This is absolutely charming.
In 1877, the Japanese woodcut artist Kamekichi Tsunajima produced these prints, entitled “Ryuukoo Eigo Zukushi” (which can be artfully translated, “A Fashionable Melange Of English Words”).
If you are trying to practice your Japanese reading skills, the header at the top of each page runs from right to left.
(H/t The Public Domain Review)
I caught a little of the “testimony” being offered by IRS Acting Commissioner Steven Miller to the House Ways and Means Committee. It had to have been the most dishonest, disingenuous performance we have seen in a long, long time. Miller would not have given them a straight and honest answer if they asked him whether the sky was blue or the sun would come up in the morning. He continually offered lawyerly and artful responses that danced as close as possible to avoiding a criminal investigation for perjury, while still not giving anything resembling the truth.
After watching just a few minutes, I had to turn the TV off so that I would not throw up.
Apparently, I was not the only one with that reaction. Here is Pennsylvania Congressman Mike Kelly, responding to Steven Miller. Note the applause at the end of his response.
With any more performances like Steven Miller’s, Obama and his minions will be seeing jail time over this scandal, whether they are guilty or not. People will put up with a lot of things, but they will not put up with being lied to in the face. The White House would be wise to send people willing to come clean on this matter.
“There was a surge of applications in 2010!”
At least, this is the explanation the IRS has offered for giving special treatment for conservative and tea party groups seeking to be registered as 501(c) entities for tax purposes (note that no, as in not one, conservative or tea party application was approved for over 27 months, from late 2010 through the 2012 election, when at the same time many liberal groups were approved, typically after a wait of no more than 9 months).
The problem with the IRS explanation is that is a a baldfaced lie. From the the US government’s IG report, we have this graphic:
As reported by the Atlantic:
“[W]e saw a big increase in these kind of applications, many of which indicated that they were going to be involved in advocacy work,” Lerner said.
But Todd Young, a Republican congressman from Indiana, pointed out at Friday’s House Ways and Means Committee hearing with former acting IRS commissioner Steve Miller and Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George that this was not the case, according to the very data the IRS provided to the Treasury IG’s office.
There were, he noted, actually fewer applications for tax-exempt status by groups seeking to be recognized as social-welfare organizations that year than the previous one, according to this IRS data. The real surge in applications did not come until 2012 — the year the IRS stopped the practice of treating the Tea Party class of groups differently from others.
Bear with me for a moment.
In 1972, Richard Nixon wanted to run against the weakest possible Democratic opponent and then win every state in the general election. After he decided this, a slew of strong Democratic opponents imploded on the campaign trail. The only Democrat left standing was George McGovern, who was so far to the left of the American public that he was unelectable, and who ran one of the most spectacularly inept presidential campaigns in history. And Nixon won all but one of state in the general election. While there was no hard evidence that Nixon’s campaign team ever did anything to interfere with the Democratic primaries, beyond some low-level and fairly innocuous dirty tricks, we have the still-unexplained break in and wiretapping of the DNC headquarters, and we have common sense. It simply could not have been a coincidence that Nixon magically got everything he wanted–no one is that lucky. The White House had to have been up to its ears in no good. The Watergate break-in was the tip of the iceberg, and everyone with common sense knew it. This, along with Nixon’s lies, more than anything else destroyed his presidency.
In 201o, tea party groups smashed the Democratic Party in the mid-terms. Democratic leaders, including President Obama, were publicly fretting about these groups and how unpatriotic they were, and there were many high profile attempts even then to silence them and shut them down. By 2012, these groups were largely passive or even silent, and no longer played a factor in electoral politics. If the 2012 election had been a repeat of the 2010 election, the GOP would have won the presidency, the House, and the Senate in a landslide.
What changed on the ground? What made 2010 so different from 2012? The issues were still the same, and many people were still upset.
We are left with the fact that Obama and the Democrats wanted the tea party movement neutered and a non-factor in the 2012 election, and that soon afterwards these groups became so mired in paperwork from the IRS and felt so threatened by the questions being asked that many gave up the fight.
The claim is being made that only a handful of low-level IRS employees were involved. And indeed, we may never see any evidence that the criminal conspiracy (and yes, it is a criminal conspiracy) went higher than some field office. However, given everything, common sense dictates that whatever the evidence might show, the White House had to have been coordinating things. The coincidence of Obama’s wish that these groups would simply go away and the activities of the IRS is simply too great. Low-level bureaucrats have neither the willingness nor the authority to pull off such a stunt–as a group, they will not stick their necks out for anyone. They had to be acting on orders from the top.
