Sweden: You are permitted to smoke in your yard!

Woman affirmed right to smoke in own garden

7 Aug 09
The Local.se


A feud in Åkarp in southern Sweden between a cigarette-puffing woman and her smoke-sensitive neighbour has finally been put to rest by Swedish courts.

On Friday, the the Environmental High Court made a final ruling that the woman may light up as much as she wants to in her own garden. In its decision, the court said that the neighbour had been been unable to prove that the woman's smoke “poses such a significant threat to human health” that the environmental code would prescribe prohibiting the woman to smoke in the garden. The conflict between the neighbours has been an ongoing legal saga since 2006. The smoke-sensitive neighbour, a lawyer, was so disturbed by the smoking that he wore a breathing mask whenever he was in his garden at the same time the woman was smoking.

In 2007, the Environmental Court in Växjö initially banned the woman from smoking in her own garden, ruling that she was banned from smoking within a nine metre radius of her neightbour's house. The 49-year-old woman then appealed the decision to the Environmental High Court, which in turn found no reasonable grounds for an interim ban before a final decision was reached.






smoking

Obama: I cannot tell a lie ... I don't now not ever have I not stopped smoking.

He makes 'Slick Willy' look downright Bushy - and it isn't that I care whether he smokes or not - just that he cannot tell the truth and he feels ashamed to admit the truth.





Get a whiff: Obama admits occasional cigarette

By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer
June 23, 2009


WASHINGTON – It fell to President Barack Obama to confirm the gossip that his aides had spent weeks trying to snuff out: He still sneaks an occasional cigarette.

"There are times where I mess up," Obama said at a White House news conference on Tuesday.
But, the president hastened to add, he never smokes in front of his young daughters and not on a daily basis. Oh, and he's "95 percent cured."

It was the first public acknowledgment from the president that he still hasn't completely kicked the habit. In the past, he had alluded to his three-decades-old habit without giving direct answers.

One day after signing the nation's toughest anti-tobacco legislation into law, Obama was asked again Tuesday about his smoking habit and came clean.

"Look, I've said before that as a former smoker I constantly struggle with it. Have I fallen off the wagon sometimes? Yes," Obama said. "Am I a daily smoker, a constant smoker? No." [As a FORMER smoker ... no, he is a regular smoker, even if it is only 4 or 5 a day, HE is not a FORMER smoker. That would be like a drug addict who took 10 grams of cocaine a day and dropped down to 1/2 a day calling himself a former drug user who relapses occasionally.]

Obama has said he used to average about five cigarettes a day, although stress sometimes drove him to reach for a lighter more often. He promised his wife he'd quit if she agreed that he should run for president.

"I hate it," Michelle Obama told CBS' "60 Minutes" early in the presidential campaign. "That's why he doesn't do it anymore, I'm proud to say. I outed him — I'm the one who outed him on the smoking. That was one of my prerequisites for, you know, entering this race is that, you know, he couldn't be a smoking president." [Well, he is and .... he is. Maybe she should just bake cookies.]

Now in the White House, Obama is finding that his nicotine intake is part of the public debate — much to the president's annoyance.

When asked Tuesday about the anti-smoking measure and his own habits, Obama scolded a reporter for thinking the question was "neat ... as opposed to it being relevant to my new law."

[Isn't he the model - lecturing the media about what is and is not relevant. Ha. Mr. Obama, the media do not take kindly to being lectured. I would be careful. They will turn on you like sharks.]

He said the legislation, which faced a veto threat under former President George W. Bush, was aimed at preventing young people from taking up the habit. Obama began smoking as a teenager and has been an on-again, off-again smoker ever since.

"First of all, the new law that was put in place is not about me," Obama said. "It's about the next generation of kids coming up."

Kids like his daughters, 10-year-old Malia and 8-year-old Sasha.

"I don't do it in front of my kids, I don't do it in front of my family," Obama said.

Obama refused to say how many cigarettes he smokes, where he sneaks them or how often he lights up now that he's in the White House. Only a day earlier, his top aides had refused to answer direct questions about the president's smoking.

"I don't, honestly, see the need to get a whole lot more specific than the fact that it's a continuing struggle," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. "He struggles with it every day."

[He should go on tour - with Slick Willy - he never told a lie and Obama doesn't smoke.]

During the presidential campaign, aides packed nicotine gum in their pockets to help Obama control his urges. Obama occasionally bummed cigarettes from aides, while also making sure to emphasize his efforts to stop for good and his progress toward quitting.









Liar liar

Who Wants to Lose?

I was sent a link to a video about John McCain, called 'The Real McCain'. Part of their advertising includes the following script:

This is truly spectacular: within 24 hours, The Real McCain 2 has skyrocketed to over half a million views! It's the #1 most viewed video on YouTube right now, and it's getting loads of love on Digg as well. These numbers put us right up there with many cable news shows, as you can see from the ratings. The difference between us and them, however, is that we're spreading our message virally through the web. We're also spreading the truth about John McCain.

This incredible feedback clearly indicates that what the general public wants to see (and what the corporate press has failed to show) is an accurate portrayal of McCain. So continue to pass this video along to all of your family, friends, and colleagues. We need to end the mainstream media's love affair with McCain, and we need to end it now!

Frustration is one word that comes to mind. Perhaps we should step back, reassess, and appreciate the fact both sides want to win,and will say whatever it takes, to win.

