Commentary on Mitt Romney’s Speech to the VFW (7/24/2012)

http://foxnewsinsider.com/2012/07/24/transcript-mitt-romneys-remarks-at-vfw-national-convention/

The first thing that jumps out at me is Romney’s attempt to pin the looming defense cuts to the Pentagon, a process known as sequestration, on President Obama. He referred to “President Obama’s massive defense cuts”, “the President’s radical cuts in the military” and says that “the President has chosen this moment for wholesale reductions in the nation’s military capacity.” I think it’s pretty clear that all three statements are attempting to pin the cuts, and the blame, on Obama.

The problem is, they’re not Obama’s cuts—or at the very least, responsibility falls on both houses of Congress as well as the President. The cuts are a result of Congress’s failure to produce a bill that would cut $1.2 trillion from the federal budget, and will (or may) be enacted as a result of the Budget Control Act of 2011. They are not a uniquely Obama policy, nor does he (or anyone else, really) actually want them to be enacted. Their inclusion was as an incentive to get other cuts passed, not as anything that was actually supposed to pass. Romney’s presentation of them as belonging solely to Obama is, at best, misleading.

Romney also lambasted Obama for pulling missile interceptors and a radar system out of Poland and the Czech Republic respectively, calling it the “sudden abandonment of friends” in both countries. And while the policy change was reportedly sudden to both countries, it was also welcome in both; Der Spiegel reported that a majority of Poles opposed the shield, while the Reno Gazette-Journal (Romney’s speech was in Reno) noted that the radar system was unpopular in the Czech Republic and was unlikely to get the Czech parliament’s approval for placement. (In fairness, Lech Walesa lambasted the U.S. for giving up on the program.) And while Romney portrays the dropping of the shield as a concession to the Russian government, the justification for the system’s construction was not to defend against Russia—ten interceptors in Poland wouldn’t do much good against the Russian arsenal—but to block missiles from Iran. It’s entirely possible that the change was in part to placate the Russians, who hated the idea of the program—although the administration never painted it as such—but a 2009 defense review of the program noted that the Iranians were concentrating on different types of missiles than the ones the shield was supposed to block. That was the reason given for the "policy reset".

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee mentioned Hugo Chavez as “inviting Hezbollah into our hemisphere”, but there’s little evidence that Hezbollah has any activity in the Americas beyond some fundraising. And while the administration’s failure to speak out publicly in favor of the Green Revolutionaries in Iran seems to me like a legitimate black mark, as the National Catholic Reporter points out, it’s entirely possible that an American endorsement of the protesters could’ve done more harm than good—living as they do in a country that rallies around its hatred of America. This one is totally up for debate, though.

Later, Romney tells his audience that “at the United Nations… [Obama] spoke as if our closest ally in the Middle East was the problem [there]”. Here are the relevant speeches, since Romney doesn’t specify which (2009, 2011). While both include criticism of Israeli policies, both also acknowledge the ever-present dangers that Israel faces, both foreign and domestic. In my opinion, it would be very difficult to call a line from either speech part of the “chorus of accusations, threats and insults” that they supposedly contribute to. (Don't take my word for it though--read them yourselves!)

While the problems with China are real—it does “permit… flagrant patent and copyright violations, forestall… American businesses from competing in its market and manipulate… its currency”—Romney doesn’t offer a solution, saying only that “the cheating must finally be brought to a stop. President Obama hasn’t done it and won’t do it. I will.” Short of a wholesale trade war, which would be disastrous for both countries, I’m not sure if there’s really much that either Obama or Romney could do to manipulate China or change Chinese policies without offering major concessions in return. They are, after all, China.

Similar criticisms apply with the Iranian paragraph. Romney calls for “sanctions [to] be enforced without exception,” “negotiations [that] must secure full and unhindered access for inspections” and “a clear line” to be drawn against “any enrichment, period”. All of those things are current U.S. policy, though, and have been since the Bush administration. As with China, it’s not exactly possible to enforce domestic policy decisions on a foreign country; the US has tried sanctions, but they haven’t really worked. And Romney doesn’t mention the clandestine US program that has been working in-country to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program for years, including the Stuxnet virus and the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists (although that was probably Israel). I’d say we’re doing plenty in Iran, quite possibly more than we should be.

