Things never change. But they do wane.

“The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it’s rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.”: Thomas Jefferson

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“One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence.”: Charles Austin Beard (1874-1948)

Just as would be expected, out come the “where will it end” and the “sin police” accusations.

It will end where we decide to end it. Laws like these tend to reflect societal norms and societal curbs on perceived luxuries, “good time” drugs and potential hazards. Everyone cries out “why forbid this and not that” but history demonstrates that “that” may well be next on the list. 

In the early 60s, we required auto makers to install seat belt hook-ups in cars. By the mid-60s we required seat belts in front seats. Within a few years we required shoulder belts. Then came rear seat belts and rear shoulder belts. Then came the requirement that we wear these devices.

During this same 40 years we introduced other car safety regulations: padded dashboards, soft or recessed buttons and switches, collapsible steering columns, head restraints and dozens of other changes. Auto safety did not get where it is today by voluntary installation or by only stressing driver safety.

My guess is smoking is following a similar path. It has lost its allure primarily by ever-increasing restrictions and regulations, not voluntary quit-smoking plans or education.

Same goes for junk food. Sure, education is an important part of the solution to stem obesity but with Corporate America’s penchant for selling crap to make a buck, the real changes will come with regulation.

It’s always been this way and always will be this way.

Not enough people are ingesting aspartame. I see the same strategy with “global climate change”. Conventional energy sources will be taxed heavily so that we can “enjoy” the benefits of green energy. None of this is freedom.

Now we have the food police. BTW, milk has 3 times the calories per serving than breast milk and was meant for baby cows and not humans. So why not add the tax to that?

And do not forget that sometimes people who are diabetic when they cannot find orange juice to raise their blood sugar levels use sugared pop.

As for the obesity issue, this is red herring. Some people no matter how well balanced and restricted their diet remain obese. Others who are virtually human garbage disposals who eat everything and in vast amounts, are underweight. After forty years in the medical field I have seen everything and what should be logical for human weight according to what a person eats/activity levels do not always give the result that you would think. Why is it that every medical person, well almost all, think that all overweight people eat all the time and do nothing, yet look at skinny people and think that they watch everything they eat and exercise all the time when in most cases the opposite is true. Besides, you cannot starve a fat cell, proven fact.

WykyRed: I am among those who cannot tolerate the smoke from smokers. It is nothing personal, I am highly allergic to cigarette smoke and even walking through a doorway to enter a building where smokers are enjoying their vice puts me in the hospital with severe lung infections and/or pneumonia. It is something I have no control over when I do have to leave my home to run errands or go to the doctors-about the only time I leave my non- smoking environment. Unfortunately I like to go outside, but have had to cut that down to a necessity only outing, even when my neighbors come over to talk-most smoke and they forget how it affects me until I trigger an asthma attack. I would not begrudge you your right to smoke, I only ask you to consider how it might affect others who also breathe the air also.

As the comment: Thank you for not breathing while I smoke, I could answer I don’t mind if you smoke, just don’t exhale.

NOW WHEN ARE THE SEX POLICE GOING TO BE OUT IN FORCE MAKING SURE THAT WE KEEP UP THE BABY LEVELS TO FILL THE CANNON FODDER FOR THE WARS THAT OUR LEADERS GET US INTO?

Ooooh Little Brother! 10 years ago, it would have been hilarious! Now it’s ... kinda creepy. But thanks for pointing me to it! Highly appreciated. I actually did laugh a little.

And the incredible majority of non-smokers out there who could care less if other people smoke are also being silenced and even severely reprimanded for their “tolerant” behavior. Same thing happened with Germans hiding Jews in the attic, I suppose, so I get the correlation of calling these anti-smoking fanatics “Nazis”. No one was allowed to smoke around Hitler either because he didn’t like “tobacco consumption”. Congrats fanats! You and Hitler are alike in that. Except he didn’t make laws, or allow laws to be made against it. So that makes him better than you, so there.

