Smoking And Presidential Privilege

Being a highly addictive sort, I've gone back and forth with smoking forever. The main trick with addiction is to actually want not to be tied to the habit. It is never that I want to quit smoking, just that I don't want to have to hide in back alleys and under bridges to do it without getting arrested or harassed, or offending people.

That is until now. All the government BS about smoking and cost to society, etc. just makes me want to light up. I hate that sort of hall monitor authoritarian mentality. Now we have Obama weighing in on the matter, and he is a sneak smoker. But, because he's president, he figures he can do whatever he wants and still tax the behavior of those who can least afford it, and who have plenty of reason to seek chemical and other escape. It irks me that anyone assumes the right to tax in order to modify personal habits of others. Spare me the arguments for such things. There are a million factors not included in the statistics, and much has to do with whether people can be free or not.

The biggest motive I now have for not smoking is to be unlike Obama. He can't quit. Yet he gets in the thick of all the tax grabbing efforts to mess with others who smoke. I can quit, and that further separates me from someone I deem philosophically and morally at odds with most of what I believe makes life worth living. I'm for individual freedom and he's big on group action. Mandatory volunteerism and the like. How can something be volunteer service if it is mandatory? Also if you get paid and it is considered volunteer, then any job is part of that glorious world of volunteerism.

I hope Barack never stops smoking. If he does, I'm oppositional enough to smoke six packs a day just because. But what would be his motive anyway? He does what he wants and gets by with "do as I say, not as I do". The big press just goes along. Lots of people do. They like him and want him to be bigger than life, the savior of planet earth and humanity. I just want him and all the others to back off and get out of private life, quit fighting vague wars, and for God's sake revamp the tax system and abolish the IRS. Get out of as many facets of life as is possible. The ideal free state does not allow or warrant a parental government, nor a charitable one. The people, who fuel the government anyway, can and will do that. But you have to back up a million steps from where we are. Couldn't happen overnight, but it could happen.

Light up, Barrisimo, light up. Knowing you, too, have to dodge the daylight while you puff does me a world of good and makes me get a strange pleasure from suffering through the cravings without giving in. Thank you. Maybe you really are the hero they say if you can piss me off enough not to smoke. I quit for a good while before so maybe I will again. I go days at a time frequently.

I guess I can safely say I feel his pain. That strikes me funny for some reason. If only he were a few dozen degrees more libertarian in his philosophy. What a waste of a smoke buddy. Well, I guess some of his pals to the south smoke. Cigars mostly.

It'd be really great if he admitted to sniffing glue. "I struggle with this glue habit, but I'm all for a glue tax and road blocks to check for blood glue levels. Kids, do not sniff glue. It is bad for society."