, - United Press International
Stephan: Where would you fall if you had participated in this poll?
ROCHESTER, NEW YORK — Only a third of U.S. adults say they are very happy — minorities show particularly pronounced declines in the past two years, a U.S. survey indicates.
A Harris Poll of 2,345 U.S. adults surveyed online April 10-15 by Harris Interactive found certain groups, such as minorities, recent graduates and the disabled, trended downward in the last couple of years.
‘Our happiness index offers insight into what’s on the minds of Americans today and is a reflection of the state of affairs in our country,’ Regina Corso, senior vice president of the Harris Poll, said in a statement. ‘While the attitudes on the economy may be improving, we’re seeing that this is not translating into an improvement in overall happiness.’
Since last measured two years ago, the Happiness Index was especially low among the Hispanic-American population. It is important to note that a causal link cannot be established, it might not be a coincidence that this drop coincides with a political landscape that has seen frequent, sometimes contentious, discussion of immigration policy in recent months, Corso said.
Americans earning under $50,000 per year were less likely to qualify as very happy than in 2011 — down from 33 percent to 29 […]
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ERIC W. DOLAN, - The Raw Story
Stephan: Here is more legislation from the Republicans. They want to outlaw all pregnancy terminations after the 20th week, and even compel women to carry non viable fetuses to term, at the risk of their own health. When I was younger a good friend of mine discovered in the 24th week that her baby would not live. It had some horrible malformation. Under the law these men are trying to enforce on women, she would have had to go through the pregnancy even though the child could not live.
This is what the Republican Party considers to be governing. Dying, and hungry children; aged men and women who have no health care; a climate spinning into something we will hardly recognize; a failing middle class. None of that is of any interest.
At the end of the day, we have to face the fact that these hateful incompetents are in office, because American citizens voted for them.
An all-male House Judiciary subcommittee on Tuesday approved legislation that would impose a new nationwide restriction on abortion.
By a party line vote of 6-4, the House Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice approved a bill that would ban abortions nationwide after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act is based on the belief that fetuses are capable of experiencing pain after 20 weeks gestation.
When Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) first proposed the legislation, it only would have covered the District of Columbia. But Franks successfully pushed for the bill to apply nationwide following the conviction of abortion provider Kermit Gosnell.
‘The trial of Kermit Gosnell exposed late abortions for what they really are: relocated infanticide,
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CHARLENE LAINO, - MedPage Today
Stephan: As we enter summer this is something you might consider.
Daily sunscreen use significantly slowed skin aging in healthy middle-age men and women, according to results of a randomized trial published online in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
As assessed by changes in microtopography, people who used sunscreen every day showed no signs of photo-aging over a 4.5-year period, reported Adele Green, MBBS, PhD, of Royal Brisbane Hospital in Australia, and colleagues.
Moreover, skin aged 24% less in people who used sunscreen daily compared with discretionary users (OR= 0.76, 95% CI 0.59–0.98).
However, daily beta-carotene supplementation had no effect on skin aging, Green said.
Sunscreen and antioxidants have long been advocated to prevent skin aging, but to date there has been no evidence of their effectiveness in humans, Green said.
To fill in the gap, Green and colleagues studied 903 adults under 55 years randomly selected from a community register in Nambour, Australia, a subtropical town north of Brisbane. They were randomly assigned to one of four groups: daily use of a broad-spectrum SPF 15-plus sunscreen and a supplement containing 30 mg of beta-carotene; daily use of sunscreen plus placebo; discretionary use of sunscreen plus 30 mg of beta carotene; or discretionary use of sunscreen plus placebo.
Photoaging was assessed by comparing microtopography grades at baseline […]
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ZACH CARTER, - The Huffington Post
Stephan: We have a country coming apart at the seams and this is what the Republican House chooses to spend its time doing. There seems to be a complete incapacity amongst the Republicans to actually govern. They spend their time posturing, digging at Obama, and wailing about values issues. Almost no actual substantive legislation occurs.
WASHINGTON — House Republicans are scheduled to vote on two separate budget bills this week, each of which would reject funding for the poverty activism group ACORN, despite the fact that ACORN disbanded three years ago.
ACORN, also known as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, came under heavy fire in the fall of 2009 after conservative videographer James O’Keefe released a set of selectively edited videos that appeared to show its employees offering advice on tax avoidance related to prostitution and child smuggling. Independent investigations by the California attorney general, the Massachusetts attorney general and the Brooklyn, N.Y., district attorney would later clear ACORN of criminal wrongdoing, and an investigation by the Government Accountability Office would clear ACORN of charges that it mishandled federal funds.
But in the fall of 2009, Congress banned federal funding for ACORN using broad language that applied to ‘any organization’ that had been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws or campaign finance laws or with filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. The funding ban also extended to any employees, contractors or others affiliated with any group so charged.
Struggling with the bad publicity and loss of federal […]
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ELISABETH ROSENTHAL, - The New York Times
Stephan: Here is the cold truth about the avarice of the American Illness Profit System. It exists for no other purpose than to make profit, and I find it amazing that people just passively sit still for this.
Click through to see the graphic which should outrage you.
MERRICK, N.Y. — Deirdre Yapalater’s recent colonoscopy at a surgical center near her home here on Long Island went smoothly: she was whisked from pre-op to an operating room where a gastroenterologist, assisted by an anesthesiologist and a nurse, performed the routine cancer screening procedure in less than an hour. The test, which found nothing worrisome, racked up what is likely her most expensive medical bill of the year: $6,385.
That is fairly typical: in Keene, N.H., Matt Meyer’s colonoscopy was billed at $7,563.56. Maggie Christ of Chappaqua, N.Y., received $9,142.84 in bills for the procedure. In Durham, N.C., the charges for Curtiss Devereux came to $19,438, which included a polyp removal. While their insurers negotiated down the price, the final tab for each test was more than $3,500.
‘Could that be right?
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