People who smoke take at least 10 years off their life expectancy, a new study has found.
On the other hand, those who kick the habit before age 40 reduce the excess risk of death associated with continued smoking by about 90%, according to the study in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.
“Smoking is the No. 1 preventable cause of death in the U.S.,” says Tim McAfee, a co-author of the study. “We need to do more to educate the American people about these findings,” adds McAfee, director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study examined data from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey between 1997 and 2004.
Women who smoke now die at a similar rate for men, the study also found. Previous research from the 1980s showed that women were less affected.
“Women now lose about 11 years of life expectancy if they smoke,” McAfee says. “Men lose about 12 years.” He adds that it is presumed that women’s smoking patterns are now more similar to men’s in terms of picking up the habit at younger ages and smoking a larger number of cigarettes.
McAfee says the study has global implications because most of the world’s 1.3 billion smokers live in low- and middle-income countries, where cessation is less common.
Susan Rice. Remember her? She was one of the names being talked about to take over as Secretary of State when Hillary Clinton steps down later this month. But Mrs. Rice had to withdraw her name after Republicans, specifically John McCain and Lindsey Graham, placed a target on her back and relentlessly fired away, blaming her it seemed, for the events in Benghazi where four Americans including Ambassador Chris Stevens were killed.
The unwarranted attacks on Rice came after she went on television and repeated the talking points given to her about the events in Benghazi. Rice, who is the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, had no first hand knowledge of the events in Benghazi, but Republicans crucified her anyway, causing her to withdraw her name from consideration for Secretary of State. And it is noteworthy to point out that since Rice withdrew her name, the attacks mysteriously stopped.
For Months since the Benghazi September 11th, 2012 attacks, Republicans wanted blood. They wanted someone from the Obama Administration to pay for what happened in Libya. Their next target after Rice, was the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Previous attempts to get Mrs. Clinton to testify failed due to some health issues. After it was reported that Mrs. Clinton suffered a concussion in her home, Republicans tagged that news as her trying to avoid the testimony. They called it Benghazi-gate.
Well now the time has come. The climax of the Republican party is here. Hillary Clinton is testifying today about the events in Benghazi and Republicans are having the time of their lives and the time of their political career. This is their opportunity to bring the Obama administration to its knees. This is their chance to blame a high-ranking official for the four American deaths in Libya.
But their plan may not be working out just yet. Early reports from the testimony are showing that Mrs. Clinton is holding her own. Apparently she is not the raving lunatic Republicans would have us believe. Apparently she has a heart and although she acknowledged that things could have went differently, it seems that she and her department are doing everything possible, including implementing 29 recommendations from an independent review board, to make sure another future Benghazi does not happen.
Almost coming to tears at times, the Secretary of State tried to reassure the Republicans on the panel. “Make no mistake about it, we have got to have a better strategy,” she said. “I stood next to President Obama as the Marines carried those flag-draped caskets off the plane at Andrews,’ she said. ‘I put my arms around the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters.”
A Republican representing Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, dug in.”There were systemic [security] deficiencies and I know you know that,” he said. “To my knowledge no one has been held accountable.”
‘These officials were screaming out for more security.
Mrs Clinton replied;
“We can’t think now about what could have, should have, would have happened. Benghazi didn’t happen in a vacuum,’ she said. ‘The Arab revolutions have scrambled power dynamics and shattered security forces across the region. And instability in Mali has created an expanding safe haven for terrorists who look to extend their influence and plot further attacks of the kind we saw just last week in Algeria.”
Senator John McCain, the man responsible for the personally attacking Susan Rice and questioning her education and experience, called Benghazi “a cover-up from the beginning.” He is the newest member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
It is the hope of Republicans to take Hillary Clinton out now. She is the Democratic favorite to run for President in 2016 and tarnishing her exceptional job as Secretary of State they hope, will be a deciding factor for many Americans if she runs. But so far, these hearings are not turning out the way Republicans plan. They are coming off as a group of hypocrites, who ignored the attacks on September 11th where almost three thousand people died in New York, focused instead on Benghazi where four Americans were killed.
If they can ask about security now, why shouldn’t they answer that same question about September 11, 2001? After all, there are documented proof that their president, George W. Bush, had intelligence that Bin Laden was about to attack.
I watched as Wayne LaPierre of the NRA rushed to the microphone to once again, try to defend the rights of the Sandy Hook shooter, the rights of the Colorado movie theater shooter, the rights of shooter who used his semi-automatic gun to put a bullet in the head of Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords. And I couldn’t help but feeling sorry for Mr. LaPierre – a man who, with this new speech, confirmed that the NRA’s back is up against the wall, and LaPierre was feeling the pressure from his bosses – the gun manufactures.
LaPierre felt the need to focus on one sentence from the President’s inaugural speech. As he stood at the podium, his eyes darting all around the room filled with his supporters, LaPierre repeated this line from the President;
We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name calling as reasoned debate. We must act! We must act knowing that out work will be imperfect. We must act knowing that today’s victories will be only impartial. And that it will be up to those who stand here in four years, and forty years, and four hundred years hence, to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.
LaPierre focused on the first part of that statement, we cannot mistake absolutism for principle. He explained his interpretation of what he thought the President meant. “Barack Obama is saying, that the only principal way to make children safe is to make lawful citizens less safe and violent criminals more safe. That’s what it amounts to,” he said. He got a giggle and scattered applauds from his supporters with the line that “criminals couldn’t care less about Barack Obama’s so-called principles. That’s why they’re called criminals.”
