Sometimes, It's Better to Just Shut Up...

I learned this lesson a very long time ago, but always forget it. Unfortunately, when I happen to forget it, the absolute worst is sure to follow. I'm thinking of having my lips stapled shut, or perhaps having a zipper installed in my face.

My big mouth has gotten me into trouble at work. It's gotten me into trouble in bars. I can deal with those situations well enough, but what really irks me about my rampaging pie-hole is that it finds me trouble in the most outrageous ways, and brings me into contact with people I would gladly smack over the head with a brick, if it were legally permissible.

There I was, waiting on line at KFC to order a three-piece with mash and corn. The staff was a bit pre-occupied with the customer in front of me, an obvious escapee from some nearby mental hospital with a room-temperature IQ, who could not comprehend the fine distinction between cole slaw and green beans, and was cole slaw really a vegetable? I shit you not: this is New Yorkistan, truly stupid people abound, and there's even dumber people who are obliged to indulge them under the guise of Customer Service.

So, while Skippy the Wonder Toad was occupying the one bundle of zits-and-baby-fat at the register in the burning existential questions, the lady behind me decides to strike up a conversation (because, you know, I look all friendly-like and obviously just love having random people invade my personal space). She announces that the previous evening was delightful; it was so cool, and wasn't it finally great that all that heat is finally over, and wasn't it fantastic to sleep with the windows open, if only for one night?

I smiled, and nodded in agreement, if only because slapping her would have been considered rude. I came here to goddamned eat, not get a weather report. In one of those subtle gestures which is supposed to be subconsciously recognized by my fellow bags of skin as "get lost, asshole", I began to rearrange my pockets, whereupon the pack of cigarettes therein became momentarily visible.

I simply could not have contrived a clearer invitation to for her to continue talking and to annoy the living shit out of me.

"You know, I quit smoking after 21 years..."

And then it happened; I forgot to keep my mouth shut. I should have politely smiled, nodded my head, and not given her any further encouragement, but no...Something said "Vegetable Boy up there has given you a few more precious seconds to waste, why not answer the Nice Lady with The Thousand Yard Stare?" The words came flowing out of their own accord.

"Well, good for you! How did you do it?"

And before she even made a sound, I caught That Look. I've seen it a million times, and would recognize it in the dark. With a blindfold on. With cataracts. There was now no way of stopping the load of utter bullshit that was coming my way.

"Jesus made me stop. I went to church one day, and the Preacher said 'what does it cost to be a Disciple of Christ?', and when I thought about it, it seemed pretty dumb that He had given me Life,and I was doing everything I could to shorten it..."

It should have ended right there. I should have shut the fuck up, and just ignored it, but I couldn't. The building wave of Sarcasm had, in the space of three seconds, become a Tsunami. I am, by nature, perhaps, compelled to do this. I could not resist the urge. It HAD to be said...

"Was that before or after he passed the collection plate?"

You'll be glad to know that it was before.

Anyhow, this caused the patron standing behind her to chime in.

"That is so true! You know, I was an alcoholic for 23 years, and I'll be sober 13 years next month!"

Oh fuck. What have I done? Maybe if I just shut up now, this entire thing will go away? Vegetable Doofus has finally gotten his entire order (you'll be surprised to learn that cole slaw is a vegetable...he certainly was), and it was time to place my order. Finally, a possible respite from the Revival Meeting taking place behind me.Perhaps, if the others saw me engaged in an act of commerce, they would be polite and not trouble me further with Ephesians 3:19, or whatever the fuck it was they discussing. But no; I was not to be saved from BEING SAVED by the sack of raging hormones behind the register. Apparently, the douche ahead of me got the last breast and thigh, and I would have to wait just a few minutes more.

Raging Hormone Register Girl didn't do the logical thing at that point, and ask the Church Lady if she could take her order, and thus, shut her the fuck up. Nope, that would make sense. Muffin-top Register Chick was going to wait for my breast and thigh along with me, like a fine and loyal dog at my side, waiting patiently and faithfully, and not do a damned thing until I had gotten the same level of personal attention that the Cole Slaw Douchebag had received...by picking the flaking nail polish off her fingernails, and letting it drop to the floor.

