Open Thread and Diary Rescue

Tonight's Rescue Rangers are joyful, Truth of Angels, vcmvo2, YatPundit, and ybruti, with Unitary Moonbat shuffling the scrolls.

Jotter Appreciation Day continues!  The Rescue Rangers are pleased to announce that beginning tonight, a link to jotter's High Impact Diaries will be a regular feature of Diary Rescue, just like the one we provide for the day's Top Comments.  Thanks again, jotter – your hard work and tireless dedication have not gone unnoticed!

• Red no more has a personal tale of how the War On Drugs disproportionately affects individuals in What Passes for Justice in America Today? (TruthOfAngels)
• Bendy girl reports how and why the strike by United Auto Workers may soon be resolved in End In Sight? (vcmvo2)
• With pictures and startling comparisons to the U.S. in Iraq, gjohnsit presents Lessons from a forgotten American Occupation. (ybruti)
• david mizner highlights recent efforts by Senators Levin and Snowe to Help Protect a Victim of Female Genital Mutilation from deportation into a forced marriage.  (Unitary Moonbat)
• kansasr gives us sufficient reason for Why Local Elections Should Matter To You. (vcmvo2)
• What sort of Bush's National Mall Memorial would The Decider decide on?  jcnossiter has some very snarky theories.  (Unitary Moonbat)
• sagewater2 reflects on the one of the worst of the Bush Administration's policies in A former lawyer writes to her friends about the Yoo Torture Memo. (YatPundit)
• Magnifico offers fascinating insight into Mexico's oil industry in Calderon's Privatization Plan for Mexico's Oil. (YatPundit)
• joeshwingding traces the history of The Debasing of Our Money in the highly-informative Part II of what's turning into an econ series.  (Unitary Moonbat)
• mole333 remembers a great professor in John Stewart Died Last Year: Belated Obit and the Cosmic Banana. (ybruti)
• In the first-part of a promised series, umasslefty lays out how Massachusetts came up with its universal health care model in The Massachusetts Model (or Why Mandates Don't Mean that Much). (vcmvo2)
• Project Vote's Erin Ferns brings the links for Voter Registration Surges, But Fuels Voter Suppression Attempts In State Legislatures, this week's Voting Rights News Update.  (Unitary Moonbat)
• Departing unconditional friends - Sallah, 2002-2008 is a Kossack's diary of love and lament for a late pet, by JDSoOR. (TruthOfAngels)

Enjoy, and please promote your own favorite diaries in this open thread.

Foreign Policy As Practiced By Seven Year Old Children

My daughter, in second grade, has been (let's face it) an unholy terror of a child, of late. I blame this entirely on her fellow classmates at her public school, as she was an impeccably well adjusted, unfailingly polite and conscientious child before she met them -- that's my story, anyway, and I'll stick to it. Before starting school, she was an emotionally competent if energetic child, able to comport herself with all the grace a preschooler is capable of mustering. After starting school, she almost immediately absorbed all the most primal lessons of grade school social interaction, and has become a small, pink-clothed monster.

Some of this I recognize from my own childhood, of course. The petty tribalism, the true vapidity of what counts as "friend" or "enemy", and the seemingly tidal nature with which the two designations come and go, primarily revolving around who brings what fabulous new toy, marble, trading card, sugar bomb, handheld game, whatever, etc., and so on. Some comrades show the first twinges of what may someday become true friendship; others reveal themselves to be the future bane of all those they come in contact with.

Other lessons, though, are different. As a grade school boy, I cannot deny that social interactions were much more twinged with actual violence, in our circles -- "social" skills were not just lacking, but actively avoided. My daughter has given me a new window into the interactions of sub-ten-year-old girls, which combine the implicit physical violence common among boys with an underlying social viciousness that we boys would have been boggled by. Deny it all you want, but young boys and young girls are different, and if I had my pick I know I would far rather have been made to eat playground dirt than be subjected with the withering, coldly plotting glare of a grade school girl contemplating my relative value in her social circle, and what she was about to do about it.

Life never progresses much beyond high school, goes one common observation. I think, though, that this is perhaps being more charitable towards many adults than is warranted. Perhaps some people never manage to evolve past basic high school social interactions, but for others even that seems a lofty pinnacle indeed. Everything I needed to know about the implicit tenets and instincts of conservatism, for example, I learned and rejected before I had turned ten. My daughter seems on the same path.

Late Afternoonish/Early Eveningish Open Thread

Go appreciate our very own jotter and bid farewell to Harper's Scott Horton, a true treasure, who's giving up blogging.

This thread is now wide open.

FL-25: Mario Diaz-Balart, demagogue hack

Miami Democrat Joe Garcia, candidate for the U.S. House in Florida's 25th district and a recent addition to Blue Majority, seems to be doing quite well so far. He's doing all the things good candidates do, like raising money and cultivating relationships with powerful incumbent Representatives whose assistance he may need once he arrives in Washington.

Well, leave it to the 25th District's incumbent hack, Mario Diaz-Balart, to turn these things into negatives.

Garcia has scheduled a fundraiser in New York City for April 21, at which Representative Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, will appear.

That's innocent enough, I should think. But Mario Diaz-Balart, desperate to score political points by any means necessary, apparently feels that associating with Rangel, a longtime critic of U.S. policy toward Cuba, is some kind of unpardonable offense:

''Joe Garcia continues to align himself with left-wing extremists. The latest to join the ranks is Congressman Charlie Rangel,'' reads a statement from Diaz-Balart's campaign. ``He has a long and well-known history of supporting a radical left-wing agenda including supporting higher taxes on working families and appeasing our nation's enemies. Left-wing birds of a feather, tax and spend together.''

Gotta love that last bon mot, which I suppose is what passes for Republican creativity these days.

Lost in Diaz-Balart's fury, of course, is the fact that Garcia actually disagrees with Rangel on Cuba. But who needs facts?

''I'm not going to fall into the ridiculous red-baiting that my opponent does,'' Garcia said.

Garcia, who previously served as executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, said he has ''serious disagreements'' with Rangel on Cuba. But having a relationship with the chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee would help him bring federal money back to the district, he said.

''I'm going to disagree with Charlie Rangel on a few issues, but agreeing on some other things will help me bring jobs to Miami-Dade County and put money in the economy,'' he said.

Hmm...bringing jobs into the district and putting money into the local economy...aren't those the kind of things a good Representative is supposed to do? How come Super Mario can't overcome his disagreements with Charlie Rangel to try and do the same thing?

One has to ask: how exactly does angrily flailing away at the House Ways and Means chairman help Diaz-Balart in his capacity as a Representative? Is he tacitly admitting his own inability to work with the leaders of the Democratic majority to try and do some good for his constituents?

I mean, I would think that cultivating some kind of relationship across party lines with the Ways and Means chair-or at least not alienating him by calling him nasty names-might be mildly useful in steering federal money and projects towards the 25th District, right?

There's always the chance, of course, that Diaz-Balart doesn't actually care about his constituents, and is merely concerned with scoring political points in order to hang on to his precious Congressional seat.

But come on, he wouldn't be that transparently cynical, would he?

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