LaPierre then attacked some of the common sense Executive Actions taken by the President last Tuesday. Executive Actions that a majority of NRA members agree with. He continued;
Forcing law-abiding people to fork over excessive fees to exercise their rights. Forcing parents to fill out forms to leave a family heirloom to a loved one. Standing in line filling out a bunch of bureaucratic paperwork, just so a grandfather could give a grandson a Christmas gift.
LaPierre then went back to his same old scare tactic, that “there’s only two reasons for a federal list on gun owners, to tax them, or to take them.” To this line, LaPierre got more scattered applauds from his supporters.
The rest of his speech centered on his assertion and the NRA’s favorite method to keep NRA members in check, that the President was coming to take the guns. He warned the President against “attacking clearly defined absolutes, in favor of his principles.”
The NRA waited a little over 24 hours before tossing LaPierre out in front of the cameras to double down on their scare campaign. They looked at the President’s second inauguration and felt what a majority of Americans felt, that times are changing and changing for the better. Wayne LaPierre and the gun manufacturers felt their grip on the American people slipping, their scare hold on the Second Amendment slowly evaporating. And whipping up another hysteria that the government was coming for your guns has always been a marvelous way to boost their membership and sell more guns.
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday that senate leaders are getting close to a deal on filibuster reform and the chamber will take up the issue soon, probably after taking up a bill to award $60 billion in aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy.
“Once we complete that vital legislation,” Reid said of the Sandy bill, “the Senate will take action to make this institution that we all love — the United States Senate — work more effectively.”
“I’m confident we’ll reach an agreement that allows the Senate to operate more effectively in coming months,” he said in remarks on the Senate floor.
Democrats have been vowing to reform the Senate’s rules to make it harder for the minority party to bog down action by requiring nearly every bill to win 60 votes and clear a Republican filibuster. They believe the filibuster, once a legislative tool invoked only rarely, has become abused. Republicans say it is their only way to get a voice in a chamber where Democrats routinely prevent the GOP from offering amendments to key legislation.
President Obama stood in the first of his two inauguration events tonight and introduced his better half. In his introduction, the President repeated something he had said earlier in the day, that “some may dispute the quality of the president, but nobody disputes the quality of our First Lady.”
The crowd went wild. Then the President introduced the First Lady, who walked on stage looking stunning in a Jason Wu dress.
Singing Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together was Jennifer Hudson.
His calls for marriage equality and for legislation on climate change, while preserving entitlements, is a clarion call for progressives and proof that the country has turned a corner and moved away from the stultifying conservatism of the last 30 years. The United States will not be looking to become more religious, nor will it be demonizing gays and lesbians or attempting to make reproductive choices a matter of whimsy for the government instead of a collective decision made by people and their doctors. We will be paying attention to the world, but not trying to run it according to a naïve ideology that says we can bring our form of democracy to everyone. And for the first time in our history we will have a health care system where all citizens not only can have care, but must have care because it’s the right thing to do.
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would never make a speech like this, and thank heaven they won’t have the opportunity to do so. They would take us backwards. We are now moving forwards.
Obama called out the conservatives by fighting back against labeling people who use government services as “takers,” a word the GOP used to little effect in the 2012 campaign. We need programs to help the poor and to try to educate every child. We need programs to make sure that the elderly get care when their resources have dwindled or disappeared. We need adjustments to the tax code and to close the dreaded loopholes in the code, and to use the revenue from those actions to strengthen the United States, not to reward the wealthy or corporations with more tax cuts or advantages.
During Obama’s first term, the right was fond of saying that the great liberal realignment never occurred and that the only reason Obama was elected was because of the recession or the weakness of the Republican candidates. The Tea Party revolt of 2010 was supposedly the end of the “mistake.”
Wrong.
What 2008 uncovered was cemented in 2012. The country’s experiment with smaller government, massive income and resource inequality and a sense that large corporations and institutions were going to swamp the middle class is over. Yes, big money does support Democrats and Republicans alike, but that will be remedied, as will all the issues that the GOP ignored for decades. We will have climate legislation, more revenue, marriage equality and immigration reform. It will take more than four years to accomplish these. The pace will ebb and flow. But they will be done.
WASHINGTON — President Obama made addressing climate change the most prominent policy vow of his second Inaugural Address, setting in motion what Democrats say will be a deliberately paced but aggressive campaign built around the use of his executive powers to sidestep Congressional opposition.
“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that failure to do so would betray our children and future generations,” Mr. Obama said on Monday at the start of eight sentences on the subject, more than he devoted to any other specific area. “Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.”
The central place he gave to the subject seemed to answer the question of whether he considered it a realistic second-term priority. He devoted scant attention to it in the campaign and has delivered a mixed message about its importance since the election.
And on January 21st, he will take that Oath of Office again for the fourth time, joining Franklin Roosevelt, who also took the Oath four times. The only difference is , Roosevelt was elected all four times.
A few hundred years ago, slavery began in this country. This simple Time-line shows the progression from the time the first slave ships arrived, to the election of the first black President. Today, January 20th, the Constitution requires Barack Obama to be sworn in for his second term. Now that’s progress.
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