Image: OpenRoadMedia.com

-Helen Gurley Brown, author of the iconic 1962 book Sex and the Single Girl and longtime (1965 to 1997) editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, has died at the age of 90. Called the “quintessential Cosmo girl,” Brown has been hailed as a feminist, a transformative force in the magazine industry and the “original Carrie Bradshaw.” In her honor, here are the top 10 tips from her book, care of The Daily Beast. Get your Don Juan ladies. It’s good training!

 -With Mitt Romney’s selection of Rep. Paul Ryan (WI) as his running mate, Medicare has become a big issue in the Presidential campaign. This is a particularly touchy topic for older voters, of course, and that’s who Romney was appealing to on a stop in Florida yesterday. Meanwhile, in Iowa, Rep. Ryan was getting heckled. But he stayed on message. Which is good? Meanwhile, the President made an unexpected stop at the Iowa State Fair at the start of what will be a three-day tour of the state. Separately but related, it’s been announced that Gov. Chris Christie (NJ) will be making the keynote speech at the Republican National Convention in Tampa later this month.

-Another day, another shooting. This time near Texas A&M University. Two people were killed and four wounded before the gunman, Thomas Caffall, was shot and killed by police. Caffall was 35 years old and, according to his mother, had recently shown signs of mental problems.

-Retail sales were higher than expected in July. This is a good sign for the economy. Have you been shopping?

-The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has released the results from a first round of new crash testing, conducted with luxury and high-end vehicles. The testing found that the cars you’re most likely to really really want are the ones that did the worst — cars like the Mercedes-Benz C-Class and Lexus IS 250/350. “The reason the institute designed the new test is that while modern vehicles generally perform well in tests of what happens in head-on crashes, small overlap frontal crashes continue to be a ‘major source’ of fatalities,” NPR reports. Watch the very scary video below.

By Charlotte Young

In the latest conservative fumble, Politico reports that an Iowa based group is now retracting a line in its marriage vow which suggested that black children born into slavery had a better family life than black children born today.

The marriage vow, created by Family Leader, came out last week and was signed by Michelle Bachmann.  The original preamble read “slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”

The group’s officials said that “after careful consideration and wise insight and input from valued colleagues,” they decided to remove the offensive language from their preamble. They still maintain that all must work to strengthen marriages between one man and one woman.

Bachmann’s spokeswoman said that she signed the candidate vow, which made no reference to slavery, and relayed the congresswoman’s belief that “slavery was horrible.” It’s unclear whether or not Bachmann actually read the preamble.

Of course, as with any other outrageously offensive comment, the group claims it wasn’t meant to be racist, “just a fact that back in the days of slavery there was usually a husband and a wife.”

(CNN) — Look out, Colonel Sanders. Flavor Flav has a fried chicken restaurant, and he’s coming for you – starting in a small Iowa city. The Public Enemy rapper and reality TV star opened Flav’s Fried Chicken in Clinton, Iowa, on Monday with a business partner he met through a connection in Las Vegas, the Clinton Herald reported. “My chicken ain’t no joke. I ain’t scared to go up against the Colonel, tastewise,” Flav said, referring to chicken giant KFC, in a YouTube video of him frying chicken at Monday’s opening.

(MSNBC) — Democrats on Tuesday denounced an Iowa Republican congressman who says President Barack Obama favors blacks over whites, and a GOP candidate from Colorado canceled a fundraiser the Iowan was to keynote. Rep. Steve King, known for sometimes incendiary remarks about immigration, Abu Ghraib and other issues, criticized Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, who also is black, in an interview Monday on G. Gordon Liddy’s nationally syndicated radio talk show.

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