I smoke, but my points are made to a) point out the totally un-human (not inhuman, just un-human) treatment of people in a country that claims “Freedoms”. As freedom’s standard bearer (so the claims run), they are all proof positive that American fanatics are even worse than any other fanatics. Now, they’re trying to force soldiers in Iraq to stop smoking, and annoying the shit out of their officers to “set an example”. So what’s next? If you served in Iraq and smoke, you aren’t allowed to come back home? If you refuse to quit and choose your personal freedoms, what? You get sent back and aren’t allowed to come home unless you quit smoking and drinking (including non-diet sodas!) or you’re killed and THEN these idiots will allow you home for burial? The incredible hatred and allowance of such people will not stop at one thing. But very few seem to get that. They’ll move on, and indeed have! It’s subtle at first, but there it is.

American vacationers go to other people’s countries and get killed when they pull out their superior attitudes and try to preach to people who can’t stand Americans to begin with and then they want to cry about it. Tough. But it never makes the news so who cares. Happens here every day in America too.

Wait until people dying to be healthy find out that their 2% milk usage has made pancreatic cancer rise 900% in just 10 years. As my mother-in-law’s Oncologist said, “It’s not a carcinogen, it’s a trigger. Pull it, just like a gun. The bullet will hit.”

yeah. be healthy. and make sure your kids follow your example you spongemops.

Don’t worry Little Brother, as long as you’re not an objector, we’ll give you a pack of ciggies to carry in your pocket. We made em up special. They have “Friend of the Oppressed” right on the front.

Worse thing I’ve heard yet: A soldier returned from Iraq about 6 months ago. He smoked, but he had lost all hope in his Evangelical roots. Turned away from the church completely. He went back a few weeks ago, and was met at the door by the fat guys in suits who informed him, “Son, God doesn’t like smokers anymore than we do. Promise to quit right now and throw that pack away and you can come in.”

He went home and shot himself in the head. I used to play Scrabble with the guy when he was a civilian. My thanks to the Assembly of God for their show of tolerance. Hope you get the same.

Only in America I guess….

Another reason to dislike Spitzer, leaving us with this bum of a governor. Rather than cut bureaucratic waste and inefficiency, let’s just create a slew of new taxes from music downloads to haircuts.

This blind, and I mean that figuratively, ignoramus should tax stupidity. I do admit the problem with that is Paterson, Spitzer and Bloomberg would be taking on the bulk of the tax burden. Many people thought that Republicans were the ones that would put the clamps on life in America. Marshall Law. They were mistaken. (Lighten up Dems, there is only one party!)

Paterson’s tax proposals will speed the departure of the working class and small businesses from New York State. That will happen long term. In the near term New Yorkers will be shopping and doing any discretionary spending in adjoining states. Yes the tolls exiting the state will be increased but that will still be counterbalanced by tax savings across the borders. Say goodbye to New York.

There is an unexplored story intertwined in all of this. That relates to the Spitzer scandal. Why was Spitzer brought down for the prostitution? Yes, he deserved what he got, a taste of his own medicine. The problem for the rest of us was he was onto Wall Street corruption at the time the scandal broke. Those benefitting from the Wall Street meltdown had the sex scandal in their pocket for a long time. If you look at the timing of Spitzer’s outing you can infer the connection. Spitzer walked so long as he kept his mouth shut. It could have been much worse for him. Instead, it is much worse for New Yorkers and they are stuck with this horse’s behind for a governor. Would any New Yorker have voted for this slime bag? Thank Spitzer for another poor choice. Elliot Spitzer took down a lot of people in his career and the last of his victims were everyone living in New York and perhaps the country at large. Don’t cry for Elliot Spitzer, he can afford a two dollar can of Coca Cola and a twenty grand hooker to boot.

WykydRed, New Yorker published a hilarious satiric piece by Garrison Keillor—in 1984, dontcha know!—entitled “End of the Trail”.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1984/09/17/1984_09_17_045_TNY_CARDS_000337240

As you will find if you check the linked excerpt, the premise of the piece involves a renegade group of smokers hiding out in a box canyon in the Donner Pass until they’re spotted and rousted out by “a crack anti-smoking joggers unit” of Federal Agents.