There will be a criminal investigation regarding this matter. The real question is whether whistle blowers will emerge, and whether Obama and his minions will succeed in interfering with the investigation.
Essentially, Obama subverted a presidential election. What are the chances that he can subvert an investigation as well? Surely, he will try, as if he does not, his presidency is finished.
Unlike most Americans, I did not grow up on a steady diet of American TV. Don’t get me wrong: I saw some American TV, but sporadically and in bits and pieces. Instead of growing up on (insert your favorite childhood TV show or personality here), I grew up on the Drifters, Kamen Raida, Tensai Bakabon, and Pink Lady (yes, that Pink Lady–they were very poorly served by NBC and that Jeff thingy, whatever he was–but in their natural habitat, they were great).
While Kyu Sakamoto had his biggest hit right about the time I was born, he was still really big when I was a teen, and his song “Ue No Muite Arukou” was still being played everywhere. (Don’t be put off by the title of the song: You know it. Yes, you do.) Here he is singing it on Japanese TV, circa 1961.
Some British record producer heard this song on a trip to Japan in 1963, and decided to bring it back to the UK. However, he thought that the Japanese title was strange, so he changed the name of the song to the only Japanese word most Brits and Americans knew at the time, “Sukiyaki”. The song was released in the UK and the US, and went to No. 1 like a bullet, selling over 13 million copies worldwide, making it one of the most popular singles ever produced.
The song has nothing to do with sukiyaki, however.
A very rough translation of the lyrics in English goes something like this:
I will walk with my eyes lifted up,
So that my tears won’t fall.
A spring day to remember.
It’s a lonely night.I will walk with my eyes lifted up,
Counting the dim stars.
A summer day to remember.
It’s a lonely night.Happiness is above the clouds.
Happiness is above the sky.I will walk with my eyes lifted up,
So that my tears won’t fall.
I walk while crying.
It’s a lonely night.An autumn day to remember.
It’s a lonely night.
Sadness is in the shadow of the stars.
Sadness is in the shadow of the moon.
I will walk with my eyes lifted up,
So that my tears won’t fall.
I walk while crying.
It’s a lonely night.
It’s a lonely night.
“Sukiyaki” was not his only hit, but most of his other songs were not all that accessible to international audiences.
Sakamoto died with 519 other people in the crash of a JAL 747 in 1985. He was 43 years old.
If your whole existence were defined by the TV news and liberal polemicists, you might think that the most racist country by far is the US, followed by the UK at a close second. But is this really true? Fortunately, there has been some research on this question, and the results might surprise you.
Here is a map of racist attitudes around the world, based on survey data, compiled by the WaPo:
If you have difficulty reading the legend, blue signifies racially tolerant countries, while red signifies racially intolerant countries.
Now, since the map is based on opinion surveys, it is possible that respondents lied and they are more racist than they claim. For example, Japan is shaded light blue, but based on my experience there I would think that it should be shaded purple or even pink. In Japan, there is such an emphasis on both internationalization and on duty to one’s country that many respondents may have answered as they were expected to, rather than as they actually felt. So yes, the map is not perfect.
However, unless everyone in the US is an abject liar (and not just politicians and the press), there is no way that there would be enough error in this research to shift the US from blue all the way to purple, or even pink.
No, a nation that is willing to elect a black president–especially one so shallow and flawed as Barack Obama–is not really that racist in the scope of things. There are many, many other countries where racism is both more predominate and more virulent.
Americans need to cut themselves some slack.
Ladies, don’t argue with a burglar–show him a revolver. “Don’t wait until the horse is stolen before you lock the barn.” Old saying, but true. Ladies can handle the new Iver Johnson Safety Hammerless Automatic Revolver with absolute safety. Accidental discharge is impossible. Children cannot discharge them. Price $5.50.
Indeed. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away. Or, in the 1870s, hours away.
(H/t Retronaut)
This leaves us more than a little speechless. Here is a campaign ad that the RNC created for the final days of the 2012 election.
However, the ad was spiked by the Romney campaign, because …
Wait for it …
Romney thought the election should be purely about the economy, and nothing else.
We talked about this fallacy repeatedly throughout 2011 and 2012 (for example, here and here). We said that it would snatch political defeat from the jaws of victory, and would ensure Obama another 4 years in office.
Sadly, we were right.
This ad should have been run nonstop 24/7, for the final two weeks before the election. As it stands, spiking the ad was one of the many missteps of the Romney campaign.
Oddly, while Romney was willing to go after his GOP opponents with brass knuckles to the crotch (usually administered through surrogates), he was unwilling to go after the Democrats with the same zeal.
So tell me, why was he a good candidate again?
