“I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody's business but my own.”

It depends if you are sane

Government should take this approach. If someone wants to hurt themselves (such as with drink or drugs) ... leave them alone. Only if a person poses a direct threat to others should the government propose laws to intervene.

Billie Holiday wasn't insane cause of drugs. Sane people do stupid things like skydive, climb mountains, deep sea dive, snort cocaine, etc. The idiots in Washington poke their nose into everything, sane or not, they say to keep people safe, but they only keep people from “...the pursuit of happiness...”, which I read somewhere, oh yeah, the Declaration of Independence.

Right On, Billie!

Moral indignation: The death-grip of fear that someone, somewhere, might be having a better time than you've ever had or are likely to ever have and is laughing at you because they know it.

Not a bad point, True in fact.

oh, so true...

What would Billie say about the many thousands of alcohol-related traffic deaths?

It's so hard for a non-medium to know what a deceased person WOULD say. What she DID say in this quote is "I never hurt nobody but myself . . ." - hardly the kind of thing that qualifies as a crime

well put.

She was the whore of Paris, but that was her business.

You must not drink one of those awful BigGulps because the nannies in the government will make you stand in the corner.

The US currently has in prison over 2 million people -- more than Soviet Russia ever had and more than China has even now (of course, they did kill hundreds of millions of political prisoners instead) -- and most of these prisoners are 'guilty' only of breaking rules, not harming another person or property. These victimless crimes are indeed political crimes and are only passed because there are enough people who wish to use the State to enforce their OPINIONS upon everyone else. Whether it is so-called drugs (marijuana is not a 'drug' it is a plant -- Paxil is a drug, and it kills more people per year than even cocaine and heroine COMBINED), or sex (who has the right to tell consenting adults how they may 'do it'?), or video-taping police (not a crime, but people that do are taken into custody for 'wire-tapping' ), or refusing govt-authorized drugs (like ADD drugs that cause suicidal tendencies or murdering rampages, mercury-laden and untested vaccines that cause autism and multitudes of medical problems throughout life), or selling raw milk right off the farm (which is even more healthy than pasteurized milk), or promoting vitamins and herbal supplements instead of pharmaceuticals, or even for providing cures for cancer that have been BANNED in the US (too many to mention -- needless-to-say, if you have cancer, do NOT get it treated in the US by chemotherapy, but cure it with proper diet and natural medicine -- or visit any number of cancer clinics in Mexico and Europe). And that is a small list, but bear in mind none of these so-called crimes hurt anyone except the monopolies -- illicit drug trade, legal drug trade, processed food companies, agri-monopolies that introduce genetically modified organisms into the food chain, and of course the biggest racket of them all, centralized government that has given itself the right to take whatever it wants, imprison whomever it wants, and crush any opposition. The time has more than come to say NO MORE. This road to totalitarianism must stop.

That statement is not true. When you hurt, the people who love you hurt too!

unless of course you are in the occupying statist theocracy infesting this land, welcome to Amerika !

... she's correct UNLESS what one does to one's self interferes with one's behavior toward another; say, for example, behind the wheel of an automobile. Does Mary Jane do the same thing to the mind as Demon Rum ? If so, smoke all you want, inject all you want, drink all you want ...but don't inflict your inebriated or high personhood on others who should be able to expect normal behavior and who normally finds that primarily from the un-inebriated or un-high.

Billy Holiday sure could sing. Life is not fair, there is only chance. It is ok to get a drunk off the road, it is Never ok to set a trap for all who dance, drink, smoke and play cards ! Get a life ! That is socialism !