I quit

And I'm not talking about any of his campaign promises or cabinet nominations. Those are fair game. I'm talking about the Prez-to-be sneaking a smoke now and then. Mr. Obama admitted to Tom Brokaw recently on Meet the Press that he had done pretty well trying to quit but has fallen off the wagon on occasion. And he told Brokaw that if he does have to have a cig he will not do it in the White House, which is smoke free. (Ironically it was Hillary Clinton who banned smoking in the White House when she was first lady.) That conjures up an interesting image of the President ducking behind a bush in the rose garden to light up.

But I can feel for the President-elect. I'm a recovering smoker myself and fortunately I haven't had a smoke in more than eight years. Not only did I fall off the wagon several times before I finally kicked, I got run over by it. It took me a long time to quit. My father wasn't able to quit until the night they rushed him to the hospital because he couldn't breath. He died 11 years ago because of it, so if you do the math you'll see that it was three years after he died before I finally quit. And I only did it then because of some big changes in my personal life. A friend of mine said it's like a car; you clean it up when you're trying to sell it.

Now don't get me wrong, I think Barack Obama should quit and quit as soon as possible. I obviously can't lecture too much, but I do know that the longer you smoke the harder it is to quit. And it's got to be one of the dumbest habits ever. It does nothing but cause physical injury to your body, there is no benefit at all. At least the people smoking pot are getting high. (That is not an endorsement of smoking marijuana by the way.) Can you imagine someone from another planet landing here and saying:

"Hey, what do you guys do for fun?"

"Oh, we light fire to the end of weeds and suck the smoke into our lungs!"

"Okay there is no intelligent life on this planet."