So, Joe Biden was classified undraftable due to asthma despite being an athlete in high school and college and the response of the right wing is to call him a draft dodger?
Look: I know from *personal* experience that the military won’t admit you if you have severe allergies or asthma. As in, I tried to sign up during Raygun’s big military buildup when they were accepting almost every swinging dick and got noped the fuck out at med exam because of my severe allergies.
Biden has released his medical records. He does, in fact, have exercise-induced asthma along with a history of severe allergies that have required multiple nasal and sinus surgeries, asthma and allergies controlled by medication. Both asthma and severe allergies are disqualifiers for military service.
Asthma or severe allergies are a disqualifier for military service because while it is controllable with medication, medication is not always available in a combat zone or if you’re captured. There have been many top athletes with asthma over the years, Olympic gold medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee being one of the more prominent ones. She performed well because she was on asthma medication. She would have been disqualified for service in the Army despite her admirable physique and extreme physical capabilities because her asthma would have been life-threatening if her supply of medicine was cut off due to being in a combat zone or being captured.
Joe Biden is a lot of things — a serial plagiarist, a guy with foot-in-mouth disease, etc. — but one thing he isn’t is a guy who invented fake bone spurs as a way of getting out of the draft. Based on the medical records that he released when he was running for President, he would have been ineligible for service in the military not only in 1968, but today.
- Badtux the non-military Penguin
Asthma is no joke. I had a roommate with it and he used to scare the living fuck out of us when he would get an attack in the middle of the night and couldn’t find his inhaler.
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YOU tried to sign up during Ray-gun? I would not have expected that from the modern you, at least the one who’s portrayed in your writing. That said, me-who-bailed-outta-the-U.S. due largely to anti-war ideology, had thoughts of joining the military, at least the National Guard, when I was younger. My dad was career Army, both grandfathers spent time in the service, two uncles (Korean War vintage) wore the uniform… Family tradition! Only it was out of the question because one of my legs was mangled so bad from gangrene caused by a rattlesnake bite that I got hit with on a Florida base where my dad was stationed when I was a teenager. Military doctors screwed up the initial treatment, which is why I got the gangrene. So the military kept me out of the military! Later, both my ex-wives, who were far to the left of me in anti-war sentiment, re-wired my mind about militarism.
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