As you are undoubtedly aware, yesterday the US Navy launched a missile from the Pacific Ocean in an effort to destroy a malfunctioning satellite. Whether or not this was a legitimate attempt at destroying a faulty satellite or an anti-satellite weapons test remains up for debate, but what seems to be pretty certain at this point is that it was destroyed.

Lucky for us we live in technological age where everything everywhere is recorded on video. So, without further adieu, here is some video footage released by the Defense Department of the missile taking off from the Navy ship and intercepting the satellite:

In a report entitled “Recession Coming” released today, Morgan Stanley has issued a full recession alert for the US economy. The report warns of a sharp slowdown in business investment and a “perfect storm” for consumers as the housing slump spreads. Additionally, the Morgan Stanley US team said that the credit crunch was starting to inflict serious damage on many US companies.

I can’t say I’m surprised at all by this report. If this takes you by surprise, then you my friend have either been living under a rock or in serious denial for the past six months or so. The value of the US dollar has plummeted, several countries have moved away from the dollar standard and even Jay-Z is storing his earnings in Euros now instead of the dollar.

And you KNOW it’s bad when rappers — who love flaunting around the benjamins — leave Franklin out in the cold.

Let’s hope the recession comes and goes quickly and doesn’t do too much damage to the economy, as my job kind of depends on business investment and spending.

The LA Times is reporting that security officials at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) missed 75% of fake explosives in a series of 70 tests. What makes it further embarrassing is that LAX screeners are given four hours of security training each week, with the final hour concentrating specifically on detecting explosive devices.

To their credit, Nico Melendez, spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), says that the tests were conducted in 2006 and that the data should be considered old. However I can’t imagine that the situation has improved much over the past year. As a frequent business traveler who flies through airports around the country, I must say that LAX does have one of the most expedient security lines, especially given the size of the airport.

If you really think about it, we are lucky that there haven’t been any additional incidents since the horrific attacks on 9/11. I don’t think any American will concede that we’re doing all we can in terms of airport security. That being said, it’s a fine-line between strong security and excessive police-state like security.

In any event, let’s hope the TSA can improve on this figure, for yours, mine and everybody else’s sake. Our lives just might depend on it.

I would have never thought I’d see the day but alas it has happened, the Canadian dollar carries the same value as the U.S. dollar. According to Yahoo Finance — at the time of this writing — the USD is at 1.00 and the CAD at 1.00.

What does this mean for Americans and Canadians? Basically, the short of it is that it’s going to be a lot cheaper for Canadians visiting America, and a lot more expensive for Americans visiting Canada.

This is such a bizarre concept for me and I’m sure many others, having long been under the notion that the Canadian dollar was much weaker and therefore we as Americans had a much stronger purchasing power. It just goes to show how badly the Bush administration has and continues to destroy the U.S. economy.

Countries around the world have been slowly abandoning the USD standard and more are adopting the Euro. Additionally, many economists have been forecasting a U.S. recession for some time. This US-Canada currency equality provides further evidence to support the recession predictions.

Consider this 5-year graph of USD vs. CAD:

The economic downturn is staggering. I wonder how far off we are from Americans putting their savings in other currencies like the Euro. Lord knows the wealthiest U.S. elite are already doing it.

Google announced earlier this year that they would be adding support for presentations to their existing Google Docs suite of word processing and spreadsheets. Last night, they delivered on their promise as Google Docs now handles presentations.

Presentations — the like the existing documents and spreadsheets — are accessible from any location as they are stored online. Additionally, the same Google Docs collaboration capability is built-in and changes to presentations can be seen in real time.

When you start a brand new presentation there are a number of themes you can select from, otherwise you can always import an existing presentation and edit that as well. Perhaps the coolest feature, though, is the ability to walk your remote audience through your presentation in real time. By clicking a link to follow along, all parties will be able to chat about the presentation collectively.

It’s great to see Google adding to their office suite and creating some more competition for Microsoft. By no means will this ever become a replacement for PowerPoint, especially in the corporate setting, but for personal use at home Google’s suite is starting to make a name for itself as a free alternative to Microsoft Office and its massive price tag.

To check out Google Presentations and the rest of the Google Doc applications, simply browse to docs.google.com.

President Bush said yesterday to a national convention of the American Legion in Reno, Nevada that if Israel’s arch-foe Iran were to get nuclear weapons, the entire Middle East would be “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.”

Bush also repeated accusations that Iran was materializing instability in Iraq by supplying weapons and training fighters. It seems someone is really trying to build a case with the American public for a war with Iran.

My issue with President Bush’s remarks is that they are misleading and incredibly short-sighted.

First off, even if Iran were to get nuclear weapons, possessing does not equal usage. Of all the countries around the world with nuclear weapons, only one has actually used them (outside of a testing capacity): the United States. That means that Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel and South Africa (before voluntarily disarming) have never used them on another country. So where does Bush’s inherent rationale that Iran would use them if they had them come from?

Secondly, and this ties in with my previous point, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has not called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” as reported in U.S. media. Contrary to propaganda popular belief, that remark was never made. It should be noted that the Bush Administration has repeatedly used this remark — falsely — as a basis for many of their threats against Iran.

