22 Comments

1. fred:

Not to worry, the Chrysler Building still stays in NYC at the corner of 42nd and Lexington. You are on target with off-shore drilling. Nice to watch the Senate and House opponents are starting to get uncomfortable as more voters (according to polls, now a clear majority)support such drilling.

Jul 14, 2008 - 3:28 pm 2. David Thomson:

“BTW, am I the only one disturbed that Dubai now owns the Chrysler Building?”

This does not even slightly bother me. I am for free trade and the fact that Dubai now own the Chrysler Building deserves a mild shrug of the shoulders. But we should be very concerned about our reluctance to drill for more oil. This is totally idiotic. Thank God the majority of Americans are coming to their senses.

Jul 14, 2008 - 3:44 pm 3. srlucado:

“Is our civilization self-immolating?”

Yes. Yes, it is. And I’m entirely serious when I say that.

We (and by this I mean Congress, academia, and the MSM) have the ingrained idea that blaming Bush for a problem is the same as solving it.

In the meantime, the real world moves on, and the USA becomes increasingly irrelevant, mostly due to our own inability to act.

Scott

Jul 14, 2008 - 4:07 pm 4. Peter G:

I agree with the above. No problem with Dubai owning the Chrysler Building. It doesn’t change anything. Off-shore drilling needs to be on the fast track.

Jul 14, 2008 - 4:08 pm 5. Roger L Simon:

I agree that Dubai owning the Chrysler Building “doesn’t change anything.” But – perhaps because I grew up in NY and the Chrysler Building is close to the most elegantly designed skyscraper in the world, much more so than the Empire State – I think its being owned by oil sheiks is a symbol our decline, if nothing else. Once the Chrysler was the very emblem of the power of New York.

Jul 14, 2008 - 4:14 pm 6. LSD:

For all I can tell, the thinking must be this:

While buying oil from countries who drill anywhere without hesitation, whose extraction standards are beyond our scrutiny and probably below our standards, does not make us better stewards of the planet; it does allow us the luxury of feeling that we have acted with restraint. -We won’t consider drilling in Anwar, but we will buy oil that comes from Canada; all the while maintaining the illusion that Canada is much more environmentally-responsible than we are. -Not to mention China…

I’m with Mr. Thompson on the Chrysler Building issue. Further, I see those investments as an endorsement of our American idea. To some degree, they are insurance against hostility. -Some seem to fear that China, for example, is going to invest deeply in the U.S. and then destroy us.

Jul 14, 2008 - 4:32 pm 7. chuck:

“Is our civilization self-immolating?”

Who is this “self” you speak of, kemosabe? There are those who hate it, which includes pretty much the whole of the Left, but the rest of us aren’t part of that suicide pact.

Jul 14, 2008 - 4:36 pm 8. Charlie (Colorado):

Well, we survived when the Japanese bought Rockefeller Center….

Jul 14, 2008 - 4:44 pm 9. Lightnin' Hopkins:

Roger, I don’t know if it helps, but if you’ll recall in the 1980’s people were freaking out about the Japanese buying up land and buildings all over America. Within a decade or so, when their economy began tanking, much of these properties were sold right back.

As Fred says above, the building isn’t going anywhere.

Jul 14, 2008 - 4:48 pm 10. Lightnin' Hopkins:

Great minds think alike, Charlie…

Jul 14, 2008 - 4:50 pm 11. ricpic:

What’s going on is that liberalism is a savage mental disease.

Jul 14, 2008 - 5:00 pm 12. Terrye:

It was not so long ago we were worried about the Japanese owning everything.

As for off shore drilling, go get it. The President lifted the executive ban on drilling today, now it is Harry Reid’s turn. The weenie.

Jul 14, 2008 - 5:03 pm 13. Jamie Irons:

If I am inclined to buy something, it is usually because I think it has some value. (Of course, my judgment may be in error.)

So I am pleased that the sheiks want to buy American properties.

But I do want us to drill, everywhere oil might be found.

