Americans are "far" unhealthier than their counterparts in Canada, Australia, Japan, Britain, France, Portugal, Italy and Germany and eight other countries, according to a study from the National Academy of Sciences.

These findings come even though here in the U.S. we spend $8,600 a year per person on healthcare, which is more than twice as much Britain, France and Sweden, "even with their universal healthcare systems."

NBC News:

“The size of the health disadvantage was pretty stunning,” Woolf told reporters in a telephone briefing.

Americans did worse in nine areas: infant mortality; injury and homicide rates; teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases; the AIDS virus; drug abuse; obesity and diabetes; heart disease; lung disease; and disabilities.

And many of these affect young people, not the elderly. Americans are seven times more likely to be murdered than people in the other countries, and 20 times more likely to be killed by a gun.

"I don't think most parents know that, on average, infants, children, and adolescents in the U.S. die younger and have greater rates of illness and injury than youth in other countries,” Woolf said.

“For many years, Americans have been dying at younger ages than people in almost all other high-income countries,” the expert panel wrote.

We also have a higher infant mortality rate than the other countries, with 32.7 deaths per 100,000. Other countries have infant mortality rates between 15 and 25 deaths per 100,000.

The report wasn't all bad for the U.S., Americans have lower death rates from cancer, the No. 2 cause of death, and do better at controlling blood pressure and cholesterol. “Americans who reach age 75 can expect to live longer than people in the peer countries,” the report reads.

The experts who wrote the report suggested that our culture here in the U.S. has much to do with the negative findings, and suggested that "policymakers" take action to reverse the trend.

DOWNLOADS: (161)

PLAYS: (704)

Embed

Tea party-backed Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) on Wednesday excused Walmart's decision to decline an invitation to the White House to discuss gun violence because "they are trying to grow the economy."

The nation's largest seller of munitions told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that it refused to participate in Vice President Joe Biden's task force because of a scheduling conflict.

Walmart also explained to CNN's Christine Romans that the company had already scheduled month sales meetings in Bentonville, Arkansas and none of its 2.2 million employees could make it to Washington.

CNN host Soledad O'Brien on Thursday told Johnson that "when people tell me they have a scheduling snafu, I just don't believe them."

"They're probably out there trying to grow the economy," the Wisconsin Republican shrugged. "You know, they're concentrating on their business and I'll take them at their word."

"I think the concern is -- from people who actually do want to protect gun rights -- is that this is a fast-moving train to try and restrict those gun rights," Johnson added. "So, people are suspicious of that."

"From my standpoint, if they've got sales meetings, those things are probably pretty important. They are trying to grow our economy and that's a good thing."

New Yorker magazine Washington Correspondent Ryan Lizza pointed out that Walmart had a fleet of corporate jets in Bentonville and could easily send someone to D.C. for meetings.

"It's just a slap in the face to publicly say you've been invited to the White House and you're not going," he explained. "Whenever someone in politics says it's a scheduling issue it means they don't want to be there."

During his appearance on CNN's Starting Point panel on Wednesday, Lizza also asked Johnson to respond conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, who recently asserted that liberals were trying to "normalize pedophilia" by legalizing same sex marriage.

"Senator, Rush Limbaugh and pedophilia?" Lizza pressed. "What do you got?"

"Not gonna happen," Johnson replied.

UPDATE (2:15 p.m. ET): A Walmart spokesperson on Wednesday said that the company had "underestimated the expectation to attend the meeting on Thursday in person, so we are sending an appropriate representative to participate."

A federal judge has approved a $1 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed by demonstrators who were pepper-sprayed during a protest at the University of California, Davis in 2011.

Via:

Under the settlement, UC agreed to pay $30,000 to each of the 21 plaintiffs, $100,000 to be split among 15 other individuals and $250,000 for their attorneys.

The Nov. 18, 2011, incident prompted national outrage, angry campus protests and calls for the resignation of Chancellor Linda Katehi after online videos shot by witnesses went viral.

Images of a police officer casually spraying orange pepper-spray in the faces of nonviolent protesters became a rallying symbol for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The settlement also calls for the University of California to set aside $100,000 to pay other individuals who can prove they were arrested or pepper-sprayed during the protest of tuition hikes and police brutality. The university would also give the ACLU up to $20,000 for its work reviewing free speech and protest policies at UC Davis.

“Exxon Hates Your Children” ad hits the airwaves: Hard hitting ad targeting subsidies to air in multiple markets this weekend.

