"Is it embarrassing that Santos was elected in the first place? Yes. But that’s democracy. Sometimes voters make mistakes."

"The role of members of Congress is to represent their constituents, not to overturn the will of the voters just because they believe those voters have acted unwisely."

Writes Adam Serwer, in "Expelling George Santos Was a Mistake/Forcing the New York representative out of the House after a conviction would have been justified; pushing him out beforehand is not" (The Atlantic).

I agree. The man was elected by the people of a small geographic area who have a chance every 2 years to pick some human being to represent them. If they picked a big clown, that's democracy for you. Deal with it. Hope that the other clowns are lesser clowns and can balance things out. Santos wasn't important, and fussing over him was always, as I see it, distraction. Distraction, too, is democracy. I get that.

"I'm happiness blogging today. Nothing interested me in the news. It's a good move to make when nothing in the news is interesting."

"I stumbled into a strategy, that is. I thought I'd just put up a quote from this book I was reading — Robert Louis Stevenson, An Apology for Idlers — and the quote was about happiness, so I started casting about for happiness items. Happily, there was no end to bloggable things."

That's something I wrote on March 16, 2012 — Facebook just reminded me. I loved getting that prod, as I engage in a higher level of seclusion this morning...



There's so much anxiety mixed with boredom these days that I thought I'd take you back to that happiness day, 8 years ago:

1. "There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy" — the post title is a quote from Robert Louis Stevenson. Much more to that quote at the link. I'll just add: "[I]f a person cannot be happy without remaining idle, idle he should remain. It is a revolutionary precept... and within practical limits, it is one of the most incontestable truths in the whole Body of Morality."

2. "And... that is the secret of happiness and virtue — liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny" — a quote from The Director in "Brave New World."

3. "I have told myself a hundred times that I would be happy if I were as stupid as my neighbor, and yet I would want no part of that kind of happiness. But yet, upon reflection, it seems that to prefer reason to happiness is to be quite insane" — said "The Good Brahmin" in the story by Voltaire.

4. "I broke my theme. Something made me laugh"/"Then you didn't break your theme. Something made you laugh. Something made you happy. Something made you smile." A real-life colloquy. The first commenter didn't understand that post, and, funnily enough, I don't either now. Oh, I think it was maybe the next post: The headline, in Forbes, "Santorum Promises Broad War on Porn," which required me to blog about the double entendre ("broad war"). That was good for laughing, but not really about happiness.

5. "'5 Things You Think Will Make You Happy (But Won't)'/You already know what they are going to be, don't you? It's interesting to be able to think something while simultaneously knowing the opposite."

6. "Happiness is more like knowledge than like belief. There are lots of things we believe but don’t know. Knowledge is not just up to you, it requires the cooperation of the world beyond you — you might be mistaken. Still, even if you’re mistaken, you believe what you believe. Pleasure is like belief that way. But happiness isn’t just up to you. It also requires the cooperation of the world beyond you. Happiness, like knowledge, and unlike belief and pleasure, is not a state of mind" — a quote from the David Sosa, whose field is philosophy.

7. "A large Gallup poll has found that by almost any measure, people get happier as they get older..." — a survey from 2008. We are all only ever getting older, but the phenomenon doesn't kick in until age 50. After that, it gets better and better.

8. "The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness.... By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women's happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men...."

9. "Romney's Religion of Happiness vs. Gingrich's Religion of Grievance" — a Sarah Posner headline at Religion Dispatches. I'm happy that I don't have to bother with the feelings of Romney and Gingrich anymore.

10. A post about my favorite Beatles song, "Happiness Is a Warm Gun."

11. I also don't have to think too much about Rick Santorum, but back then, he said: “This is the mantra of the left: I have a right to do what I want to do” and “We have a whole culture that is focused on immediate gratification and the pursuit of happiness ... and it is harming America.” He took the position that the Founders idea of "the pursuit of happiness" was “to do the morally right thing.”

12. "The Happiness Bank."

13. The acronym PERMA represents the 5 components of happiness.

14. "Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve found very helpful?"
"Years ago, when I was researching an article on research into stress, one social scientist passed on a simple tip: 'At some point every day, you have to say, "No more work."' No matter how many tasks remain undone, you have to relax at some point and enjoy the evening."

15. "Happy people rarely correct their faults... they consider themselves vindicated, since fortune endorses their evil ways" — wrote Le Duc de La Rochefoucauld.

"We're sorry for the swearing/And we're sorry to be crude...."

But Flo & Joan are really "cunting angry," and it's all because of 2016:



Via Metafilter, where it's also pointed out that Donald Trump has read a book:

In 2012, [Rick Santorum] was the runner-up to Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential primaries. Ensconced since then in a Washington, D.C., law firm, Santorum had written a book that attracted little attention: Blue Collar Conservatives, Recommitting to an America That Works. But Trump had read the book, very carefully, in fact, and was intrigued. He called Santorum and asked if he would come to Trump Tower for a visit.....