Oh great. Not only will I run the risk of being bored to death by the God Squad behind, I can now contemplate having to check my food for potentially toxic debris before I eat it. The time when I really should have engaged my mouth, and said something like "Sunshine, you shouldn't do that in front of a customer, and you certainly shouldn't handle food with little bits of nail polish falling off you fingers" didn't come. It was almost as if, having engaged my mouth at an inopportune moment just a minute before for something really unimportant, now that something vital had come about, I had lost the power of speech.

Frankly, I just wanted my goddamned food so that I could retreat into a corner and eat it in peace.

But,i t was not to be. It almost never is when the Almighty has been invoked.

For Recovered Alcoholic and Jesus Saved Me From Lung Cancer, strangers not two minutes prior, had suddenly become long-lost buddies, and because I had introduced them to one another, they found it necessary to try and include me in their conversation...which was all about church and "recovery". I declined, but nodded my way through this or that piece of stupidity thrown at me. Or maybe it was because they both picked up on that bit of sarcasm about the collection plate, they took it as the signal that they had an Unbeliever in their midst who needed to be harangued?

For his own good, of course.

I finally received my food. For the length of time that it took to get it to me(I was assured it would only be a few minutes) I could have hatched a chick from an egg, raised the fucking thing and then given it the full Frank Perdue treatment before frying it up myself. Just tell which 11 herbs and fucking spices to use, please? I took my tray, and headed to a table as far away from another human being as possible without leaving the store. After carefully inspecting my victuals for the telltale signs of "Hot Pink Passion" fingernail pollution, I began to eat.

And Church Lady and Mr. Recovery found it necessary to sit at the very next table together and discuss which church was better than another (apparently, both were frequent visitors to a variety of churches). The words "Jesus", "Christ", "God", "Saved","Repentance" and "The Day of Judgement" were tossed about so frequently it would make you vomit. Both would only stop yacking long enough to stuff their faces, and give me That Look. If there's anything worse than That Look,it's getting it from someone looking down a greasy drumstick while they do it.

I wolfed down my food. In fact, I ate it so quickly that I'm still tasting it this morning. Three pieces, mashed potatoes and corn on the cob, I barely remember the biscuit. I scarfed it all up so quickly as to make a hoard of locusts look like a bunch of third-rate-tossers. I tried to leave quickly, dreading what was certainly coming, because I know this drill, and it always ends the same fucking way.

"God Bless you", she said, "I really hope Jesus puts it in your heart to stop smoking!"

Deep breath, Matt. She really means well, and it's not as if she just told you to go fuck yourself. Stay calm.

"Thank you", I said, through clenched teeth, and probably clenched buttocks, too.

I headed right for the door.

I will NEVER eat at fucking KFC again, and I will never engage a stranger in conversation again...unless she has great big knockers, of course.

Dear New York State Legislature: Don't You Feel Stupid Now?

When you tax a commodity to the sky, don't be surprised when the trade in that commodity goes elsewhere, and you lose the tax revenue you had hoped to get. Let this be a lesson to you in basic economics. Vermont, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and other states will now benefit and collect their much-lower, and more-reasonable cigarette taxes, as New Yorkers looking to save a buck on smokes start looking out of state to buy them. Organized crime is probably already on this like flies on shit, and making a fortune -- none of which you will ever see.

Also, don't be surprised when price gouging occurs because no one is paying attention, or because pricing rules are contradictory or misunderstood: in my neighborhood, a pack of Marlboro Lights is now selling from anywhere between $11.50 and $14.00, depending which store you go into.

You do realize I could buy three six-packs of barely-drinkable-piss-water for that, get behind the wheel and kill more people in 30 seconds than my second-hand smoke has in the last 27 years?

Bunch of assholes in Albany. You should all be shot, and as an added bonus, we can fix it so that your final cigarette before the firing squad will have been purchased in Vermont.

The Good News, The Bad News...

A few months back, I posted here that I was suspected of having contracted sarcoidosis, and that the disease may have been linked to my proximity to Ground Zero on 9/11, and the smoke and debris which persisted for months and years afterwards.

Well, the bad news is that, yes -- I do have sarcoidosis. Confirmed. Nailed down. No question about it.

