SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:54 P.M. ET: 

DO THEY HAVE TO AUTOMATE EVERYTHING? – FROM CNBC:  Grilling burgers may be fun on the Fourth of July, but less so if hot grease is your daily grind.  Enter Miso Robotics. The southern California start-up has built a robotic "kitchen assistant" called Flippy to do the hot, greasy and repetitive work of a fry cook. Flippy employs machine learning and computer vision to identify patties on a grill, track them as they cook, flip and then place them on a bun when they're done.  Miso is part of a budding kitchen automation industry. Its peers include Zume Pizza, Cafe X, Makr Shakr, Frobot and Sally, which are developing robots to help commercial kitchens churn out pizzas, lattes, cocktails, frozen yogurt, and salads.  No more mama's home cooking.  Now we'll have snacks by Miso Robotics or burgers by Makr Shakr.  How romantic.  No more diner scenes in movies either.

GOOD DEAL – FROM CNN MONEY:  Drivers are enjoying the cheapest Fourth of July gasoline in more than a decade. Enjoy it while it lasts: Experts say prices will start inching higher soon.  The average price nationwide for a gallon of regular is $2.23, down 15 cents from a month ago, according to AAA.  And really cheap gas is even more common than suggested by that average: About 25% of gas stations nationwide are selling gas for $2 a gallon or less.  The last time gas was this cheap heading into Independence Day was 2005.  But wholesale gasoline prices have already started to climb up, and that will probably translate into modestly higher prices at the pump in coming days, said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service, which tracks gas prices for AAA.  Of course, if you were a true social justice warrior, you wouldn't use a car at all, poisoning the air, destroying the Earth and the Solar System.  You'd walk, or take a collective rode in the new Goremobile.  But you won't do that, would you?

AND NOW THE ACTUAL NEWS – FROM DAILY MAIL:  Despite claims by furious Trump opponents that they would leave the country if he won the presidency, Canada hasn't proved as many citizenship applications as might be expected.  The country's did receive an uptick of 66 per cent in applications from January-April 2017, but that only meant an average of 400 people per month rather than the previous year's 264.  And those figures are still down from highs of 2011 - the middle of the Obama administration - when 564 Americans a month were trying to become Canadian, the National Post reported.   The left is wonderful at advertising dramatic pledges to leave the United States if so-and-so is elected.  The pledges never seem to pan out.  Even leftists like the privileges of American citizenship.

July 4, 2017