{"id":12794,"date":"2009-07-18T19:16:59","date_gmt":"2009-07-19T00:16:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=12794"},"modified":"2009-07-18T19:22:06","modified_gmt":"2009-07-19T00:22:06","slug":"vvs-friedman-on-smoking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=12794","title":{"rendered":"VV&#8217;s Friedman on smoking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brandon &#8220;Beaker&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vetvoice.com\/showDiary.do;jsessionid=545202E3E68C0F4D154650616FFFE7CE?diaryId=2960\">Friedman of Vote Vets<\/a> is unhappy that s<a href=\"http:\/\/www.military.com\/news\/article\/dod-wont-ban-war-zone-smoking.html\">oldiers will retain their choice whether to use tobacco<\/a> or not after the Department of Defense rejected recommendations to curtail tobacco use in the military. Somehow he blames some nebulous &#8220;pro-tobacco opposition&#8221;;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> Even though no one suggested the government&#8217;s Morale Suppression Squad would immediately deploy agents to the front lines to confiscate Joe&#8217;s smokes, that&#8217;s exactly how the pro-tobacco opposition framed it.  And you guys were successful.  So well played, my tobacco-loving friends, well played.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I don&#8217;t remember anyone except real soldiers who like to dip tobacco to fend off stress and fire up a stogy to celebrate when it&#8217;s over expressing their opinions. Somehow we did irreparable damage to future soldiers. But see, that&#8217;s not the end. How can anyone write a post at Vote Vets without pulling statistics out of their ass? Well they can&#8217;t. In defense of his post, Beaker wrote this;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/beaker-on-smoking.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/beaker-on-smoking.jpg?resize=489%2C358\" alt=\"beaker-on-smoking\" title=\"beaker-on-smoking\" width=\"489\" height=\"358\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12795\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/beaker-on-smoking.jpg?w=489&amp;ssl=1 489w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/beaker-on-smoking.jpg?resize=300%2C219&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 489px) 100vw, 489px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Notice the first line; <em>Military service is not more dangerous than smoking and drinking.  I don&#8217;t have the data, but I guarantee you more veterans died of smoking- and drinking-related causes last year than died in combat.  In fact, that&#8217;s a statistic I&#8217;d love to get my hands on. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>He had to say &#8220;veterans&#8221; because no one on active duty dies of tobacco use &#8211; it takes decades of use to die from tobacco usage. No one dies when they&#8217;re 19 from a year of a pinch between teeth and gums. But ya know, when you say &#8220;veterans&#8221; that means people who don&#8217;t go to combat &#8211; because they&#8217;re not in the military. They&#8217;re veterans. And they get to choose whether they use tobacco or not &#8211; irrespective of military policy.<\/p>\n<p>So, and I&#8217;m just guessin&#8217; here, I think that 100% more veterans die of tobacco use than die in combat. <\/p>\n<p>Below the jump, Freidman sings &#8220;Ode to Joy&#8221; to repent for his anally-retrieved  statistics;<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n<object width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/xpcUxwpOQ_A&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1&#038;\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brandon &#8220;Beaker&#8221; Friedman of Vote Vets is unhappy that soldiers will retain their choice whether to use tobacco or not after the Department of Defense rejected recommendations to curtail tobacco use in the military. Somehow he blames some nebulous &#8220;pro-tobacco opposition&#8221;; Even though no one suggested the government&#8217;s Morale Suppression Squad would immediately deploy agents [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloggers-and-stuff","category-military-issues"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ozh1-3km","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}