Some Extra News (Open Thread)

Do you notice how the stories and the outrages are coming fast and furious?  Well, that’s the plan, isn’t it?  To overwhelm us and wear us all down. In the ensuing confusion, many stories go unnoticed and unremarked upon. We can’t have that! So let’s look at some other stories that have been in the news lately.

Let’s talk about the Washington Redskins. Now the U.S. Patent Office is getting involved in the issue of their name. (Is there any government agency in the Obama administration that hasn’t been politicized yet?)

The patent office has canceled the Redskins trademark because after all these years they’ve suddenly decided that the name is “disparaging”, even though 80% of Americans think the name is just fine and, in fact, might be an homage to the bravery and strength of Native Americans. However, some vocal Native Americans think otherwise, and so a minority of a minority population now has the power to nix a trademark that they alone consider “offensive” or “disparaging”.

Putting aside the question of whether or not the patent office even has the authority to do this retrospectively, one has to wonder how small an objecting minority can be and still get a politicized agency to acquiesce. If even one person is offended, will the U.S. Patent Office pull a trademark?

If the owners do eventually knuckle under to political correctness and threats from a federal agency that’s abusing its power, I have a suggestion for a new name for the Redskins. This name embodies something that every progressive can get behind. It’s politically correct and totally in sync with the new definition of hero.  Here you go:

The Washington Victims.

Hold that thought about minorities. Progressives like Hillary Clinton seem to love certain minorities but hate on others, such as the Tea Party and gun-rights defenders (although the latter may be a majority). You know, progressives dislike basically anybody who cherishes our Constitution. Recently Hillary opined about gun rights and minorities:

I’m well aware that this is a hot political subject.  And again, I will speak out no matter what role I find myself in, but I believe that we need a more thoughtful conversation. We cannot let a minority of people – and it’s, that’s what it is, it is a minority of people – hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.

There’s too much Alinsky in that quote for me to parse. The writer at the link does a most excellent job. But I will say this: One has to wonder if the owners of the Redskins feel terrorized at the moment. After all, it’s a minority of a minority that’s attacking them and using the apparatus of the U.S. government to do it. What stands out most, in my opinion, is Hillary’s contention that “we”, whoever we are, “cannot let” anyone “hold a viewpoint” that, in her opinion, “terrorizes” others. We can’t allow someone to hold a viewpoint? Whoops! Hillary accidentally revealed how her mind works.

What does Hillary suggest, repeal of the First Amendment? Yet she goes beyond the First Amendment. She’s talking about suppressing viewpoints. In other words, thought control! Orwellian.

Hillary, of course, wants to become our first female president. She plans to get there by using the trumped-up “Republican war on women” meme in her campaign. Hillary used to be Secretary of State.

WND tells us that, via the State Dept., Democrats plan to “thrust” the gay agenda on the whole world:

But now a coalition in Congress, made up exclusively of Democrats, wants to take the effort further and make promoting LGBT “human rights” a “priority for the U.S. government worldwide.”

Prepared by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., the “International Human Rights Defense Act” would demand that the State Department “make preventing and responding to discrimination and violence against the LGBT community a foreign policy priority and devise a global strategy to achieve those goals.” …

Markey, who was joined by more than a dozen other Democrats in affirming the new guidance for a worldwide campaign for the U.S., said in a statement on Friday there are more than 80 nations around the world that criminalize homosexuality.

“In seven countries, homosexuality is punishable by death,” his announcement noted.

Markey’s bill (S. 2472)

Directs the Secretary of State to establish in the Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor a Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBT Peoples.

So I checked out the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.

There are six deputies, of whom one is female and the rest are male. There’s one current “special envoy” who’s male, whose job is to “monitor and combat anti-Semitism.” There’s one “special advisor” (not “envoy”) who’s female; her job concerns disability rights.

So out of a “leadership” of eight at that agency, only two leaders are female. There’s no “special envoy” to monitor or combat misogyny, despite the fact that over half the population of the world is female and that in many nations, particularly Muslim-majority ones, women are oppressed, enslaved, persecuted, murdered, mutilated, and denied freedom and human rights. What did Hillary do for Muslim women when she was Secretary of State?

Let’s switch gears for a minute and talk about another sports team owner: Donald Sterling of the LA Clippers basketball team. He’s been in the news for uttering allegedly disparaging comments about blacks in a private conversation that was secretly taped by his “mistress”. Now the NBA is trying to force him to sell the team to another (more politically correct) owner like Oprah or Dr. Dre. Sterling, however, is not going gently:

Donald Sterling … has hired four private firms to investigate the NBA’s former and current commissioners, and its 29 other owners, a person close to Sterling’s team of lawyers told Associated Press, or AP. [T]he investigators have been offered a six-figure budget to scrutinize the league’s finances, compensations paid to the present and former commissioners, and previous unfair conducts, within 30 days. Sterling’s primary targets reportedly include previous NBA Commissioner David Stern and current Commissioner Adam Silver.

“The gloves are off, as they say,” the source told AP. “Have them dig up all the dirt they can find.” …

According to the source, investigators have also been asked to find out if any other NBA team owner has ever made racist or sexual remarks. …

“Now his objective is to demonstrate for everybody that the NBA is a damned hypocrite,” Bobby Samini, Sterling’s attorney, told ESPN, on Wednesday. “We’re going to pull every case against the NBA. Then we’ll demonstrate that the culture of racism and gender discrimination is born at the NBA, where Adam Silver has worked in a high-level position for a long time.”