The really good news is that the contributing factors do not appear to have been exposure to the (worst of) the toxic materials that were released during the collapse and subsequent fires (we're talking really bad stuff, like asbestos, mercury, lead, PCB's, dioxin and shit like that). I've been tested for exposure to those horrors, and thankfully, they don't seem to be much in evidence. However, it is difficult to actually identify what is the cause of this syndrome, and it's generally believed that the hyper auto-immune response which causes sarcoidosis is typically not triggered by exposure to a single source, but by a combination of many sources. It's this sort of uncertainty and the potentially-unlimited number of possibilities that makes sarcoidosis difficult to diagnose.

Fortunately, there are no signs of persistent granulomas (small, fibrous tumors), although my initial chest x-ray did indicate there might be some in the lungs. Whatever that was has pretty much disappeared -- no one knows how or why-- and the doctor is not (at this stage) concerned that the affliction is going to become debilitating, although we'll just have to wait and see if it becomes/remains chronic. So far, the only things we do know is that it seems to become worse with the arrival of spring (it's shown up two consecutive years in a row, now), and tends to tail off when the really hot weather arrives (like today when it hit 96 degrees outside, and all of a sudden, the worst of the tiny little red blotches on my forearms arms seem to have gone completely).

This means, of course, a battery of allergy tests is in the offing. Literally hundreds of them. Starting next week. I'm going to be tested for every pollen, spore, mold and fungus known to mankind, to judge by the Doc's demeanor. He seems genuinely interested in this case, perhaps even genuinely perturbed by the elusive nature of it all. I can't tell if he's just really pissed, taking this inability to give clear and concise answers beyond "maybe", "we're not really sure", and "well, it might be..." as a personal affront to his medical reputation, and personal honor. Whatever; so long as he cares that much, I'm thinking it's a good thing.

It also means someone is coming to my house to vacuum every speck of dust, test every surface, sample the air in the house and in the neighborhood, not to mention check my soap, laundry detergent, deodorants, colognes, and every household cleaner under the sink. No stone is being left unturned.

The other piece of good news is that at least I won't have to take steroids to keep my lung function up. As an aside: the last lung function test I took was damned impressive, considering that I've smoked for 27 years, am a good 50 pounds overweight, and haven't run more than a few hundred feet in years. Not a whiff of cancer or lung damage on the x-rays, either. Fuck You, Tobacco Nazis and Secondhand-Smoke-Kills Pansies! How do you like them apples?

It's Official: Tobacco Now More Expensive Than Crack...

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Official: Pot Now Cheaper Than Tobacco...

Only in New York will a pack of smokes set you back a whopping $12.00!

I've said for the longest time that the reason behind the increasing taxes on cigarettes was to make every New Yorker want to turn to drugs so that our elected douchebags can continue to pick our pockets, only by then none of us will notice.

It's the same song every year: the cost of healthcare is breaking the bank. The State needs more money, or the hospitals will all close, and we'll all die of ingrown hemorrhoids or something. Smokers, because they engage in a habit that leads to serious health problems that tends to require expensive courses of treatments, should be expected to shoulder this burden, because it's because of THEM that the State has to spend these outrageous sums.

Umm, no.

The reasons why New York State has to devote so much money to pay for healthcare, are;

a) it's paying for the care for those who don't pay for it themselves, like the welfare queens, illegal immigrants, the"poor" (who all seem to have Bluetooth and Patent-leather Air Jordans, while I don't; "The Poor are the Rich That Jesus Warned You About" -- Kathy Shaidle),

b) is paying for the care of people who engage in even riskier behavior, which require even more expensive treatments, but who are also politically-protected (or cossetted) classes, especially AIDS victims, blacks, IV Drug users, and crack addicts,

c) The asswipes in Albany have never heard, apparently, of an effective cost-containment strategy known as "tightening one's belt" or "economizing", or even -- dare I say it? -- privatization,

d) The State government continues to mandate payments for conditions and procedures that have nothing to do with people's basic healthcare needs (like...ahem..."Family Planning", sex-change procedures, needle exchange programs).

