Happy Independence Day!

I hope you're all enjoying your freedoms on this glorious Fourth. I know that I am absolutely wallowing in mine, especially given the news that the government is now photographing all my mail to keep me safe. The fact that my Time Warner Cable bill arrived in a ripped-open condition this week had, in fact, made me suspect that something was afoot. But it's fine with me if TWC is on some kind of postal No-Seal, No-Fly list. I am terrorized every time I get one of their bills, which always seem to come only a week after I paid the last one, and is always full of new hidden charges, like a monthly rental fee for the same modem I've had for the past five years.

And when a company's motto is Freedom To Enjoy, I know deep down in my soul that my freedom is simply their obscene profit, and that keeping them in my life makes me nothing more than an abject slave to their intrusive technology. I think we should all be getting a discount for having unknowingly contributed to the PRISM program all these years. Instead, we're the ones actually paying for the privilege of being spied upon. Very undemocratic, if you ask me.

Did you read about the new Restore the Fourth movement getting underway on this day? Hundreds or even thousands of people will be protesting All Over This Land against the surveillance state, no doubt getting surveilled as they do so. I hope it catches on.

And speaking of patriotism, Ralph Nader conducted a Fourth of July survey of multinational corporations, asking if they love America more than they love their off-shored wealth. Two companies (Walmart and Chevron) actually responded to him with non-responses. Results here.

Oh, and Egypt had another revolution. Like me, did you feel just a tad jealous as millions of Egyptians were able to oust a democratically-elected president just because he betrayed their trust? Of course, the military did all the heavy lifting. There will never be a military coup here in the Homeland, because that train left the station eons ago. The generals and the pseudo-generals of the military-industrial-surveillance-media complex have been the de facto government for more years than we will never be allowed to fully know -- although, thanks to Edward Snowden and those pesky "activist journalists", we are finally getting an inkling.

I was reading the other day that the Fourth of July is prime time for news dumps by officials of stuff they don't want attracting too much attention. I was thinking maybe Obama would sneak in approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline. But so far, the only biggie is the White House announcement that "some" businesses won't have to pay for employee health insurance until 2015. (translation: probably never, and they are finally tacitly admitting that the whole law is a major blunder.) The New York Times made the major blunder of using ACA architect Ezekiel Emmanuel to defend the decision. Readers, predictably, are wrathful. My response (which in retrospect I wish I had made meaner) --

Health insurance should not be related to employment, period. Just think about how many more "great workers" that businesses could afford to hire if they didn't have the millstone of health insurance premiums hanging around their necks. The USA is the only advanced nation in the world that doesn't supply universal health care. And thanks to the predacious insurance companies in the equation, we have the most expensive health care system in the world, with some of the worst outcomes in terms of morbidity and mortality.

In addition, granting a reprieve to what is defensively being called by the White House "only" a small proportion of businesses is just a terrible PR move. The Obama administration is seen to be announcing that it cares more for the employer than it does for the worker. And all that people are paying attention to is the delay, not the fact that those affected can still purchase coverage on their own. Dumb idea, only giving more ammo to the "I told ya so" Republicans in the mid-terms.

My dream is that the whole ACA will turn out to be so cumbersome and cost-ineffective, and people will get so sick and tired of being sick and tired, that all the Gopers and the Wall Street Dems will be voted out of office and we'll finally get a progressive government answerable only to the people.

Medicare for All. We are dying out here.

And while we're all dying out here, if you are lucky enough to have the "Freedom to Enjoy", SyFy is running one of its Twilight Zone marathons this long weekend. Rod Serling based many of his stories on the Surveillance State, then hunting for communists under every bed. Today, they're hunting for everybody in and out of bed, and they don't even need human eyes to see us.