;)
The Commentariat -- October 14, 2017
Afternoon Update:
The Cheese Stands Alone. Stephen Castle & Thomas Erdbrink of the New York Times: "Iran, Russia and European leaders roundly condemned President Trump's decision on Friday to disavow the Iran nuclear deal, saying that it reflected the growing isolation of the United States, threatened to destabilize the Middle East and could make it harder to resolve the growing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.... Though they avoided direct criticism of Mr. Trump, Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France said in a rare joint statement that they 'stand committed' to the 2015 nuclear deal and that preserving it was 'in our shared national security interest.' 'The nuclear deal was the culmination of 13 years of diplomacy and was a major step towards ensuring that Iran's nuclear program is not diverted for military purposes,' they added." ...
... Eric Levitz has "a rundown of Trump's most absurd arguments for decertifying the nuclear agreement with Iran." ...
... Fred Kaplan of Slate: "President Trump's statement Friday on the Iran nuclear deal may be the most dishonest speech he has ever given from the White House -- and, depending what happens next, it could be his most damaging. It flagrantly misrepresents what the deal was meant to do, the extent of Iran's compliance, and the need for corrective measures. If he gets his way, he will blow up one of the most striking diplomatic triumphs of recent years, aggravate tensions in the Middle East, make it even harder to settle the North Korean crisis peacefully, and make it all but impossible for allies and adversaries to trust anything the United States says for as long as Trump is in office." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Eliana Johnson of Politico (story linked below) puts the onus on Nikki Haley -- with a shoutout to John Bolton -- for stage-crafting Trump's speech. But I want to know, inasmuch as the Iran pact is integral to Middle East peace -- WHERE'S JARED? Here Trump is fooling with with a delicately-crafted international accord, and the Trump's Designated Middle East Peace Guru must be off enjoying the fall colors or something.
... Heather Hurlburt of New York: "If the theatrics of [Friday's] speech reminds you more of a reality-show season premiere than high diplomacy, it's not accidental. Trump and his team are stage-managing Iran policy as if it were an episode of The Apprentice. He intentionally built drama for weeks -- from his September taunt to the United Kingdom, our closest ally, that he'd made a decision but wasn't willing to share it, to a steady drip of leaks and time changes in the lead-up to today's announcement. European ambassadors were called to the State Department days ahead of time, then told the State Department had nothing to tell them. Tune in for the season opener, right? But international diplomacy doesn't thrive on 'reveals'--in fact, it tends to fall apart over them."
Steven Feldstein in Informed Comment: "At campaign rallies [Trump] pledged to 'bomb the hell' out of the Islamic State. He openly mused about killing the families of terrorists, a blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits violence against noncombatants. Ten months into his presidency, a clearer picture is emerging. The data indicate several alarming trends. According to research from the nonprofit monitoring group Airwars, the first seven months of the Trump administration have already resulted in more civilian deaths than under the entirety of the Obama administration.... Researchers also point to another stunning trend -- the 'frequent killing of entire families in likely coalition airstrikes.'... The vast increase in civilian deaths is not limited to the anti-IS campaign. In Afghanistan, the U.N. reports a 67 percent increase in civilian deaths from U.S. airstrikes in the first six months of 2017 compared to the first half of 2016." Feldstein lays out possible reasons for the increases.
Chris Riotta of Newsweek: "Jared Kushner 'enriched himself' by not revealing his ownership of a real estate tech business that raised millions of dollars while he served in the government, said a member of the House Judiciary Committee, calling it part of a pattern of unethical behavior that he believes should cause the White House Senior Adviser to be stripped of his security clearance. Congressman Ted Lieu told Newsweek that Kushner's failure to list a company called Cadre on his initial financial disclosure forms -- man oversight that could mean millions for the president's son-in-law -- is an ethical lapse that should have severe ramifications." You'll have to read on to understand how the stunt worked in Jared's favor.