e) The State mandates that insurance companies also pay for these non-basic healthcare requirements, and then add a laundry list of even more ridiculous procedures and treatments (like penile implants and vasectomies),

f) The State allows illegal immigrants to use our emergency rooms for every need from a case of the sniffles to multiple gunshot wounds without even making an attempt to 1) collect a dime from these people, and 2) deport their fucking asses after they've been treated,

g) The Fed'ral Gubmint mandates coverages and treatments, and then leaves the responsibility of paying for them to the States,

h) We have a bunch of pig-ignorant political ticket-punchers in both Albany and Washington, D.C.. For some of them, ticket-puncher might actually describe more work than they actually do,

i) The healthcare unions in this state goon strike every fifteen minutes, until the guy who wheels you to-and-from the hospital door gets paid six-figures and has nine weeks of paid vacation, can retire at 59-1/2 with a fat pension, and can't get fired short of committing multiple child rape, and the dismemberment-murder of a miniature poodle in front of 12 witnesses and a video camera,

j) The Lawyers treat the medical malpractice system like a personal feeding trough where it's somehow a doctor's fault if your child was born with Cerebral Palsy, harelip or Forked tongue, prehensile tail and other GENETIC defects, and you can sue his ass into another galaxy for it.

k) Medical science is making it possible for people to live longer (or is it really just linger longer?) with health issues that once would have killed them off relatively young. Many of these people are elderly, and rely heavily on city health services to supplement what State and Federal Medicare won't cover or provide.

Okay, I can see the point of encouraging people not to smoke by making it prohibitively expensive. But then what happens when enough smokers actually quit because of the high price? Why, then the expected tax revenue which justified the tax increase in the first place just might dry up faster than Hillary Clinton's teat at a Sahara Desert Shamwow convention! And then, of course, the "solution" will be to raise cig taxes again, naturally! The concept that smokers tend to die younger (thus consuming fewer healthcare resources!) is never even seriously entertained. Cutting the fat from the system is a laughable suggestion. Saying "No" to the unions, the lawyers, the deadbeats and the druggies gets you a queer look, as if you've just landed from Mars and have asked for a Sarsaparilla and a blowjob.

Soon, some clueless douchebag of a City Councilman will wonder where the hell the smokers all went, while lamenting the closure of yet another city-run hospital, the predictable result of the very policies he's advocated for years! New York politicians are dumber and denser -- and less in-touch with reality --than the national norm, you know.

But then again, this is New York City/State, and if someone suggested to the Mayor, Governor and Assembly Speaker there was a buck to be made by recycling the undigested corn in your stool, they'd find a way to tax you per cob. Those Regal personages can't be expected to engage in common-sense solutions to these problems -- or even make tough decisions on them -- because they're too busy addressing the really vital issues of the day: making sure you don't get too much sugar in your doughnut, too much salt in your street meat -- or have too much cash in your wallet.

Or something similarly Earth-shatteringly important, like this.

I say that instead of lighting up a Marlboro, perhaps it's high time to light up the statehouse in Albany, and Gracie Mansion. Of course, even saying that here facetiously will probably earn me a visit from the NYPD. Judging from the whopping 1-hour-and-16-minutes it took them to respond to a a two-car accident in front of my house two days ago --- when the Precinct House is but a mere 11blocks away -- I can probably expect the SWAT team to arrive on-or-about Columbus Day.

I expect that within a month's time, we'll be hearing that the "Loosey" will become the new underground currency of choice-- replacing the overinflated, Chinese-financed, ObamaDollar Monopoly money we use now -- and enterprising drug dealers will soon be dealing in Lucky Strikes instead of heroin because of the higher profit margin.

Dipshits, all.

Detroit, New York, What's the Diff?

J. Robert Smith at Pajamas Media muses upon the Post Office and a Green Detroit, and it's a cautionary tale for the rest of us.

Mr. Smith shouldn't fool himself into thinking it's only democrats that think this way. Our so-called republican (probably because it was the cheapest label to buy) Mayor of Noo Yawk, Michael Bloomberg -- Patron Saint of Virgin Spinsters and the Perpetually-Pantybunched -- was so convinced that only his divine beneficence could "save" this city from it's looming Wall-Street-induced fiscal crisis that he went out and had the goddamned election laws changed so that he could serve a third term.