Finally, Romney denounces the leaks of classified information that have happened over the past few months (like Iran, as I just mentioned) but he does so mostly on the assumption that the leakers were “seeking political advantage for the administration”. Not only has that yet to be determined, but Romney also says that the leaks demand a “full and prompt investigation by a special counsel”. There are two special prosecutors investigating them at the moment. Romney does have a point that all US district attorneys are Presidential appointees, so it makes sense an independent agency should be investigating the leaks, but it remains to be seen how harsh the attorneys’ report will end up being. And the implication that the prosecutors cannot be trusted because they're Obama appointees leads back, inevitably, to the idea that the leaks were orchestrated by the White House for political gain--which has yet to be proven or disproven. Give it time.

Now, I know this is campaign rhetoric. Only a fool would expect either side to adhere strictly to the facts, devoid of spin, glaring omissions or unfounded attacks—and that goes for Democratic candidates as well as Republican ones. But despite the historical Republican lead on matters of defense and national security, President Obama has a fairly strong foreign-policy record, which is reflected in the polls http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78910_Page2.html. If Romney wants to supplant the President’s current lead on matters of foreign policy, he’ll have to do better than the Reno speech. The problem is that the best critiques of Obama’s foreign policy are currently coming from defense doves, which is precisely the opposite of what Romney is painting himself as. Attacking Obama’s national security policies from the hawk side won’t be an easy road for the former Governor.

To Rep. Paulsen (R-MN) and Rep. Wilson (R-SC): Good Idea, But Not Going To Work.

The House of Representatives is considering an omnibus energy bill today. Among the proposed amendments, via Politico's Morning Energy, is one co-sponsored by Representatives Paulsen and Wilson that would force President Obama to certify Yucca Mountain as the U.S.'s proposed deep geological storage site for nuclear waste. If the President chose not to make that certification within 30 days, the U.S. government would then be forced to refund the balance of the Nuclear Waste Fund, collected from ratepayers over the years in anticipation of the use of Yucca. According to the Huffington Post, the amount of cash in the Fund stood at some $24 billion last May. By law, it can only  be used to fund a permanent storage site, so the money has just been sitting there and piling up for years while the site in Yucca keeps... not getting built and used.

Let's set aside for a second the fact that this amendment has yet to make it onto H.R. 4480, and even if the omnibus bill somehow makes it through the Senate, it will likely face a presidential veto. Never mind that for a moment. Let's just focus on the amendment.

First of all, the amendment represents a commendable effort by Reps. Paulsen and Wilson to stop what's basically a pointless federal tax levied on nuclear utilities throughout the U.S. Those utilities pass the cost on to ratepayers and the government sucks out money that legally cannot be used for any purpose but the (unlikely to ever happen) Yucca Mountain facility construction. Wilson and Paulsen's amendment would force the government to piss or get off the pot, and most likely, that money would be refunded to ratepayers and the utilities in their areas.

However, Yucca Mountain will never be the U.S.'s deep geological repository as long as Harry Reid (D-NV) is Senate Majority Leader, or probably if he holds any power within the Senate. Reid hates the idea of the dump, which is in his state and is tremendously unpopular there, and has focused on killing it for many years. Besides the political obstacles, there are practical issues too: Yucca Mountain is in the middle of the desert and difficult to access, and should the dump go into operation, nuclear waste stored all over the country would have to be transported thousands of miles to Yucca by truck. There's no other way to move the "dry casks", since they weigh a couple of tons apiece, and there's around 70,000 pounds of waste that would still need to be casked and moved. The casks are tested rigorously, surviving drops, fire, train crashes, etc. without incident, but there are always complaints about the testing process and whether it's comprehensive enough. Moving the waste via highway would also see it passing through major cities, and although the casks do not emit a significant amount of radiation at rest, a crash and opened cask would be a total disaster.

Paulsen and Wilson have the right idea, but there are too many practical problems with their plan. To offset these, I would offer an amendment (were the world mine) repurposing the Nuclear Waste Fund money into construction of regional storage facilities, minimizing the distance that casks would have to travel and scattering them around the country. That, combined with the construction and use of nuclear reprocessing facilities, would drastically lower the gross amount of waste that needs to be geologically disposed of. Yucca Mountain could serve as a repository for this much smaller (but more radioactive) amount of waste, which is a compromise that Harry Reid might even accept. Put all that together and we're on the way to a closed nuclear fuel cycle (where no new U-235 needs to be introduced), which will be helpful when the world starts to run short of uranium.

