Posted on 10/08/2008 7:58:42 AM PDT by mimi from mi
He's setting a wonderful example for the youth of America. I admit that I'm a smoker, but I'm not running for president.
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/08/obama-admits-bumming-cigarettes-campaign-trail/
From the 9/25/07 primary debate:
MR. RUSSERT: Senator Obama, a national law to ban smoking in all public places?
SENATOR OBAMA: I think that local communities are making enormous strides, and I think they’re doing the right thing on this. If it turns out that we’re not seeing enough progress at the local level, then I would favor a national law. I don’t think we’ve seen the local laws play themselves out entirely, because I think you’re seeing an enormous amount of progress in Chicago, in New York, in other major cities around the country. And because I think we have been treating this as a public health problem and educating the public on the dangers of secondhand smoke, that that pressure will continue.
As I said, if we can’t provide these kinds of protections at the local level, which would be my preference, I would be supportive of a national law.
MR. RUSSERT: Have you been successful in stopping smoking?
SENATOR OBAMA: I have. The — you know, the best cure is my wife. (Laughter.)
Democrats: The Do As I Say, Not as I Do Party.
I wonder if the urge ever leaves. I quit five years ago and still crave them a few times a week. Lucky for me I’m cheap and refuse to pay the big $$$ they command now or I might relapse.
No, it never leaves, at least for me. The body remembers the "feel" and "taste" but not the discomfort of hacking coughing and choking on phlegm. The brain must take charge and overrule the cravings................
Also announcing he successfully quit smoking in that national in September debate, while Jake Tapper smelled smoke all over him in August:
Obama is Smokin’
April 03, 2008 9:29 AM
Last August, I ran into Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, outside the Senate chamber in the Capitol.
This was before the Obama surge, before he had omnipresent Secret Service agents, back when you might see him strolling solo.
We chatted for a second, mainly about the Pakistan speech he’d recently given and about how the media had covered it. He was in good spirits.
As any close friend or family member can attest, I have an unusually keen sense of smell and immediately I smelled cigarette smoke on Obama. Frankly, he reeked of cigarettes.
Obama ran off before I could ask him if he’d just snuck a smoke, so I called his campaign.
They denied it. He’d quit months before, in February, they insisted. He chewed nicorette.
But I knew what I’d smelled and I asked his campaign to double-check and to ask him if he’d had a cigarette.
They reported back that he had told them he hadn’t had a cigarette since he quit.
And maybe that was true. Maybe I imagined the cigarette smoke. My olfactory nerve somehow misfired.
Except….last night on MSNBC’s Hardball, Obama admitted that his attempt to wean himself from the vile tobacco weed had not been entirely successful.
“I fell off the wagon a couple times during the course of it, and then was able to get back on,” he said. “But it is a struggle like everything else.”
Now I wonder about last August.
It’s not a big deal in the scheme of things — the war on Iraq, a major economic crisis — indeed, it’s miniscule. Hardly worth mentioning.
Except that I don’t like feeling that I wasn’t being dealt with honestly. And as much as citizens who are suspect of the media might scoff at such a notion, many of us consider ourselves to be your representatives to help make sure our leaders are telling us the truth, and leading the country down a path we as a nation are confident is the right one. (Corny, I know.)
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/04/obama-is-smokin.html
GEE WONDER WHAT ELSE HE LIED ABOUT IN DEBATES???
According to those I know who have quit for more than 20 years (family members)....sadly, that answer is no. I quit twice already. The damn “car” made me start up again!! I MUST quit before I’m 40 (38 now). Damn those things!!
Congrats on staying on the wagon.
There's an explanation for that. Smoking is now a largely working class vice. Decades ago that wasn't true. Watch old Hollywood movies and you'll see sophisticated, upper class people smoking in scene after scene. But elites turned away from smoking years ago, leaving it primarily a vice practiced by non-elites. Once that happened, the left declared war on smoking.
In contrast, drugs are still an indulgence of the "beautiful people". See how often Hollywood stars have to go off to rehab. Disease-spreading sexual practices such as homosexuality are also chic and in vogue, so the same people who want kids to be taught never to smoke tobacco are perfectly willing to encourage them to experiment with homosexuality.
Liberals don't really give a damn about the people, they just want to indulge in those vices that happen to be fashionable. A vice practiced mostly by working class folks isn't fashionable and therefore it's okay to oppose that vice. Vices practiced by the Beverly Hills, Broadway, and Martha's Vineyard crowd are to be encouraged. If homosexuality was a working class indulgence, and chewing Red Man was all the rage in Hollywood, libs would be suppressing homos and inviting chewing tobacco salesmen into the public schools.
Obambi is a dream leftist for the anti-American crowd. They don't like his smoking habit, but it's a minor fault they can overlook as long as he's Marxist perfection on everything else. Note that tobacco (a pet issue for the 'Rats in 1996, 2000, and 2004) hasn't been mentioned at all in this election. In the prior three elections the 'Rats had a guy dressed as a giant cigarette butt following the GOP ticket around the country, accusing them of being in the pocket of Big Tobacco. He's vanished this year.
What am I missing with this advice? How do you eliminate "triggers" like waking up and eating?
Because of Barack Obama, I'm inspired to skip the first cigarette of the morning and proceed directly to the second. :)
Once an addict, always an addict??? I grew up one of four children in a home with two smoking parents. Three of us took up the habit, only one still smokes. I never smoked in my house or car or around nonsmokers — I made it as inconvenient as possible and quitting was the hardest thing I ever did. Good luck to both of you.
I smoked for twenty years - two packs a day most of the time. I quit four years ago this coming new year’s eve. Very few days go by that I don’t think longingly of lighting up.
Smoking a cigarette is the least of my worries about Obama. Good grief, pick your battles, people.
I would vote for a smoker but not a marxist socialist commie like Obama.
Liberal elites don’t buy their own anything.
I know. It really never leaves you, especially after a meal. My wife still smokes, and it’s really difficult sometimes to refrain from just reaching over an picking one up, but I manage...............
you also forgot the pot smoking hippies.
The dems are for the very very very rich and the very very very poor (that is, those who ruin their lives by taking crack)
So he hasn’t quit smoking; he just quit buying. LOL!
You got it!! The smoking police in Arkansas have made it a crime to smoke in your private business. If Obama smokes, that IS the only thing I like about him.
Really.
He's a socialist. He's a statist. He's a surrenderist. Thats enough. I don't care what he does privately, its his policy positions that matter, and his personal history only in the sense that it tells us what his policies are likely to be.
I’m not a smoker but I am an advocate of keeping America a nation of laws.
This is just a distraction from more serious problems.
Smoking is the least of our concerns.
Tobacco is a legal product.
If it is so horrible make it illegal.
If not, leave it alone and concentrate on the really bad things this man and the democrat party are doing and will do to harm America.
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