I love that. It’s about time somebody fought back.

Remember General Petraeus, who once directed the CIA and international forces in Afghanistan, and who had his own problems with extramarital imbroglios? Well, he’s back in the news with some disturbing comments in light of recent developments on our southern border:

Gen. Petraeus was speaking on the “After America, What?” panel at the Centre for Policy Studies’ Margaret Thatcher Liberty Conference at the Guildhall in the City of London.

“After America comes North America,” he said, discussing how Canada, the United States and Mexico are set to be a formidable force together, “notwithstanding Mexico’s rule of law issues”.

“Clearly China is gong to continue to grow and develop, he said, but the former CIA chief was optimistic about America’s future. 

“The United States does faces challenges, we do have to get immigration reform … our debt-to-GDP ratio … the deadlock in Washington, et cetera et cetera.”

We “have to get immigration reform.” We do? What’s he talking about there–a North American Union? Petraeus now works as “chairman” of the KKR Global Institute.

Did you hear about how Muslim jihadists went door to door in Kenya, forcing people to recite passages from the Koran and, if they couldn’t, murdered them in cold blood? Some say the attacks were directed by a “white” man who spoke English and Arabic.

“I saw a group of armed man standing then dividing themselves into groups, one went to the police station, one towards the town centre to attack the banks and businesses,” he said.“All were commanded by someone who was white or an Arab,” he said. …

The larger of the two most recent raids happened on Sunday night, when gunmen took control of Mpeketoni town and went door-to-door asking people if they were Muslims. They executed those who were not. Sixty people died. [Were murdered!]

There were further clashes on Monday night, when as many as 15 more people were killed. So far, no one has been arrested.

Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, shocked many when he claimed the raids were the work of local politicians trying to stir up ethnic hatred against his Kikuyu tribe, and not al-Shabaab.

This was despite the fact that the Somalia-based al-Qaeda army had already claimed responsibility. …

Also in the news again is the situation in Libya. Obama took credit recently for capturing Ahmed Abu Kattala, the alleged perpetrator of the attack on our mission in Benghazi.

Kattala has been “hiding” in plain sight for the past two years. The “capture” took place just as the House prepares to initiate new hearings into the Benghazi attack, which took the lives of four Americans. Kattala was not, however, the maker of the video that Obama, Susan Rice, and Hillary said caused the “spontaneous demonstration” that caused the attack. No, that was another Muslim, who some say is an agent who worked with or for the U.S. government.

Before the Benghazi attack, WTPOTUS ran a post asking who the U.S. government was arming in Libya, and why we were arming them. In that post, we discussed Khalifa Hifter,

the new leader of Libya’s opposition military [who] spent the past two decades in suburban Virginia but felt compelled – even in his late-60s – to return to the battlefield in his homeland, according to people who know him.

Khalifa Hifter was once a top military officer for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, but after a disastrous military adventure in Chad in the late 1980s, Hifter switched to the anti-Gadhafi opposition. In the early 1990s, he moved to suburban Virginia, where he established a life but maintained ties to anti-Gadhafi groups.

The Asia Times Online wrote in March 2011:

Khalifa Hifter – a former Libyan army colonel who spent nearly 20 years in Vienna, Virginia, not far from the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley? Progressives will love to learn that the romantic “rebels” are now led by a CIA asset.

Coincidentally, or not, Hifter is in the news again this week:

Troops loyal to a rogue general launched airstrikes on Sunday against Islamist militias in Benghazi, a Libyan security official said, in what appeared to [be] a new push into the city itself as part of his ongoing offensive against the fighters.

The strikes followed a ground assault with infantry and clashes earlier in the day that left five dead. Both actions seemed to be part of a plan by Gen. Khalifa Hifter and his forces to seize control of the eastern city.

In conjunction with these events, the government of Libya is now demanding the return of Kattala (aka Kattalah).

Libya’s weak interim government on Wednesday verbally assailed the U.S. capture of a suspected mastermind of the 2012 attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans and set off a political firestorm in the United States.

At a news conference nearly 24 hours after the Pentagon publicly disclosed the special-operations raid that netted Ahmed Abu Khatallah, Justice Minister Saleh Marghani denounced the U.S. military action as a violation of Libyan sovereignty and demanded that Abu Khatallah be returned to Libya for trial.

“We had no prior notification,” the minister told reporters. “We did not expect the U.S. to upset our political order.” …

Deepening the turmoil, a rogue ex-general, Khalifa Hifter, has in recent weeks launched a self-declared war against the Islamists. He has urged regular Libyan military units to join forces with him and has marshaled weapons including artillery and attack aircraft to bombard Islamist militias’ positions in Benghazi.

The Islamists and Hifter’s troops routinely exchange fire with heavy weapons while civilians cower in their homes.

Where did Hifter get the artillery, attack aircraft, and heavy weapons? Why did Hifter go rogue at this particular point in time? Is he or was he on the CIA payroll? Why did the U.S. government suddenly and simultaneously grab up Kattala, whose whereabouts have been known for the past two years? Why did they grab him without notifying the Libyan government, violating their national sovereignty and upsetting their “political order?” Did Hifter know in advance? Was that his go signal? Why did Obama have Kattala seized now, putting him on ice, right as Representative Trey Gowdy’s hearings are set to begin? Was this a CIA mop up? What stories might both Kattala and Hifter have to tell? What is the truth about Benghazi?

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