It is a funny, funny piece—but I have to admit nowadays it is much closer to the truth than I would have imagined possible when I first read it about ten years ago.  It won’t be funny at ALL when it finally comes true!

I’ve never used tobacco products, but I remain sympathetic to smokers who’ve been hassled more and more over the past thirty years.  I remain in the minority who declines to share in the oodles of moral outrage available to anti-tobacco forces that has been so assiduously cultivated by nanny-staters and victim-centered groups.

Isn’t it great when government takes it upon themselves (with a great deal of money and help from “anti” groups) to overtax and restrict a portion of the population with the group-cry “It’s for health purposes!”

Yes, after years of getting away with illegal laws and ban against smokers, granting custody to the non-smoking parent and illegally restricting “the ground rules for seeing your children” in divorce courts, taxing the smoking population 300% to 500% overages in very illegal taxes ... it’s YOUR turn!

It worked once and everyone was behind it, believing of course that if you can’t convince someone to take up YOUR lifestyle and be healthy (which is killing most of you, thank goodness!) you should force them to by enacting any laws you want to make up and fuck the Constitution! It’s going to work again. And when you’re paying $8.00 for a non-diet Coke and the obesity rate still isn’t falling to the levels the preachy snots who gave up soda entirely because “it’s a great cause and will help people live healthier and longer” will enact bans. You will no longer be “allowed” to order non-diet drinks in restaurants, drink them in theaters, drink them at your desks or anywhere at work, your children will be removed from your home because you drink them in your living room, thereby encouraging children to drink them as well, they’ll be removed from movies entirely, both non-diet and diet because the “big soda companies are trying to hook a new generation”, and you’ll be weighed at work and scrutinized and denied a job because you obviously are a user of soda.

Welcome to the world! Enjoy it. You made it.

Okay, maybe it sounds all paranoid and uneducated, but 15 years ago, tell a smoker that someday, they would be reduced to being called “drug addicts” by their own brain-washed in school children and restricted from their choice of pleasure and they would have laughed at you and called you paranoid and uneducated and told you to get out of the country and go live in another one that supports such heinous notions of un-American rights to freedom.

Sin, brothers and sisters, must be stopped at all costs! We’ll stop ‘em from drinkin’ and smokin’ and eatin’ too much and speaking against all of us who are just doin’ the lord’s good work and makin’ em all better christians ‘cause Th’ Rapture is jest around the corner and god wants us ta FORCE them heathen scum onto our… er, His ... righteous path! Amen and pass them laws!

Alcohol rots your organs. Alcohol ruins families. Alcohol designs its ads to reach children and hook another generation. Alcohol is the leading cause of cancer and death and if we stop people from drinking it, no one will die anymore. Our battle cry will be “Think of the children!” and “We MUST protect the children!” And the politicians will fall right into our crusade because they want money and votes and fuck the Constitution or the people, they really need another house and that thing needs fixing up! We will win these wars because the great country of American has never, ever, ever lost a war! Look at how we won that there war on drugs!

An’ after that, we’ll put a stop to cell phones because they cause brain cancer and accidents and ... oh wait, and CHILDREN riding in cars with parents using cell phones, gasp!, they’re in DANGER! We HAVE to protect those children from their own parents’ bad habits! They’ll die without us to fight for them! Oh lordy, lordy! That Rapture just isn’t coming fast enough to save all those lovely, innocent children!

Honestly people, when the world decides to nuke America and every pissant, ego-inflated, self-righteous, ex-insert your favorite “sin” here, I will not be shocked, horrified or surprised. In fact, I’ll be cheering because it’ll be about time.

I’d like to buy the world a Coke—but not in New York State.

The Empire State & The Nanny State:  two sides of the same coin.

This is the nightmare that small l libertarians always fret about.