Fun Facts From My Future Home State

I'm moving to Vicksburg, Mississippi in a couple of months, and because I like to be prepared, I did a bunch of research about my soon-to-be-home state.

Fast Facts

-Jackson is the largest city, with a population of 174,514. The total population is around three million, about 1/3 of whom are black.

-59% of Mississippians consider themselves "very religious", the highest percentage in the U.S. It's also the only state with over 50% Baptists.

-As of the 2010 census, Mississippi was last in per capita income and had the lowest median household income out of all U.S. states. It also had 14 of the 100 lowest-income counties in the U.S. The American Human Development Project ranked it third-worst in the country behind West Virginia and Arkansas. CQ Press ranked it the least livable state in 2011. It's not all bad, though: Mississippi has one of the nation's lowest costs of living, and one of its highest rates of charitable giving.

-According to the private Commonwealth Fund, Mississippi is ranked 50th in overall health care, 50th in mortality rate amenable to health care, 50th in infant deaths per 1,000 live births and 51st in percentage of overweight children (including U.S. territories, I believe) at 44.5%. 34% of Mississippians are overweight, as per USA Today.

-Mississippi has not gone Democratic in a Presidential election since Jimmy Carter, and has voted for a non-Republican candidate only thrice since 1960 (the other ones were George Wallace in '68 and Robert Byrd in '60). It was the only state where every single county voted for Barry Goldwater in '64 (Alabama had no Democratic counties, but a few with unpledged delegates). Excepting the Attorney General (Jim Hood) and one member of the House (Bennie Thompson), Republicans control every major political institution or position in the state. In 2004, their constitutional ban on same-sex marriage passed with 86% approval, the highest margin of any state.

History Time!

-Mississippi has been a French, Spanish and British colony. It went over to the U.S. in the Treaty of Paris (1783). Between 1795 and 1832, the U.S. government negotiated ten different treaties with various Indian tribes for the state's present-day territory. It became the 20th state admitted to the Union in 1817, and was the second to secede from it in 1861.

-And boy, did they pay for it. Mississippi suffered the largest casualty percentage of any state in the Civil War. 78,000 Mississippians entered the war and 59,000 were either killed or wounded in it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Memorial Day evolved partially from a Mississippi custom.

-Related to Vicksburg specifically: Newitt Vick, after whom the town was named, was a Methodist minister and a conscientious objector during the Revolutionary War. The siege of Vicksburg was one of the Civil War's pivotal battles; the town fell after a 47-day siege, effectively cutting the South in two. Vicksburg surrendered on July 4th, so the town didn't celebrate Independence Day for another 82 years thereafter.

-Mississippi hates alcohol. Absolutely loathes it. It banned alcohol in the state in 1907, a dozen years before Prohibition was passed, and it was the first state to ratify the 18th Amendment. After the 21st Amendment repealed Prohibition, it kept up the statewide ban for another another third of a century. When it finally went to a county option system, allowing counties to decide whether they'd be "dry" or "wet", the language of that law specifically reaffirmed the spirit(s) of Prohibition.

-Incidentally, Mississippi didn't actually ratify the 13th Amendment (banning slavery) until 1995.

-Mississippi's is the only state flag to incorporate the Confederate battle flag.

Economy Time!

-Mississippi's unemployment rate dropped to 9.0% in March. Before that, it had been over 9.6% for the previous 28 months, including 26 over 10%. The state GDP grew by 1.1% in 2010, one of the lowest rates of any state.

-It ranks third in casino gambling income among the states, behind only Nevada and New Jersey, due to the profitable riverboat gambling trade. Six riverboat casinos work Vicksburg alone.

-Although the days of King Cotton are long over, Mississippi still ranks sixth among the states in cotton exports. It's fourth in rice and fifth in poultry; its top agricultural commodity is broilers (5-12 week old chickens; I had no idea), followed by soybeans, corn, cotton and aquaculture. In fact, it's the country's leading producer of farmed catfish, and one of the leaders in shrimp.

