For the sake of my forgetfulness, for posterity or for anyone else who finds these unattended cries for help I will post what I found fixes the problem. This has happened to me more than once and with more than one site.
First I will restate my situation:
Using MAMP Pro (using a Macintosh) on my localhost (but it can happen on your remote server too)
Currently using WP 3.0.5
Reinstalled tinymce (located in the includes/js directory. (Didn't help but it has in the past so you may want to try this first)
9 plugins installed and turning them all OFF did nothing to help.
4 of my plugins needed updates. Oh only I wish I had updated them one at a time.
- Akismet 2.5.3
- Contact 7 2.4.3
- Reveal IDs for WordPress Admin 1.2.1
Not sure which one was the culprit but I can at least report that after updating these plugins (even though turned OFF0 the Kitchen Sink is now visible. I also turned them on and the KS is still working fine.
Other helpful posts are found here but they address previous versions of WordPress:
Visual Editor appears as HTML in 2.9 Mentions an interesting "delete revision" plugin
2.8 Problems and Solutions Documents various possible issues with tinymce.
Good luck you all!