And once he'd accomplished re-election -- spending $100 million bucks of his own hard earned coin. At least he had that much decency -- and then winning by a mere 4% over a democratic candidate that ran such a lackluster, torturous, tedious campaign of inanity, inertia and hot air that you would have thought he was the National Spokesperson for Constipation, did Saint Bloomberg turn his considerable talents towards helping New York navigate the current financial crisis?

No.

Did he, perhaps, set about enacting the vital reforms that are needed in this city, which is slowly having it's lifeblood sucked out of it by voracious public unions, a rising crime rate, fleeing businesses, rising unemployment rates, shrinking tax base, unchecked illegal immigration and higher levels of government spending?

Of course not.

Then what, exactly, is he doing?

Trying to pass a law restricting how much salt finds it's way into my food...

That's after, of course, he's already passed laws outlawing transfats, making certain I have all the nutritional information available on my Whopper with Cheese posted at the cash register, and eliminated the serving of sugary drinks in public schools (where they still somehow manage to serve corndogs, pizza and processed chicken nuggets, according to my nephews).

This is the Mayor who's also cordoned off sections of the city that used to be open to vehicular traffic so that now you can walk all the way up Broadway, from Times Square to Central Park on the weekends, assuming you'd want to considering there's a subway available to save you the trouble and shoe leather. It's not as if there's much scenery to enjoy between 42nd and Columbus Circle -- unless you like office towers.

It's the same Mayor who once suggested "congestion pricing" plans by which tolls charged on river crossings to enter the city from the Outer Boroughs would be adjusted by time of day and general level of traffic. The idea was a) to restrict vehicle traffic into the City and thus, clean the air and make traffic flow more smoothly, and b) raise a shitload of money while simultaneously denying the benefits and niceties of the City to those who live in the Outer Boroughs for the benefit of the transplanted Upper East Side libtards.

It's both class and economic warfare, veiled by the pledge of "it's all for the Common Good..".

The City of New York is always on the lookout for a buck; so much so that it inspects your garbage, which had better be thrown in out in clear, see-through plastic bags, and placed in the proper trash receptacle if you wish to avoid a fine greater than that given to speeders, drunk drivers or public urinators (don't ask me how I know that!).

You can no longer smoke in public, assuming you can afford cigarettes; which now average nearly $10 a pack. Michael Bloomberg has succeeded in making crack a cheaper and more attractive alternative to tobacco. In the meantime, the city's poor continue to get fatter and sicker (a steady diet of welfare-funded Twinkies and Fatback will do that to you), and the hospitals ever-more crowded with pregnant illegals with tuberculosis and AIDS, and the Union workers who run them get richer and do less work, and this is why the taxes on cigarettes had to be raised in the first place; to save the hospitals.

At least that's what they said...

The rot started under democrats (I remember the days of Abe Beam, Hugh Carey, Ed Koch and David Dinkins with something less than nostalgia, more like nausea), but then something mysterious happened: some republicans came along -- like Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg -- and they not only did their republican schtick and cut crime and spending (although Bloomberg loves raising taxes), they also carried on some of the stupidity and freedom-choking policies of their predecessors. For Rudy it was mostly about guns, but for St. Mikey it's all about his Upper East Sider friends and their "enlightened" sensibilities.

Blooomberg's fiercely-mextrosexual, self-appointed-Manhattan-elite are the new Lords of the Manor, and we're the serfs.

Now Micheal Bloomberg spends all his time, and his vast fortune, to ensure you're eating arugula and lemon grass and his friends get to walk their fancy, teacup lapdogs in Central Park, or to enjoy the boisterous Open-Air flea markets selling counterfeit goods and authentic West African food poisoning that now dominate Midtown on the weekends, all without having to encounter a taxi, an SUV, or a tourist (unless they have really neat European accents), or worse -- one of the proles from Queens or Staten Island -- while every potential employer flees the city because of crushing tax burdens, regulatory expenses and overpaid Union labor, and the State floats upon a sea of red ink.

The only thing missing from Micheal Bloomberg's New York City is a Bastille for us scum to storm.

And people wonder why nearly a decade after 9/11 there's still a great, big, gaping 19-acre hole in the ground?

