From the Blackwater website homepage:

Our leadership and dedicated family of exceptional employees adheres to an essential of core corporate values- chief among these are integrity, innovation, excellence, respect, accountability, and teamwork.

I bet. But, I gotta say I'm digging the new website. There's even a section where you can buy some crappy-ass motivational posters.

But, look, Blackwater had to be given immunity from accountability so that we could find out what happened and hold Blackwater accountable! Oh, wait...

saintzak writes: "Let's face it, Condi's political career is over once her term as Secretary of State under the Worst President in History is over."

• I disagree. I don't think the stink of the Bush Administration has affected Rice the way it has others (it destroyed Colin Powell, but that's because we already knew him and thought so highly of him). But Rice didn't have that kind of background coming in and has shown herself to be (of late) the diplomatic one in the Bush Administration. We'll see her doing political consulting and as an ambassador in a future Republican administration. Or maybe she'll joinh Cane as an evil ice-skating coach named Lacuna. Maybe she'd get her own spin-off called "Lacuna Beach."

Is this surprising? No. But some customers thought The Gap had cleaned up its act after similar problems in the 90s. Perhaps this will clue our consumer culture into the dirty little secret about "cheap products" --there are no such things. When you buy cheap, you're likely buying less-rigorous safety standards and slave labor.

In the words of Krusty the Clown, "And we pass the slavings onto you."

For what it's worth, The Gap's press release: http://www.gapinc.com/public/Media/Press_Releases/med_pr_vendorlabor102807.shtml

Sometimes people buy cheap because they simply can't afford these products otherwise (see Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickle and Dimed--there's a section where she works at Wal-Mart and is desperately waiting for some khaki shorts to go on sale because that, plus her store discount, will allow her to buy them as part of her work uniform).

Othertimes, people buy cheap because it allows them to buy more stuff. Which seems to defeat the idea of buying cheap in order to save money--you're not saving money if you just use that money to buy stuff you wouldn't have purchased otherwise.

So what you often wind up with is people having extensive amounts of cheap crap. When the cheap crap breaks, it isn't cost effective to have it fixed so they replace it by buying more cheap crap.

When you buy so much cheap stuff that you can't keep it all straight, you've got product overload. And if labor standards concern you, you can wind up with guilt overload to boot.

Boycotting is one part of the solution. By boycotting, individuals work together to put pressure on the company en masse. Individuals alone can't change the labor conditions but these big companies do have some power. The idea is not necessarily to get these companies to pack up and move to another country. The idea is to get the company to mandate better working conditions in the country as a condition of doing business there.

Thank you for you hil-wait for it-arious strawman!

Every dollar you don't spend on sweatshop products buys you one square-inch more of McMansion! Great satire.

And that's what making women unfit parents today. We're raising a generation of coddled, every-one-gets-a-trophy kids. If more fathers stayed home or were the "primary parent," we could stop the current tide of wussy kids.

I just wanted to join the fun.

Little boys do tend to more wild than their little girl counterparts. Just look at the higher rates of ADHD and other school issues (such as not finishing high school or not going on to college) among boys. Is it genetics, testosterone or how they're raised? I don't know.

But I don't see what this has to do with trucks.

You can calmly drive your truck down the hallway or you can use it to smash everything in sight.

As someone who had Tonka trucks as a little girl, when I saw this commercial it pissed me off. How dare you tell me what I toys I can and cannot play with?!

It also strikes me as a bit stupid. Why would you want to try to turn 50% of the toy demographic away from your product? Did Hasbro get a new ad agency?

Oh. My. Gawd.

Please do check out the Hasbro website for all of your child-rearing needs:

• Don't be alarmed or upset if your boy prefers a gentler form of play, dressing up in costumes or taking care of stuffed animals. All children benefit from this kind of play, and most boys don't get enough of it.
• Recognize that your son is absorbing all sorts of information from TV and movies, including many messages about what is expected from boys and men. The media--and our own expectations--can give boys the wrong idea that there is only one very narrow definition of masculinity.

http://www.hasbro.com/tonka/default.cfm?page=parents_parentingtips

The irony of the "built for boyhood" slogan in light of those statements on the website. The rest of the website also contradicts itself in hilarious ways. I didn't want to post the entire page in my posting.