-The importance of the poultry industry extends into manufacturing, where its biggest manufactured good is processed goods, especially chickens. It also produces furniture, chemicals, motor vehicle parts and ships; the Huntington-Ingalls shipyard at Pascagoula manufactures merchant vessels and nuclear submarines for the U.S. Navy. The state also has important petroleum and natural gas mining concerns.

Trivia Time!

-The word "Mississippi" is believed to originate from the Ojibwa/Cherokee mici zibi, which means "Father of Waters". The entire state is lowlands, and is subject to frequent flooding from the Mississippi River. Thunderstorms, hurricanes and tornadoes are common (the latter average is 27 per year).

-The Mississippi state fossil is the basilosaurus, a prehistoric whale. The state tree and the state flower are both magnolias, and its official nickname is the Magnolia State (other nicknames include the Hospitality State, the South's Warmest Welcome, and the Birthplace of America's Music). Their motto is "Virtute et armis" (By Valor and Arms), the state reptile is the alligator and the state beverage is... milk. (#prohibition)

-Speaking of culture, Elvis was a Mississippian, as were Jimmy Buffett and Howlin' Wolf. Morgan Freeman, James Earl Jones and Oprah Winfrey are all from the state; same with William Faulkner, John Grisham and Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets.

-Mississippi has produced some unbelievable football players. Brett Favre, Walter Payton, Jerry Rice, Archie Manning, Eli Manning, Deuce McAllister, Patrick Willis, Steve McNair, Donald Driver, Ray Guy and many others were either born in the state or went to its schools.

-Coca-Cola was first bottled in Vicksburg. The first human lung and heart transplants were performed in Mississippi. When Teddy Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear cub and inadvertently inspired the teddy bear, that was in Mississippi too. The state hosted the first world heavyweight championship, is home to the International Checkers Hall of Fame, and is home to the graves of the King and Queen of all Gypsies in the United States. Finally, the world's largest shrimp resides in the Old Spanish Fort Museum in Pascagoula, presumably dead. (I'm slightly terrified.)

This is what I imagine daily life is like there--fighting off giant cannibal shrimp!

Decision Points: Big Choices

Hello, Internet. It’s been a while.

If we’ve never met, my name is Andy. I write down the ramblings that come into my head and post them as a part of Tisdel’s Tirades, my online clearinghouse for all things coherent. Whether these things are actually tirades is up to my mood on any given day; usually they’re reviews, football critiques, or sometimes generally angry rants about an obstinate person in the national political environment (or closer to home). None of it is particularly special, inspired or relevant to the day-to-day lives of a majority of my readers.

Today, however, I’m going to break that particular trend and put out what I think is some good advice. It’s advice I intend to take, and it applies fairly well to most of my recently-graduated classmates, friends and kindred spirits. It’s entirely possible that you’ve heard it before, and if so, I invite you to read mine anyway; perhaps I used a different adjective, a fresh example, or some unconventional way of catching your eye and reshaping the clay into something reasonably new. Or maybe not.

When you’ve just graduated college, and you’re sitting in your old room in your parents’ house at 22 and trying to figure out what you want or have to do with your life, your mind has a way of looking for guidance from any source available. For me, the things that come easiest to mind are the movies, TV shows and books with which I spend so much time. Protagonists, and even for subsidiary characters, have it comparatively easy: sure, your life may be ended or altered or changed in massively unpredictable ways at the author’s whim, but at least you’ll always know when it’s coming. The horns will blare out a Hans Zimmer war march, or the violins will script a sad and passionate leavetaking, or a swarm of unlikely-but-true events will wipe out all your prevarications and leave you facing your Big Choice with no barriers or delays allowed. Your life will change, and you will see it coming.

But real life doesn’t work like that. You can still fall in love, lead your company to huge successes or die bravely on the battlefield, but you’ll never see it coming. Life doesn’t broadcast its life-changing events; they’re sneaky, they’re tricksy and they’re disguised as normal, everyday decisions. You’re still making a Big Choice, but instead of one climactic moment where Hagrid asks you to go to Hogwarts, it’s the million tiny choices you’ve made over the years that light up your path. My choice of the College of Wooster has shaped me to a huge degree, but nobody sounded the trumpets when I visited the campus in the spring of 2008. And it was a series of tiny decisions, mine and others’, that put me in the position to choose that school at all. I’m sure every reader of these words can relate to that in some fashion. If movie choices are love at first sight, life choices are meeting at a coffee bar, seeing each other a few times over the next month or two and slowly getting to know the other person as the relationship flowers into mutual attraction and romance.

In a brave new post-graduation world, it’s easy to panic and overreact about the Big Choice or series of Big Choices you’ll be making in the coming months and years; getting a full-time job that you can live off of, getting an apartment, picking a graduate or law or medical school, and on and on. And it’s easy to get paranoid and freak out over the Big Moment lurking somewhere on the horizon. You don’t have to. There are Little Moments all around you, and it’s your choice at any given moment that might end up setting your path for years to come. Instead of waiting for the huge choice, focus on keeping your life in order from day to day, and the Big Choices will reveal themselves in due time. (This has helped me not freak out, or at least freak out less frequently.)

Wisconsin Campaign Coverage

There's a fine line between massaging the facts to your advantage and being downright disingenuous. Everyone does the former because it makes you look good. If you choose the latter, though, you'll alienate more voters than you draw in... at least if those voters are actually paying attention, like I was a few minutes ago.

One of the ads currently airing on Channel 12 Milwaukee just told me that under Governor Jim Doyle, unemployment in Wisconsin went up 37%, and unemployment in Milwaukee went up 28%. While not an actual lie, this is manifestly disingenuous. Unemployment didn't go up 37% in real terms under Doyle; assuming the underlying numbers are correct, it went up 37% from whatever it was pre-Doyle... like moving from 10% to 13.7%, not 10% to 47%. If unemployment in WI had hit that level, it would be a national catastrophe. The unannounced change in emphasis conceals the true meaning of the statistic (however meaningful it actually is; unemployment under Doyle was relatively static in his first five years before the 2008 recession began) and makes it just blatantly misleading.

I choose not to vote for candidates who fuck about in that fashion.

While I'm on that subject, let's tackle Scott Walker's claim that Wisconsin created over 23,000 jobs in 2011.

First: as Forbes pointed out, for the first 15 months of Scott Walker's governorship, he was content to use the same method of measuring job creation that saw him posting a loss of around 24,000 jobs in the past calendar year. Even the most ardent supporter of the Governor might balk at the timing of discounting conventional statistics that make him look bad... instead of his new statistics that make him look better... a few weeks before the election.

Second: Whether it's a net gain or a net loss over the past calendar year, 23,000 jobs is a relatively small number in a state with 205,000 out of work. I understand the symbolic importance of running as a job creator or attacking an opponent as a... job destroyer(?)... but either way, it's not an incredibly significant number. (Never mind the debate over the role of government in job creation; that's another thing entirely.)

Third: Any way you look at it, using whatever numbers, Walker is not on track to hit his target of 250,000 new jobs in Wisconsin by the end of his first term. Although this has very limited significance due to the timing of the recall election... since Walker will have been in office for about a year and a half on Election Day... it's still worth keeping in mind.

Dear American Electoral System,

Yesterday, President Obama approved an expanded policy of drone strikes in Yemen to kill suspected members of Al-Qaeda. Now, U.S. officials are authorized to kill people whose identities are not known at the time the missile is fired. President Obama has continued Bush-era policies of holding detainees at Guantanamo Bay trial, authorized the killings of Al-Qaeda leaders in other sovereign states, and proclaimed the right to kill American citizens who are plotting against the United States without a trial. There isn't much major domestic political opposition to these policies; Democrats in the House and the Senate go along with them, and Republicans don't often mention them.

 In 2007, Obama's presumptive challenger, Mitt Romney, compared "jihadism" to fascism and communism, and said that "Their strategy is the collapse of the economy, the government, and the military of America and our friends". He has since spoken of making the 21st century an "American Century", and stated that members of Al-Qaeda are not entitled to due process. It's unrealistic to think that Romney, if elected, would decline to use the powers that Obama has claimed.

