Update: Bloody Hell! Mattel is recalling 18 million toys world wide for lead paint and pieces that fall off posing a choking hazard.

The Associated Press is reporting that Mattel has another recall pending over toys from China that have lead paint.

Whig notes that CNBC anchor Erin Burnett thinks that lead paint on toys and tainted food from China is fine because it keeps prices low. Somehow I don’t think Mattel, which just took a multi-million dollar hit on the last recall, or the people with poisoned children and/or pets would agree.

A little economic primer that Ms. Burnett and the readers at home can verify for themselves: after Wal-Mart has established its dominance in a market and wiped out the competition, it raises prices. The “every day low prices” scam is only to get you hooked on a store and to take out people who don’t have the deep pockets to compete, which includes the majority of national governments.

Yeah, right, just your average middle-class Americans, the Bushies.

Cécilia Sarkozy is not apt to drop in at a neighbor’s for hotdogs when she avoided most of her husband’s victory celebration. The Times may write Cécilia, you’re breaking all the rules, but it is extremely doubtful that she cares. Her husband is the politician and has obligations, she didn’t agree to anything.

[the first link is to Youtube, if you’re on dial-up]

The only real change is that the tax payers of the US are no longer paying for the salary and benefits of one partisan political hack and his access to classified information should cease.  Karl Rove will no longer have a White House office, but anyone who thinks he is no longer in the center of the corruption is fooling themselves.

Karl is looking for the big bucks before his influence and value is at rock bottom.

At 10AM CDT Invest 90L was upgraded to Tropical Depression Four and seems likely to become Hurricane Dean at some point. It is currently on track to cross the Lesser Antilles as a Cat 1 hurricane at the end of the week.

Invest 91L is currently located between the Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba and is projected to become Tropical Storm Erin before coming ashore around the mouth of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo.

In the Pacific, Hurricane Flossie is maintaining Cat 4 status, but appears to be on track to pass south of Hawaii and provide a lot of much needed rain. Thanks to the climate change, Hawaii has been experiencing drought conditions and needs all the rain it can get. The pineapple is going to be tough.

It’s August and time for the tropics to get active.

The short version is that we didn’t learn a thing from the rather disastrous blow-back from the CIA financed insurgency against the Soviet occupation, assuming that you agree that 9/11 was a disaster.

Steve Coll’s book, Ghost Wars, is an open source for the story behind what we did and didn’t do that resulted in al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Pakistan security forces ties to both, the rise of fundamentalism in Pakistan, and the madrassas that use US financed and printed books to teach children to hate the US.

I’m sure everyone is thrilled that our tax dollars built the training sites that were used to attack us, which is why we were able to strike them so accurately, but not quite soon enough.

I know I was happy that the Stinger missiles that we supplied to the insurgents in Afghanistan did in fact prove to be too old to use against our aircraft.

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