That’s because you only see things that agree with your preconceptions.
All right, that I’ll buy. Thank you for the clarification.
So from that standpoint, Diiddy and Jay-Z did more with less. You fail.
Yes, I do. Success in the entertainment field is far more elusive than commercial real estate. Those adolescents you mock are far more fickle than commercial tenants, and managing the assets necessary to appeal to them requires far more innate talent than building a hotel.
That is beneath contempt, and not worthy of response. Who is luckier, the inner city kid who makes wealth out of nothing, or a guy who starts out with $30 million. Get serious.
How exactly did I fail? joebuck20 claimed that Trump was probably only worth a quarter of the amount he claimed. I said that even if that were true, he’s still have more money than Diddy or Jay-Z, both of whom are poster boys for conspicuous wealth and extravagant spending.
And I was right. I win.
Exactly. And it is from this fact that the luck of the draw comes into play. You have to be in the right place at the right time with the sound to make in music. Almost everyone knows this.
I’m not mocking anyone. Adolescents and twentysomethings are the target market for both of those guys. And yes, that market is fickle. That’s why Jay-Z became a record company executive and Diddy branched out into clothing, scents and vodka.
Horseshit.
And yet you responded to it. 
So we’re talking about luck now?
Yeah, Combs (I’m starting to feel silly saying “Diddy” over and over again :D) and Jay-Z have been lucky. They’ve also been smart enough and shrewd enough and driven enough to capitalize on that luck and get to where they are today.
What any of that has to do with Trump’s accomplishments and abilities is anyone’s guess.
Dammit, I screwed up the wording again. :smack: 
And besides, Combs (I’m less familiar with Jay-Z) was not an inner city kid who suddenly made something out of nothing. His mother was a model, he grew up in Mount Vernon, NY and played football at a Catholic high school. He subsequently attended Howard University and commuted to New York on weekends to work as an intern at Uptown Records, a job which he eventually parlayed into an executive role with the company, signing at one point Jodeci and signing and producing Mary J. Blige. (He also promoted a concert and provided security at the City College of New York gymnasium in 1991 which oversold twice as many tickets as there were seats, resulting in a stampede which killed 9 people.) Cite for all.
At any rate, by the time he hit it big, Combs had already been a significant player in the music business for almost ten years and had worked his way up from the bottom.
“Less familiar” with Jay-Z, by which you mean you also looked him up on Wikipedia, but you found that his story didn’t match the narrative you needed, right? 'Cause he’s from a bad part of Bed-Stuy, and came from nothing, and all that.
I don’t even care about the point you’re trying to make, either; that kind of disingenuity is just begging to be pointed out.
I don’t care whether you believe this or not, but I haven’t looked up anything on Jay-Z, Wiki or otherwise. I just don’t find him as interesting.
If you’re planning on going into the mind-reading business, I would suggest that you not give up your day job.
And besides, the story of Jay-Z’s rise has nothing whatever to do with Trump or his abilities, so why we’re even talking about it is a mystery to me, so you might want to ask Fear Itself as he’s the one who keeps bringing those guys up.
I think the key here is that Starkers doesn’t think he’s insulting anyone when he relates the obvious truths about liberal corruption, hypocrisy, and stupidity. He is willing to accept that you don’t know any better, but that’s only because you aren’t listening when he relates the clear and apparent truth. If you listened with an open mind, you would be utterly convinced, no longer a liberal, and therefore not insulted when he speaks candidly about what assholes liberals are.
You are perfectly free to assert the “I didn’t even bother finding out whether my point is a point or not” angle, SA. That might as well be true.
At your direction, I’m happy to accept that, in the effort to make a point about how Jay-Z and Puffy are not self-made men who rose from the bottom, but instead profited from pivileged upbringings, you relied only on your knowledge of how Diddy got to his internship, gleaned from multiple readings of Dancing With the Devil (How Puff Burned the Bad Boys of Hip-Hop). And that you didn’t, in fact, take the one and a half seconds it would have taken to type 5 characters into the Wikipedia search box to see whether maybe Jay-Z had the same background. Because it wasn’t interesting, and therefore not relevant to the fact that you were actually arguing something which hinged on the outcome of that inquiry.
My apologies for my terrible mind-reading. Your explanation is way better.
For the record, you are the one who first used Diddy and Jay-Z as examples. When called on the inconsistency of that example, you repeatedly defended it. I will conrinue to shove that weak sauce in your face until you admit Diddy and Jay-Z have worked far harder in a much more competitve industry that Trump couold ever imagine.
No, actually Starkers started talking about what assholes liberals are when liberals started talking about how the only way somebody could be a conservative was if they were evil in the first place. Since most people define evil as engaging in practices that hurt or kill people, I thought it was time someone brought up the ruined lives and the millions of needless deaths that have occurred since the 60’s due to liberal attitudes and liberal permissiveness.
Prior to that I mostly argued about Bush and the war in Iraq, and against liberal dumbassery in general.