Oracle for Hire -- Will Say Whatever the Hell You Want to Hear. Josh Delk of the Hill: "Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon said Saturday ... during a speech at the Values Voter Summit ... that President Trump will 'win with 400 electoral votes in 2020,' following reports that he had lost faith in the president's ability to complete his current term.... [That's funny because] Bannon reportedly said several months ago that Trump only has a 30 percent chance of finishing his current term, a source told Vanity Fair, who said the president also did not know the function of the 25th Amendment, which allows a majority of the Cabinet to vote for the president to be removed from office." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: So to "Values Voters," Trump's in like Flynn (no, not that Flynn); to Vanity Fair, Trump will be deposed. Apparently Bannon has reason to believe that "know thy audience" can be monetized.
*****
Gail Collins: "Policy-wise, this has been a particularly dreadful week in Washington. The president trashed the health care act and washed his hands of the nuclear agreement with Iran. Attention must be paid. But there has also been a bumper crop of Ridiculous Events. And it seems only fair to mention a few of them, given that the president himself doesn't have enough stable thoughts for a serious policy debate." And mention them she does, in a column titled "Stupid Trump Tricks."
Health Insurance Is Just a Game of Oneupmanship. Burgess Everett, et al., of Politico: "... Donald Trump will oppose any congressional attempts to reinstate funding for Obamacare subsidies -- unless he gets something in return, his budget director Mick Mulvaney said in an interview Friday morning. The comments by the Office of Management and Budget chief delivered a severe blow to efforts by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) to strike a bipartisan deal on funding the subsidies.... Mulvaney panned those efforts, calling the so-called cost-sharing reduction payments 'corporate welfare and bailouts for the insurance companies.'... The administration, however, opened the door to negotiations on the now-canceled payments. After speaking to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Saturday, Trump said that a temporary deal could be struck on shoring up the insurance markets. Mulvaney suggested the insurance payments could be a bargaining chip in a broader negotiation with Congress to either repeal President Barack Obama's signature health care law — or fund Trump's long-stalled border wall with Mexico." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: I was wondering who-all was running Trump's anti-health-insurance push now that Tom Price is spending more time with his family; Mulvaney may not be the one, but he's certainly one of the "brains" behind the draconian schemes. ...
... Mike DeBonis & Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "President Trump's decision late Thursday to cut off crucial health-care subsidies has once again torn open the long-festering debate over the Affordable Care Act, increasing the potential for a government shutdown in December and ensuring that the issue will be central in next year's midterm elections. The move to end insurer subsidies for low-income patients could spike premiums by as much as 20 percent for those who purchase insurance on the individual market. While Trump and Republican allies argued that former president Barack Obama's signature health-care reform law is fundamentally flawed, Democrats called the move an act of sabotage against the ACA and pledged to fight it.... 'Republicans in the House and Senate now own the health-care system in this country from top to bottom, and their destructive actions, and the actions of the president, are going to fall on their backs,' [Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer] said. 'The American people will know exactly where to place the blame when their premiums shoot up and when millions lose coverage.'" ...
... James Hohmann of the Washington Post runs down some of the consequences of Trump's moves to sabotage ObamaCare. ...
... An Unintended Consequence of Malice Aforethought (but not so well "thought.") Eric Levitz of New York: "In an early-morning tweet [Friday], Trump confirmed that this was an act of malice. Months ago, the president predicted that canceling the so-called 'cost-sharing reductions' would break Obamacare -- and thus, force Chuck Schumer to negotiate with him over a replacement. On Friday, in a missive fit for a cartoon supervillain, Trump announced that the deed was done, and the Democrats' precious Obamacare was no more. 'The Democrats ObamaCare is imploding. Massive subsidy payments to their pet insurance companies has stopped. Dems should call me to fix!'... And yet..., according to the Congressional Budget Office, in this particular case, canceling Obamacare subsidies will only make them stronger. If CBO's analysis is correct, Trump's latest act of Obamacare sabotage will do the opposite of what every Republican health-care plan had intended.... Trump might have just made Obamacare a better deal for low-income Americans; provided 1 million more people with insurance (after 2020); and increased federal spending on health care by nearly $200 billion over the next decade." Levitz builds on health-care economist Nicholas Bagley's explanation, linked yesterday. ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Maybe about now you're thinking Mick Mulvaney isn't such an evil genius. Just evil. One problem: since the Trumpies are making it harder for enrollees to sign up, the new & degraded Healthcare.gov may make it more difficult for individuals to figure out which plan would be best for them. According to Levitz & others, it may turn out that -- thanks to Trump -- a gold plan will become most advantageous, but many people would probably just assume that a bronze plan -- the cheapest -- would be most affordable. I think I'm pretty smart, but it took me about a year (I'm not exaggerating) to figure out which Medicare supplement plan would give me the most bang for my buck, and I can tell you insurers dished out a lot of disinformation (and outright lies) to confuse me. I will say that the person who gave me the final, deciding clue was a helpful Medicare staffer. ...
