Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog notes:

MEXICO CITY — Authorities are sounding the alarm about an influx of assault rifles, armor-piercing pistols and fragmentation grenades from the United States, weapons that they say are increasingly being used to kill police and soldiers fighting drug cartels.

It sounds like the US is proving weapons to narco-terrorists who are attacking Mexican law enforcement. Maybe the Mexican government should classify the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms a terrorist organization?

Dean is set to slam into the Antilles as a Cat 2 with 95 mph winds around dawn tomorrow. The center in now set to hit Martinique with Dominica to the north also affected, but it is moving at a brisk 25 mph to the west. The wind map indicates is still has a tight core, so the hurricane force winds do not extend out very far.

Before Reagan there were all kinds of pesky rules around that said things like: banks are banks; insurance companies are insurance companies; stock brokerages are stock brokerages. Obviously such restrictive rules prevented American business from prospering, so they were done away with and with a general “who cares” attitude about regulations we saw wonders like the Resolution Trust bailout of savings & loans, the Enron accounting frauds [with multiple clones], and all kinds of good things like soaring salaries for CEOs and outsourcing for the rank and file after the pension fund was looted.

Atrios and Whig provide some basic background of what’s going on, and R. Neal covers the impact on the South.

[Read more →]

Everyone is now aware of the meltdown in the housing market and the associated slump in the stock market as the number of foreclosures soar and the mortgage lenders experience the Coriolis effect associated with sanitary drains.

According to Southwest Florida’s Herald Tribune people think Sarasota is the drain:

SARASOTA — Readers of the famously salmon-sheeted Financial Times woke up Friday morning to a story linking the global credit crunch and stock market dip to the sandy shores of Southwest Florida.

“Like the proverbial butterfly that flaps its wings and sets off a tidal wave on the other side of the world, Sarasota, Florida is the centre of the U.S. housing bust that sent shockwaves through global markets,” said the London-based newspaper’s story by Eoin Callan.

[Read more →]

Blogiversaries™:

• Ellroon at Rant From The Rookery – one year
• Whig at Cannablog – one year
• Quiddity at Uggabugga – five years

And Cookie Jill at skippy the bush kangaroo wrote the 13 millionth comment on dKOS.

Who says nothing ever happens in August.

Hurricane Dean is not simply the first hurricane of the season, it is on track to become a major hurricane. It will smack into the Lesser Antilles around Dominica as a Cat 2 Friday morning and continue to strengthen as it crosses the Caribbean. It threatens the south coast of Hispaniola and will probably be a Cat 3 at Jamaica. On the current track it will be a Cat 4 smashing into the Yucatan Peninsula around Cozumel and exit into the Gulf as a Cat 1 hurricane.

Erin came ashore around Lamar, Texas and is moving to the northwest as a rain event, and Flossie losing strength in the cooler waters west of Hawaii.