Smoke ‘em while you got ‘em

Obama is a liar.  He said that he would quit smoking when he began running for president at the request of his wife:

When Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., officially enters the stressful world of presidential politics this Saturday, he will be trying his hardest to resist the urge to smoke those Marlboro Red cigarettes he has relied upon for years.

Instead, he has pledged to his wife, Michelle, that he will chew Nicorette gum.

Well I guess Obama can’t stick to any pledge he makes, so why should this one be any different.  Before I start I’ll take for granted that pointing out that he smokes is somehow racist, so don’t even bother with the accusations.  I’ve already taken it under advisement.

As a long time smoker myself, I can attest to the difficulty of quitting.  But I did it (over 1 year now!).  So have millions of other people.  Also as a former smoker, I don’t mean to imply that it in any way makes you bad person if you continue to smoke.  It just shows how powerfully addictive the drug in the cigarette is.  Lying about it when you are running for public office is an entirely different thing.  That does show a lack of integrity, and in Obama’s case, fits a pattern of misleading the public.  This is what makes me believe that he has no character whatsoever.  He lies when it suits his needs, plain and simple.

I’m also taken aback somewhat by his reason for quitting, or rather his wife’s reason for him quitting.  He says that Michelle warned him to quit before running for President.  I think this shows a complete lack of character on her part as well.  I mean, she doesn’t want him to do it for his health per se, or for the fact that it might be dangerous, or set a bad example for his two young daughters.  No, for Michelle and Barack, its all about their own ambition, and how others will perceive them.

“I’ve never been a heavy smoker,” Obama told the Chicago Tribune. “I’ve quit periodically over the last several years. I’ve got an ironclad demand from my wife that in the stresses of the campaign I don’t succumb. I’ve been chewing Nicorette strenuously.”

Obama aides say that the main reason Michelle Obama has been pushing so hard for her husband to quit the demon weed is for health reasons, but of course for any public figure, one also has to factor in the image of the habit — either out of concerns he would be setting a bad example, or that he may turn off some voters. (you might say he’d do anything to win)

Interesting how the media changed the description of his smoking habit from this report in Feb. 07, when he said “I’ve never been a heavy smoker”, to now, when it seems that it is harder than he imagined to quit…

The presumptive Democratic nominee has been open about his smoking past: Once a heavy smoker, he publicly gave up the habit, per his wife’s request, to run for president.

Since quitting, Obama has indicated in the past that he has “fallen off the wagon” but before today was not specific about how recent his smoking was. (emphasis mine)

I guess that lends credibility to him not being able to give it up…I guess.  Anyway I have a sneaking suspicion that this didn’t come out just because Obama felt like sharing…oh no, as with everything negative about him, it was forced out.  This time by his medical records….

The release of a scant one-page summary for 21 years of care brought some criticism to the Obama campaign – especially when compared to the thousands of pages of medical records released by McCain. Obama promised reporters that if there are additional health-related questions, his campaign would make that information available. “In terms of additional records, if there are particular things that people have questions about, then we’d be happy to give that information,” he said

And if I may toot my own horn, I’ve been saying this about his scant medical records for weeks.  A smoker can recognize one of their own.  But even when he is caught in a lie about smoking Obama refuses to take responsibility.  This time it is the fault of other smokers around him who, one imagines, tempt him to “bum” one off of them…

Obama said he’s bummed a cigarette a couple of times during the campaign.

“But I figure, seeing as I’m running for president, I need to cut myself a little slack,” he said.

Nothing is too good for Senator Obama!  And give me a break!  His ego is so huge that even though he has FAILED to quit smoking, he feels the need to give other people advice on how to do it (I guess they don’t deserve a little slack–even if, you know, they are losing their house or their pension in this economic crisis).

Quitting smoking didn’t create “huge withdrawal symptoms,” the Illinois senator said, partly because he smoked only seven or eight cigarettes a day at his peak. His wife, Michelle, pressured him to quit, he said.

Obama’s advice for those trying to kick the habit? “Eliminate certain key connections — that first cigarette in the morning, or after a meal, or with a drink,” he said. “If you can eliminate those triggers, that should help.”

Earth to Barry:  You didn’t suffer from withdrawals because you never quit.  But seriously, how can any self-respecting eco loving, environmentalist progressive continue to support a man who has such little disregard for the environment.  Because in case you didn’t know, smoking is BAD for the planet;

It is fairly obvious that smoking pollutes the air and quite often the ground. However, it is not always obvious how or how much smoking pollutes. Cigarettes contain over 4000 chemicals which are exhaled and released into the air and the atmosphere. Approximately 30% of North Americans are smokers, and the percentage goes much higher in developing countries, which means there is a massive amount of pollution being released into the air every day. Trees are often compared to the lungs in our bodies because they perform basically the same functions as our lungs do on a global scale. With all of the pollutants that the trees filter out for us already it seems almost crazy to add more to the air that doesn’t need to be added. We need to breathe, but no one needs to smoke.

The pollution caused by cigarettes does not stop in our bodies or the air; it also affects the land we live on and the water that we drink. Millions of cigarette butts are discarded onto the ground every day. Every year in California the state has a statewide cleanup and cigarette butts account for almost half of the waste that is collected. These are only the ones that are picked up in one state and millions more are never picked up. They end up in the rivers and lakes where fish and animals eat them by mistake and quite often die from it. The rest are left on the ground to decompose which will take an average of 25 years while all of the chemicals and additives leach into the ground and pollute the soil and the plants. If you are going to smoke please consider this information before your throw your cigarette butts on the ground. It looks unattractive, it is a major fire hazard in dry weather, and it is extremely harmful to the environment.

So not only does smoking pollute the air, it releases toxins into the ground, poisons animals, and is a fire hazard, among other things.  But maybe the worst part about it, given the presidential hopefuls’ call for energy conservation, and helping people around the world, is the actual production of the cigarettes themselves:

Probably the most impacting aspect of cigarettes is actually producing them. There is the land used to grow the crops all over the world that could be put to better use by planting more trees or food for starving children in third world countries. These crops are also often sprayed with a lot of harmful pesticides and chemicals because tobacco is a very fragile plant and is likely to pick up disease. It also takes a lot of trees to produce and package cigarettes. Cigarette manufacturing uses four miles of paper an hour just for rolling and packaging cigarettes. One tree is wasted for every three hundred cigarettes produced. Those trees could be filtering out the pollutants already in the air instead of being chopped down for the cause of adding new ones. There is still the energy and water wasted in manufacturing cigarettes that needs to be considered and with soil depletion and chemical wastage added on top of that it becomes clear that manufacturing cigarettes has an enormous strain on the environment.

Shame on you Barack Obama.