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It's happening in Nevada. Spread the word. Buy lots of ammo--you may soon need it.

http://www.youtube.com/...9ruxjGbBB1MOpuU6tpAQ

From Sea Shepherd
Captain Paul Watson

Welfare Ranching Show Down in Nevada

There is a silly little drama going on in Nevada and the Neo Cons, the militias and the welfare ranchers would have us believe there is another Waco about to happen.
For some strange reason I am on the Conservative Daily mailing list. I think they confused the word “conservation” with the word “conservative.”
Joe Otto who I assume speaks for the Conservative Daily sent me this message today (below) and I could not resist responding to it.
It’s all about a rancher named Cliven Bundy who has not paid his grazing fees since 1990 and is now upset that the government has come to collect over two decades in back fees.
You see, Cliven believes that he has every right to graze his cows free of charge on public land. It’s called welfare ranching and they believe their “right” to feed at the public trough trumps the right of endangered species to exist.
So I decided to inject my comments into Otto’s somewhat hysterical letter defending Cliven and his fellow welfare ranchers from the tyranny of Obama. You see when anything happens they don’t agree with, Obama is always at fault, and Obama is especially at fault when the thing the Neo Cons are upset with is something initiated by one of the two former Bush Presidents like this particular case.
Anyhow, this is Otto’s letter with my comments.
Dear Conservative,
(PW: You mean dear conservationist Otto. You were addressing me I think.)
By now you have probably heard about the crisis surrounding the Bundy Ranch in Bunkerville, Nevada. In case you haven’t, here is the basic synopsis.
(PW: Yes the Fox Network has their undies in a knot over this, which means it is hardly a major story elsewhere.)
Cliven Bundy is a cattle rancher whose family has lived near Bunkerville, NV for the last 140 years. The Bundy family’s cattle have always grazed on what had always been state-owned, public land. In 1993, the Federal Government discovered that Bundy’s grazing area was also home to the endangered Desert Tortoise. As a result, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) swooped in and took over control of the land. In order to dissuade farmers and ranchers from using the land and threatening the tortoise population, the BLM instituted a policy where ranchers would be forced to pay a grazing fee before using the land.
(PW: Let me see, the Bundy family has lived on the land for 140 years and the desert turtle has lived there for hundreds of thousands of years. The Bundy family took their land by force from Native Americans but the turtles were there even before the Native Americans. In 1993, the government did not discover that the grazing area was home to the turtle. They knew that. What they discovered was that the turtle was endangered and one probable cause was over-grazing by rancher Bundy’s cows.)
For Cliven Bundy, this was an unacceptable affront to his livelihood. His family has lived off this land for over a century, long before the creation of the BLM, and the idea that he would now have to pay a tax to protect a turtle was nothing short of absurd.
(PW: To the turtles it is an unacceptable affront to their right to survive as a species. Rancher Bundy believes the turtle’s right to survive is absurd yet he believes he has a God-given right to graze his cattle for profit at public expense. It is also not a tax but a grazing fee. In exchange for the fee, Bundy gets to graze his cattle. Bundy wants free food for his cows at public expense. In other words he wants welfare.)
So, Bundy refused to pay the tax. He allowed his cattle to graze on the land and didn’t pay the federal government a dime to do it. Why should he? The land is technically state-owned public land, yet the federal government want’s a cut because of an endangered turtle. Well, after twenty years of court battles, the Bureau of Land Management has finally swooped in and begun confiscating Bundy’s cattle at gunpoint to pay the $1.1 million that he owes in back “grazing fees” for using public land! This is absurd and should be a wake-up call to everyone! The government doesn’t care about common sense or decency… these militarized agencies and bureaus will use every law, regulation, and technicality to come after YOU with the full weight of the Federal government!
(PW: The law assessed a fee and rancher Bundy refused to pay the fee for over two decades and now he seems surprised that the government has called to collect back fees. Otto states the land is state owned and public but somehow rancher Bundy has a right to use it free of charge. Bundy owes back fees and the government is collecting those back fees by the confiscation of the cattle that Bundy has been raising at the expense of the public. It’s a classic case of welfare ranching where the rancher believes he is entitled to have his animals raised for slaughter at public expense. I hope the government does use every law, regulations and technicality to collect the back fees and to protect the right of the turtles to survive.)
Tell Congress to STOP the out-of-control militarization of agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and put an end to the Obama administration’s intimidation tactics!
(PW: I intend to tell Congress in the words “Good on you for defending the turtles and enforcing the grazing fees.”
How despicable is this… The federal government is seizing a rancher’s cattle because he didn’t pay a $1.1 Million “grazing fee” that was set up to protect a damn turtle! Anyone with half a brain can see that this is ludicrous… yet the government continues to wage its war on Cliven Bundy and proceeds to seize his cattle at gunpoint.
(PW: If anyone else does not pay their bills, they forfeit their property. Why should ranchers be exempt and above the law. Why should the public support Cliven’s damn cows? Why do his damn cows have more rights than the desert tortoise? The government is not waging war on Bundy, they are simply enforcing the law. Personally I disapproved of the fee myself. He should have been banned completely from grazing his cows on the land occupied by an endangered species.”)
I’ve said it before: It is absolutely ridiculous that we have so many militarized, non-law enforcement agencies in government. Agencies like the Department of Education, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the IRS, and even the Bureau of Land Management have been arming themselves to the teeth for years.
