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Thread: Life in the Trump Era, Part 2

  1. #211
    Quote Originally Posted by Diehard Ute View Post
    With the new Amazon and UPS facilities in SL things will get interesting. You combine those two buildings it’s 1,600,000 square feet.

    Amazon is literally across the street from Fed Ex and a 5 minute drive from UPS.
    I'm connecting dots here and jumping topics, but assuming UPS & FedEx (and USPS) are facing wage/benefit pressure from the free-lancers, this adds pressure toward healthcare reform. As GM demonstrated a few years ago as they moved manufacturing from plants in the US north to Canada because of healthcare costs, many businesses are increasingly finding the benefits aspect of wages to be cost prohibitive.

    Ironically, Intermountain (Health Care) has a new CEO who is on a campaign to dramatically re-invent how they operate. The word is a LOT of people are going to be riffed, and at least in the IT part of IHC, they intend to keep the architecture and security groups, with everyone else becoming contractors. (We're getting really, really good applicants looking to jump off that ship, right now. The IT placement folks in SLC are really getting a workout, from different angles.)

    IHC shedding employees will certainly help bend the healthcare cost curve downward (in Utah), though it needs to come down quite a bit more to allow non-insured workers to be able to afford healthcare. CVS Pharmacy acquired Aetna (the health insurer), so there is some serious consolidation going on in healthcare, vertically, nationally. They may be able to stave off a push toward a Single Payer model that a resurgent Democratic party would be pushing in the early 20s.

    Fascinating times as an economic & political observer. Probably not so much fun as a participant.

  2. #212
    Five-O Diehard Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ma'ake View Post
    The Amazon free-lancer I saw yesterday was driving an Audi A8, an older gentleman with his car stuffed with packages. Interesting...

    Hunch - if the USPS is losing money on the Amazon deliveries, it's probably due to employee benefits, like health insurance.

    The Trump tweet feels like an instance of him finding out they're losing money on Amazon deliveries, prompting him to take on Bezos in a twitter attack. (Certainly USPS brass know if they raise rates, they'll lose business.)

    My sense is the Amazon delivery landscape is pretty fluid - I see fewer UPS and FedEx deliveries than I used to, and now see USPS Amazon deliveries blended in with the regular mail run, along with the free-lancers.

    The same-day delivery capability Diehard references, along with the Whole Foods grocery side of Amazon, will do further damage to regular retail... but it may also cut down on air pollution along the Wasatch Front, as fewer people start cold cars to drive 1-4 miles to the store, where the delivery vehicles have warm engines operating efficiently and polluting less.
    UPS just sent a record for packages delivered during the holiday season.

    One of the big changes is UPS and FedEx have their ‘hybrid’ model, they move the package, but deliver it to the post office for final delivery

    Reality is usps isn’t losing money on package deliveries. It’s the only area they make money, they just aren’t making as much money as they could be (and some think should be).


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  3. #213
    Quote Originally Posted by Ma'ake View Post
    .

    Ironically, Intermountain (Health Care) has a new CEO who is on a campaign to dramatically re-invent how they operate. The word is a LOT of people are going to be riffed, and at least in the IT part of IHC, they intend to keep the architecture and security groups, with everyone else becoming contractors.

    Fascinating times as an economic & political observer. Probably not so much fun as a participant.
    This seems like an insane move, after IHC's equally insane move to build their own shitty medical data/billing/charting software for billions of dollars rather than just buying licenses to the best, easiest to use, and most widespread product (Epic). They will be in desperate need of high-quality IT people to diagnose, customize, and upgrade their program from here on out to suit the needs of their providers. And it will never be anywhere as close to modern and up-to-date as the professional software products are, since those programs are already managing the medical records for hundreds of millions of people across the nation.

    On a bigger view, the big problem with driving prices to the bottom is the savings usually tends to come out of employees' salaries and benefits/retirement. And there is little market pressure to cause companies to plow savings back into their employees, as most cost savings will instead go toward stock dividends or schemes to raise stock valuation (e.g. stock buybacks). These are short-term outcomes.

    This is precisely the opposite of what the economy needs to expand over the long term. More people at the bottom of the scale need to have more expendable money so they can buy more things. They need to be healthy and they need to be educated.

