More than a million South Vietnamese killed – not because we entered the war – but because of the way we left it. Horrific and inexcusable. And every movie I’ve ever seen a Vietnam scene in or a Vietnam veteran in makes it look like a drug filled slow conveyor belt to death for no reason.

Synopsis of the story: The Frank family knew shit was going down and started planning to go into hiding in the annex of Mr Franks business building (a company called Opekta which sold a kit to make home made jam). They had to bump up the move after eldest daughter, Margot Frank was sent a summons to report to a work camp. “Fuck that” was the obvious response, and the family moved into the annex attic that night, taking whatever they could carry without looking suspicious and wearing several layers of their clothes since they couldn’t be seen with suit cases.

They were joined shortly afterward in their hiding place by family friends Mr and Mrs Van Pels and their teenage son Peter. Later, their dentist and friend Fritz Pfeffer (see my companion piece to this post I wrote for BetweenShowers.com here) was added after in inquiring to Miep Giess, one of the office workers who brought the hidden families food and supplies, on a place to hide.

Anne’s father, Otto Frank was the only one to survive.

This is one of the few television interviews Otto Frank gave. Sitting in one of the rooms of the Secret Annex, he is talking about his surprise at the things Anne Frank wrote in her diary. Her thoughts on life, her self-criticism: this was not the daughter he had known

Things I learned that everyone should know:

-The “E” at the end of her name is not silent. Her name is pronounced Ann-eh. kinda like “Anna” but with an ehh instead of the “uh” sound an “A” makes.

-If only whoever betrayed the family (no one knows who made the anonymous call to the Gestapo that gave the tip) had waited a month, Anne and maybe more probably would have survived (Anne died one month before the camp was liberated).

DEATH:

-She suffered. Her last months were pain filled in every sense, starting with seeing her precious diary thrown away by the German police as they ransacked the attic and ending with her death among piles of sick, dying and bodies in the infirmary hut at the camp where she died 3 days after her sister.

-If Anne had not been infected with Scabies (a skin infection caused by mites burrowing into your flesh), her whole family most likely would have lived. 1) because her mother and sister were selected to leave the death-work camp they were in and go to an actual work camp where most of the slave laborers lived but Anne was denied due to her scabies infection and her sister and mother chose to stay with her. and 2) Anne’s expected cause of death, Typhus, was caused by the scabies.

-If Anne had known her father (whom she was closest to) were still alive, I bet she too would still be alive. When the family arrived at the camp, families were immediately forced apart into 4 groups: first the men and women were separated and then each split into either off-to-the-work-camp or straight-to-the-gas-chamber. One of Anne’s friends who ended up in a neighboring camp from her heard from Anne that she believed her father was put into the straight-to-the-gas-chamber group and died that night. She (accurately) believed her mother to be dead and her sister Margot died while Anne was taking care of her. Anne died 3 days later, evidence would suggest, because she just gave up. Her whole family was dead and there was no light at the end of the pitch black hell tunnel she was in, and she just let her illness claim her. If she had known her dad was alive, I believe she could have hung on those 4 more weeks to be liberated.

The effect a war can have on an economy is uneven. World War 2 (and not any of FDR’s economic policies) got us out of the depression for instance, but the war on terror helped nudge us in the opposite direction for instance. The reason is because in a situation like World War 2, the government issued mass production of war making devices. This can work as a quick pick-me-up, but unless its followed by a 1950′s era of continued production and growth, then all you’ve done is create a ton of jobs creating a ton of products that you then dumped in the ocean and blew up in the skies. Obama could do that today with any field. He could open a new government wing that will increase paper clip production by a million percent and that would bump the economy by creating jobs, but then slump it when we’re met with no way to profit from the paper clips.

My mouth was propped open with a dental damn over it and mental objects prodding around my Novocaine induced face, so my engagement in the conversation was limited to a Frankentien like eeehhhnnn uuuuhhhnnnn grunt here and there.

Then a 2nd assistant, sitting to chat with the 3 of us but performing no job at the moment chimed in on the heels of the dentists war comment…

“What’s really a shame is that Obama is going back on his promises about the war so now they’re just going to stay there longer and get depressed and killed and have a terrible time when they come home”. I gave the eyebrow signlanguage equivelent to a “wtf” as she continued.