(PW: I’ve never seen an armed IRS agent, That would be scary, hell they are scary enough unarmed. I have certainly never seen an armed member of the Department of Education but considering all the school shootings, that might not be a bad idea. A law has been broken and it is being enforced. Pretty damn straight forward to me.)
Now, the full weight of the government has come down on the Bundy ranch. There are snipers watching the family’s movements, armed agents rounding up cattle, and the BLM has effectively made the whole area a “constitution free zone,” or at least that’s what they want it to be. The land is public land on a public road. Yet, anyone who wants to protest the government’s tyrannical actions is limited to doing so within a preset “First Amendment Zone” set up by government officials.
(PW: Can someone tell me where in the Constitution it says that ranchers have the right to graze for free on public land? The land as Otto says is public land on a public road. It is not Clive Bundy’s land. It is however turtle land. Thank you United States government for defending our endangered turtles. As for snipers, the fact is with dozens of trigger happy militia nut bars in camo, armed to the teeth, the deployment of snipers seems like a reasonable response. I admit the First Amendment zone is unacceptable but by order of the Governor of Nevada it has been taken down.)
That is ridiculous, and the protesters have fanned out, taking their frustration directly to the federal agents. In the last two days, one protester has been tackled to the ground and another has been shot with a stun gun. Now, militias from around the country have been mobilized and are beginning to arrive in Nevada to defend the ranch from this clearly tyrannical action. One county official warned the “inbred” militiamen (his words, not mine) from neighboring Utah that if they come to Cliven Bundy’s aid, then they “better have funeral plans.”
(PW: Oh no not the Mormons!!! I hope this is not another Mountain Meadow Massacre. It is amazing to see so many ultra conservatives ready to rise up and die to defend welfare rights for ranchers. Oh the tyranny of collecting unpaid bills.)
How despicable is that? Rather than defend the local rancher against the government thugs, the local Clark County Commissioner is actually threatening people if they show up to help him!
(PW: Yes I would imagine that the Clark County Commissioner would be opposing mob rule. When a bunch of wild eyed men in camo arrive with heavy weaponry it is reasonable for the County Commissioner to condemn their invasion of his county.)
I pray to God that there isn’t bloodshed. I really hope that the Federal government realizes that they are waging this war over nothing but a damn turtle and pull back. I mean, think about it… people could actually die over a dispute over cattle grazing on a turtle sanctuary… What on earth is this world coming to?
(PW: It is a world where human greed is eradicating endangered species and diminishing biodiversity. Otto you said it yourself, it’s a turtle sanctuary. It seems to me that people would be making a decision to risk dying for some damn cow. I think the turtle is much more deserving, after all it is a sanctuary for turtles. This is not a dispute over a turtle anyhow, it is a dispute over the fact that a welfare rancher has refused to pay his grazing bill.)
The fact remains that this is just one of the latest attempts for the Federal government to use loopholes to seize property for the “common good.” There is a case in Colorado where a couple’s mountain cabin is being seized and demolished to create “open space.” The government is actually using eminent domain to seize a piece of property just to create more open space.
(PW: If you build a cabin on public land you don’t have rights to the land just because you built the cabin. People have seized too much open space for their own use and by doing so they deprive nature of open space for wildlife. Nature needs more open spaces, more turtles and fewer cows.)
Rather than using common sense and restraint, the Federal government looks for every opportunity to come down hard on average citizens! This has to stop!
(PW: If citizens are a threat to the survival of an endangered species they should be stopped. Welfare ranchers are not average citizens, they are people who have grown rich at the public expense.)
The government shouldn’t be allowed to levy $1.1 Million fines on hard working Americans because their family’s ranch’s historical grazing grounds are now occupied by an endangered turtle! Americans from across the country shouldn’t have to mobilize in order to fend off tyrannical government agents!
(PW: It is not a fine, it’s a grazing fee, a fee that rancher Bundy has refused to pay for over two decades. Bundy’s lands are not now being occupied by an endangered turtle. The turtle’s land is being occupied by Bundy’s cattle.)
What if the government came into your home or business and threatened you because of a technicality or nonsense regulation? Things like this happen every day across America because we have given the Executive branch and its numerous agencies too much power over our lives!
(PW: When the U.S. Court and the IRS came after us for defending whales they were acting on the request of the Japanese whalers, I did not see many conservatives defending our rights to defend the whales. No most of them were defending the “right” of Japanese whalers to use American courts to stop American whale defenders.)
The Obama administration wouldn’t even send in one soldier to protect our ambassador in Benghazi, but it has sent in over 200 agents to harass a rancher in Nevada! This is despicable! The time has come to rein in these out of control, militarized government agencies. Congress must put an end to the Obama administration’s intimidation tactics!
(PW) Wow, they actually managed to fit Libya into their rant. That’s a stretch. The law removing free grazing rights came under the George H. Bush administration, not Obama.)
Tell Congress to STOP the out-of-control militarization of agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and put an end to the Obama administration’s intimidation tactics!
I will tell them in the words of George W. Bush, “Go get ‘em boys.” We need to put an end to Welfare ranching.
Sincerely,
Joe Otto
Conservative Daily