    In a few decades time there is a very good chance that most of our current jobs will be obsolete, whether through shipping manufacturing/customer service jobs overseas, robots replacing manual workers (truck/cab drivers, retail point-of-sale, fast food) or AI (diagnostic jobs in finance, law, medicine, real estate, engineering, etc will be heavily impacted). The entire economy will operate with significantly fewer workers, and finding employment will be exponentially harder than it is now.

    We are eventually going to have a serious look our own American brand of single-payer healthcare, retirement, etc, and probably some form of a universal basic income. Because without those things, the masses of people will not be able to feed their families and desperate situations will likely lead to desperate actions and/or significant civil unrest, civil war, etc.

  4. #214
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Extremely interesting piece by lefty pundit Peter Beinart:

    Breaking Faith
    The culture war over religious morality has faded; in its place is something much worse.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...utm_source=twb

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  5. #215
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Life in the Trump Era, Part 2

    It’s going to be an interesting 2018.

    Partisans, Wielding Money, Begin Seeking to Exploit Harassment Claims

    https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/3....co/im1iT36tYS

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  6. #216
    Quote Originally Posted by NorthwestUteFan View Post
    This seems like an insane move, after IHC's equally insane move to build their own shitty medical data/billing/charting software for billions of dollars rather than just buying licenses to the best, easiest to use, and most widespread product (Epic). They will be in desperate need of high-quality IT people to diagnose, customize, and upgrade their program from here on out to suit the needs of their providers. And it will never be anywhere as close to modern and up-to-date as the professional software products are, since those programs are already managing the medical records for hundreds of millions of people across the nation.

    On a bigger view, the big problem with driving prices to the bottom is the savings usually tends to come out of employees' salaries and benefits/retirement. And there is little market pressure to cause companies to plow savings back into their employees, as most cost savings will instead go toward stock dividends or schemes to raise stock valuation (e.g. stock buybacks). These are short-term outcomes.

    This is precisely the opposite of what the economy needs to expand over the long term. More people at the bottom of the scale need to have more expendable money so they can buy more things. They need to be healthy and they need to be educated.

    In a few decades time there is a very good chance that most of our current jobs will be obsolete, whether through shipping manufacturing/customer service jobs overseas, robots replacing manual workers (truck/cab drivers, retail point-of-sale, fast food) or AI (diagnostic jobs in finance, law, medicine, real estate, engineering, etc will be heavily impacted). The entire economy will operate with significantly fewer workers, and finding employment will be exponentially harder than it is now.

    We are eventually going to have a serious look our own American brand of single-payer healthcare, retirement, etc, and probably some form of a universal basic income. Because without those things, the masses of people will not be able to feed their families and desperate situations will likely lead to desperate actions and/or significant civil unrest, civil war, etc.
    Great post.

    As for your last points about technological disruption of jobs, I agree, and though new jobs will appear, with the rapid impact of technological changes there's an increasing chance that the disruptions will be broad enough to lead to serious social instability. In the past, technological disruptions weren't as broad, or frequent.

    Combined with the "Breaking Faith" article referenced by LA, it's pretty clear a wide swath of Americans are losing faith in America, itself. Are churches the victims of economic turbulence for common people? (This article is excellent, but has so many points and contra indicative points it deserves a lot more analysis.)

    Today I told my son about our ancestor who was a delegate to the Utah State Constitutional Convention, and was also the grand master of the Masonic Temple in SLC. Before TV came along, people belonged to fraternal organizations to pass the time, including all the various Masons offshoots, the Moose lodge, Elk lodge, etc. Now we have youth sports to bring us together (and adult sports) but they don't promote explicit cultural values like the fraternal organizations did, ...and like religions have done.

    The Breaking Faith article accurately describes how people under economic distress retreat into tribalism, which is reflected and amplified at the national level in our politics. If the rise of the Nones in our religiosity is replaced by following Hannity and Rachel Maddow in the political space, we're missing common ingredients we really need to keep to be a viable nation.

  7. #217
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
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    Bannon torches Trump and his cadre in his book.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/..._reddit_is_fun

    Some tidbits:

    Bannon, speaking to author Michael Wolff, warned that the investigation into alleged collusion with the Kremlin will focus on money laundering and predicted: “They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.”
    The meeting was revealed by the New York Times in July last year, prompting Trump Jr to say no consequential material was produced. Soon after, Wolff writes, Bannon remarked mockingly: “The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor – with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers.
    “Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.”
    Bannon has criticised Trump’s decision to fire Comey. In Wolff’s book, obtained by the Guardian ahead of publication from a bookseller in New England, he suggests White House hopes for a quick end to the Mueller investigation are gravely misplaced.
    “You realise where this is going,” he is quoted as saying. “This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr and Jared Kushner … It’s as plain as a hair on your face.”

  8. #218
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by U-Ute View Post
    Bannon torches Trump and his cadre in his book.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/..._reddit_is_fun

    Some tidbits:
    Wow. Bannon trashing Trump. Such a pair of admirable men. How do we decide who we're cheering for in this one?


    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  9. #219
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    Wow. Bannon trashing Trump. Such a pair of admirable men. How do we decide who we're cheering for in this one?

    I think in this case we're rooting for a bit of mutual destruction.

  10. #220
    Bannon is out to destroy Jared and Don Jr. This is fun to watch.

  11. #221

  12. #222
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by concerned View Post
    Was it you who underlined the good parts?

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  13. #223
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    Was it you who underlined the good parts?
    Katy Tur, at least it was her tweet

  14. #224
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by concerned View Post
    Katy Tur, at least it was her tweet
    Of course it was Katy.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  15. #225
    Quote Originally Posted by concerned View Post
    Bannon is out to destroy Jared and Don Jr. This is fun to watch.
    It seems he knows something, and is trying to put distance between himself and those who are prison-bound.

  16. #226
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by NorthwestUteFan View Post
    It seems he knows something, and is trying to put distance between himself and those who are prison-bound.
    I love my liberal Ute friends here, but do you guys realize that you're treating Steve Bannon -- Steve Bannon! -- as some kind of whistleblower? To hear you all talk, Bannon was a lying fascist pig, and now he's telling the truth? How can anyone believe anything either Bannon or Trump says?

    Again, I ask this question with love in my heart.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  17. #227
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    I love my liberal Ute friends here, but do you guys realize that you're treating Steve Bannon -- Steve Bannon! -- as some kind of whistleblower? To hear you all talk, Bannon was a lying fascist pig, and now he's telling the truth? How can anyone believe anything either Bannon or Trump says?

    Again, I ask this question with love in my heart.
    I havent said anything about Bannon's veracity. I have no idea if he is telling the truth or not. They likely are all pathological. I just love them all turning on each other. According to the author, the book has a lot more sources than Bannon, and much of what he writes was corroborated by several sources.

    Do i think Trump barely reads and is semi illiterate? Of course. Dont you? Do i believe Trump thought he was going to lose and melania cried when he won? Yep, that has basically bee reported elsewhere.

    Bannon said something to the effect that the Russia trail runs through Deutsche Bank, and seemed to be saying that there was collusion through Kushner. I suspect that if it is true, Mueller will find it.

    Do I think there is a chance that Don Jr. took the attendees at the June 16 meeting upstairs to meet Trump? Sure. Bannon sure wants to take down Kushner and Don Jr. I wish him godspeed.
    Last edited by concerned; 01-03-2018 at 10:41 PM.

  18. #228
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by concerned View Post
    I havent said anything about Bannon's veracity. I have no idea if he is telling the truth or not. They likely are all pathological. I just love them all turning on each other.
    OK, I do too.

    Bannon said something to the effect that the Russia trail runs through Deutsche Bank, and seemed to be saying that there was collusion through Kushner. I suspect that if it is true, Mueller will find it.
    I know I risk my friend Diehard accusing me of defending Trump here, but isn't Mueller's investigation limited to Trump campaign collusion with Russian government during the 2016 campaign? Bannon is talking about money laundering dating back to long before 2016. I'm honestly a little confused.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  19. #229
    What Bannon is saying is the Fusion GPS group uncovered deep money laundering going back decades and amounting well into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and fully involving the Trump and Kushner families, and that the ties run deep into Russian oligarchy/mafia. Much of this money was frozen internationally through the Magnitsky Act, named for the Russian billionaire who was (allegedly) murdered by the Putin regime after he tried to drop a dime on international money laundering.

    Bannon is a despicable character but he is a well educated man and a former Naval officer. He has to know well enough (from being in the room during that meeting at Trump Tower) that Russians sought influence to 1) end US sanctions on Russia over Crimea (to free up the multi-trillion dollar Exxon/Rosneft pipeline project), and to end the Magnitsky Act (Russia banned the foreign adoption of orphans in retaliation for the Act, hence the reason for Don Jr wanting to discuss 'adoptions'). Don't forget, one of the items listed in the Steele Dossier/Fusion GPS research was the apparent transfer of approx 15% of Rosneft (nationalised Russian oil company) to private banks in the Cayman Islands roughly around the same time.

    So this whole thing may have begun as an investigation into Russian influence in the election, but it stumbled into an enormous scheme. The Panama Papers and Paradise Papers leaks will all play into this. And Mueller already has the Deutchebank and other foreign bank records showing the money trails.

    If we are lucky, very many people will go to prison over this entire mess. I just hope the dam breaks before the Mad Bomber in the White House taunts an equally mad man in North Korea to do something very stupid and we a end up killing tens of millions of people.

  20. #230
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    “...Bannon serves his own ambition when he offers up material with which to take down Trump. That should be a reason to mistrust him, but if you hate Trump and want him destroyed, you welcome Bannon, the man you once loathed. Should liberals allow their anti-Trump passion to speed Bannon along? Maybe they think that Bannon is so ugly and ridiculous and obviously evil that he could never get very far if he decides to run for President, but it’s that kind of thinking that let Trump get so much traction that he could not be stopped.”

    http://althouse.blogspot.com/2018/01...olffs.html?m=1

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  21. #231
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    “...Bannon serves his own ambition when he offers up material with which to take down Trump. That should be a reason to mistrust him, but if you hate Trump and want him destroyed, you welcome Bannon, the man you once loathed. Should liberals allow their anti-Trump passion to speed Bannon along? Maybe they think that Bannon is so ugly and ridiculous and obviously evil that he could never get very far if he decides to run for President, but it’s that kind of thinking that let Trump get so much traction that he could not be stopped.”

    http://althouse.blogspot.com/2018/01...olffs.html?m=1
    Its not binary; you can loathe Trump and Bannon at the same time. Trump made this Faustian bargain in hiring and listening to Bannon, picked his poison, lay with dogs, has chickens coming home to roost, among many metaphors.
    Last edited by concerned; 01-04-2018 at 07:38 AM.

  22. #232
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    I love my liberal Ute friends here, but do you guys realize that you're treating Steve Bannon -- Steve Bannon! -- as some kind of whistleblower? To hear you all talk, Bannon was a lying fascist pig, and now he's telling the truth? How can anyone believe anything either Bannon or Trump says?

    Again, I ask this question with love in my heart.
    They speak the truth only when it suits them.

  23. #233
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    Quote Originally Posted by U-Ute View Post
    They speak the truth only when it suits them.
    I'll rephrase: They'll only tell you the part of the truth they want you to hear when it suits them.

  24. #234
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    An interesting article on how Trump never actually expected to win the Presidency. He just wanted the adoration of running and the platform of losing to throw shots at people.

    It substantiates a bit of what I thought he looked like on Inauguration Day: Instant Regret.

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...ald-trump.html

  25. #235
    Quote Originally Posted by U-Ute View Post
    They speak the truth only when it suits them.
    At least it is the truth.

  26. #236
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
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    A particularly interesting quote (for me anyway) on what is going with Trump in the White House.

    As soon as the campaign team had stepped into the White House, Walsh saw, it had gone from managing Trump to the expectation of being managed by him. Yet the president, while proposing the most radical departure from governing and policy norms in several generations, had few specific ideas about how to turn his themes and vitriol into policy. And making suggestions to him was deeply complicated. Here, arguably, was the central issue of the Trump presidency, informing every aspect of Trumpian policy and leadership: He didn’t process information in any conventional sense. He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-*literate. He trusted his own expertise *— no matter how paltry or irrelevant — more than anyone else’s. He was often confident, but he was just as often paralyzed, less a savant than a figure of sputtering and dangerous insecurities, whose instinctive response was to lash out and behave as if his gut, however confused, was in fact in some clear and forceful way telling him what to do. It was, said Walsh, “like trying to figure out what a child wants.”

  27. #237
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by concerned View Post
    Its not binary; you can loathe Trump and Bannon at the same time. Trump made this Faustian bargain in hiring and listening to Bannon, picked his poison, lay with dogs, has chickens coming home to roost, among many metaphors.
    Yep.

    "Gather ye scoundrels while ye may,
    Old Time is still a-flying;
    And this same jerk that smiles today
    Tomorrow will be a-lying."

