OT: sober reading between the lines; less sober analogy

Yes, but for Trump it is the "royal we" - a claim that he knows what is best for everyone, and speaks for everyone. For Obama it was an honest "I" - when he gave an opinion, he did not claim it to be everyone's opinion.

Nonsense. He was too big to fail. His success in business is despite his abilities, not because of them. Look at his record for bankruptcies and failures - it is impressive, to say the least. But in each case, his investors and banks had put in so much money that the only way to avoid massive losses was to give him even more money and hope that the next venture succeeded. He gets lucky often enough to keep the scam going. His only real skill is marketing himself and his name. (And he is /very/ good at that.)

I feel like Trump doesn't use "I" very often because when he talks solely about himself he prefers to use the third person anyway.

If he had simply given the 100 million or whatever he got from his Dad in his mid 20s to a skilled hedge fund manager in the early 1970s he probably would've ended up wealthier.

That's how most of the other tens of thousands of wealthier people in the world got there honestly

sadly, that is NOT unique to Katrina..

mark

Sure, personality is all a range of possibilities that doesn't feat neatly into the boxes textbooks try to put it in.

I doubt Donald Trump would personally shoot someone simply because it amused him (despite some campaign trail "jokes" to the contrary.) Kim Jong, on the other hand...

Because the Tesla might not make it into town :-) m

is

t.

There's something pretty nasty about thinking that you could shoot somebody on the street and get away with it because you are so popular. Being crass enough to admit it in public is a touch nastier. Trump is pretty psychopat hic.

He hasn't had people shot with anti-aircraft guns, or near relatives assass inated with smear-on nerve poisons because that would take complicated orga nisation which his minions aren't set up to handle, but some of the details of his divorce actions reveal unsavoury personal habits.

He's a creep, and he's always been a pretty obvious creep. He's not the her editary head of a repressive political apparatus, though he does seem to be trying to use the political apparatus he now controls to do unpleasant stu ff, like separating kids from their parents if any of them happen to be ill egal migrants, which no previous administration found necessary.

I'm not a psychiatrist, and I don't know what the official criteria for a p sychopathic personality disorder might be, but he does seem to be the kind of creep that it would be a good idea to stay well away from, and a really poor choice for president.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

That's just your emotional prejudices dominating you ability to perceive and reason. That's the normal mode of most people.

You should be as incompetent and lucky. You might even wind up President.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

Instead of playing the market, which is a zero-sum-or-less game, he built things.

I wonder if Obama or Hillary ever built anything.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

Especially not in a snowstorm.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

If that is my bias showing, it is certainly no more so than your biases that I replied to.

I wasn't lucky enough to be born with a massively wealthy father. On the other hand, I /am/ lucky enough to be a basically nice guy, so I believe I am better off.

And his companies' bankruptcies hurt nobody? Perhaps the people he didn't pay might have a different view on whether dealing with Trump is a zero-sum-or-less game.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

I have direct experience in the New York big-league construction business. Everybody under-bids things to get the job, and then sues over minute omissions in specifications. You wanted doorways into those offices? The contract didn't mention any openings for doorways. Doorways are expensive. We'll have to diamond saw the concrete walls.

The unions will do anything to inflate costs and not be done. We got fire alarm equipment approved by city authorities literally overnight. It's an ugly world that I'm glad to be out of, but some people enjoy the game. Lawsuits and bankrupcies are just parts of the sport.

On one of our sites, once a day, all the union workers would gather together. The crane operator would swing his boom over them. Then they would all fill out their cards for the hazardous-work bonus. They would install wiring during the day, and come back and rip it out at night.

But the hotels and apartments are ultimately real. It's not just about money.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

Same over here. At the end of a contract the company that can't dodge the "snagging costs" goes bankrupt.

But those are usually the small sub-contracting companies; the prime contractor / development companies don't fold.[1]

Presuming Trump's companies were the prime contractor / development company, it is noteworthy if more than one of them folded. If, OTOH, they weren't the prime companies, then his achievement is less significant.

[1] assuming the auditors do their job, which is a different barrel of worms waiting to explode

The unions are a fixed quantity that is simply factored into the cost. Anybody that failed to do that is incompetent.

Agreed. But how many people were hurt creating that reality?

He's probably the most American president we've had; there are millions of Trumps walking around all over the place.

I grew up in a US suburb in the 1980s and e.g. one time I got in a street scuffle with another neighborhood boy, his father shows up and instead of doing well, anything else he drives over my bike with his Jeep and junior jumps in the truck and they both give me the finger and drive away. Stuff like that was completely common; American parents of that era would do anything to "fix" problems their brats managed to create for themselves including murder for them probably.

Trump is just standard-issue Boomer trash with the usual me-first-always trash attitudes about stuff you'll find there. He just happens to be rich and well-known, other than that he could be anyone, not at all an unusual persona.

Elon Musk is a skilled hustler who mostly brags about the awesome things he's never built, Trump is a skilled builder who mostly brags about the awesome hustles he's never run.

Shit. I'd better not give them ideas.

And Hillary Clinton.....

-- This message may be freely reproduced without limit or charge only via the Usenet protocol. Reproduction in whole or part through other protocols, whether for profit or not, is conditional upon a charge of GBP10.00 per reproduction. Publication in this manner via non-Usenet protocols constitutes acceptance of this condition.

It's typical of the wannabe elitist who thinks they know it all, thinks they have the solutions to all the world's problems, thinks they know better than everyone else what's best for everyone else; that others' opinions are inferior and count for nothing - but actually knows FUCK ALL because everything they *think* they know arises merely from delusion and self-deception. Places like Washington, London and Brussels are absolutely *infested* with these parasites, none of whom have ever done a single proper day's work in their entire, pointless lives.

--
This message may be freely reproduced without limit or charge only via  
the Usenet protocol. Reproduction in whole or part through other  
protocols, whether for profit or not, is conditional upon a charge of  
GBP10.00 per reproduction. Publication in this manner via non-Usenet  
protocols constitutes acceptance of this condition.

s is despite

case,

o

he

scam

d

Don't you have that exactly backwards??? One of those things Musk never bu ilt is in solar orbit having been put there by another of those things Musk never built. What????

Rick C.

h

f into a better condition, but every previous attempt at this has shown the North Koreans to be persistent and intransigent liars who will say anythin g, but keep on building weapons of mass destruction. Trump, as a persistent liar, should be better placed than most to deal with this, if he wanted to , but he's more likely to be lying to the US public about what he has achie ved than deluding himself about the triviality of the document he signed.

m is

not.

is)

e of

e s t

inion.

es

e

Strictly speaking, he encouraged other people to build things and stick his name in large letters on the front.

Naomi Klein - recycling her "No Logo" book - classifies him a brand builder rather than any kind of creator of actual product.

Large fund-raising organisations for a start. Obama in particular set up up a web-based fund raising operation that collected more money than anybody else's and in smaller chunks.

And neither of them have been associated with any string of large-scale ban kruptcies. John Larkin's selective perception is working as reliably as eve r.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney