Last Call For The Real Racists In Michigan

Just pointing out the fact this Michigan couple has a noose and Confederate flags hanging from the trees in their yard makes me a racist, or something.

A suburban Detroit business owner and his wife who hung Confederate flags and nooses on their property insist that anyone who sees the actions as racist is “stupid.” 

“I am not a racist,” Robert Tomanovich, owner of Robert’s Discount Tree Service in Livonia, Mich., told the Daily News Monday night. 

“I know black guys, I have black friends. We’re all laughing at this stupidity. Do you know how many white guys were hung back in the day? This isn’t racist. But all of a sudden it’s out of control.” 

Tomanovich , 55,made local headlines when WXYZ reported last Friday that Confederate flags and a noose were hanging outside two of his properties, one of which he uses for his tree-cutting business. The noose hung from a tree small enough for a child to scale. 

The decorations have no connection to the racist history of the Confederacy, said his wife Lindy, rushing to his defense.

Boy, sure is a terrible time we live in when people get upset over stuff like a noose hanging from a tree.  Besides, all those slave lynchings and hangings? White guys died too or something, so what's the big deal?

It's not racist cause he said so, guys.  CASE CLOSED.

Johnny Volcano's Revenge

Sen. John McCain has finally reached the stage in his life where he completely blames his failure to win the White House in 2008 on Barack Obama, and that he's just out of damns to give when it comes to making up niceties and excuses for his foul behavior towards the man who beat him.

Sen. John McCain has an explanation for Obama administration appointees whose confirmation votes are languishing in the GOP-led Senate: It’s payback for Democrats using the so-called nuclear option to push through scores of nominations in the previous Congress.

“I told ’em: ‘You jam them through, it’s going to be a long time before I approve of them,’” McCain said, recounting what he told Democrats after they changed the rules in 2013 and confirmed dozens of lifetime judicial appointments and several high-profile Cabinet nominees. “It’s affected me as chairman of the Armed Services Committee.”

McCain did help shepherd Defense Secretary Ash Carter through confirmation — the only Cabinet nominee approved by the GOP Senate. Since then, the Arizona Republican has refused to move 10 civilian nominations that have landed in his committee.

And none of them are going anywhere, either.  It's just petty revenge now, that's all he lives for.

McCain is far from the only one, however.

There are 18 nominations waiting for a vote on the Senate floor — including Loretta Lynch’s nomination to be attorney general — and more than 130 idling in committees. So far, though, only McCain has admitted to deliberately stymieing President Barack Obama’s picks. But even as the GOP Senate Judiciary Committee moves at a pace similar to that of last year’s Democratic Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has done little to bring up nominations for a vote by the full Senate. 

That has Democrats accusing Republicans of slow-walking the nominations amid lingering anger over the nuclear option. 

“It’s appalling,” groused Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Senate Democrat. “I mean, how many times are they just going to throw logs on the process of government? I mean, even district court judges, for lord’s sake.” 

The pace of action on confirmations stands in contrast to legislative action, where Republicans have considered more than 100 amendments this year and passed a budget, and are hoping to soon push through major trade and foreign policy bills.

And voters won't punish the GOP at all.  They haven't in the past.  Why would they now?  Even if a Democrat wins the White House, at best the Dems will have a small Senate majority, and the GOP will still have a huge House majority.  In 2018, the Dems will have to defend the Senate again, and unless the GOP makes the same mistakes as they did in 2012, they'll get the Senate back too.

But all this?  Of course it's mean ol' Obama's fault.

West Of The Abyss

You may have heard about this scathing deconstruction of Cornel West in TNR by Michael Eric Dyson over the weekend, but really everything you need to know about Dyson, West, and the entire black academic cottage industry of OBAMA FAILED BLACK PEOPLE can be summed up in the piece's second paragraph:

Cornel West’s rage against President Barack Obama evokes that kind of venom. He has accused Obama of political minstrelsy, calling him a “Rockefeller Republican in blackface”; taunted him as a “brown-faced Clinton”; and derided him as a “neoliberal opportunist.” In 2011, West and I were both speakers at a black newspaper conference in Chicago. During a private conversation, West asked how I escaped being dubbed an “Obama hater” when I was just as critical of the president as he was. I shared my three-part formula for discussing Obama before black audiences: Start with love for the man and pride in his epic achievement; focus on the unprecedented acrimony he faces as the nation’s first black executive; and target his missteps and failures. No matter how vehemently I disagree with Obama, I respect him as a man wrestling with an incredibly difficult opportunity to shape history. West looked into my eyes, sighed, and said: “Well, I guess that’s the difference between me and you. I don’t respect the brother at all.”

And that's where the game of black political academia is right now in 2015, the "I hate Obama but I respect him" crowd versus the I hate Obama and don't respect him" crowd.  No group has turned on Obama faster than these puffed-up pinheads, and no group is more aware of the complete expiration of their mild at best relevance to current politics on January 20, 2017.

Both of these men, along with Tavis Smiley and Melissa Harris-Perry and a whole host of other black thought leaders on campuses across the country, have made a fortune on "If only President Obama would listen to me, black America wouldn't be in this mess."

But the grifters, man they have to grift, and West has gone so far down the Obama Derangement Syndrome rabbit hole that he's even an embarrassment to the rest of the grifters, enough so that instead of making the fight always about Obama and his failures, Dyson breaks that cardinal rule and makes it about West.

The rest of the piece is Dyson just absolutely wrecking West, and deservedly so.  It's been a long time coming as well, a 10,000 word disassembly of the last ten years of West's numerous academic sins that only could be delivered by the man he once mentored, and not just the sins against President Obama.

But the whole time Dyson has one foot in the same abyss that claimed West's career and Dyson can't see it. in a very real way it kind of proves the point that the rest of us have figured out: we're really going to miss Barack Obama as President when he's gone.

West and Dyson will too, of course, but for a whole other batch of reasons.

StupidiNews!

• Ousted former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the deaths of dozens of protesters in 2012.
• A Chicago judge on Monday found police officer Dante Servin not guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Rekia Boyd in 2012.
• Iranian officials are optimistic that a cease fire in Yemen will be reached today between Houthi rebels and a coalition of Arab forces led by Saudi Arabia.
• The European Central Bank may be considering slowing down emergency liquidity support to Greek banks if a bailout deal cannot be reached soon.
• Norway plans to become the first country to entirely transition away from FM radio to digital radio starting in 2017.