President Barack Obama, answering queries about his signing of a law giving Congress unconstitutional power to regulate the tobacco industry, proclaimed himself a 95% cured smoker. What this means is anyone’s guess as the vilification of tobacco and people who exert their God given liberties and choose to smoke rolls on.
President Barack Obama, answering queries about his signing of a law giving Congress unconstitutional power to regulate the tobacco industry, proclaimed himself a 95% cured smoker. What this means is anyone’s guess as the vilification of tobacco and people who exert their God given liberties and choose to smoke rolls on.
Would a drunk who used to get plastered every day and now only is drunk one day a month be a 95% cured alcoholic? Would an abusive spouse who used to beat up his wife or her husband every day but now only beats them just two days a month be a 95% cured spouse abuser? Would it be ok to say that Governor Mark Sanford is not a scumbag because he was 95% faithful to his wife? And would any of these claims be something not met with a skeptical eye?
Frankly whether or not Obama takes a puff here and there is really quite irrelevant beyond the fact that he tries to couch his habit in terms that make himself feel better about it. The whole anti-smoking routine is just done for political grandstanding with the typical lies about the effects of smoking (i.e. that it causes cancer when in fact it only increases the risk of cancer, etc.) being bandied about by holier than thou crusaders without enough things to occupy them in their own lives, sundry ignoramuses who to this day claim that they were never, ever, ever aware that the risk of cancer from smoking existed and those seeking to blame others for their own inability to just simply stop putting cigarettes into their pie hole.
Once again we are being saddled with even more intrusive government. That is the thing that I want to make abundantly clear to you. You may not like smoking. You may not like that other people choose (and they do choose to smoke regardless of the addiction claims) to smoke. You might fear beyond reason that at some point in your empty life you might catch a whiff of someone’s cigarette as you walk down a public street or decide to saddle up to the bar at your local, privately owned restaurant. You may even think that tobacco companies are the devil himself.
That’s fine. Being idiotic and psychotic about such things is of course your right.
Meanwhile, because of these actions by those that would liberally ply the words of our founding documents apart to insert such imaginary powers to regulate the populace once again we witness how these actions cost U.S. workers jobs. Hav-A-Tampa, which makes cigars, announced that due to all the taxes and regulations heaped upon them by the federal government and the state of Florida it will be closing its production facility here in the States and moving production to Puerto Rico. The cost? 500 good paying and previously solid jobs are going away.
So far the company is not completely closing up shop to the relief of 150 more workers that are employed at its distribution center off U.S. 301. But if the trend continues, with sanctimonious do as I say, not as I do, hey look at this expanded power we found written in invisible ink here in Article I of the Constitution and that no one else ever noticed before do-gooders even these 150 workers will feel the heat. So for all the claims by the President that his actions are nebulously and unverifiably “saving” jobs, we see that the actions of people with his ideology can certainly be credited with job losses. With the mere waving of their hands, once gainfully employed Americans have been magically poofed into the unemployment rolls and onto government assistance. Meanwhile the jobs that are created are government funded make work projects obviously not too important to the individual states otherwise they would already be funded rather at the expense of failed social experiments.
Coming down the pipe we have a plethora of other job and liberty destroying policies all ready for Obama to sign into law as well if only Congress can be goaded into passing them. From Cap and Trade which just passed the House on Friday without hardly anyone reading it (déjà vu) to a federal government expansion of public health insurance despite the financial failure of Medicare and Medicaid; each are looming and Obama is salivating with the anticipation of being able to ink his name to all of them.
Yes, President Obama is certainly 95% cured of something. But it is not smoking. He is 95% cured of reason. He is 95% cured of caring about limited government. And at the rate he is going he will be completely cured of such afflictions in no time.
J.J. Jackson is a libertarian conservative author from Pittsburgh, PA who has been writing and promoting individual liberty since 1993 and is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. He is the Pittsburgh Conservative Examiner for Examiner.com. He is also the owner of The Right Things - Conservative T-shirts & Gifts http://www.cafepress.com/rightthings. His weekly commentary along with exclusives not available anywhere else can be found at http://www.libertyreborn.com
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