... Sarah Kliff of Vox: "Fewer people will have insurance -- and the government will spend more.... There is no question that this new policy is lose-lose-lose for key stakeholders with no upside. It will raise Obamacare premiums by an estimated 20 percent in 2018.... Pulling the plug actually increases the national deficit. As those insurance plans make double-digit rate increases, the government will have to spend billions more on the other subsidies that 10 million Americans receive to purchase that coverage. The number of uninsured Americans would rise by one million people in 2018, in the CBO's estimate. Insurance companies ... now stand to face significant financial loses on the Obamacare marketplaces." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I doubt Trump has any idea of the fiscal consequences, but it wouldn't matter if he accidentally found out. His objective is to ruin ObamaCare, and if it costs billions to do so, so what? Meanwhile, all the dimwitted "values voters" are cheering him on. ...
... Megan Messerly & Riley Snyder of the Nevada Independent: Nevada "Governor Brian Sandoval [R] called the president's decision to end critical payments from the federal government that help health insurance companies offer affordable coverage to lower-income Americans 'devastating,' though officials with the state's insurance exchange say Nevadans won't feel any immediate impact in the coming plan year. Dealing yet another blow to the Affordable Care Act, the White House said in a statement late Thursday night that the government cannot 'lawfully' continue making the so-called cost-sharing reduction payments, which the president has repeatedly referred to as a 'bailout' for insurance companies. But halting those payments would be 'very destructive' for the state of Nevada, Sandoval said, echoing concerns expressed by exchange officials and health-care policy experts that injecting additional volatility into the individual insurance market could eventually lead to its collapse in the long term." ...
... Rachel Roubein of the Hill: "A new multistate lawsuit has been announced to stop President Trump from halting key ObamaCare payments to insurers. Fifteen states and Washington, D.C., are signing onto the new lawsuit, which will be filed Friday, according to Sarah Lovenheim, a spokeswoman for California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. On Thursday night, Trump announced he would stop making the payments, which led to an outcry from critics saying he was sabotaging the health care law. The complaint will seek a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction and permanent injunction requiring the cost-sharing reduction payments be made."
Trump Whisperer. Eliana Johnson of Politico: "While many of the president's cabinet members, aides, and advisers work to restrain his impulses, when it came to Iran deal [U.N. Ambassador Nikki] Haley did the opposite -- channeling what many Democrats and even some Republicans consider the president's destructive instincts into policy.... The fingerprints of former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, whose access to Trump was recently limited by chief of staff John Kelly, were also on Trump's Friday address.... Bolton urged Trump to include a line in his remarks noting that he reserved the right to scrap the agreement entirely...."
Antony Blinken in a New York Times op-ed: "Now that Mr. Trump has decertified Iran's compliance with the nuclear agreement, Congress has 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions. Mr. Trump called on Congress and America's allies to use the time 'to address the deal's many serious flaws.' If not, he said, 'the agreement will be terminated.' By 'fix' Mr. Trump means legislation to impose new conditions on Iran beyond the purview of the agreement and to extend its constraints indefinitely. That would put the United States, not Iran, in violation of the agreement and isolate Washington, not Tehran, around the world." Blinken lays out the numerous lies Trump told to "justify" his supposed decertification of Iran's compliance. The headline on Blinken's piece: "Trump Alienates America's Allies and Hands Iran a Victory." ...
