Yay! It’s the Fourth of July! Time to blow some fingers off with firecrackers and laugh at the poor dumb bastards up north who think they got a better deal than the Great American Colonists without having to kill anybody in a War of Independence. Don’t the Canadians know that Freedom Isn’t Free?

Being FREE, we all know, is not a question of having healthcare or a decent chance of avoiding being shot with a gun. It’s not a matter of civil rights or economic security. It’s got nothing to do with speaking or organizing or determining the outlines of your life. People who’ve fled slavery and wars to live in Canada haven’t obtained Freedom, only pneumonia and — I suppose — a halfway decent NBA team, and a longer lifespan, and greater security, and better education, and other such worthless muck. The free-est country on earth, on the other hand, has the most people in prison; if that confuses you, you haven’t understood Freedom. Being FREE has a simple definition. Being FREE means being something that somebody killed a lot of people for. And, therefore, Canada ain’t FREE — though it’s working on it.

Investors are pondering where to put their money this week after the sudden decline in the assessed value of presidential candidate Joe Biden.

On Wall Street and in other corporate quarters where financiers were heavily invested in Biden, hopes have eroded in recent days amid reduced investor confidence. Some prominent donors began to openly question the wisdom of devoting more capital to the national marketing campaign for the former vice president.

After the leading blue chip closed sharply lower at the end of last week, even declaring “my time is up,” many top investors felt overexposed and looked for shelter. Gathering new topline data and considering several prospectuses that had been previously submitted, investors are now reassessing assets and liabilities as well as potential growth in market share during the next quarter and beyond.