The house at 301 Highland View Drive is one of three participating in the 2006 Parade of Homes. Rolling hills and valleys make up the view from this four-bedroom, three-and-one-half-bath house with about 4,870 square feet.
Its exterior is brick with wrought iron accents and a multi-gabled roof. The house is listed at $1,204,000. [source]
Or, as the developer puts it:
No matter where you choose to build in Highland Lakes, you can be assured of gated, retreat-like privacy with executive convenience. Highland Lakes is a truly unique community of gracious homes, quiet streets and parks. It's a neighborhood in touch with today's world, but somehow slightly removed from it.
I imagine the "somehow" has something to do with the guard at the gate. This post brought to you by LowerMyBills.com:
Funny, back in March I had the same title:
ReplyDeletehttp://weazlsrevenge.blogspot.com/2006/03/why-they-hate-us_29.html
Then again in June
http://weazlsrevenge.blogspot.com/2006/06/why-they-hate-us-revisited-watch-video.html
Wouldn't be so presumptuous to say great minds . . .
But there is a trend, no?
The irony of many ironies is that the same house would cost $20 million in California.
ReplyDeleteThat's why California hates Alabama.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, BG. Sometimes you just have to see it.
and there would be people that could afford that 20 mil
ReplyDeletemostly republicans i would think.
Oh jeez, that copywriter should be canned on the spot.
ReplyDeleteI keep on telling people that the biggest problem in the world is POVERTY and that all of these other problems (violence, terrorism, destructive religious fundamentalism) are symptomatic of poor societies.
In touch with today's world? Pardon me while I vomit. I wonder how many people in Highland Lakes who bitch about their taxes helping poor people know that their taxes also pay to maintain apartheid and illegal settlements (and therefore the horrendous status quo in Gaza) in Israel/Palestine?
ReplyDeleteAnd, no, I'm not anti-Semitic just because I don't support the ultimately suicidal policies of the Israeli government.
Thanks, BG. Pictures really are worth many thousands of words. We should be ashamed. And you could probably get similar shots in some parts of Birmingham.
Not to rain on the parade, I'm just a middle class working guy in Minnesota, but I don't get the connection. How does someone buying or not buying the house at 301 Highland View Drive,translate into the abject poverty in the regions you have pictures of. The "have nots" in those countries "have not" usually due to oppresive corrupt governments and civil/sectarian violence. This despite the millions we send in foreign aid and private anti-poverty organizations. If the people who are going to buy the mansion in Alabama bought a two bedroom bungalow instead and sent the remainder of the money to any of the governments of those impoverished countries you'd still get the same pictures. I'm not a cold hearted bastard, just a realist. Those peoples situations won't change as long as their governments deliberately starve their populations and take the lion's share of aid to fatten themselves rather then feeding & housing their people.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the thoughtful questions, Sir Knight. My point is that those buying million dollar homes in gated communities are insulated in so many ways from the "real world" -- poverty, ignorance, and yes, political oppression. Then they, and more particularly, their children, ask "why do they hate us?" when a 9/11 comes along. The dull denial of the impact of our wealth, ignorance, and blindness to the political and physical realities of the rest of the world, that that blindness could have any impact on how others perceive us: that's what I'm talking about.
ReplyDeleteThey don't hate us for our freedoms. They hate us because we think the rest of the world, starving for bread, should eat cake.
...but... but... it's National Character Counts Week.
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Tengrain
Blue, I agree that those buying million dollar homes in gated communities are insulated in so many ways from the "real world" -- poverty, ignorance, and yes, political oppression. However if you look at other nations with high oil GNP's such as Mexico & Venuzuela and many, many oil rich Arab countries, the wealth is so disproportionately denied the majority of their citizens that you'd get the Alabama mansion surrounded by cardboard homes there. Yet those governments point to us to divert their own people's hungry gaze.
ReplyDeleteI think most people in those countries would love to live here & have our standard of living. I think they hate us more for our military adventurism, renditions, etc (the hypocrisy of our democratic ideals)then our standard of living.
Um, in my neighborhood a million two only gets you a little fixer upper. In fact, there is a shortage of $1 million homes in these parts.
ReplyDeleteAbout a year ago, I saw (and I'm not making this up)a studio frickin' apartment in San Francisco for right about that price. I'm thinking the folks at McDee's need to make at leat $8.50 an hour to cover that.
Well-fed Crapweasels.