With Bill Thompson’s concession, the New York City mayoral primary has officially come to a close.   The coda might, in four years, read that Bill de Blasio’s tax-the-rich-until-they-aren’t policy precipitated the diaspora of Wall Street’s bankers. Picture, if you will, Lloyd Blankfein or Stephen Schwarzman spiriting their minions across the Hudson (think: Washington’s troops crossing the Delaware only backwards and hatted by yarmulkes instead of tricornes) towards Jersey City.   Yet despite the majestic imagery, a far more compelling sidebar will endure; Gotham’s voters formally buried the political career of Anthony Weiner – as well as that of Eliot Spitzer – like a mohel spading a foreskin into the earth.

In San Diego, mayor Bob Filner officially resigned in return for the city’s pledge to help defend against multiple sexual harassment lawsuits.  Filner was also required to complete an intensive in-patient counseling program centered on aversion therapy.  Unnamed sources confirm that during the course of treatment Filner was repeatedly aroused by attractive young women while being forced to perform cunnilingus on Gloria Allred.  The unorthodox regimen, according to his supervising therapist, did in fact produce a successful outcome; surreptitiously obtained copies of discharge papers note that Filner is now “practically gay.”

With these principals out of the game, how might the cross-country cock feud survive?  Perhaps the most famous observer of the American political system, Alexis de Tocqueville, may have offered the answer when he noted, “The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.”   And so the battle was joined by Jason Lee, a Goldman Sachs managing director who was indicted for raping a 20-year-old woman during a party in the Hamptons.  His counterpart, Richard Nanula, resigned as chairman of Miramax Films after video stills appeared on the Web showing him balls deep inside porn actress Samantha Saint.  Nanula may be a lech, but he’s no dummy.  The Harvard MBA was once Disney’s youngest CFO and surmised that by filming the Malibu encounter he could circumvent California’s anti-prostitution laws.  I’m assuming that, at this point on the page, you are concocting your own scheme to legally pay for sex with adult film stars.  But here’s the rub: a third porn actor has just tested positive for HIV, putting the entire industry in temporary lockdown.

History: At the close of the 19^th century, the Ch’ing Dynasty, in a death rattle attempt at self-preservation, sided with the xenophobic Boxers.  Throughout China, foreigners and Christians were massacred by the thousands before an international force took Peking and quashed the rebellion.   Though the Chinese are still trying to kill the rest of us, the deeper issue is the implausibility of this kind of international cooperation in today’s world.  One need look no further than the lack of a unified response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons to appreciate the cynicism and despondency fostered by politics.  What better way, then, to shift our focus and rekindle our collective spirit than for Mr. Obama to get caught with his knickers down?   Because, as Freud so eruditely posited, “Man’s labor, beyond any illusion, is all about getting a little snatch.”

Thanks to several tips from the community, brothers Shawn and Akein Scott have been arrested in connection with the Mother’s Day mass shootings New Orleans.  “The people chose to be on the side of the young innocent children,” acknowledged Police Chief Ronal Serpas, “instead of on the side of [those] who shot into the crowd.” Well, not all the people.  Sen. Kelly AIyotte (R-NH), who helped defeat a federal background check bill, is squarely on the side of the shooters.  “I have a lot of concerns about that leading to a registry that will create a privacy situation,” offered the Senator, which, for the politically nescient, is merely Beltway code for “as long as the gun lobby gets me reelected, I don’t give a shit who gets killed.”

In response to the school massacre at Sandy Hook — and Virginia Tech and Columbine — states have begun to enact tougher gun laws.  But Texas, in contrast to Colorado, New York, Maryland, etc., is moving conspicuously in the other direction, both urging gun manufacturers to relocate to the Lone Star State and arming school employees with handguns.  A growing number of school districts have approved concealed weapons permits for teachers, janitors and even lunch ladies (as if turkey tetrazzini isn’t lethal enough).  Van ISD Superintendent Don Dunn: “We’re going to start training immediately. It will be every employee who is approved to carry.”  Even, apparently, maintenance worker Glenn Gaddie, who shot himself in the leg during a firearm training session.  Yet the logic of attaining gun safety by increasing the number of weapons involved is deeply flawed.  Recent shootings at Ft. Knox and Ft. Hood (note: in Texas), and those at airports in Jacksonville and Houston (again: Texas) only prove that facilities where armed droves are tasked with safeguarding the citizenry are no more secure than say McDonald’s or a Century movie theater.  Even Kaufman, TX district attorney Mike McLelland found no protection from the dozens of loaded “guns hidden all over the house,” lamented his son, J. R., after McLelland was murdered at home. “When they said that he got shot,” added J. R. wistfully, “it was unbelievable because he was so well-armed and so well-versed in guns.”

That a mass stabbing took place at a Texas community college was perhaps no accident of fate; one could easily surmise it was orchestrated by the NRA to distort public discourse on the Second Amendment.  Like, you know, knives kill, too.  And now that I think about it, there was, at the time, a curious upsurge in published reports of crime-by-cutlery. But all that latent messaging was swiftly obviated by the Boston marathon bombings.  Seizing upon that tragedy, newly elected and certifiably insane NRA president James Porter has plied the lecture circuit to share the organization’s new motto: “Guns don’t kill people, Muslims do.”