US Navy does raunchy:
NORFOLK, Va. (AP [1]) — The Navy said Sunday it will investigate “clearly inappropriate” videos broadcast to the crew of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in which a top officer of the ship used gay slurs, mimicked masturbation and opened the shower curtain on women pretending to bathe together.
The star of the videos, made in 2006 and 2007, is a former Top Gun pilot who now commands the same ship, the Norfolk-based USS Enterprise, which was deployed in the Middle East at the time and is weeks from deploying again.
The Virginian-Pilot newspaper reported on the videos in its Saturday editions and posted an edited version of one video on its website.
Did the video improve or degrade the Enterprise’s combat effectiveness? No other question matters. Operating a sailing airfield the size of a postage stamp is stressful enough in peace time and the Enterprise was not on a training cruise Memo, to the rear echelon, find a real problem and leave the warriors alone.
New York Times does envy, from Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times [2]:
John Steinbeck observed that “a sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.”
That insight, now confirmed by epidemiological studies, is worth bearing in mind at a time of such polarizing inequality that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans possess a greater collective net worth than the bottom 90 percent.
There’s growing evidence that the toll of our stunning inequality is not just economic but also is a melancholy of the soul.
I suggest that what Kristof calls inequity would be better called green eyed envy and for Kristof to get over it. The sooner the better.
More, Darleen Click, Protein Wisdom [3]:
People who shop Walmart, Target or Costco are just as apt to have a flatscreen TV, personal computer, cell phone and a refrigerator full of food as people who frequent Whole Foods or Neiman-Marcus.
Indeed, plant yourself on a bench at any high-end mall and I would assert you would have a hard time picking out the income bracket of any random shopper based solely on how they dressed
All those flat screen television bought at Wally World would not exist, had those poor sap rich folks bought the first expensive over priced models first. Kristof would have believe that is better to live on world with no flat screen televisions at all.
Dream the impossible dream, from, N. Gregory Mankiw, New York Times [4]:
STOP TRYING TO SPREAD THE WEALTH Ever since your famous exchange with Joe the Plumber, it has been clear that you believe that the redistribution of income is a crucial function of government. A long philosophical tradition supports your view. It includes John Rawls’s treatise “A Theory of Justice,” which concludes that the main goal of public policy should be to transfer resources to those at the bottom of the economic ladder.
Many Republicans, however, reject this view of the state. From their perspective, it is not the proper role of government to fix the income distribution in an attempt to achieve some utopian vision of fairness. They believe, instead, that in a free society, people make money when they produce goods and services that others value, and that, as a result, what they earn is rightfully theirs.
This view also has a long intellectual tradition. The libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick has suggested revising the old leftist slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” to “From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen.”
Might as well tell Dumbo, b/k/a Barack Obama, to fly. If Obama is anything, he is dyed in the wool class warfare warrior. No Obama is more important to insure that nobody has more than his due share, than for any poor slob to have anything. In Cuba nobody has anything, but then nothing is equally distributed, and that is al that really matters.