An update that stays away from updating...

I studiously avoid broadcasting the "what I am reading now" link on my AIM or myspace.

That's because it's none of your damn business what kind of porn I like. Certainly, I know you can't be interested in knowing how many times a day I download a new video from my favorite pregnancy fetish sites.

I may be in danger of just repeating myself, but this article by Josh Greene about one of today's most important moral dilemmas is well worth the read.

Not only have the lactation videos been keeping me busy, but I am reading Josh's dissertation. It's in PDF format here! I am on page 33. I can call him Josh because that's how he signs his e-mails to me. I told him "I blog about philosophy sometimes" and "plan a treatment of your article as well."

I just hope he doesn't google himself and then end up at this site and wonder "why all the stuff about porn?" Mr. Greene, you may be a 'Harvard grad' and a Ph.D, but as a blogger I know the only way to get hits on a site is to load it with key words like *big tits * and* Britney Spears Naked * porn*

See? I just made him famous!

Corporate Personhood

Readers of this blog know about my obsession with Corporate Personhood. It began when I attended a Womens' International League of Peace and Freedom
lecture sponsored by Micheal Moore. I recall they had space for 40 and packed about 80 into the room, and this was few years ago.

One of my favorite blogs has taken up this issue. From Political Theory Daily Review via Alternet, "here's a not-so-modest proposal: abolish the concept of corporate personhood. But why do you have fewer rights than corporations? And it turns out capitalist Warren Buffet is really a socialist dragoon."

The proposal to abolish personhood by Alternet fails to succeed because it cannot recognize that corporate personhood, as David Million points out, "is itself a changing notion that derives its varied shapes from the philosophical or ideological basis of its proponents; the argumentative strategy of these positions beget the character of the disputed corporate character."

In other words it's not just enough to be mad at current construction of corporate power as most of the commentors in support of this idea would have you believe. What we should really be doing is asking better questions about how we want corporations to behave "the more apt question ... is not the nature of the corporate person but the proper relation of the corporate person to those natural persons around it. "

The finest scholarly treatment of the issue is David Million's THE AMBIGUOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF CORPORATE PERSONHOOD. Since this is a law journal article, and I have so many lawyer friends, I expect mad posting to begin on this topic. I will offer my own treatment soon. Now that I am working for the PIGS again my mind has little energy to apply to recreation.

Bosses stealing from the poor. Maybe Marx was right.

It's gotten bad in America. If you thought the greed and scandals of the 90's was over, think again. It's so bad the Wall Street Journal is coming out against it.

Folks like John Stossel may think it's ok to play the 'red card' still, but it's not just critics of capitalism that are concerned this time.

What the defenders of capitalism are so upset about is the impact of executive retirement pay on the viability of retirement systems in general.

With one of the best incentives for long term loyalty missing, what can the prognosis be for the long term viability of the established order?

Check out these WSJ headlines:

Hidden Burden As Workers' Pensions Wither,
Those for Executives Flourish

Companies Run Up Big IOUs, Mostly Obscured, to Grant Bosses a Lucrative Benefit

The Billion-Dollar Liability

"The Managerial Revolution" accounts for the failure of lassie-faire capitalism to develop into socialism. What doesn't make sense is why owners have allowed this insurrection to proceed to the point that the managers are now become owners of capital themselves.

"Benefits for executives now account for a significant share of pension obligations in the U.S., an average of 8% at the companies above. Sometimes a company's obligation for a single executive's pension approaches $100 million."

We could be just living in another 'Robber Baron' period in history. But I have an alternative theory. First, I would contend that the peace bought by capitalists during the great depression is coming to an end. America is caught up in a globalization movement that lowers wage demands by the poor. The managerial class has become truly decadent. Even the outrageous legal golden parachutes aren't enough. Many CEO's are willing to bend the law for the near billion dollar payouts.


Second, witness the middle class destroyed. All we have to do is watch the fall of General Motors. We are slowly being split more and more into the "haves and have-nots." Most of the new 'information' jobs pay much less than manufacturing jobs. The pension system most people rely on in retirement is dangerously underfunded. And most experts agree that the pension system is dead.

It's not only the middle class that is in danger, many of the rich are watching their profits being syphoned off by the class they put in charge of making profits for them. What sort of system is the new managerial class ushering in for us? A system which brings with it low pay for most, criminal pay for the highly educated elites who manage . Those elites will bring with them a overly confrontational and broad system of monitoring for the average worker and consumer. We must hope that the next mangerial revolution fails.

Marx on the destruction of capital:

As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the laborers are turned into proletariat, ... as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the laborer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many laborers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralization of capital. One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the co-operative form of the labor-process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labor into instruments of labor only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialized labor, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world-market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime.

Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. Thus integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.

Greg Palast interviews Hugo Chavez.

The Progressive. Greg Palast. Hugo. Need I say more?

