What would you do with a mega-mansion?
The lavish $20 million home of Amway superstars Ron and Georgia Lee Puryear, on the Spokane River in Post Falls, is still available.
One reader wrote in with a sarcastic proposal for closing a deal:
“The city of Coeur d’Alene could buy it! Utilize it as a retirement home (for the wealthy), a foster home for kids (for the poor) or turn it into a very profitable house of ill repute (ka-ching, ka-ching).”
I’m not sure the ill-repute business is quite so booming these days – that’s one big mortgage payment. But maybe I’m just being naïve.
A couple of other updates on the real estate front: Duane Hagadone’s Stanley Hill home near Coeur d’Alene remains on the market at $17.5 million – a price cut of $10 mil, for you bargain hunters.
And the South Sherman home of Spokane house painter Jennifer Crouch, who has offered to repaint it the color of the buyer’s choosing, is still listed, as well.
It’s a bit less expensive than those other two.
Maybe they’ve got some dumb ideas, too
Norm Semanko, the chairman of the Idaho Republican Party, did not answer my request for an interview before I wrote about the state party’s radical new platform.
But he did take to the blog, Idaho Conservative Blogger, this week to complain about the party’s treatment at the hands of the liberal, one-sided media, and to share all the “positive, inspiring things” that happened at last weekend’s convention.
He referred to the GOP as the “party of ideas,” and he’s sure right about that – ideas like loyalty oaths for candidates, repealing the 17th Amendment, hoarding gold. …
Those ideas are so bad they pick on themselves.
But Semanko made one excellent point about the beleaguered Idaho Democrats:
“(W)e hold our Convention deliberations under the full scrutiny of the media. Contrast that with the Democrats who just a few weeks ago banned the press from attending their platform discussions. As the party that is saddled with the crippling agenda of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, it is understandable why they wouldn’t want Idahoans to hear their discussions.”
The calculated, repetitive rhetoric aside, he’s right: It’s pathetic to hide out behind closed doors, as the Dems did at a convention meeting June 12 in Worley.
If the GOP can let its freak flag fly, why can’t Democrats?
It’s gunny out there
Speaking of conservatism, the recent Supreme Court ruling affirming a fundamental right of gun ownership prompted The Daily Beast website to try to measure the country’s most gun-owning states.
The site used FBI background check information to track gun sales over 18 months. Like any state-by-state comparison using federal statistics, these are imperfect comparisons because of reporting differences between states.
I was a little disappointed in Idaho, which ranked just 15th. Almost all the good conservative Western states were buying and selling more guns – Utah, Wyoming, Montana. …
Heck, we weren’t all that far behind here in Washington, at 25th.
Not quite the same
No word yet on whether Robbie Knievel will be allowed to try and re-create his father’s failed jump over the Snake River Canyon in Twin Falls.
But another jump inspired by Evel Knievel seems to be in the works for this fall: Michael “Mad Mike” Hughes, “The World’s Most Famous Limo Driver/Jumper!”, says he plans to re-create the Snake River jump at Lake Havasu, Ariz. Not in a limo, but in a rocket like the one Evel used back in 1974.
The not-quite-final-sounding event is planned for October, according to Hughes’ website.