And in walks the boogieman

And it's about time to break out the political shtick again. I've been avoiding the conversation for about two weeks, but the New York 23 is too interesting and, frankly, keeps getting better. A quick recap: A relatively conservative district has a dogfight between a token democrat and a semi-moderate republican. In walks a non-shamefaced carpetbagger (he actually lives in another district), from a third (literally, Conservative) party, gets national news and support from certain right-wing superficial loudmouths. Republican party candidate drops out on eve of election, not in enough time to get her name off the ballot, and Conservative party guy loses to Democrat by some 5000+ votes, concedes, Dem is sworn in.

Now: ACORN stole the election. Okay, so there was also a quick little blurb in there about unions, but really, even then it's mentioned as a castoff.

The joyful thing about this is that I think it represents an official passing of the torch for conservative boogiemen: it used to be unions (see Nixon, R.) that would hand elections to the Dems through their pandering, intimidation, etc. And sure, there might have been a grain of truth in that somewhere -- this is America, after all, and a little election fraud is usually considered par for the course, and doesn't amount to more than the usual margin of error for a completely clean vote. But the unions have gotten old, they're not a selling point, they're trite and mustachioed and frankly went out of favor whenever the Hoffa rumors died. No pun intended.

[Quick aside: to my more conservative and Republican friends out there, the left has the grand Diebold conspiracy, so this is by no means isolated.]

Okay, great, we get it. You lost, you're sore, you need someone to blame. ACORN is now big leagues, in no small part thanks to the efforts of the scree team decrying them. Great. And if it makes the conservative Mr. Hoffman, and by extension, all of the people who voted for him -- no slim number, btw -- sleep better at night knowing that they couldn't shouldn't wouldn't have lost in a fair fight, so be it as well. Also so be it that the candidate himself was nothing more than a talking points shill with no actual substance to his arguments (not, again, uncommon in American politics, esp. on the House level), whose only claim to fame was being a champion of a guy who links the Rockefeller family to communism (or is it fascism?) because of a bunch of commissioned works on a collection of buildings that bears the same-said name. So be it.

That he lost the election by stolen votes from a left-leaning organization, nevermind that the margin was well within the number of votes cast for his other, Republican, challenger, that she might have siphoned off votes in the too-late drop-out, that a movement that seemingly can't even get its act together long enough to present a unified vision and model of a candidate does not account for anything to do with it, so be it.

Hoffman, and I address you by name here -- you're a lightweight. Give it up, you've had your fame, now sit down and let the big people go about their business.

[Special points, dear readers, if you can figure out another person that last line could apply to.]

and you will know us by the trail of the read (?)

I've been awol from here for a while, kids, and I apologize. And even more distressingly, I actually have nothing to report, save for the ever changing floor plan of my apartment and some random, weird bumpings in the night that's playing completely off my imagination.

But how do I spend my time in these situations? Easy, I read. And reading I have been doing.

So below is a digest of what's been through my system:

• An indictment, and for my two cents a compelling one, of a certain type of contemporary parenthood.


• Yes, Heidegger was an ideological nightmare, but can we separate the man from the legacy from the belief system?


• Finally, how much cute can a normal man take before he wants to break out the panda steaks with a hello kitty au jus

Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves. I'm thinking about reading some Louis Lamour.