    (Apologies to Robert Herrick.)

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  28. #238
    https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...-house-1071504

    If this article is even 10% true it is terrifying.

    Regarding Trump and his inability to listen to anyone nor accept others ideas, I worked with a person remarkably like him once. She knew that she could say any lie and repeat it enough that people would start believing her, and she would say whatever she had to, even if she had said something just the opposite literally only moments before. She had to be the focal point and always wanted desperately to be the smartest person in the room, or at least perceived to be. Even a slight disagreement with her would level her fire at you and she would attack all guns blazing and relentlessly. It was surprisingly effective, particularly with the owner of the company.

    People soon figured out that all you needed to do with her is fawn over her and praise her for her genius and she would quickly become your ally. Best of all, all you had to do to get her backing was explain your idea, and just begin by saying it was really her idea. She would quickly absorb your lie as her own and suddenly be your advocate. It was entertaining to watch. But every time I hear Trump speak or read about how he conducts his life I think of her. Two massive narcissists, two epic disasters.

    I bet my story is hardly unique, we've all ran into different levels of this. I think there are actually a lot of Trumps in the world.

  29. #239
    Administrator U-Ute's Avatar
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    Another disturbing quote from the "Fire And Fury" book.

    here was more: Everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his repetitions. It used to be inside of 30 minutes he'd repeat, word-for-word and expression-for-expression, the same three stories — now it was within 10 minutes. Indeed, many of his tweets were the product of his repetitions — he just couldn't stop saying something.
    That sounds a lot like my grandparents who were struggling with various types of dementia.

  30. #240
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rocker Ute View Post
    https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...-house-1071504

    If this article is even 10% true it is terrifying.

    Regarding Trump and his inability to listen to anyone nor accept others ideas, I worked with a person remarkably like him once. She knew that she could say any lie and repeat it enough that people would start believing her, and she would say whatever she had to, even if she had said something just the opposite literally only moments before. She had to be the focal point and always wanted desperately to be the smartest person in the room, or at least perceived to be. Even a slight disagreement with her would level her fire at you and she would attack all guns blazing and relentlessly. It was surprisingly effective, particularly with the owner of the company.

    People soon figured out that all you needed to do with her is fawn over her and praise her for her genius and she would quickly become your ally. Best of all, all you had to do to get her backing was explain your idea, and just begin by saying it was really her idea. She would quickly absorb your lie as her own and suddenly be your advocate. It was entertaining to watch. But every time I hear Trump speak or read about how he conducts his life I think of her. Two massive narcissists, two epic disasters.

    I bet my story is hardly unique, we've all ran into different levels of this. I think there are actually a lot of Trumps in the world.
    The hallmarks of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) are grandiosity, a lack of empathy for other people, and a need for admiration. People with this condition are frequently described as arrogant, self-centered, manipulative, and demanding. They may also concentrate on grandiose fantasies (e.g. their own success, beauty, brilliance) and may be convinced that they deserve special treatment. These characteristics typically begin in early adulthood and must be consistently evident in multiple contexts, such as at work and in relationships. People with narcissistic personality disorder believe they are superior or special, and often try to associate with other people they believe are unique or gifted in some way. This association enhances their self-esteem, which is typically quite fragile underneath the surface. Individuals with NPD seek excessive admiration and attention in order to know that others think highly of them. Individuals with narcissistic personality disorder have difficulty tolerating criticism or defeat, and may be left feeling humiliated or empty when they experience an "injury" in the form of criticism or rejection.

    Symptoms

    Narcissistic personality disorder is indicated by five or more of the following symptoms:


    • Exaggerates own importance
    • Is preoccupied with fantasies of success, power, beauty, intelligence or ideal romance
    • Believes he or she is special and can only be understood by other special people or institutions
    • Requires constant attention and admiration from others
    • Has unreasonable expectations of favorable treatment
    • Takes advantage of others to reach his or her own goals
    • Disregards the feelings of others, lacks empathy
    • Is often envious of others or believes other people are envious of him or her
    • Shows arrogant behaviors and attitudes



    https://www.psychologytoday.com/conditions/narcissistic-personality-disorder

    I see this all the time in problem physicians I help clients deal with. Often brilliant clinicians have NPD. It's tragic to watch as they wreck their careers and hurt people around them, including their patients.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

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