It all comes down to who you believe.

Anyone who trusts the governments motives or actions is naive, at best.

I think we would all be better off with the BLM and NPS completely dismantled.

i know nothing about the BLM and NPS, it blows me away that they are armed, but that is just because i am Australian. But I think he makes a few valid points

I'm more curious about the history of this. This is state land. How did it come under the control of the BLM? This is state land. If there is going to be a grazing fee why should it go to the federal government and not the state government? Remember when the BLM took over all the state land around Moab that could be used for camping and shut it down to force people into a very limited blm camp ground where they could collect fees? See a pattern here? Does any one really think this has any thing to do with a turtle? If it did then why is grazing allowed there at all? It's about $50,000 dollars a year from every person that owns a cow for free. What is the BLM providing in return for this fee? Why should they be able to collect this money for free from citizens of a state to graze their cattle on their own state owned land. It's public land. He is part of the public. And if there are any fees involved, not an unreasonable concept, it should be between him and his state.

Lee

When I first read about what was going on I was very skeptical too. It seemed to me to be little more than a case of someone not paying their bills. I would have ignored it if not for the heavy handed tactics the government is using.

Those tactics are similar to those used by other U.S. government agencies in what seems like its war against the American people that has been going on since the late 1980s.

In the late 1980s the U.S. government started its "War on Drugs" that has resulted in a lot of people getting killed, thrown in prison, had their property taken by the government, and/or being harassed. The stories are endless. During that same time, the federal agency tasked with regulating guns, the BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives) has been operating in a similar way against legal gun owners and businesses. Same with the federal taxing agency, the Internal Revenue Service.

And let's not forget about the TSA--the "Transportation Safety Administration". They are the people that grab your balls and steal your stuff at the airport when you travel by air within the U.S.

The federal agencies were out of control *before* Obama took office but have been on quite a rampage since he was elected.

The Bureau of Land Management's task is upposedly to manage "federal lands", but they have developed a reputation for doing some pretty shitty things--like selling wild horses for slaughter and stealing property.

Here is a link to a map of land "managed" by the BLM: http://www.nationalatlas.gov/...f/fedlands/BLM_2.pdf.

The incident that flared up was in Nevada, in the western U.S. I saw the figure recently about the percentage of the state of Nevada that was under BLM jurisdiction and it was astounding--well over 80%. From the map, that looks to be accurate.

Why does the federal government control so much land? Good question. Also a good question is why they have systematically run the ranchers in the area of their latest incursion out of business. No doubt the reason will have zero to do with endangered species. It will have everything to do with money.

Many Americans are very tired of the U.S. government's abusive behaviors both inside our borders and around the world. I think there will be many more incidents of Americans fighting back and it could get very ugly.

Walt

Benefit with some relevant background. I have not verified what the guy is saying.

http://youtu.be/tAwALTdrMZ8

ok, well that is just madness
is the average American aware of the power the BLM has?

I wasn't. I am currently reading through the law that established their mission (The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976), which is here: http://www.blm.gov/flpma/FLPMA.pdf

I don't think there was any ill intent in establishing the BLM, but as with all government bureaucracies whose policies have the power of law, the potential for abuse is always there.

Add to that one of the most corrupt administrations (Obama and crew) that this country has ever had and it has become a nightmare because the BLM is being used as a weapon.

Sucks, and it needs to stop.