Jamie Irons

Jul 14, 2008 - 5:05 pm 14. Jamie Irons:

ricpic,

You wrote:

What’s going on is that liberalism is a savage mental disease…

I have always thought Robert Downey, Jr. was the finest actor of his generation, but encountering this today in a column by Andrew Breitbart made me respect him even more:

Yet recently during the “Iron Man” media blitz, a New York Times profile on Robert Downey Jr. featured the following quote buried in the 23rd paragraph: “I have a really interesting political point of view, and it’s not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics ever since.”

Jamie Irons

Jul 14, 2008 - 5:15 pm 15. tim maguire:

Foreigners have bought quintessential Americans things before–The Rockefeller Center and a major league baseball team (the Mariners) for example. I remember 20 years ago all the hand wringing about the Japanese buying America. Doesn’t matter. It just means some foreign moneybags is sending a nice big chunk of that money to America in exchange for something that isn’t going anywhere. It’s like prostitution–we got it, we sold it, we still got it!

We are idiots for not drilling more, but I’m betting the stupidity will stop soon. The only question is whether the Republicans will be smart enough to throw the Democratic party off the ship with this policy tied around its neck like the anchor it is. I’m betting they aren’t.

Jul 14, 2008 - 6:28 pm 16. Lem:

With so many beautiful places in the world why would somebody go to Dubai?

This is one of those where it is really hard for me to relate.

Offshore oil eyesore? Make it submersible.

Jul 14, 2008 - 6:38 pm 17. Richard Nieporent:

The Chrysler building is small change. Dubai now owns the world.

Jul 14, 2008 - 7:14 pm 18. James:

“Self-immolating” civilizations
I like Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, in which he wrote:
“… children of Merlin, chasing a gleam. Children, too, of Eve, forever building Edens–and kicking them apart in berserk fury because somehow it isn’t the same.”
and
“The closer men came to perfecting themselves a paradise, the more impatient they seemed to become with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier for them to see that something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle’s eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.”

Jul 15, 2008 - 6:32 am 19. ruth:

I’m right with you on both of these points. Reading about the purchase of the Chrysler building was a shock—as to the Chinese drilling right off our shores–only here could Congress try to sue OPEC for not increasing oil production to drive prices downward and still refuse to allow drilling in our own huge preserves. It is all mind-boggling!

Jul 15, 2008 - 7:04 am 20. Harry:

As others have pointed out, this is all stuff we’ve seen before. I was living in NYC back in 1980 and well remember the angst over the sale of Rockefeller Center to Japanese interests, and how the filth and decay of NYC was irreversible—-oh, only a fool would think that 42nd Street from Sixth Avenue to the Port Authority bus terminal could ever be reclaimed!

During that age of fashionable defeatism in places like NYC and Washington, people in the heartland were keeping the faith and getting ready to elect Ronald Reagan. I suspect the same currents are running deep in “flyover America” today.

A suggestion for you, Roger: get out of LA and California more often; “what’s going on” is your perceptions are being distorted because California is indeed self-immolating. But the entire country isn’t. Spend time visiting places like Texas and North Carolina. If you do, you’ll know why I firmly expect President Obama to be a one-termer and for a powerful shift to the right in the 2012 elections.

Jul 15, 2008 - 7:15 am 21. Joel:

You are not the only one disturbed that Dubai now own the Chrysler Building.

Jul 15, 2008 - 8:52 am 22. david foster:

James…I think there’s much truth in the Leibowitz passage. See also this haunting quote from a now-defunct Italian blogger:

“Cupio dissolvi…These words have been going through my mind for quite a long time now. It’s Latin. They mean “I (deeply) wish to be annihilated/to annihilate myself”, the passive form signifying that the action can be carried out both by an external agent or by the subject himself…Cupio dissolvi… Through all the screaming and the shouting and the wailing and the waving of the rainbow cloth by those who invoke peace but want appeasement, I hear these terrible words ringing in my ears. These people have had this precious gift, this civilization, and they have got bored with it. They take all the advantages it offers them for granted, and despise the ideals that have powered it. They wish for annihilation, the next new thing, as if it was a wonderful party. Won’t it be great, dancing on the ruins?”

I think there are a fair number of people like this on today’s Left. Not many among the top leadership, though, who tend to be mere opportunists with no intellectual depth.

Jul 15, 2008 - 3:32 pm

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