Countering a multi-million dollar onslaught of advertising by the oil industry in defense of its subsidies, three progressive organizations re-launched ExxonHatesYourChildren.com today. The provocative campaign consists of a web site and a TV ad that will is crowd funded by supporters online.

Having now surpassed $12,500 in funds raised in mostly small donations from individuals around the country and 118,000 views on YouTube, the hard-hitting ad - called “Genius” by Grist.org - will begin hitting the airwaves in key markets this weekend.

The campaign targets $10 billion in fossil fuel subsidies provided annually by Congress. Not a single fossil fuel subsidy was eliminated in the deal that was ultimately struck in the fiscal cliff negotiations; in fact, tens of millions of dollars in subsidies to coal and oil companies were extended, on top of the billions in ongoing subsidies that continue.

Meanwhile, the American Petroleum Institute presented their latest “State of American Energy” report on Tuesday, which pushes for less regulation, more oil and gas production, and continuing subsidies.

“The American Petroleum Institute, Exxon’s mouthpiece, laid out a vision that spells disaster for the climate and our future,” said Steve Kretzmann, Executive Director of Oil Change International. “It’s time to stop subsidizing an industry that is hell-bent on using our tax money to destroy the planet for future generations.”

The ad will air in Washington, DC, New York City and Denver in the initial round starting Friday, January 11th. Denver was included by the campaign to ensure the ad is seen by some of the same viewers who were subjected in late 2012 to ads from the American Petroleum Institute defending the subsidies the “Exxon Hates Your Children” ad is targeting.

“The fact remains that Exxon and its counterparts in the fossil fuel industry are spending every day imperiling our futures just so they can make a profit,” said John Sellers, Executive Director of The Other 98%. “And what’s more, they’re making their profits on the backs of American taxpayers. It’s time for that to end.”

“The climate isn’t waiting for us to act. Every day we subsidize this dirty industry is a day we are moving in the wrong direction and giving our kids a scarier future,” said Drew Hudson, Executive Director of Environmental Action.

Details on the initial advertisement airings are as follows:

Denver - 6949, COMCAST, Denver DMA Interconnect

MSNBC

Friday, January 11th, 7p-8p The Rachel Maddow Show
Saturday, January 12th, 6a-8a UP With Chris Hayes

[Via priceofoil.org]
Washington, DC - 6030, COMCAST, Washington Interconnect

MSNBC

Friday, January 11th, 8p-9p The Rachel Maddow Show
Saturday, January 12th, 7a-9a UP with Chris Hayes
Sunday, January 13th, 7a-9a UP with Chris Hayes

New York City - 0201, VIAMEDIA, INC., Viamedia/NYC Roll-Up Zone, NY

MSNBC

Friday, January 11th, 9p-10p The Rachel Maddow Show
Saturday, January 12th, 8a-10a UP with Chris Hayes

By Lois Beckett, ProPublica

In Minnesota, Democratic volunteers scour their local newspapers each morning for letters to the editor with a political slant. They pay attention to the names of callers on radio shows. They drive through their neighborhoods and jot down the addresses of campaign lawn signs.

Then they feed the information into a state Democratic Party database that includes nearly every voter in Minnesota.

Some of the states' few dozen data volunteers are so devoted that they log into the party database daily from their home computers. Deb Pitzrick, 61, of Eden Prairie, convinced a group of her friends to form the "Grandma Brigade." These women, in their 50s, 60s and 70s, no longer want to knock on doors for the Democrats. Instead, they support the party by gathering public information about other voters.

Much of the data the Grandma Brigade collects is prosaic: records of campaign donations or voters who have recently died. But a few volunteers see free information everywhere. They browse the listings of names on Tea Party websites. They might add a record of what was said around the family Thanksgiving table — Uncle Mitch voted for Bachmann, cousin Alice supports gay marriage.

One data volunteer even joked about holding "rat out your neighbor parties," where friends would be encouraged to add notes about the political views of other people on their block.

Once information about individual people is entered into the state party's database, it doesn't stay in Minnesota. Almost all the information collected by local volunteers like the Grandma Brigade also ends up in the party's central database in Washington.

Few places have data volunteers as dedicated as the ones in Minnesota, which has been held up as a model for other state Democratic parties. Both Democrats and Republicans have centralized databases that, among other things, track opinions you share with local campaign volunteers.

