I hope all the Yanks -- and anybody else celebrating -- had a happy July 4th. Yesterday we hosted two riders from the Texas 4000 who were doing a lot more than I will do this month -- riding 4,000 miles from Texas to Alaska to help fight cancer. Kudos to Joel and Shilen and good luck! You can track our friends on the "Rocky Route" here.

In the news, ironically the July 4th festivities were marred by financial pyrotechnics rather than the celebratory kind, as the papers jumped on the fiscally depleted state of the nation -- and the world:

• Illinois is drowning in red ink (New York Times). Depressing story. And you thought California was bad?
• Huge pension problems in Illinois were not helped by the fact that they turned to the OTC derivatives casino to make back their lost money (Medill).
• Bank meltdowns continue (Fed.gov). Yikes!
• The recession has now killed of 7.9 million jobs in America (CNNMoney). Hey, I hate to be a downer, but it's reality, bro!
• Hey, not everything's bad! Markets are stable today (Associated Press). Maybe we should just keep the U.S. markets closed. 
• The BP tab is now over $3B (USA Today). That's if you can actually put a price on the total environmental and economic destruction.
• The first test of the "superskimmer" are inconclusive (Reuters). Let's all hope it works.
• All about Google's $700 million purchase of ITA (TechCrunch). Vertical search is the new deal.
• Apple is sucking wonton in China, says Lenovo chief (Financial Times). Hmm. Big competitor trash talks big competitor, says "C'mon over." Why, exactly.
• The Kin was the mother of all consumer toy flops, says the New York Times. File under Microsoft's epic flops along with "Bob."