Santorum agreed, of course—he was thinking of making another run at the White House, using that playbook. (He did, but got bum-rushed early in the primaries.) Trump then surprised Santorum even more by questioning him on details of his book and economic policy in general. What could be done with trade policy to help the working class? Was there any way to turn around the massive bilateral trade imbalance with Beijing? Could the White House be used as a bully pulpit to pressure American companies to stop sending manufacturing offshore? On and on they went, and Santorum left the meeting wondering what might happen if you mixed the power of celebrity with a blue-collar tent revival....

Rand Paul drops out of the race.

This is very interesting as it happens before the primary in New Hampshire, a somewhat libertarian place, where he could expect to get the most votes.

It must be that he wants to throw his support to one of the other candidates. Which one?

As I said yesterday: "Time for every GOP candidate who is not Cruz or Trump to endorse Rubio. It's that simple."

ADDED: Santorum is dropping out. 

Debate, anyone?

1. I'll put up comments if any occur to me, continuing a numbered list.

2. The "undercard" is up now, and it seems they're trying to make Rick Santorum cry... and succeeding.

3. Over on CNN, they're showing the long line for the Trump event and enthusing over Trump. I think CNN is showing that event, so it will be interesting to see the ratings.

4. Well, we drifted away from the undercard. We were actually watching "Kennedy" (on Fox Business!). Drifted back in time to hear the closing statements. Gilmour was testily denouncing Trump. Absurd! It ended, and they said the big debate wasn't going to be on for another hour. What! It's not on until 9 Central Time? That's crazy late. That's 10 on the East Coast. I don't know about you, but I have been up since 3:30 a.m. I can't wait another hour just for that damned thing to start. I'll record. It can be checked out tomorrow. Keep the discussion alive in the comments if you can. My son, John Althouse Cohen, tells me he'll be live-blogging. That will be here, so check that out when the time comes. I'm retreating into private life until tomorrow's pre-dawn. See you then or whenever  you get up and onto the internet. Good luck to the candidates. I hope you can find something un-Trump-related to say, and I hope Trump can shake things up from the other side of Des Moines.

5. I mean Gilmore. Did you notice?

6. Comfortably numb....



7. Oh! I was wrong. It did start at 8 Central. I have the recording. Damn. I'm going to give it a look. Can't promise I'll say anything.

8. Lots of empty seats in the audience. First question is to Cruz, asking him about the "elephant not in the room." Cruz does some intro. He has children. Blah blah. Then: "I'm a maniac. And everyone on this stage is stupid, fat, and ugly. And Ben Carson, you're a terrible surgeon. Now that we've gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way...."

9. I watched a bit. Thought the guys minus Trump worked well for them. It seemed more human scale. And yet, I didn't stay long. Switched to Trump's event and hung out there, even though, actually, it was rather boring.

Rick Santorum set a good example for conservatives.

In his reaction to the Bruce-to-Caitlin Jenner matter:

"If he says he’s a woman, then he’s a woman. My responsibility as a human being is to love and accept everybody. Not to criticize people for who they are. I can criticize, and I do, for what people do, for their behavior. But as far as for who they are, you have to respect everybody, and these are obviously complex issues for businesses, for society, and I think we have to look at it in a way that is compassionate and respectful of everybody."

Previously blogged on May 2d, here.

Defining "sexual predator" broadly.

It's Rick Santorum:

"A majority of children being born out of wedlock today in America are born in families where the father is in the home. But they’re not married... Now these fathers leave the home and not just father children with that particular women, they father a child with another women, and another and another. We have created predators, sexual predators..."

"If he says he’s a woman, then he’s a woman."

"My responsibility as a human being is to love and accept everybody. Not to criticize people for who they are. I can criticize, and I do, for what people do, for their behavior. But as far as for who they are, you have to respect everybody, and these are obviously complex issues for businesses, for society, and I think we have to look at it in a way that is compassionate and respectful of everybody."

Said Rick Santorum.

"There has never been a Catholic Republican nominee for the White House (the Mormons, interestingly, got there first), although there may be one this year..."

"... with a field that includes Rick Santorum, Chris Christie, and Jeb Bush, who converted to Catholicism, his wife’s faith, some twenty years ago. For them, the issue is not one of religious bigotry, such as John F. Kennedy faced in his 1960 campaign, with insinuations of adherence to secret Papist instructions. In a way, it’s the opposite: the very public agenda of the all too authentic Pope Francis. Early signs of trouble came in the summer of 2013, when the new Pope, speaking with reporters about gays in the Church, asked, 'Who am I to judge?' The conservative wing of the Party had relied on his predecessors to do just that...."