“I think a lot of times they send people off to war just for population control. you know? its not the people making the war who have to go die in it, so I think thats just what they do”.

What in the sh#t? Luckily my mouth was JUST becoming free at that point, so I was able to issue a “no way” response and briefly explain how that theory doesn’t make any frigging sense. I couldn’t go nuclear on her because she clearly was not convinced of the charge herself, nor felt very passionate about it so I gave a reply equal to her initial statement. I’m guessing that she heard the claim made in a convincing way by someone who sounded like they knew what they were talking about, so she brought it up still thinking it was a valid observation.

It’s a frigging retarded observation.

The US population as of 2008 is 304,059,724 (roughly 3 hundred Million).

US casualties in Iraq as of June 2009 have been 4,300 (roughly 4 thousand).

If 4 thousand out of 300 million doesn’t sound like a large percentage, then you probably passed the 2nd grade on your first try. But to really see exactly HOW off base this theory is, you’ve got to calculate what % of our population has been exterminated in this alleged population control.

4,300 is 13 thousandths of 1% of 304,059,724.

In other words: .0000013% of our population has been killed in Iraq.

Does that sound like effective “population control” to you?… If so then you probably voted for Nader.

Did it never occur to these people that perhaps issuing cheap or free birth control, increasing abortion, federally legalizing euthanasia, speeding up wait time for inmates on death row, or restricting health care benefits to the elderly and drug addicted – MIGHT just be more logical, and definitely more effective measures of going about controlling the population? Think those suggestions are just a tad more prudent than risking a political career and reputation to make some shit up about why its a big deal that we have to go fight a war for some reason other than the REAL one which is to get our strongest, hardest willed men and women ages 18-30sent to their deaths, while spending hundreds of billions of dollars in the mean time to train and arm them… just so we can execute them. Really?…

UPDATE: Martin, from a UK e-mail address says:

Take your head out of your ass, its not only americans who die. It’s also not just people in Iraq. There are many other ‘wars’ happening all over the world.

Thanks for that 100% irrelevant notation that changes nothing (he’s just pissed that I used America – the country the person I’m responding to was talking about – as an example because he’s got hater issues).

Naturally, Stephen Colbert thought it was over the top and parodied it with his bigger, scarier alarmist special: the “Doom Bunker“. (go here if the video below becomes unavailable)

SO… in what is a unique occurrence – a parody reply to a parody reply – Beck parodied Colbert parodying HIM with Beck’s new faux segment with the shows “Fear Consultant” coming to him live from the “Doom Room” (a padded room within the Doom Bunker). I loled…

Black Holes are “crushingly dense sucking things, like giant Paris Hiltons”?…. Dude… Colbert’s been zinged with funnier writing…by FOX NEWS…..

A German brass band (including Hirohito on sousaphone and Mussolini on bass drum) marches through a small German town (where everything, including the clouds and trees, is decorated with the Nazi swastika), singing the virtues of the Nazi doctrine. Passing by Donald’s house, they poke him out of bed with a bayonet to get ready for work. Because of wartime rationing, his breakfast consists of stale bread, coffee brewed from a single hoarded coffee bean, and a spray that tastes like bacon and eggs. The band shoves a copy of Mein Kampf in front of him for a moment of reading, then marches into his house and escorts him to a factory.

Upon arriving at the factory (at bayonet-point), Donald starts his 48-hour daily shift screwing caps onto artillery shells in an assembly line. Mixed in with the shells are portraits of the Fuehrer, so he must interrupt his work to do a Hitler salute every time a portrait appears. The pace of the assembly line intensifies (as in the classic comedy Modern Times), and Donald finds it increasingly hard to complete all the tasks. At the same time, he is bombarded with propaganda messages about the superiority of the Aryan race and the glory of working for The Führer.

After a “paid vacation” that consists of making swastika shapes with his body for a few seconds in front of a painted backdrop of the Alps, Donald is ordered to work overtime. He has a nervous breakdown with hallucinations of artillery shells everywhere. When the hallucinations clear, he finds himself in his bed—in the United States—and realizes the whole experience was a nightmare. The short ends with Donald embracing a miniature Statue of Liberty, thankful for his American citizenship.

HAM BUR GERS! HAM BUR GERS!
oh, and also: Dog impersonates boozy Orson Welles.