Tuesday Tabulation
- Via the Bulwark: I Spent Insurrection Week Listening to Steve Bannon. It is a great read if one is in need of being depressed.
- Speaking of depressing, via WaPo: How Republicans became the party of Trump’s election lie after Jan. 6
At least 163 Republicans who have embraced Trump’s false claims are running for statewide positions that would give them authority over the administration of elections, according to a Post tally. The list includes 69 candidates for governor in 30 states, as well as 55 candidates for the U.S. Senate, 13 candidates for state attorney general and 18 candidates for secretary of state in places where that person is the state’s top election official.
At least five candidates for the U.S. House were at the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riots, including Jason Riddle of New Hampshire, whom federal prosecutors have accused of chugging wine inside the building that day.
[…]
According to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll in December, 58 percent of Republicans think Biden’s election was not legitimate, and 62 percent think there is solid evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
- This piece on Greg Gutfeld from WaPo just underscores the infotainment of it all: Greg Gutfeld has risen to the top at Fox News — and that’s no joke. Indeed, it reinforces my existing view that Gutfeld is sort of a version of Adam Corolla. This is especially telling when considering his growing prominence as an alleged commentator politics (let alone a guiding light for GOPers):
Gutfeld, a self-described libertarian, says he doesn’t remember how he’s registered. (He’s officially listed as no party or refuses to disclose.) He did not cast a ballot in the 2016 presidential election, according to New York voting records reviewed by The Washington Post. This came as a surprise to Gutfeld, who says he voted by mail — though he thinks it’s possible he missed the deadline. Gutfeld, who has been critical of mail-in balloting, says he wrote in the name of someone with whom he works but can’t remember who.
- And via Fox23 News, a monument to insane opulence: Most expensive home in America listed for $295M ahead of bankruptcy auction.
With respect to the Bulwark/Bannon piece, I agree that’s it’s very depressing, but somehow riveting. I liked Miller’s observation that the show “offers Trump supporters a fascistic MAGA cosplay in which they are the main characters, and the aggrieved victims, and also the all-powerful heroes.”
As for the most expensive house: how soulless, sterile, and cold. Maybe they can turn it into a resort for androids.
If I had $500M, $300M, or even $5M to spend on a house, I’d find my own architect and sit with her and decide what I would want. Why spend that money on someone else’s dream house.
Having seen articles on that pile before, it’s not a surprise that it’s in bankruptcy.
Well sure, but what alternative do they have? If they acknowledge that their beliefs are nonsense, they’ll end up getting stuck with supporting responses to Jan 6.
And in 2024, they’ll end up opposing “
StopTurn the Steal Around.”@CSK: Yes. The design and decor DO give it a relentlessly institutional feel, don’t they? Incheon Airport is a more charming and welcoming place. And its color palette is limited to glass, chrome, light grey and dark grey.
@just nutha:
By God, you’re right. The house does indeed look like Incheon Airport. Only not as cozy and welcoming.
@CSK:
… a resort for androids with an incontinence problem. The bathroom/bedroom ratio in that house is 2 to 1! What the hell?
Any “house” with >100,000 square feet is going to be odd. That’s somewhat more than 50% bigger then the Hearst Castle.
@Scott F.:
How many bathrooms (or at least stalls) do you have to include near a dining room that sits a couple hundred people?
Re the most expensivest house, I do not mind minimalist style. Kinda like it. I also kinda like Brutalism – sue me.
But the scale is absurd. 21 bedrooms, 42 bathrooms, 4 pools. Who would use those spaces? It is bonkers.
I don’t begrudge the architects / designers at all. They got to play out in real space things that had been stuck in their heads for years, but the owner just baffles me. Got paid for it.
Why would anyone want that? I spend 90% of my time at home in two rooms.
The whole conceit is mind boggling. Why? You’d have to be certifiably insane to approve the project. It serves no purpose.
This is Ozymandias level folly.
That house is just the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and it’s not even trying to be tacky. If I had 200 million to blow I would probably go overboard but in a good way. Like a forest populated with monkeys and fake ruins and a gallery with secret passages behind the El Grecos, and not a place that looks like C-list Art Basel minus the models and the cocaine.
Good point!
I constantly scratch my head in bewilderment at these estate mansions and how anyone thinks they’re going to be able to resell them at anything close to the cost of construction + land value.
Has anyone checked to see what undeveloped real estate would go for in that area? I’d argue (if I were trying to buy it) that it’s worth less than the value of the land underneath it, because I’m going to have to pay to demolish the damn thing just to get back to ground zero.
(It certainly has a soulless hotel/airport terminal feel to it, doesn’t it.)
“Why would anyone want that? I spend 90% of my time at home in two rooms.”