In many respects, New York and Detroit are already sister cities.

Too Much Salt, or Too Much Government?

Via JammieWearingFool; Michael Bloomberg, Der Fuhrer of the People's Republik of New York, has championed a crusade to reduce the amount of salt in the average New Yorker's diet. This is after. mind you, he's gone as far as to ban trans-fats, require restaurants to post nutritional information and ban sodas and juices from New York City schools (unless, of course, your politically-connected soft drink company gives the Board of Ed. a huge financial break, in which case, yours will be the only soft drinks allowed in a New York City public school. Kids should be protected from sugary juices, but then denied the choice of what to drink by a monopoly negotiated in Gracie Mansion?).

This, incidentally, is the same mayor who's spending a shitload of money to teach heroin addicts the advanced techniques they'll need to become really proficient heroin addicts. So they won't get AIDS, you see --- because your run-of-the-mill AIDS-infected heroin addict takes public health resources away from Homosexuals with AIDS. Heroin addicts don't vote as much as Homosexuals, so as long as we're trying to keep them from getting AIDS we might as well really encourage the habit that will eventually kill them anyway, right?

Try to keep up with this logic; teach a heroin addict how to kill himself, but the rest of you need to be protected from high blood pressure? Is it just me or is there a stunning disconnect here?

Mayor Bloomberg cares about what you eat and drink. He says it's for your own good, but really, it isn't. It's about taxation, and the distribution of tax revenue and government services to politically-connected groups and individuals, and ultimately, the power to control an individuals behavior by limiting his choices and punishing those behaviors his self-appointed betters find objectionable.

Too much salt causes problems with high blood pressure. People with high blood pressure wind up in hospitals, and many of them do not have insurance, and they die or skip out on expensive cardiac treatment. High blood pressure, therefore, costs money. Yeah, we get it. But the solution to the problem is not new laws! The solution is in allowing people to actually suffer the very real consequences of their (in-)actions!

The truth is that most people with health problems caused by high blood pressure will pretty much die younger --- which actually saves the system money --- but that fact is glossed over, because there are larger principles at stake.

One of those principles is the questionable idea that if the Mayor (and by extension,any elected official) isn't pushing for new laws then what the hell would we need a Mayor for? This is a common theme which runs through most regulation, nowadays. New Laws and Regulations are not developed so much to address the consequences of certain behaviors, or to adapt and reconcile changes in our society; no, now they are a visible symbol of "government working". The fact that government often works in a an expensive, inefficient and half-assed fashion because of politics and bureaucratic forces is always, conveniently forgotten. When you combine those who believe that government must be seen with those who have inflated egos and an unjustified belief in their own superiority, you get stupid, petty, regressive and ultimately-ineffectual laws like this, that destroy personal choice, put an undue burden on business, cost nine times more than initially estimated, and in retrospect, accomplish jack shit. If we don't see Mike Bloomberg or Chuck Schumer addressing even the smallest, most insignificant concern of even the most brain-damaged asshole in his constituency, then government, somehow, isn't "working"?

This is a mindset that needs to be discouraged. Probably with gunfire.

Frankly, I think they do it just so they can hold a press conference. The Press Conferences are usually the only part of the program that go according to plan. But I digress...

Some people have the strangest notion of what the government should do, and how it should 'work', and the majority of these people believe that government actually exists to either "do things" or to "save us from ourselves". It's not supposed to do either -- it's role is to preserve the conditions under which you exercise your personal liberties, i.e. your power of choice. Instead, government seeks, at the behest of the dumbest and those who can scream louder, to reduce our choices, to limit our liberties, for our own good, but I should be the final arbiter of what "my own good actually" means. The first clue that your liberties are about to be taken away is usually contained in a sentence uttered by some pompous, sanctimonious, beetle-like little asshole with a title ... like this one:

If we achieve our goal, we would talk about saving tens of thousands of lives," Farley said, predicting that deaths from strokes and heart attacks will dramatically fall.