Finally, Bush’s remarks about an impending nuclear holocaust in the Middle East should Iran get nuclear weapons are far less from what a real-life scenario would entail. Granted, Bush is probably correct that if one nuclear weapon were to go off the region would be set ablaze with hellfire and radiation. However, it’s not likely to remain contained to that region. Bush and his cronies need to read up a little on the IR concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD), which is the best nuclear weapon deterrent. Under this MAD premise, one nation setting off nukes means retaliation from other nuke states leading to the destruction of everyone. Thus, were Iran to nuke Israel, Israel and the United States would surely nuke back. As a result of the United States nuking Iran, Russia or China would likely get involved, and the downward spiral goes ever deeper. The lesson from all this: Iran knows that nuking another country will only get itself destroyed, so it’s not going to do it.

It’s unfortunate that the government uses such deliberate manipulation of information to pursue its own secretive agendas (read: attacking Iran). It is extraordinarily unlikely that Iran would ever launch a first-strike nuclear weapon against Israel. Rather, the more plausible explanation is that Iran is seeking to acquire a nuclear weapon so that it can use MAD as a deterrent against countries seeking to nuke it.

A Russian region on the Volga River, roughly 550 miles east of Moscow, has announced that September 12th will be the Day of Conception and for the third straight year will give couples time off from work to engage in the act of baby-making.

The move is part of an effort to combat Russia’s birthrate crisis, as Russia covers 1/7th of the Earth’s surface but only sports 141.4 million citizens, making it one of the most sparsely populated countries. In fact, the population of Russia has been declining since the early 1990s.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced last year cash incentives to families if they have more than one child. The program rewards women who give birth to a second child or subsequent children with certificates worth $10,000 USD.

Being a member of the machine that is the American economy — where every day off is a blessing — I envy the work schedules of most countries around the world. And while I’ve never really considered Russia on that list, this proposition certainly makes a case for it.

What do you say we, as members of the proletariat, push the American bourgeoisie for a day of copulation?

A report released yesterday by the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) revealed that for the first time Yahoo has beaten Google when it comes to customer satisfaction. The report showed Yahoo as improving last year’s score by 3.9% to 79 out of 100, and Google falling 3.7% from last year to 78 out of 100.

Although Google remains the dominant search engine, the survey claims that Yahoo is gaining user approval for its network of Web sites, email, social networks, etc. Such popular Yahoo-owned services include Flickr and Del.icio.us.

The ACSI report used interview data from 70,000 customers to measure satisfaction with more than 200 companies in 45 industries. The data was compiled during the second quarter and at least 250 respondents were interviewed for each company included.

Three cheers to Yahoo for taking care of us!

Earlier this month Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo reiterated that the way to stop a terrorist attack from occurring in the U.S. is by attacking the holy sites of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia as retaliation. The Colorado Republican added that this was the only thing he could think of that could prevent somebody from doing what they may otherwise do.

“If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina. Because that’s the only thing I can think of that might deter somebody from doing what they otherwise might do.”

It doesn’t end there. I say reiterated in the first paragraph because in a 2005 radio address he made similar remarks, claiming that if an attack was determined to be a result of radical Islam that one could “take out their holy sites.”

“Well, what if you said something like — if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, um, you know, you could take out their holy sites.”

This is a great example of the abhorrent leadership that is percolating throughout the United States currently. On the right you have innumerable conservatives pushing the anti-terror, pro-war agenda and trying to make us live in fear so that we may cede unprecedented control of our lives over to Bush and Co. And on the left you have unaccountable idiocrats who have had so many opportunities to halt the runaway Neo-Con train and have failed miserably time after time.

I don’t feel it prudent to delve into the logic behind why attacking Islam’s holiest sites is a bad idea, as this should be well beyond self-evident, but if for some reason you are lacking in reason let me know and I’ll be happy to revisit this.

The Neo-Con fear-mongering propaganda machine is at it again, and this just may be its most outlandish claim to date. News Corp in Australia — you know, the fair and balanced organization run by Rupert Murdoch — is reporting that terrorists are using Second Life as a testing environment to practice for real life terrorist attacks. Apparently Aussie and U.S. law enforcement officials are so concerned that they’ve established their own virtual terror scenarios in order to gain the same experience as the terrorists.

Wow. Can you smell Cheney’s desperation for a case to attack Iran? This is just preposterous. I’m sorry, but saying that terrorists are practicing on Second Life for real-world terrorist attacks is like saying you’re no longer a virgin because you’ve had cyber sex.

The article goes on to discuss how governments need to improve their technical capabilities with tools such as Second Life in order to have the appropriate means to monitor what’s going on in the terrorist world — isn’t that why we have a CIA/FBI/Homeland Security Department?

I truly hope that my fellow Americans can begin to see around the lies of the Neo-Conservatives. I actually had a conversation with a co-worker today about the looming attack on Iran and the possibility of an America run by martial law. He was quick to try and dismiss what I told him as neo-liberal conspiracy theory, but after pointing out to him that I am not a liberal and showing him the evidence of the claims I was making, he began to take it a little more seriously.

The truth is out there, we’ve just been conditioned by the government and mass media not to look for it. Don’t be the ignorant American, otherwise by the time we collectively rise up to confront our runaway government it will be far too late.