PunditGuy — Home

Year: 2005

You’re Either With Us or Against Us

Finally, we’re confronting the problem. This is long overdue.

President Bush calls for United Nations to convene after “deeply disturbing” report implicates Syrian officials in assassination. I’ve thought for some time that the Bush administration should have been calling Syria out for it’s support of terrorism. Let’s hope that this is step one in the process. We know the U.N. won’t do anything significant, so it will be up to the U.S. to remind Syria that we expect them to stop harboring outlaws, stop funding their acts of aggression, and reform themselves. Or else.

It’s time for Syria to step up and get their act together.

Picture of the Day

Priceless. Drudge posted this picture of Ahnold on his main page, along with a link to a story about the governator questioning the timing of a visit by President Bush.

Capt.camw10210152153.schwarzenegger_firefighters_camw102

See? He really is the Terminator.

Frankfurted

I’m on a business trip in Frankfurt, Germany which means lots of time ‘pressing the flesh’ and not a lot of time at the computer. Today was unreal. Started at 6 AM with coffee and a quick email check, out the door at 8 AM, meetings all day, business dinner, and then I finally get back to the hotel room at 12:30 AM!

Knowing I haven’t blogged at all today, I get inside, take the day items out of my pockets, cell phone on the table, shoes and socks come off, and I open up the computer. Phone rings –  it’s the wife…, so of course, I take the call. 15 minutes. It’s now 12:52 AM. Boot up the computer, download email…there are a couple of personal ones that require immediate reading. Now it’s 1:00 AM. Still haven’t blogged anything yet. So I open up my blogging tabs in FireFox – 12 in all – and I start looking at some stuff for inspiration. 1:03 AM – and suddenly I hear a little voice inside my head…

“It’s one in the morning and you’re gonna blog, huh? You gotta be up at 6 AM. Oh, and another thing – YOU’RE WIPED OUT, YOU’RE STINKING TIRED, YOU’RE WHIPPED!”

The little man is always right.

G’night.

Just Get It Over With

Delirium

Pronunciation: di-‘lir-E-&m
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, from delirare to be crazy

1 : a mental disturbance characterized by confusion, disordered speech, and hallucinations

Hussein_cp_6027276Saddam_xdg138

Trial one started today and I already wish it was over. The media will spin this circus in all sorts of directions, making believe that Saddam has a chance to beat the case against him. They want the roller coaster ride atmosphere. We’re smarter than that though. We all know what his future holds.

Uncle_sam_gun

Rumor O’ The Week

Cheney resigns so Condi can take the VP slot and slide easily into the 2008 nomination.

Sounds like a great plot for a left-wing Hollywood movie, but that’s it. Perhaps there is an actual screenplay in the works here? I’ll push the rumor even further and say that I think Ace is behind it. He’s been looking for a deal for some time (right Ace?).

Experiencing Dachau

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                 Photo Courtesy of ushmm.org

Today, I visited the Dachau concentration camp. It was an experience I’ll never forget.

I’m not Jewish, and I haven’t studied much of the history of the Holocaust. I have visited the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam, I’ve been to the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and yes, I’ve watched Schindler’s List. That’s the extent of my physical experience with the Holocaust. Some of you know that I’ve been in Munich for the past couple of days. Driving around, I found signs pointing toward the town of Dachau. It didn’t occur to me that this place was so close by. I knew I had to go see it.

Dachau

Established in March 1933, the Dachau concentration camp was the first regular concentration camp established by the Nazis. Today, it is a museum, an archive, a library and most of all, a place of remembrance.

It is hard to describe what I felt as I walked up to this place. Dachau is surrounded by a suburb where people live in two story apartment buildings. When they look outside their kitchen window, they can see over the wall. Some look out and see this.

Tower   

It’s just one of the half a dozen towers where Nazi SS were posted, waiting for camp prisoners to cross a line near the wall. When they did, they were immediately shot. 

KZ Dachau

As I walked into Dachau, I was greeted with these words.