From "God and the G.O.P." by Amy Davidson in The New Yorker.

"The GOP's Giddiness Over Hillary Clinton's Jobs 'Gaffe' Will Backfire."

That's the title of a New Republic article by Brian Beutler, and I'm sure it makes some liberal-lefty readers feel good, but a competent consumer of propaganda begins with a thought like: So I guess Democrats are terrified that Hillary's pandering to the you-didn't-build that crowd is going to destroy her.

How can Beutler purport to predict that this sound bite cannot be exploited without backfiring? The Democrats won the last presidential election by exploiting one awkward thing Mitt Romney said.

Beutler doesn't mention that, but he makes much of the Republicans' use of Obama's "you didn’t build that" remark, which didn't prevent him from winning in 2012. 

[I]n hindsight, many conservatives acknowledged that the GOP’s obsession with that gaffe revealed more damaging truths about the Republican Party than the gaffe itself revealed about Obama.

“One after another, [Republican businessowners] talked about the business they had built. But not a single—not a single—factory worker went out there,” Rick Santorum told activists at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference last year. “Not a single janitor, waitress or person who worked in that company! We didn’t care about them. You know what? They built that company too! And we should have had them on that stage.”

The fixation on [Hillary's] gaffe foreshadows another Republican presidential campaign centered on the preeminence of the entrepreneur, to the exclusion of the wage worker and the trade unionist and the jobless.

"Gaffe" is not the right word. The point isn't: Ha ha, you made a ridiculous mistake. It's: You said what you really think in a revealing way and we're going to use that against you. That's obviously part of American politics, and in 2012, both the 47% thing and "You didn't build that" were revealing and useful. Both were used, and if Obama won, I doubt that it's because the Republicans shouldn't have exploited "You didn't build that." It's more likely that Democrats (and their media friends) jumped on the 47% remark and used it ruthlessly.

The trick is to use these revealing statements well. It would be foolish for Republicans to take the advice to leave the Democrats' overly leftist lines alone. If it's good advice, you'd have to believe that Democrats would leave the Republicans' overly right-wing lines alone. Who believes that?

Bob Dylan looks like Rick Santorum.

In his painterly mind:



The trouble with painting/drawing portraits is everyone gravitates to the question whether it looks like the person it's supposed to be. That's a good reason — if you like doing portraits — to choose subjects who aren't well-known. Alternatively, use a camera. You might get credit for making one person look like someone else.

Here's Bob Dylan's new "Self Portrait (1969-1971): The Bootleg Series Vol. 10." And here's Dylan's long-ago release titled "Self Portrait"...



... the one about which Greil Marcus asked in Rolling Stone: "What is this shit?" (Here, please credit me for resisting making a Santorum joke.)

Comparing the 2 selfies, we see a consistent approach to the upper lip/lower lip proportion, the the Scarecrow-from-the-Wizard-of-Oz nose, the hair part deeply denting the forehead (making it look like a lopsided heart), the cut off jawline with jowls, and the un-level ears (though the down ear is now up and the up is down*). The biggest difference, other than skin tone, is in the eyebrows. Gone is the amazement of youth. The old man has seen it all, but he's still looking.
_________________________

*Old lyric that resonated (after a search for "up" and "down"):

Oh, the only decent thing I did when I worked as a postal clerk
Was to haul your picture down off the wall near the cage where I used to work
Was I a fool or not to try to protect your identity?
You looked a little burned out, my friend, I thought it might be up to me

"Hard to mock Santorum’s visibly emotional opening about his nephew’s illness and death."

"So I won’t."

Morning-after thoughts about the first night of the GOP convention.

Why didn't I live-blog the GOP convention last night? I'd thought I would, and I think I live-blogged every day of both parties' conventions in 2004 and 2008. I watched part of the afternoon roll call and all of the evening show. But I didn't want to say something about each of the speeches as I listened, though this morning I wish I had.

I watched on C-SPAN. I cannot tolerate the channels that have people who talk about what is going on while it's going one. They are obviously not listening, so what are they doing — other than getting in the way? But when you watch on C-SPAN, it's just a bunch of speeches. Speeches are speeches. There's a sameness to them. A good line now and then. A nice line reading. Themes emerge. It seemed to me that the main theme was that Americans work hard and construct their own families' economic well-being. There were a lot of "We Built It" signs (playing off the Republican's favorite Obama quote, "You didn't build that").

Chris Christie, the keynote speaker, was the main speaker who had his own distinctive theme: Truth. Americans are ready to hear the truth about government and economics. He told the truth in New Jersey, and he got elected, and he fixed things, and now this truth thing is going national. Without checking the text, I'm not sure how directly Christie associated Obama with not telling the truth, but I note that Obama was always the "dreams" guy. Talking tough about truth may be the perfect counterbalance to Obama's supremely — unfairly! — effective "hope" theme.

