more or less) generated a thing their PR wing (and the obedient corporate media) called the Tea Party, which consisted mainly of their existing base under new branding. I mean sure, it started as a sort of grassroots thing, but the party ate it right up and shat it out as a nationally coordinated campaign run by the party's main money backers. Since that worked to regenerate their vote after Obama's first win, they openly became this thing, which they already were in the first place.

Some years later, this next-gen spin on the "Reagan Revolution" (the first time as farce, the next time as farce, the time after that as farce) allowed a reality TV star with the Right (Republican) Stuff to successfully effect a hostile seizure of the Republican base away from the old party establishment. He did this by more effectively selling the same line of bullshit they themselves had developed in the first place, and by taking advantage of a party primary system that, shockingly, is more open and democratic than the one run by the Democrats. (Basically, all you had to do to become a high-ranking Republican was to bring gobs and gobs and gobs of money -- no, probably more than that -- put your hand up, and swear allegiance to the Republican creed: GOD AND TAX CUTS. The Democrats have traditional "popular" machines managing a diverse set of voting clienteles, so to reach a high position with them, you first have to crawl over glass and granite for a decade to prove your loyalty and compatibility and willingness to flip every flop at the command of the gobs and gobs of donor money, which is ample but much more conditional.)

The old R establishment didn't like that, obviously, mainly because they'd been doing the same thing but less effectively, and they hate losing. And this character also pissed off the neocon war blob by pretending (strictly for pretend) to be some kind of borderline anti-interventionist, even after he presided over an escalation of the exact same interventionism and hypermilitarism as before. So they, along with Bloomberg and Dimon and co., went and tried to take over the Democrats by injecting themselves at the top, ideologically and, increasingly, organizationally. Or at least to merge with the Democratic leadership, and run effective party policy even as the rhetoric plays at moving toward something defined as "left" (empty identity-oriented cosmetics with no set policy whatsoever). They were greeted warmly by a D establishment concerned with one priority above all: preventing any real progressive shift. So far, these high-level Republican refugees have found this to be a lot easier, at least for them, than one might have thought. So now characters like Kasich, Bloomberg, Frum and Kristol, and the Lincoln Project openly run the effective Democratic platform.

And so it goes.