"You’d think George Bush would get down on his knees and kiss Hugo Chávez’s behind. Not only has Chávez delivered cheap oil to the Bronx and other poor communities in the United States. And not only did he offer to bring aid to the victims of Katrina. In my interview with the president of Venezuela on March 28, he made Bush the following astonishing offer: Chávez would drop the price of oil to $50 a barrel, “not too high, a fair price,” he said—a third less than the $75 a barrel for oil recently posted on the spot market. That would bring down the price at the pump by about a buck, from $3 to $2 a gallon."

Here is an article critical of Hugo.

That Chavez is applauded by many people, especially the poor, is not necessarily a sign of democracy; many revolutionary leaders are popular, at least in the beginning of their rule, before their promises have ended in misery and bloodshed.

The left has a proud tradition of defending political freedoms, at home and abroad. But this tradition is in danger of being lost when western intellectuals indulge in power worship. Applause for autocrats undermines the morale of people who insist on fighting for their freedoms Leftists were largely sympathetic, and rightly so, to critics of Berlusconi and Thaksin, even though neither was a dictator. Both did, of course, support American foreign policy. But when democracy is endangered, the left should be equally hard on rulers who oppose the US. Failure to do so encourages authoritarianism everywhere, including in the West itself, where the frivolous behaviour of a dogmatic left has already allowed neoconservatives to steal all the best lines.

Is Hugo the new Castro? Try this PDF.

I must be homesick.

I must be homesick. I am watching Sunstroke. Sunstroke is a lifetime movie that stars Jane Seymour. I am watching Sunstroke only because it is set in Arizona.

IMDB offers a review of the movie...

"Seymour uses a southern American accent, which raises her pitch when she yells, making her sound more ferocious in one scene that she normally appears. She is styled with tight clothes and baring flesh, sweating, and trying a sultry eyes half closed look, but sensuality only works when the person doesn't make it so contrived. Seymour is also seen dancing, has sex in a public swimming pool, and gets one camp line `You've reached the line. Don't cross it'."

I can't believe I came to that line...and crossed it myself. I bet you are expecting a tirade on the crappiness of the Lifetime Movie Network. You'll get no such pleasure here, sir.

First, Jane Seymour looks totally hot. Like an older but less tanned Rebecca Gayheart. My affection for Noxema commercial girls knows no boundaries.

Now Jane is what I call classy. And if you know anything about classy, you know classy can never be described as classy. Jane could affect a Southern twang to her voice and dress in skin tight mini-dresses, but every cowboy in the room would never buy her as anything but "high faluting gal."

No matter how many Space Operas she makes, Jane can not play modern. Even in the original Battlestar Galactica you had a sneaky impression that Seymour's character was straight outta the time of the ancient Greeks. Jane Seymour should have been born in the 1700's. She needs servants and bustiers.

I dream about Jane Seymour. I see Ms. Seymour continually fingering and twirling an umbrella under a July 4th sky while the 1812 overture plays in the background. But I lack imagination that way. Maybe it's a purple umbrella and Rebecca Gayheart is there. Rebecca's hair is up. But not for long. Soon, there is a twist of her head and her long flowing curls are released.

Maybe that was just a little too much info for some...

Bathos Cosmology 203

Every once in a while even creative types run out of ideas. That's why Family Ties did two clip shows a season. What you don't know know about clip shows is that they require just as much energy and creativity as regular programing.

So you could get mad at me rehashing all my previous posts, or you could just understand that 'this is the summer' and a clip show beats a re-run anyday.

And now a list of Things about this site.

According to the Bathos Mythology:

• Tom Cruise is the Devil
• Objectivists eat puppies.
• Fat chicks carry cake on themselves at all times and use it to tempt me to kiss them.
• I hear voices
• I think that PETA members are worse than serial killers.

People I hate, in no particular order.

1. Oprah
2. G.W. Bush
3. Tom Cruise
4. Ayn Rand
5. Dr. Phill
6. Will Wheaton
7. Uncle Joe
8. God-untill he heals someone with an amputee
9. Jan Brewer
10. Maryln Vos Savant

People I inexplicably admire:

1. Larry King
2. The guy who invented the artificial heart for putting up with his wife.

Odd obsessions:

1. D.L. Rosenhan's experiment
2. U.S. invasion of Panama
3. Voo Doo Science
4. Hugo Chavez
5. corporate personhood

A letter of Sympathy for Mrs. Steve Nash.

It's tough out there for a NBA wife. I bet all you NBA wives hang out together. Since you probably do, I bet you all probably haven't stopped talking about 'The Mark Cuban incident.'

Mark Cuban is a billionare NBA team owner who forces his wives' girlfriends to go all 'strip club' on him.

I guess the obvious question is does Steve make any of your girlfriends give him lap dances? Or is this just something that the wives of NBA owners have to put up with and not players wives? If he doesn't make any of your girlfriends give lap dances, do you think it's just because he thinks all your girls are ugly? Or is it some law in Canada that all lap dances have to be done in French and/or English? I guess that law is pretty tough to follow for Paraguayans.

I sure hope it's the former and not the latter unless the latter is owners' wives in which case I meant them.

This post is dedicated to Lisa Loeb and the prospect of running a joke into the ground.