Continue reading »

Annie Leonard spent 20 years working for environmental organizations, studying where our stuff comes from and where it goes. She followed waste from industrialized countries to apartheid-era South Africa, where it was dumped in black townships, to Haiti, where it was disguised as fertilizer and dumped on a beach, to Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines where we sent everything from e-waste to used car batteries for recycling in a process too dirty for our own backyard.

Then, in 2007, she made a short animated film about our consumer culture and the damage it does to the environment. The Story of Stuff went viral (chances are you’ve seen it — more than 15 million people have) and spawned a whole series of videos that explain complicated environmental and political concepts in an irresistibly simple and engaging way. The Story of Change is a bit of a departure — instead of looking at the problem, it proposes a solution.

DOWNLOADS: (562)

PLAYS: (9489)

Embed

We've covered both of these stories here, whether it's the "too big to jail" corrupt HSBC, or the out of touch greedy AIG, which was considering suing the taxpayers after they'd bailed them out. This Wednesday evening, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart took his turn going after them.

AIG decided not to join their former CEO "Hank" Greenberg's lawsuit against the government after all. I guess they took a look at those booming sales of pitchforks and torches and decided it might not bode well for them to do so.

Good morning, today is Thursday, January 10, 2013. On this day in 1964, The Beatles' first album in the United States, "Introducing the Beatles," was released.

Happy Birthday to Ronnie Hawkins, Frank Sinatra Jr., Donald Fagen, George Foreman, Pat Benatar, and Shawn Colvin.

Your morning open thread begins below.

A conservative advocacy group has targeted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, running ads in his home state of Kentucky highlighting his key role in negotiating a deal to avert the fiscal cliff. Brent Bozell, the president of For America, the group pushing the ads, called them a “statement to make it emphatically clear that what the minority leader did was 100 percent unacceptable. Conservatives are going to hold him responsible for this.” McConnell negotiated with Democrats to create a deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, although many Republicans felt betrayed by the ultimate deal, which allowed for tax increases.

The ads read, “Mitch McConnell: Whose side are you on?” with the image of a morose McConnell wedged between pictures of a smiling Vice President Joe Biden and smirking President Barack Obama.The ads will be distributed through Google display ads and will also run on conservative websites such as the Drudge Report and the Daily Caller.

DOWNLOADS: (582)

PLAYS: (7250)

Embed

Jon Stewart was still on fire his second night back from vacation, despite having some trouble with his voice due to a cold and he laid into the right for their staunch opposition to any new regulations or form of gun control, even though we're constantly hearing them say that "everything should be on the table" to deal with the problem.

No one was spared from NRA head Wayne LaPierre, to Fox News, to GOP politicians to you name it. After playing some footage of Fox "news" and wingnut Glenn Beck and their fearmongering on the topic, Stewart pulled out an assault rifle on the set in reaction:

STEWART: I'm not sure what happened. I'm sorry. I blacked out in the middle of that and woke up with an AK in my... I don't know... or whatever this is. I'm sure I'll get letters about what this really is, which is plastic is what it really is.

It was nice to see him get in a not so thinly veiled swipe at the wingnuts who went crazy after David Gregory held up something that appeared to be a magazine on the set of Meet the Press. There is a mile long list of why I'd like to see Gregory off of the air, but that stupidity isn't one of them.

Stewart got a shot in on LaPierre for his solution to the problem with our mental health system failing us not doing anything to actually improve taking care of those with mental health problems, but a national database of the "lunatics" out there instead. After asking what someone might have to do to be added to that list, Stewart recommended that LaPierre be put on it for this:

LAPIERRE: Americans, don't want to be added to that pile of dead people that have been left defenseless by the U.N. policies.

STEWART: LaPierre with two r's is a run.

Next up was HuckaJesus saying we don't have a gun problem, but a sin problem instead, to which Stewart responded that he didn't realize that his masturbating had risen to the level of a national crisis. He wrapped up the first segment with Fox's Eric Bolling saying it's not the right time to talk about gun control and that he'd have to wait until the next segment to continue his conversation about it.

In part two, Stewart did a great job talking about all of the other things we are willing to regulate in the United States other than guns, and the list of reasons we're given by the politicians and the talking heads for not regulating them, along with all of the legislation that's been passed to make sure that the gun manufacturers are never held liable for their products, unlike every other industry out there which manufacturers products which might harm or kill people.

Continue reading »