I said that if Trump was only worth 1/4 of the wealth he claims, he would still be richer than Diddy or Jay-Z. You guys are the ones trying to turn it into a dick-measuring contest about who has worked the hardest, and, predictably, you’re failing miserably. Thousands of young kids have made it big in music since the 50’s by dint of being in the right place at the right time with the right sound. It doesn’t take any particular skill or ability, no matter what that person’s background. Where Diddy and Jay-Z have excelled is in turning that success into their respective business empires. Still, it’s a lot easier to sign and promote acts and to work with cologne makers and clothing manufacturers than it is to work with architects and engineers and contruction workers and bankers and zoning commissions and to find and engineer the purchase of parcels of land and to predict how much business space to create there and how much residential space to create there and how much it’s possible to charge for it and whether enough of a market exists for that space at that price and…well, you get the idea. Neither of those guys is anywhere near Trump’s level and I’d wager that if no one else would ever hear about it, they’d admit the same to you.
Then you’re going to be tilting at that windmill for a long time 'cause that just ain’t so.
You keep demonstrating your ignorance about commercial real estate is exceeded only by your ignorance of the music industry. You make the world more stupid by your mere presence. That’s not an insult, it is a dispassionate observation of fact.
I think we’re all missing the point here. Even if we assume that Donald Trump is a genius at real estate development, and that real estate development skill is highly predictive of skill in other fields, we still have the fact that Donald Trump is going around talking about Obama’s birth certificate. Either he actually doubts that Obama was born in the US, in which case his ability to discern truth from absolute bullshit is severely damaged, and he should in no way be considered fit to be President, or he understands that this is truly nonsense, and yet he says it anyways to pander to morons, in which case he’s a cynical liar on a scale far beyond normal politicians, and he should in no way be considered fit to be President.
You’re not speaking from a basis of fact - you’re speaking as a fanboy.
It couldn’t be more obvious.
Look, Diddy and Jay-Z are cool guys. They’ve accomplished a hell of a lot more than most of the people who’ve gained success in the field of music, and they certainly know how to make money and how to live well. But they are not businessmen in the sense that Trump is a businessman. Not by a long shot. Most of their success rides on the fact that they appeal to a certain demographic, and that demographic can be counted upon to support their various enterprises through small-ticket purchases: records, concert tickets, cologne, vodka and so forth. Relative to the kinds of things Trump does, it’s no great shakes to put on a concert or sign a new act, or to license your name and image to a clothing manufacturer or promote a vodka. All these things rely upon an established fanbase and essentially boil down to promoting and capitalizing upon their respective images. Without their images, neither Diddy nor Jay-Z would have accomplished anywhere near what they have. Trump, on the other hand, had already become highly successful in the field of commercial real estate in the difficult and competitive market of Manhattan before anyone ever began to hear of him in the mid-to-late eighties. He relies upon vision and the creation and development of real estate to make his money, and it’s a lot harder to envision and create large and profitable real estate enterprises than it is to capitalize upon the wealth and image that you were lucky enough to have attained by dint of having become a pop star.
The thing about geniuses is that they often appear to be doing one thing when they’re really doing something else.
I have no idea what Trump is up to with all this birther stuff, but you can bet your last dollar that he knows exactly what he’s doing. He may just be creating publicity for his business enterprises, or he may have determined that it’s a good dodge to keep from having to talk about more complex issues, but one way or another you can bet that he’ll come out ahead in some way because of it.
I take it all those bankruptcies were also strategic moves we’re not smart enough to understand, rather than times when he totally fucked up and ceased to pay his debts?
Which is, as Miller pointed out, a response to specific things Stark Raving said and not the type of general “fuck you all and them too” type of insult that Starkers does:
The man has a bad dye job, a worse comb-over, and builds some of the ugliest buildings around. His personal life is a disaster. He went bankrupt twice, something that conservatives want to make harder to do for those of us who are not rich. He is now advancing a lunatic position, either because he believes it or is so cynical that he has decided to placate the mouth breathers. In other words, he is the best candidate the conservatives have put forward.
I find it rather funny that you go from the above…
…to this. I’m not sure that you can accuse someone of speaking as a fanboy and then post such absolutely blinkered nonsense. Donald Trump is a genius? In fact, he’s such a genius that we mere mortals cannot comprehend the end game here? He’s not the fucking Batman. He’s the real estate version of Gene Simmons: it’s all about the marketing.
By claiming to run for president and spouting this whole birther crap, he gets more people to pay attention to him which furthers the Trump brand. Now more people will tune in to watch “C” list celebrities jump through hoops for his amusement and he has his own little segment on Fox and Friends now. That’s a nice little hunk of publicity for doing very little. If he even actually runs in the primaries, it’ll only be to get footage for a reality show on NBC. Better yet. A Lebron James-esque “The Decision” show where he announces on live television whether or not he’ll run for president. Whether or not he believes Obama was born in Kenya is entirely irrelevant. He doesn’t care if it’s true or not. Similarly, it doesn’t matter if people want him to run for president. He just wants the attention and the money. He’s fucking trolling.
Yeah. The mad genius of Donald Trump. :rolleyes: You honestly believe that and I’ve got a “blessed by his hairiness himself” version of Trump the Boardgame to sell you. It’ll only cost you $15 million. No checks please.