... Asawin Suebsaeng, et al., of the Daily Beast unearth the plot to hide the Iran nuclear agreement from Trump. H. R. McMaster has tried to lure Congressional Democrats into joining the conspiracy, even as he had to speak to them in code. Mrs. McC: To save the nation from Trump, the members of the Cabinet & Congress are already banding together. This could be the start of something big.
Storm-Ravaged Islands in the Big Ocean Are Other Countries. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "During a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing Thursday, Energy Secretary Rick Perry mistakenly referred to Puerto Rico as a country while talking about how to repair its energy grid.... And now President Trump has talked about another U.S. territory struck by hurricanes as if it's a foreign country. He said in a speech at the Values Voters Summit on Friday morning that he met with the 'president' of the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Virgin Islands don't have a president; they have a governor, Kenneth Mapp, with whom Trump met 10 days ago. In fact, their president is none other than Trump himself, since they are Americans." ...
... Paul Krugman: "... the Trump administration seems increasingly to see this tragedy [in Puerto Rico] as a public relations issue, something to be spun -- partly by blaming the victims -- rather than as an urgent problem to be solved.... And it took almost three weeks after Maria struck before Trump asked Congress to provide financial aid -- and his request was for loans, not grants, which is mind-boggling when you bear in mind that the territory is effectively bankrupt.... Puerto Ricans would doubtless be getting better treatment if they were all of, say, Norwegian descent.... Whatever the precise mix of motives, what's happening in Puerto Rico is utterly shameful. And everyone who enables the regime perpetuating this shame shares part of the guilt."
Dan Friedman of Mother Jones: "The White House has blown by an October 1 deadline for beginning to implement new sanctions targeting Russia, drawing concern in Congress that President Donald Trump is planning to ignore parts of a bill he grudgingly signed in August.... The aide said that members of the White House's National Security Council have assured senators that they are 'getting to' the sanctions and 'it's gonna happen.' But lawmakers are wary." --safari
NEW. Josh Meyer of Politico: "Twitter has deleted tweets and other user data of potentially irreplaceable value to investigators probing Russia's suspected manipulation of the social media platform during the 2016 election, according to current and former government cybersecurity officials. Federal investigators now believe Twitter was one of Russia's most potent weapons in its efforts to promote Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, the officials say...."
Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "Reince Priebus, the former chief of staff to President Trump, was interviewed for a full day Friday by members of special counsel Robert S. Mueller's team, Priebus's lawyer said.... The interview, which took place at the special counsel's office in Washington, is a sign that Mueller's investigation is now reaching into the highest levels of Trump's aides and former aides." ...
... Following the Money. Manafort & the Oligarch. Aggelos Petropoulos & Richard Engel of NBC News: "Paul Manafort, a former campaign manager for ... Donald Trump, has much stronger financial ties to a Russian oligarch than have been previously reported. An NBC News investigation reveals that $26 million changed hands in the form of a loan between a company linked to Manafort and the oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a billionaire with close ties to the Kremlin. The loan brings the total of their known business dealings to around $60 million over the past decade, according to financial documents filed in Cyprus and the Cayman Islands.... According to company documents obtained by NBC News in Cyprus, funds were sent from a company owned by Deripaska to entities linked to Manafort, registered in Cyprus."
Choir Boy. Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post: “'You cannot publicly castrate your own secretary of state without giving yourself that binary choice,' [Sen. Bob] Corker told me in a phone interview Friday. 'The tweets -- yes, you raise tension in the region [and] it's very irresponsible. But it's the first part' -- the 'castration' of [Rex] Tillerson -- 'that I am most exercised about.'... The problem, he suggested, is Trump's tweets and other statements implying that there is no deal to be made with North Korea and that Tillerson 'is wasting his time,' as one tweet put it. Such comments are causing the Chinese to back away from what has been an incipient willingness to bring serious pressure to bear on Pyongyang.'"