I don't believe for a second that Mr. Farley actually cares whether tens of thousands of people live longer. Why should it be desirable if tens of thousands more of us live? Won't it just make New York more crowded? Doesn't it just mean that those tens of thousands you're "saving' will continue to make demands on the Public Health System that we can't afford? What's the harm in letting them die young? I mean, in this day and age, if you don't know that high blood pressure kills, if you don't know about low sodium diets, and if you don't know of the benefits of regular exercise, then we have to conclude one of two things; a) you're a moron, in which case I want you to die before you procreate, and b) you're an irresponsible, lazy fuck, in which case, I want you dead before you procreate.

Because when "tens of thousands" of stupid, irresponsible, lazy people are artificially "saved" by government, we get more stupid, irresponsible and lazy people...who require more government to pass laws against sticking your genitals in an electrical outlet, sticking pins in your eyes or picking your nose with a samurai sword, because they obviously won't know any better.

The problem we have here is not too much salt, but too much government geared towards catering to too many stupid people.

And Mike Bloomberg still sucks.

I Think The Wrong People Won the Civil War...

I was saddened today to learn that the State of North Carolina has finally succumbed to it's self-inflicted infection of imported Yankees and instituted a state-wide smoking ban in restaurants, bars and public areas.

This is what happens when you allow several million whining north-easterners into your state; they gradually begin to remake the place according to their own whims. If they can't do it with money, they eventually get it done with votes, and if that fails, they whine...incessantly...until you give them what they want. The influx of Northerners into Raleigh and Charlotte following the technology and banking jobs, have brought you to this sorry state of affairs. You can't smoke in the state that lives and dies on tobacco?

Mark my words, North Carolina; the ban will gradually be extended. Soon, you'll not be able to smoke in front of a public building, never mind that you're outside. Not long after that, there will be great debates about whether people who own condominiums in high-rise buildings are allowed to smoke in their own home because of the proximity of their neighbors.

All the while Cigarette taxes will continue to climb, as Yankees gradually spread the misinformation that smokers burden the Health Care System, (wrong; uninsured illegal aliens and AIDS victims burden the Health Care System) which is 'underfunded'. Mostly because the same Yankees screamed that their pet disease du jour -- Juvenile Ingrown Toenails, Athlete's Tongue, Homoerotic Scrofula -- be funded to such an extent that money was diverted from basic care just to shut them up, and to show that the politicians care.

Soon, you too can live in New York; a place where you can't smoke except in a closet equipped with it's own separate air-circulation system, where cigarettes cost $10 a pack, mostly because of taxes to pay for hospitals that are full of drug addicts, AIDS patients, illegal aliens, and people who have lived far longer than they ever had any right or expectation to without insurance or savings. But it's your fault, Smokers; Even if you will eventually have that massive stroke or heart attack in your 60's that will kill you instantly, and thus save the community the burden of having you linger on for months and years, taking up valuable resources.

Things like this are ultimately driven by other motives; the first is the nerve of pushy people to believe they know better, that they can dictate the conditions of other people's lives. And then they have the nerve to say that they do it for the common good. Kathy Shaidle at FiveFeetOfFury likes to tell this sort of pretentious, presumptuous, obnoxious Soccer-Mom/Metrosexual type "You're not smart enough to tell me how to live."

The second motive is to use the process of Incrementalism to slowly erode your personal rights while simultaneously picking your pocket. Politicians cannot help but spend money -- other people's money. It's their disease (how long before that becomes 'underfunded'?). And eventually, they spend so much that the traditional sources ("revenue streams" as they say on Wall Street) dry up, and they have to find more ways to steal from the public. When they can present this theft as a positive boon for society, they're even more dangerous and dishonest. This is all about raising taxes at some point -- and then wasting the money.

And don't think you've escaped if you chew. They'll get you people next with a SNU-tax, and justify that on the basis "of an increase in oral cancers", and to keep these "gateway tobacco products" out of the "hands of the children".

It's always about "the Children." with this crowd, isn't it?

No it isn't, but that's how they fool you. It's about persecuting people they don't like, and since they can no longer persecute Blacks, Jews, Hispanics, Italians, Irish, and whatnot in public anymore, they've had to find new targets for hate but in a way that doesn't get them punched in the face; so they started picking on Christians and Smokers. If I were still in Charlotte tonight, I'd start thinking about joining one of them Civil War re-enactment groups. And then I'd start thinking about how I could get them to join me in doing it for real.