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Did you miss it? Obama said he won, in case you missed it — but, that was weeks ago, so, in case you missed it then, yesterday he announced that he was President of the United States and that he’d do what he wants, just in case you didn’t know that already.

When asked at yesterday’s news conference — someone actually had the nerve to ask him questions, though they were, in fact, prearranged statements established pre-conference such that Obama had prepared ‘answers’ before the ‘questions’ were even posed to him — someone ‘asked’ Obama yesterday if he had taken the positions of Republicans, John McCain and Lindsey Graham (as to the Iraq Situation) into account, and Obama responded, with noticeable derisive tone, “what do you think?” He’s the President of the United States, he doesn’t take into account anyone else’s opinions, he’ll just do whatever he wants to do (because, remember, he won).

What was even more problematic, however, was that Barack Obama remained grim and passionless when asked about the Iran Situation — deaths amidst ongoing protests there — and pronounced the circumstances equally grim. The room could have frozen on the flat tone displayed by Barack Obama. Flat it was, flat he was, and if he hadn’t already announced himself as President (”of the United States“), I’d have sworn a zombie was standing there at the podium where moments ago the man making snidely about Republicans had stood.

But the real test that distinguished zombie from the man was when Barack Obama was asked about his cigarette smoking — in all consideration (which Obama does not display toward others, so this consideration extended to him was particularly special) omitting the other substances that are surely affecting the man (refer to his earlier writing in which he made elaborations about his substance abusing forays and ventures, without so much as a passage afterward describing any appreciative experiences with sobriety).

Only at this ‘question’ was Obama noticeably animated. His tone darkened, his volume increased, his teeth he bared, a glower overcame him, his eyes became darker and sternly focused on she who had posed the ‘question’ and his ire, it was heated.

And Obama proclaimed himself as smoking about five percent (because, so he said yesterday, he’s “about ninety-five percent done with” smoking otherwise). And his ire continued, directed at the woman who posed the ‘question’ while also admitting at that time that she was a former smoker, so understood the issue well.

But Obama would have none of that understanding. And discarding compassion, then, he ridiculed the woman who had posed this ‘question’ to him for doing so, using that moment to demean her and her ‘question’, his indignity still high.

So, what IS a cessation of smoking by “ninety-five percent”? Does one cease smoking or not? If you smoke, you smoke. If you use other substances abusively (as Barack Obama has so described his life experiences with substances — he has admitted abusing substances in his lifetime, he says he’s “used” “anything” and everything except heroine but stopping at that in the full range of substances available to abuse is not noteworthy nor anything to brag about, given the options available, which he says he used), I’m not of the mind that you are going to be using substances non-abusively in degrees or simply by changing the substances you use, in whatever degrees.

So Obama, despite him being President of the United States, was noticeably piqued at this issue, just like every drunk, addict and smoker I’ve ever known who was asked about their use of substances, one or all.

Because it’s not a case of one or all substances used when one is a substance abuser, it’s a case of one either using substances or being sober and not using them – there really isn’t any in-between for those who are compulsively attached in the head to substances: changing which substances one uses doesn’t get to ‘go’, it lands in jail.

About the nicotine habit, Obama defended his habitual use of nicotine by attempting to rationalize it in percentages. He then, woefully, solicited sympathy from anyone in ear-shot by claiming that smoking was something he “struggles” with. His self-serving, self-pity passed no test with me, and he did, in fact, fail as to character at that moment.

By wallowing in how difficult (”struggling with it”) it is to both smoke and to stop smoking while still smoking, Obama provides to himself the rationalization to not stop smoking — he grants himself permission to wallow in the habit, in other words, to continue the activity; so asking for public sympathy in that regard is lowdown and dirty.

He’d be credible if he admitted he smokes, likes to smoke or at least has not rejected his habitual use of nicotine (and that martini habit he boasts about), but that if and when he ever reaches a decision to cease this activity, he’ll do so. But that’s not what the man says.

I smoked for over a decade, having had two parents who smoked, so as I figured, in retrospect after I’d eventually stopped smoking, that I was already addicted to nicotine by the time I went off to my first college experience: I bought my own cigarettes nearly as soon as I arrived there and started right up and continued with the smokes for about twelve years afterward.

When I eventually stopped smoking, I stopped smoking. Before that, I went through my last months of smoking in self-loathing as to the habit I had, then feeling defeated by it while remaining disgusted by it and truly loathing being around others who also smoked in that interim: they reminded me too much of myself and I didn’t like the entire thing of smoking by then. But I still liked to smoke. So I was still smoking but I didn’t lie about doing it or present some twisted illogical excuse when asked if I smoked or anything related: but I was disgusted by the harsh reality of what I was engaged in. And therein is the contrariness of addiction to or habit of nicotine, that downward spiral of ‘having to’ and feeling worse for having to.

But when I stopped smoking — truly a miracle in my experience, an act of God (that’s God of the Judeo-Christian theology, God, the Creator of everything, who I asked to help me) — I stopped smoking.

When you stop, you just stop. You finish with it, you don’t pick it up again. You leave the thing in the past by seconds, then minutes, then hours, then days and years, you just leave it. IF you stop, you don’t start again and any fitful efforts or unsuccessful attempts earlier are just that: attempts at an action, not the action itself.

So hearing and seeing the current President of the United States, for the first time in his entire history of press conferences as President, actually become heated and personalize his condemnations as he did for so much as an issue being raised before him as to him smoking, hearing and seeing this yesterday was difficult. Difficult because the man’s the President (”of the United States” in case that’s not been repeated enough). His erratic emotional state places everyone at risk; and, so it’s been proven so many times in the history of human behavior, it’s that little thing, that one thing, that sets off the quiet, cool one into a rampage.

Recall, if you will, that Obama declared he’d stopped smoking while still campaigning for the Presidency and when it was discovered that he was still smoking then, that he’d lied about stopping, he then exclaimed about what he attempted to use today as his cover excuse, and that is that he categorizes it: certain times, certain people, rooms, no rooms, only then, only this, just that, nearly not, etc.

And that is, indeed, substance abuse in action, that is what it is, how it attempts to rationalize itself and by someone involved in it, what was shown yesterday by Barack Obama, it’s the real man finally jumping out of the prearranged masking and over-modulated performances, it’s the irritation of a substance abuser who wants the ‘questions’ to just go away so he can remain in statis with yet another fix.

And I am nearly certain that what Obama did immediately or very soon after that Press Conference was have a drink of alcohol just after he had another cigarette.

From Hot Air,
“VIDEO: OBAMA’S TESTY PRESS CONFERENCE” — and –
“OBAMATEURISM OF THE DAY”