Coming to the realization that I spent 90% of my time in one room helped me realize that I would suffer no particular sense of loss relocating to Asia to teach and why I would be fine living in a 400 sq.ft studio (smaller would have been fine, in fact) when I returned to the states.
A wonderfully snippy look at “The One” and the guy who put the damn thing together.
Yah. Anyone who would have the money to buy it is going to be the sort of person who would want to have his own place built to specifications.
@Scott F.: So glad that caught someone else’s eye. I read that and thought “what the hell…how could you need that many bathrooms??”
I find nothing appealing at all about that house. For that kind of money, I’d rather buy a Scottish castle and renovate.
@de stijl:
Maybe Ivo Shandor had a hand in building this home (which really is more like a high-end hotel/resort compared to even the mansions that you can find in Bel Air/Brentwood/Beverly Hills)?
It would explain why anyone thought it was a good idea to build a home that does not seem like a very homely place to live. I wonder if some of the construction materials include cold riveted girders?
@Jen:
It seems to be the fashion now in new construction: more bathrooms than bedrooms, i.e. a five bedroom house will have six bathrooms. But I freely admit that 42 bathrooms seems a trifle…excessive.
The average Scottish castle, in my experience, has fifteen bedrooms and one bathroom.
@inhumans99:
If it’s not torn down, it will probably end up as a resort. There isn’t much else tat could be done with it.
The moat/swimming pool gave me a laugh.
@CSK:
Some of those bathrooms may be vomitoriums. However, the real estate agents insisted on another label.
@grumpy realist:
Dennis Kozlowski’s $26M mansion isn’t far from me. After he went off to be a guest of the Feds, it sat on the market for years finally selling at auction for $4.2M. The buyers, gutted it and made significant changes to the exterior, then they put it up for sale. Not sure what it sold for.
@just nutha:
When we were in StL, we had acquaintances that had a 10,000 sq ft pile in Westmoreland Pl. He told me they lived in 3 rooms, the master suite, a den off it and a mini kitchen next to that. It was shamble when they bought it and they spent about 15 years returning it to its original glory. They loved the place but admitted it didn’t make any sense.
I attended a conference at the Fountainebleu in Miami Beach.
They gave away my room. I had a reservation, wtf?
I politely asked (concealing inner outrage) if any accommodation was available since I had a (fucking – unsaid) reservation. After a bit of consult the manager stuff, they did find a room for me.
It was the penthouse party room. 3 maybe 4000 sq. feet. It was so fucking awesome! Huge space, a TV the size of an SUV. Wrap around sea-side balconies. Quite minimalist in a late 90s Miami take. Designed for parties.
What made it so epic was they had to wheel in a cot (well, a very utilitarian single bed on wheels) for me to sleep on. There are no beds in Fountainebleau’s premiere party space. I would have been totally cool with any of the roughly 30 sofas scattered about. I’m pretty easy. Give me a blanket and I’m fine.
For one night I lived like a goddamn rockstar. I enjoyed it immensely. It was so absurd. Got shuffled off to a $400 dollar a night pleb room next noon. Sea view at least.
It was cool while it lasted.
I don’t live very far from this boondoggle house. It’s the laughingstock of West LA. Best part is the house was shoddily built and is already suffering from structural damage. At $200 million. Can you imagine?
@Dude Kembro: Actually I can. I’ve been to a smaller-scale version of the same show in the West Hills of Portland where a developer sold a string of houses with really great views only to discover he couldn’t get occupancy permits for them until repairs that he didn’t have the money to make were effected.
@just nutha:
Hey, come on! I’ve lived in 6×9 cells that had less of an institutional feel than that pile of $$$. Things like this give institutional (and grandiosity) a bad name.
At first glance, I thought it was the villain’s lair from a Matt Helm movie.
@flat earth luddite: Great catch! I was wondering what the long shot looked like and couldn’t place it. (I think it may have been used–or some angle of it anyway–as an exterior shot for some episodes of Marvel’s The Runaways, but I’m not sure.)
A downside to the super party rock star room was no shower in the morning.
So I did the get naked in front of a sink full of hot water and do your best washing up thing. There should be a name for that – stand up sitz bath. The Germans probably have a word for it.
Looking back, I could have just gone to the gym.
The last night party event was in the – you guessed it – penthouse party palace.
I am not terribly socially awkward, but sometimes the opening gambit eludes me and I get tongue-tied and weird. That night I had the best opening gambit possible. “I slept here Sunday night. No fooling! Here, let me show you around.”
@Jen: Yes, for that kind of money, I could get a country home near the English village where my father’s bomber group was based in WW2. It’s quiet (more sheep than people in the vicinity) and it’s within 2 hours of London by train.