AT AMAZON, it’s the Thanksgiving Store, with deals on barware, cookware, cookbooks and ingredients.

And do your emergency preparation shopping at the Amazon Emergency Essentials Store.

Also, Warehouse Deals on small appliances.

ANYTHING YOU CAN DO I CAN DO META: Audio: Obama Lies About His Lies.

FREQUENT URL-SHIFTER PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH is now at PejmanYousefzadeh.net. Bookmark it.

TWEET OF THE DAY: “Dear America: We warned about higher premiums & millions of cancellations, & the media called us racist liars. Remember that.” — Tea Party

AVIK ROY: The Myth Of Americans’ Poor Life Expectancy.

If you really want to measure health outcomes, the best way to do it is at the point of medical intervention. If you have a heart attack, how long do you live in the U.S. vs. another country? If you’re diagnosed with breast cancer? In 2008, a group of investigators conducted a worldwide study of cancer survival rates, called CONCORD. They looked at 5-year survival rates for breast cancer, colon and rectal cancer, and prostate cancer. I compiled their data for the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan, and western Europe. Guess who came out number one?

Yep, you guessed it. But wait, there’s more:

Another point worth making is that people die for other reasons than health. For example, people die because of car accidents and violent crime. A few years back, Robert Ohsfeldt of Texas A&M and John Schneider of the University of Iowa asked the obvious question: what happens if you remove deaths from fatal injuries from the life expectancy tables? Among the 29 members of the OECD, the U.S. vaults from 19th place to…you guessed it…first. Japan, on the same adjustment, drops from first to ninth.

It’s great that the Japanese eat more sushi than we do, and that they settle their arguments more peaceably. But these things don’t have anything to do with socialized medicine.

Which is why we hear a lot about broad life expectancy, and not much else.

THESE ARE NOT THE ILLUMINATED THATCHED COTTAGES YOU WERE LOOKING FOR: Star Wars Invades Thomas Kinkade Paintings.

AT AMAZON, Fall Essentials In Patio, Lawn & Garden.

Plus, take an extra 15% off select Stanley tools.

Also, deals on battery chargers and portable power.

I’VE GOT A PIECE IN ROAD & TRACK: Don’t track me, bro! As gas tax revenues drop, governments look to more invasive solutions, privacy be damned.

UPDATE: Link was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!

SEE, THIS MAKES PRIVATIZATION LOOK PRETTY GOOD: South Carolina Police Chief Threatens to Arrest Drug War Critic. Or at least the abolition of official immunity.

SEEING IN THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT? Only kinda-sorta. But vision is heavily based on brain-processing. And while I’ve always had good night vision, it got a lot better after I spent a lot of time in a darkroom. I don’t think my eyes improved — I think my brain got better at figuring out how things look in the dark.

KEG-STAND QUEENS: A Photo Essay On College Women Drinking.

LIFE IN POSTFEMINIST AMERICA: Woman Admits She Uses Guys for Expensive Meals at Nice Restaurants. “Men should feel honored by this open invitation to date me.”

INDEED: FAA Says Electronic Devices Now Allowed In-Flight. So Why The Heck Were We Turning Them Off All This Time?

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: The Book Obama Didn’t Read, And Should Have.

MICHAEL GERSON: Democrats Ditch The Middle Class. It’s the Gentry party now, and its welfare-dependent clients.

POST-MORTEM: Why Obama’s ‘IPod Presidency’ Was Doomed. “America thinks of itself as being one of the youngest nations in the world. But as far as governments go, we’re one of the oldest: We’ve been operating continuously under the same constitution for more than 200 years now. A certain amount of what Jonathan Rauch has dubbed ‘demosclerosis’ was inevitable. And it’s now so far advanced that I doubt we’ll ever have an iPod presidency . . . at least not until an iPod is something that your grandmother used to listen to.”

ART: Photographer Puts Two Strangers Together For Intimate Photographs, And The Results Are Surprising.

CLIMATE CHANGE: U.S. Tornado Count So Low That It’s Invaded The Legend.

Hurricanes seem awfully scarce, too. This isn’t what Al Gore was telling us would happen.

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Mark Obenshain, a Reason to Vote in Virginia Tuesday.

NEW YORK TIMES COLUMNIST DISCOVERS THAT REPUBLICANS ARE HUMAN BEINGS: A reader calls this the “dumbest oped of 2013,” but actually, for the Times, it’s a triumph of open-mindedness and inquiry.

THEY’RE JUST NOT VERY NICE PEOPLE: Kennedys feuded before bodies were recovered from JFK Jr.’s flight.

HOW TO INSTALL a car subwoofer.

READER BOOK PLUG: From Reader Kate Lusty, The Ghosts of Jubilee. Currently $2.99 on Kindle.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 4 Ways Being a Sorority Girl Prepared Me for the Real World.

PHOTO GALLERY: NYC Subways In The 1980s Were No Joke. Nope, it was ugly then. Now it’s like Disneyland by comparison. Likely to revert under new mayor, though. . . .