The TRUTH? Well, is it truth to tell your side of an interpretation of the other side? Even if you believe it is true, is it the TRUTH. Your opinion / interpretation of the opposition candidate - is it TRUE because you believe it, because you manipulate video to make it say what you want it to say, because you will do anything to get your candidate elected. Both sides believe that way, but we the people should understand that the truth is not isolated in the speech or fumbled words, it is located in their plans, bills, actions, deeds, desires, wants ...

What is the title about: The Real McCain: Less Jobs, More War. The Real McCoy is the original from which the Real McCain was derived, a play on words and perfectly acceptable. Less jobs - and where will the jobs go? Republicans take your jobs away and Democrats make jobs is what the statement implies.

More jobs via the government can only happen with BIGGER government. Yet it is the Democrats or at least the extreme left-wing of the party who scream about government that intrudes into your personal lives.

My question - when government is so big and so encompassing, how on earth can it NOT intrude. By its very nature of being so large as to provide the jobs, it would intrude into the personal lives. Government cares, so intrusion isn't so bad, say the far left, unless it has to do with their sex practices. Yet caring is rather subjective isn't it? To save money on insurance premiums, we will force smokers to pay 2x what they currently pay, as an incentive to stop smoking, after all - smoking is bad.

Overweight people - same issue. The government wants to protect you, help you live longer, and to do that, it may need to raise premiums as an incentive to lose the weight and save the money. After all - being very heavy is bad for your health.

Laws regulating radio - to prevent hate speech and encourage civil dialogue - after all, laws are not intended to interfere with free speech, just to prevent hate speech that hurts innocent people.

Government cares - about smoking, obesity, and hate speech. Consequently, laws regulating or preventing bad behavior are ok ... but are they. It is still government intrusion into our personal lives, but for the left-wing, this degree of intrusion is good, but heaven help us if the government wanted to regulate the minimum age a girl could have an abortion. The hysteria that would erupt - the intrusion and violation of a woman's body, not to mention a violation of the 14th Amendment.

We each want to win. Your lunatic beliefs are as dangerous in my opinion as my views are to you. Yet characterizing me as a religious zealot is simplistic and false, just as characterizing you as walking vomit would be inaccurate.

Big government is bad and I do not understand how the left loons cannot understand that for their central thesis in life is free speech and free whatever whenever at whatever time and with whomever they wish ... do you really think that a government that controls weight and smoking in your own home, will not eventually control and dictate who you can and cannot have sex with? You are naive and dangerous if you do not.

So this bigger government will provide jobs by hiring people and will pay these people???? With our tax dollars = higher taxes. Versus - let private enterprise hire and pay for their employees off profits from selling or building or doing what business does. Government doesn't do anything - it contracts with someone to hire people and in the process pays fees, which, to hire millions of people, would amount to tens of millions in fees that would otherwise be used on people.

The Real McCain = less jobs and more war. So what is this more war bit? Under Ronald Reagan we did not get an invasion of El Salvador by December 1982 as Martin Sheen had predicted most assuredly (a speech he gave in Arizona at a college). We actually had less worldwide conflict under Reagan than under Carter. And it was not because Reagan wanted to negotiate for the sake of negotiation. So is that why we would have more war? Because McCain does not believe we should negotiate for the sake of negotiation without conditions? Their simplicity and foolishness is beyond understanding. Why will we have more war? Because McCain said we would be in Iraq for 100 years? Well, we may well be there for fifty years, but before you have an apoplectic fit - it doesn't mean we will fight for fifty years, nor that there will be war, rather - our military may well be in Iraq for fifty years just as we have been in Germany. That explanation is less appealing to the looney left than taking McCain's statement and ignoring reality. The looney-left live in a fantasy world where we do not have war, government gives jobs, and we all live happily-ever-after. Disney.

Don't vote for McCain because of something substantive - you think we should allow illegals in here and we shouldn't have a border. We shouldn't be in Iraq because we are more evil than al qaida. Vote for reasons that make sense, not because of such trifling ignorant and insipid statements as those made by The Real McCain 2, at least you would be honest.

Mobile Phones more dangerous than smoking or asbestos

Brain expert warns of huge rise in tumors. Growing evidence that suggests ten years of cell phone usage leads to brain tumors and cancer. This means potentially tens of millions of people will have cancer in the next twenty years. Tens of millions of people who will overwhelm our medical systems with their medical surgeries and treatments. The Independent, March 30, 2008

Tens of millions who will die.

That fact is as evidenced as global warming and potentially more destructive.

Cancer and Genes

According to European scientists, cell phone usage is more deadly than smoking.

Now comes a report that informs us that lung cancer may be genetic.

People who have the gene variant face at least a 30% greater chance of developing the disease, three studies find. The discovery may help to explain why some smokers will never be afflicted.

April 3, 2008, LA Times, Genetic Link to Lung Cancer

Smoking

Do not smoke near government buildings. Do not smoke in buildings. Do not smoke in offices. Do not smoke in airports. Do not smoke near airports. Do not smoke in the city parks. Do not smoke in the city. Do not smoke in your car. Do not smoke in your home.

The Crusade continues.

Update: 2/15/08 BBC: £10 license to smoke. That is, you will pay £10 for the right to buy cigarettes and smoke them in your home or in the tree or far away from humanity.