King Zinke. Sarah Burris of RawStory: "Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has come under fire for spending nearly as much as former Secretary Tom Price on private airline flights, but now it appears he also has special mandates for the buildings he's in. The Washington Post reported Thursday that Zinke unearthed a military ritual hoisting special secretarial flags on whatever buildings he happens to be in. Each time Zinke is scheduled to enter a building, a security staffer takes an elevator to the top floor and climbs to the roof where his special flag is raised. When he is not in the building, the security staffer must, once again, climb the steps to the top and take the flag down." --safari ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Burris has mangled the WashPo story, linked above: The flag-raising & -lowering hoo-hah happens only at the Interior Department building in Washington, D.C. (or, as Zinke's press secretary hilariously puts it, "in garrison.") Lisa Rein of the Post describes the flag as a "blue banner emblazoned with the agency's bison seal flanked by seven white stars representing the Interior bureaus," & Burris posts a representation of it. "In Zinke's absence," Rein writes, "the ritual is repeated to raise an equally obscure flag for Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt." Bernhardt's flag, pictured in Rein's story is white with blue stars. "Zinke," Rein reminds us, "upset some of the 70,000 employees at the agency that manages public lands by stating that 30 percent of the workers are 'not loyal to the flag' in a speech to oil and gas executives." I guess now we know what flag he had in mind. "Zinke rode to work on horseback on his first day in office and displays animal heads on his wood-paneled office walls. For a while, he kept a glass-case display of hunting knives but was asked to remove them because of security risks.... He has commissioned commemorative coins with his name on them to give to staff and visitors, but the cost to taxpayers is unclear. Zinke's predecessors and some other Cabinet secretaries have coins bearing agency seals, but not personalized ones.... The agency's inspector general opened an investigation after [Zinke] ran up bills for travel on chartered jets and mixed business with political appearances, sometimes accompanied by his wife, Lola." In any event, Zinke is a preposterous, self-aggrandizing laughingstock, a character type who is the butt of jokes in many a situation comedy.
Ryan Deveraux & Spencer Woodman of The Intercept: "An internal handbook obtained by The Intercept provides a rare view into the extensive asset seizure operations of ICE's Homeland Security Investigations, an office that trains its agents to meticulously appraise the value of property before taking it.... The handbook acknowledges that civil forfeiture can be used to take property from a person even when there's not enough evidence for a criminal indictment." --safari
Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "Sen. Susan Collins of Maine announced Friday that she will not run for governor in 2018, renewing her commitment to serve in a sharply polarized Senate where her centrist Republican positions have made her a key bulwark against much of President Trump's agenda. Ending months of speculation about her political future, Collins, who does not face reelection until 2020, opted to stick with the job she has held for the last two decades, even as other moderate GOP lawmakers including Rep. Charlie Dent (Pa.) and Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.) are heading for the exits."
Josh Gerstein of Politico: "A federal judge on Friday turned down the Justice Department's request to dramatically scale back the reach of an injunction he'd issued against the Trump administration's targeting of so-called sanctuary cities. Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Harry Leinenweber granted the City of Chicago's request for a nationwide block on the Justice Department's plan to insist that cities and counties receiving public-safety grants allow immigration agents access to local jails and give local authorities advance notice when suspected illegal immigrants are about to be released from custody. Justice Department lawyers asked Leinenweber to stay his order so that it would benefit only Chicago...."
Al Baker & Stephen Castle of the New York Times: "The police in London and New York said Thursday that they were looking into complaints involving the disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein, the latest turn in a scandal that has consumed Hollywood over allegations of sexual abuse and harassment." ...
... TMZ: Harvey Weinstein will challenge his firing by The Weinstein Company at this month's Board of Directors meeting."
Medlar's Sports Report:
** Karen Attiah of the Washington Post: "With Pence's stunt, Trump's tweets, [ Cowboys owner Jerry] Jones's edict and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's statement saying players should stand, the debate about players standing for the national anthem is no longer about the flag. This is not about the anthem. This is not about supporting the troops. This is about putting outspoken black people back in their place in America -- subordinate, and silent about the racism, police brutality and white supremacy that affect our lives everyday."