Gate

“Work Makes One Free”. You might recognize this motto as the same one posted at the main gate of Auschwitz.

Auschwitz

Dachau is huge. So much bigger than I had imagined (see the map here). It could easily take a couple of hours to walk around and see everything. I focused on two places. The Crematorium and the maintenance building.

Walking

On my way to the Crematorium building, I couldn’t help but think about all of the people who lived here, worked here, suffered here and died here.

Walking just outside the camp and through a gate, I came upon this building. It looks rather plain actually, but it was nothing ordinary at all. It was here that tens of thousands of people died.

Crematorium

There is only one picture showing the Dachau Crematorium in operation. It was taken illegally by a prisoner, but it survived and is now the single representation of the horrors that occurred here.

Info_krematorium_1

There are two rooms inside this building that are the most difficult to visit in the entire camp. The first is the gas chamber.

Dac_gaschmbr

And the second place is the room containing the ovens.

Ovens

No one talks much in here. There really isn’t a whole lot to say. It’s mostly a place to reflect. A place to remember. A place which must never exist again. 

In the back of the Crematorium, you’ll find this memorial. It was here where the ashes of thousands of those killed at Dachau were dumped by the Nazi SS.

Dachau statue_c

As I mentioned earlier, the Dachau concentration camp covers a very large area. As I walked away from the Crematorium building, I took in this view of the camp road, and the foundations of the 30 bunk houses. These were built to house 200 prisoners, but at the time of the liberation of Dachau, they each held over 2,000 people.

Bunkers

Dachau is filled with memorial plaques. This one is particularly haunting.

Memorial

I exited the camp through the same way I came in. Walking through this gate, I thought about all of those who never got the chance to leave this place as I did. Their memory lives here.

Dac_gate1 

I experienced something of the Holocaust today that no book could describe, no pictures convey, and nothing a Hollywood movie could present. Dachau is a piece of history, a living memorial to the people who died there, but also to the survivors who struggled and suffered, but walked away on their day of liberation.

We must never forget what happened during the Holocaust, and we must take whatever measures necessary to ensure it never happens again. I know one thing. I’ll never forget what I saw today. Dachau won’t let me.

And He Puts His Pants On Like Everyone Else Too

This story from the Associated Press sets a new standard for stupidity. Darlene Superville reveals the secret about Karl Rove’s garage – it’s like any other garage in America. Duh.

He is “the architect” who steered George W. Bush to victory four times, twice as Texas governor and twice as president.

But can Karl Rove organize his own garage? Can the master of Bush’s political planning figure out where to put the ladders, paint cans and cardboard boxes?

Rove’s wife, Darby, raised the white garage door one morning last week to show journalists outside the million-dollar brick home that the deputy chief of staff, assistant to the president and senior adviser wasn’t home. All the interest came on the eve of his testimony Friday before a grand jury investigating who in the White House might have revealed the identity of a CIA operative.

There was no car in the garage. And the stuff left behind turned out not to be much different from what gathers dust inside most American garages.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking. Why would anyone read past the second paragraph of this idiotic story? You got me. All I can say is it’s voyeurism, pure and simple.

She then goes on to list the inventory.

  • Some cardboard file boxes stacked one on top of the other, labeled “Box 6,” “Box 4” and what appears to be “Box 7.” No sign of boxes 1, 2, 3 and 5.
  • What appear to be paint cans stacked alongside a folded, folding chair.
  • A rather large wood crate marked “FRAGILE” and painted with arrows indicating which way is up. On top of the crate, two coolers.
  • A tall aluminum ladder.
  • A snow shovel leaned in front of another cardboard box.
  • Wicker baskets inside of wicker baskets on top of a shelf running the length of the rear wall. Transparent plastic storage bins crammed with indiscernible stuff. Another cardboard box.
  • In one corner, the rear wheel of a bicycle sticks out, along with what appears to be a helmet.
  • Another ladder, this one green, leaning sideways.

For these reasons I thank God every day that I didn’t ‘grow up’ to be a reporter who’s career is defined by staking out in front of famous people’s houses.