Who was the best speaker last night? Maybe it wasn't Christie. Maybe it was Rick Santorum. What am I saying? All that hands-touching-hands business. It got to me, and I am not a social conservative. I cried when he talked about Bella. Santorum was off the "we built it" theme. He was the one speaker — as I remember it — who talked about caring for people. But who votes based on caring? Don't those people vote Democrat?

I say that to Meade, and he goes on about how fixing the economy is the best way for government to care for people. That's not my point. Of course, that's true. That's rational. But I'm talking about the voters who imagine suffering children and feel the importance of love as they arrive at an emotion-based decision. Those people vote Democratic, don't they?

ADDED: Ann Romney carried the main "We Built It" theme by portraying Mitt as building his own wealth, starting out from nothing... basement apartment... ate a lot of pasta and tuna.... And her grandfather was a coal miner. In Wales.

But did she humanize him? I read in the press about a thousand times that it was her job to humanize him. Isn't it racist and sexist to portray Mitt Romney as inhuman?

"Rick Santorum is suspending his campaign..."

In the email. He's about to speak.

I hope he goes out well, with grace. And I hope this doesn't mean there is sad news about his daughter.

ADDED, watching the speech: He never looks like he's lost any sleep. After spending the weekend with his daughter in the hospital, he still has a well-rested look, which I take to mean that his religion is sincere. He's talking first about his daughter and the disabled and "the least among us" (which invokes the same words of Jesus that were the basis of the Jeremiah Wright preaching we were talking about earlier this morning).

AND: "That's what our campaign was about: What made us Americans — how we built this country from the bottom up and how, if we are going to be successful, how we must believe in ourselves and believe in that ability to go forward and do the same thing."

"Ludicrous, hysterical, brilliant – the top Republican campaign adverts."

Ana Marie Cox assembles and critiques some fabulous material. I don't have time to watch them all just yet, but I did watch Rick Santorum's "Obamaville," and all I can say is I laughed, I cried...



Cox says, about that one: "Hey, people really liked The Ring! Also, the claims are so over-the-top that Obama partisans will be amused as conservatives take slash-fiction pleasure in the visualisation of their most fevered dreams.... The great thing about speculation is that it cannot be fact-checked."

Wow. Ads are getting so good, it's kind of evil. Hold onto your brains, people. It's going to be a crazy year.

Santorum "plans to bowl at at 3:15 p.m. at Pla-Mor Lanes in Chilton..."

... and he'll end the day with a rally at the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay.

Meanwhile, closer to Madison: "Romney is scheduled to return to the area for a 'town hall meeting' at 5:10 p.m. Sunday at the Madison Marriott West Hotel, 1313 John Q. Hammons Drive in Middleton."

"You don't care at all about the truth."

Santorum to reporters.

Dying cultural phenomenon alert.

Whatever happened to "mic check"? Why, only last fall it was a burgeoning new cultural phenomenon. Look at Richard Kim burbling in The Nation last October:

We Are All Human Microphones Now

... [T]he protesters [have] adopted an ingeniously simple people-powered method of sound amplification. After the mic check, the meeting proceeds:

with every few words / WITH EVERY FEW WORDS!

repeated and amplified out loud / REPEATED AND AMPLIFIED OUT LOUD!

by what has been dubbed / BY WHAT HAS BEEN DUBBED!

the human microphone / THE HUMAN MICROPHONE!!! (jazz hands here).

Jazz hands here, indeed.

The overall effect can be hypnotic, comic or exhilarating—often all at once. As with every media technology, to some degree the medium is the message....

Oh, yes it is. And that particular message lost its appeal. Am I wrong?

"SANTORUM: Obama Is Preferable To Romney."

"No he’s not, and you just demonstrated that it’s time to end your campaign. Either you’re an idiot, or you’ve cracked under the pressure. Either way, go home."

Why I don't delete mobys in the comments section to this blog.

First, I love free expression, and one way to express a viewpoint is to say the opposite. It's sarcasm. It can be comedy. Look at Stephen Colbert. It's a good — even light-hearted — way to expose the bad side of your opponent's arguments.

Second, we all need to become as competent as possible as consumers of communication. Don't be naive. You need to detect these literary devices. Understand that writers/speakers have ulterior motives. I'm not going to clear out material that requires you to exercise your mental muscles. If you can't tell a moby when you see one, I'm not going to delete him: You need practice. If I see you responding to him as if he were sincere, it makes me sad. Where's your mental toughness? How will you be a competent citizen in the political arena where everyone's always more or less bullshitting?