Marc Tracy of the New York Times: "The N.C.A.A. did not dispute that the University of North Carolina was guilty of running one of the worst academic fraud schemes in college sports history, involving fake classes that enabled dozens of athletes to gain and maintain their eligibility. But there will be no penalties, the organization said, because no rules were broken. In a ruling that caused head-scratching everywhere except Chapel Hill, the N.C.A.A. announced on Friday that it could not punish the university or its athletics program because the 'paper' classes were not available exclusively to athletes. Other students at North Carolina had access to the fraudulent classes, too."
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Reader Comments (8)
King Zinke? A special flag that must be raised whenever the king is in a certain building? I thought all these pretentious fucks had enormous security details and feared for their lives because their importance to the nation made them high priority targets. Wouldn’t a flag be like, ya know, a giveaway? “Hey, yoo-hoo, terrorists! Over here! That champion of Strip mining America is in. Direct all RPGs and automatic weapons right here. Yoo-hoo!”
I mean, what if the guy has to run in and take a leak or check to make sure his tie isn’t crooked? Does some Marine adjutant have to race to the roof and hoist the Zinkee Banner and wait for the all clear that he’s zipped up and on his way? Oh shit, he forgot to wash his hands. He’s headed back in. Put that flag back up!
Zinke is just another self-involved, conceited Trumpian con man with visions of personal glorification. I’d like to see this flag. Is it gold with eagles or lions or some other pretentious bullshit? Or does it say, as it should “Asshole Present”?
Back in the day Saturday night baths were the thing for us children who then could listen to Saturday night radio programs while lazing in the bubbles of the bath. My favorite besides Lux Theater was THE SHADOW: the voice of Orson Welles telling us "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men––the Shadow knows!"
The Shadow was an invincible crime fighter. He possessed many gifts which enabled him to overcome any enemy. Besides his tremendous strength, he could defy gravity, speak any language, unravel any code, and become invisible with his famous ability to "cloud men's minds."
So when very young one was told to believe that evil was something that indeed was lurking in men's hearts. We then were lured into thinking something could be be done to eradicate that evil. I thought of this old radio program yesterday after being overstuffed with news of a pertinacious nature.
I also thought what Nietzsche warned us about: that pride or overconfidence in Enlightenment thinking and "the minute portion of human reason" might blind us to the darkness in human nature."
So when we find ourselves dealing with a deliberate destruction of our foundation not only in this country but with foreign entities how do we deal with that darkness, with that evil? Or perhaps a better question is how long can this go on?
Check out this exchange between David Brooks and Mark Shields on PBS's New's Hour–-their regular Friday night rundown of the week's wreak of news. This was one of the rare times that Shields takes a dump on David:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/shields-brooks-trump-dismantling-obamas-achievements-puerto-rico-need/
@PD Pepe: Okay, I trued to watch Brooks & Shields & I made it all the way to the point where Brooks started talking about "Trump's philosophy." That was too much.
Oh, shucks, Bea, then you missed the part where Shields says "Trump has a philosophy??? And we here on the couch yelled in unison–-"What?? Trump has a philosophy?
Brooks––bless him, his head is still somewhere in the clouds.
Well, isn't this the epitome of ostentatious consumption? And fp^6 wants to let these people keep more of their hard-earned cash.
Donnie baby, cancelling the Iran deal is a mistake.
No it's not. I am never wrong.
Sorry baby, but Obama and our allies got this right.
See you said Obama! That proves I'm right.
We have an idea baby. How about if we leave it to Congress to decide?
Great idea!!
Today's news. Trump says that letting Congress decide was his great idea.
@unwashed: this property has been hyped for some time, I believe the original owner never occupied it before putting it up for sale. But, if you want to track more ostentatious/conspicious consumption you might be interested in the yuge home that Trump's whisperer Thomas Barrack has under construction for himself in LA!
Guess everyone wants their own Versailles!
Remember Aaron Spelling's 60,000sf mansion?
Remember that couple in Florida from a few years back building their own over the top monstrosity.
Have to wonder that sometime in the future that these very individualized properties will not have features another buyer might desire. Sometimes they could end up as teardowns or as near fire sale properties.
Bob Hope's home in Palm Springs went on the market at around $50million a few years back. (It is a spectacular place and the view is amazing.) It finally sold within this past year for a mere $13million.