Under Obama, military spending--adjusted for inflation--has risen to the highest levels since 1950. We spend more money now than we did during the Korean War, the Vietnam War or when expanding our nuclear arsenal. And Mr. Romney has repeatedly stated that, if elected, he will "restore America's national defense" by reversing Obama's minimal defense cuts and adding more spending. This contributes to the problem of a country that has not balanced its budget since 2001 and with a national debt that is well over $15 trillion, a number so vast as to defy comprehension.

Osama bin Laden is dead. Most of the leaders of Al-Qaeda are either dead, imprisoned or being detained. By almost any measure, its ability to conduct terror attacks inside the U.S. or in other Western states has been greatly reduced. But by its nature, there can be no definitive end to the fight against global terror. After bin Laden's death, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Americans to "renew our reserve and redouble our efforts". If bin Laden's death didn't end the war, what will?

Both of the presumptive candidates seem inclined to pursue America's current path, that of increasing defense spending, intervening in other countries to kill suspected terrorists and expanding the powers of government to wiretap, detain and to kill U.S. citizens without trial.

I think that this is not the only path available to the United States. I question the decision to spend, expand and kill without any end in sight, in a fight against an enemy that is unlikely to ever be fully eradicated. And I assert that the choice America is facing is not merely one between being tough or soft on terrorism, of spending big or making America weak, of curtailing our rights or letting Al-Qaeda strike us again. I believe there is a middle ground, one of prosecuting terrorists in civilian courts instead of military tribunals, of giving up the "right" to kill American citizens without a trial, and one where it is possible to spend less on defense without being perceived as weak... because the U.S. spends more on defense than the next ten largest spenders combined, and around six times as much as China (the next biggest)*.

I do not support the policies that President Obama has instituted, nor those which Mitt Romney has said he will enact. I feel like the 2012 election is going to be 1964 re-done, when the American people had to choose between one massive hawk (Lyndon Johnson) and another massive hawk (Barry Goldwater). So where do I go to find a candidate, one with a legitimate chance of winning, who supports the idea that there will eventually be an end to the War on Terror, and that we should not continue to spend, expand and kill at our current levels?

Sincerely,

Andy Tisdel

*Let's put this in perspective by using just one issue: The Chinese are currently in the process of building their first nuclear-powered aircraft supercarrier. The U.S. has 11, with two more on the way. We have more missile firepower, more nuclear submarines and more naval aircraft than any other state, and in some cases more than the rest of the world combined. Our fleet displaces more tonnage than the next 13 largest navies combined, 11 of which--as the above link says--are our allies. Yet you have Romney saying that China will "[brush] aside an inferior American navy" and criticizing Obama for weakening the fleet, saying that the number of ships is less than at any time since 1917--as if World War I-era battleships were remotely comparable to modern aircraft carriers!

Awesome Untranslatable Words From Around the World (200th Post)

I'd love to say that I'd planned something special for my 200th post on this blog, but to be honest, I was just logging in and noticed the little "199 Posts" ticker. My 100th post passed unremarked, whatever it was, but this time around I would like to humbly thank y'all for reading. Friends, family, complete strangers, arch-nemeses, thank you kindly.

By way of a thank-you for watching me manipulate the English language for 200 posts, here are a load of words it's impossible to directly translate into my mother tongue. I'll give you a bunch of definitions that I found online, then offer one untranslatable word of my own that I found in Israel at the end. Ready? Here we go. 

From the Daily Mirror, we have:  

Jayus - Indonesian: someone who tells a joke so unfunny you can't help laughing.
Kamaki - Greek: the young local guys strolling up and down beaches hunting for female tourists, literally "harpoons".
Dii-KOYNA - Ndebele, South Africa: to destroy one's property in anger.
Hira Hira - Japanese: the feeling you get when you walk into a dark and decrepit old house in the middle of the night.
Shnourkovat Sya - Russian: when drivers change lanes frequently and unreasonably.
Gadrii Nombor Shulen Jongu - Tibetan: giving an answer that is unrelated to the question, literally "to give a green answer to a blue question".
Layogenic - Tagalog, Philippines: a person who is only goodlooking from a distance.
Rhwe - South Africa: to sleep on the floor without a mat while drunk and naked.
Creerse La Ultima Coca-COLA EN EL DESIERTO - Central American Spanish: to have a very high opinion of oneself, literally to "think one is the last Coca-Cola in the desert".
Vrane Su Mu Popile Mozak - Croatian: crazy, literally "cows have drunk his brain". (I love this one.)
Du Kannst Mir Gern Den Buckel Runterrutschen Und Mit Der Zunge Bremsen - Austrian German: abusive insult, literally "you can slide down my hunchback using your tongue as a brake".
Tener Una Cara De Telefono Ocupado - Puerto Rican Spanish: to be angry, literally "to have a face like a busy telephone".
Bablat - Hebrew: baloney, but is an acronym of "beelbool beytseem le-lo takhleet" which means "bothering someone's testicles for no reason".
Snyavshi Shtany, PO VOLOSAM NE GLADYAT - Russian: once you've taken off your pants it's too late to look at your hair.

