Think of all the safety recalls we have had lately. Think of the danger our children have been put in because of a lack of safety on toys. What does it amount to? More cronyism and evidence that the Bush administration flat out doesn’t care:

The chief of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and her predecessor have taken dozens of trips at the expense of the toy, appliance and children’s furniture industries and others they regulate, according to internal records obtained by The Washington Post. Some of the trips were sponsored by lobbying groups and lawyers representing the makers of products linked to consumer hazards.

The records document nearly 30 trips since 2002 by the agency’s acting chairman, Nancy Nord, and the previous chairman, Hal Stratton, that were paid for in full or in part by trade associations or manufacturers of products ranging from space heaters to disinfectants. The airfares, hotels and meals totaled nearly $60,000, and the destinations included China, Spain, San Francisco, New Orleans and a golf resort on Hilton Head Island, S.C.

Notable among the trips — commonly described by officials as “gift travel” — was an 11-day visit to China and Hong Kong in 2004 by Stratton, then chairman. The $11,000 trip was paid for by the American Fireworks Standards Laboratory, an industry group based in an office suite in Bethesda whose only laboratories are in Asia.

Now why would they enforce safety when they are getting these gifts? It’s almost like Abramoff all over again.

Remember after 9/11 how Bush said we need to protect our water, food and products so terrorists don’t use them against us? Well over 6 years later we still don’t have protection of our imports and the safety of these imports have drastically decreased over the years. What if the terrorists decided to stage an attack through our toys? Say a little uranium or some biological agent placed in them? We wouldn’t know until thousands of kids got sick or died.

Yeah I know this is purely hypothetical, but isn’t Bush’s reasons for torture? If we had a Democratic version of FOX news then they could be pushing this kind of story; “The lead in the toys is actually an al Qaeda plot”, kind of like how FOX said the wildfires were some big al Qaeda plot.

What I am getting to is that it’s time for Congress to raise the questions of product safety and link them to terrorism. Perhaps the Democrats should start playing the fear card, and when the administration tries to dismiss them as foolish then the candidates can say “there goes Bush ignoring terrorism. He must live in a pre-9/11 world”. Same thing would apply when the Republican candidates back Bush on the story. Turn the entire fear card around on them.