I found this picture here.   And also here.

This version (above) appears to be doctored.  I used it sarcastically in this post.

However, as corroboration of the claim that Obama smokes I offer this quote from an article on Obama that appeared in the Chicago Tribune: One thing he has tried to do for his children–quit smoking–is among his biggest struggles. “The flesh is weak,” he said. “It’s an ongoing battle. I have my gum, my patches and all that stuff.”

[Dec 24, 2005]

It receives a vitriolic political comment here, from Joh Gibson of Fox News: Gibson also asked: “The question is would you vote for a smoker as president? John, is that kind of — is that an impediment?” At one point in the discussion, an on-screen graphic showed a picture of Obama in front of the White House, smiling next to two packs of Marlboro cigarettes with the question: “Would you vote for a smoker as president?”

John Tapper writing at Political Punch interprets it more sympathetically: …on MSNBC’s Hardball, Obama admitted that his attempt to wean himself from the vile tobacco weed had not been entirely successful.

“I fell off the wagon a couple times during the course of it, and then was able to get back on,” he said. “But it is a struggle like everything else.”

Now I wonder about last August.

It’s not a big deal in the scheme of things — the war on Iraq, a major economic crisis — indeed, it’s miniscule. Hardly worth mentioning.

Except that I don’t like feeling that I wasn’t being dealt with honestly. And as much as citizens who are suspect of the media might scoff at such a notion, many of us consider ourselves to be your representatives to help make sure our leaders are telling us the truth, and leading the country down a path we as a nation are confident is the right one. (Corny, I know.)

Meanwhile, I – Ann’s New Friend —  already offered my own rather far-fetched interpretation as to one possibility that Obama or his campaign might have wished to keep the smoking quiet.  My theory was that it might suggest to someone that his speeches look a lot like hypnosis in response to which they might wish to avoid drawing attention to the connection between hypnosis and habit control.

I should add a proviso to this allegation which has surfaced in various places on the internet: it could be possible for Obama to be coached in the technique without his knowledge by an over-eager campaign manager or team …. However, it seems improbable that he could be doing the techniques without being aware.  In any case, lacking hard evidence, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.  But the techniques of vagueness and suggestion are decidedly present in his speeches and are further reinforced by all kinds of props (such as the fake presidential seal, the circular logo, the chanting, the “change” posters, and so on).

In any case, were it true that the campaign deliberately used hypnosis techniques, one would anticipate seeing similar techniques used again in the future.  What works once is temptingly used again.  For now, I simply wish to address an error I helped promote by posting the fake photograph.  While it’s true that Obama smokes, the above picture is not a photograph of his doing so but is rather someone’s photo-shopped attempt to make him look bad — something that is all too familiar as political sarcasm these days.

The question remains as to why Obama thought his cigarette smoking would be a campaign liability when his associations with Ayers and Wright and others was wrongly presumed to be “okay” – or why he was comfortable describing cocaine use in his past, but reluctant to acknowledge cigarette smoking in the present.

One simply wants to hear the truth.  And that should not be so difficult to draw out as it has been during this campaign with this candidate — correction, with this now president-elect.