From Boingboing:

-I couldn't find a translation, but apparently the Dutch phrase for 'pays too much attention to insignificant details' translates to ant fucking. 

-Afrikaans: "Jou mammie naai vir bakstene om jou sissie se hoerhuis te bou Vieslik!" your mother engages in prostitution in order to raise funds for the building materials necessary to construct a brothel from which your sister will operate.
-German: "backpfeifengesicht" - a face in need of a fist
 

Wikipedia gives us the translation for the French L'espirit d'escalier, literally "Staircase wit". It's the snappy comeback you think of after the moment has passed. 

German just knows how to do excellent words. From the BBC, we have Kummerspeck, or "grief bacon": the weight gained by emotional overeating (definition theirs). Also, Drachenfutter - literally translated as dragon fodder - are the peace offerings made by guilty husbands to their wives. 

Matador Network had a list with several of the really common ones--apparently untranslatability is a widely agreed-upon trait. 

Ilunga. Tshiluba (Southwest Congo) : a person “who is ready to forgive and forget any first abuse, tolerate it the second time, but never forgive nor tolerate on the third offense.”

Saudade. Portuguese: This word “refers to the feeling of longing for something or someone that you love and which is lost.”  

L’appel du vide. French – “The call of the void” is this French expression’s literal translation, but more significantly it’s used to describe the instinctive urge to jump from high places.

Wabi-Sabi. Japanese: “a way of living that focuses on finding beauty within the imperfections of life and accepting peacefully the natural cycle of growth and decay.” Note: Alternate translations I found had wabi-sabi as 'the one flaw in an otherwise perfect entity that, by its existence, makes the person beautiful'.
Toska. Russian: "No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom." -Vladimir Nabokov

And from NPR:

korinthenkacker. German:  Literally "raisin shitter" — that is, someone so taken up with life's trivial detail that they spend all day crapping raisins.
meraki. Greek: This is a word that modern Greeks often use to describe doing something with soul, creativity, or love — when you put "something of yourself" into what you're doing, whatever it may be. Meraki is often used to describe cooking or preparing a meal, but it can also mean arranging a room, choosing decorations, or setting an elegant table.

yoko meshi: Japanese. Taken literally, meshi means 'boiled rice' and yoko means 'horizontal,' so combined you get 'a meal eaten sideways.' This is how the Japanese define the peculiar stress induced by speaking a foreign language: yoko is a humorous reference to the fact that Japanese is normally written vertically, whereas most foreign languages are written horizontally.


Finally, when I was in Israel in January, I learned their word for the Holocaust: Sho'ah. It's not a direct translation, because 'holocaust' is derived from Greek and literally means, more or less, 'the ashes left after a fire'. Sho'ah (or Shoah) can translate to calamity, but the deeper translation has no direct equivalent. It was demonstrated to me at the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, called Yad Vashem. 
The final room of Yad Vashem has, in its center, a pit surrounded by a railing. Stand at the railing and look up, and you see a conical board with hundreds of pictures and stories and names, that circles the edge of the pit and continues on upwards. Stand at the railing and look down, and you see a pit. The sides of the pit are rough, jagged sandstone. It goes down and down until, about thirty feet below you, there's a pool of still water. You can see the pictures and faces and names above you reflected in the water, but no matter how hard you look or how long you try, you can't quite make out the picture in the water. You will never quite be able to see the reflection as clearly as the real thing. That is the meaning of shoah: the reflection in still water that is impossible to see clearly. 


Thank you, once again, for reading. 
-Andy