Walt

You're from Australia so when he says that it's being used as a weapon I feel the need to point out that the ranchers in CO, WY, NM, NV and other parts of the mid west are staunch right wing conservatives. They are the blue in the blue states. In other words opposed to the Obama dictatorship. This is in no way unique. There is a link on the same youtube page to the efforts by the ATF (alcohol, tobacco, and firearms) to Shut down the sale of legal gun parts and reclassify unregistered gun parts and force sellers to give up the names of their customers so that they can form a fire arms registry. Note that it is illegal for them to acquire this information any other way. Maybe you remember how that turned out in your country? I don't know if you've heard but the IRS (internal revenue service, income tax) has been used to target groups receiving campaign contributions for conservative candidates. Denying them tax free status and making the contributions to that party non tax deductible. But amazingly any one smiled on by Obama seems to have no problem getting approved.... etc.

Lee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFiosLqjoQQ

just gets crazier and crazier

so let me get this straight.

that video is saying harry reid has been planning this takeover of ranchers land for a shady back-alley deal with chinese solar power giants using the endangered tortoise as a clever facade, since 1993? ... like, the 1993 that happened 21 years ago?

like, before anyone gave two shits about solar power?

i call bullshit, politicians are too dumb and too short-sighted to pull that one off.

sure, harry reid is a politician and therefore probably an asshole. some federal LEOs i have met are assholes. some rednecks i know are assholes. even paul watson sounds like an asshole. i dont know if bundy is an asshole or not, but i dont give a fuck about his "ancestral grazing rights." ....what kind of bullshit excuse is that for freeloading. sounds like a fucking Kent-Hovind-esque "i only pay taxes to god, not the IRS" wacko excuse. i think paul watson called it right.

if there was really a big money corporate back-alley deal, bundy woulda been swept (or bought) out of the way years ago.

don't get me wrong i think its great there are "militia" members, with guns i wish i owned, who are out there rushing to his defense. i look at it like, they are practicing for the day when they need to defend someone who actually is being victimized by the government and not their own stupidity to not follow the law. a law that might have pissed them off, but that everybody else has to follow. believe me i have worked on a lot of government properties where even the government itself is blocked from doing something that seems reasonable, due to some fucking endangered "Preble's Meadow Jumping Mouse" or the fucking "blind snot-nosed cave fish." if you don't think that these things affect everybody, your awareness of pervasive bureaucratic red tape is underwhelming. but hey, a conspiracy theory is way more entertaining, right?

and if you don't like the endangered species act, fine you dont have to like it. but as a democratic society we have made a decision to protect biodiversity at the expense of short-term economic gain and even some peoples' livelihoods. if you dont like it, vote. but realistically the ESA is probably not going away soon and that's probably a good thing if you care about the outdoors.

i'm not saying its squeaky clean down there in nevada. but if bundy had paid his grazing fee for using public lands, he would probably not be in the middle of a shitstorm right now.

oh, and the StormCloudsGathering people who made that video are not exactly an impartial news source either. in case anyone was wondering.

oh and wtf does this have to do with obama??

Well I am all in with you Walt and so is Ruthie.. As you know a hostile take over was issued at two of my houses. Way to much bulling going on….

btw
Obama has tripled my insurance cost…..

love you brother,
P

You must mean how we don't live in fear of children being massacred in school?

I was thinking more about the loss of your god given personal freedoms and right to defend your self. Not to mention the huge surge of home invasions in which criminals just brake down your door, come in, kill you and take what ever they want with impunity.

Lee

I would consider it a loss of "freedom" if my children needed to pass through metal detectors at school.

This simply did not happen here but it has only been about 15 years so there is still time.

Do you not consider it a loss of freedom that children are forced into government indoctrination camps (schools) where they are NOT taught how to think, but rather what to think and are made to conform to government propaganda?

You're talking about the police here, right?

I'm sure some do.

This is the easy question. He is their boss and since he has not condemned the military action the BLM took, including shooting cattle from a helicopter and trying to conceal the evidence by burying them in a mass grave, then he approves.

Why he has not been tried and convicted of treason already is beyond me.

as usual, Jon Stewart encapsulates it nicely:

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/...4jh6e/apocalypse-cow

" ... putting the women up front ... " - Douchey T. McDoucherson

This is not about big guvermint, this is about Bundy is a douche, his stupid fucking redneck friends are douches, and i hope his cows fucking die and he goes to jail!

Probably the must hostile and uninformed opinion I will run across all day.

Been too long since you got laid?

Walt

There isn't any question as to whether this guy has broken the law. Wait... is it a law? Some how I kind of thought that laws were something voted on by the people, or representatives of the people, ie. those voted into office as representatives of that group. Not random dictates laid down by a self serving bureaucracy answerable to no one with no means of redress. Let's call it a regulation. And he has been working diligently to fight this by every legal means. Keep in mind that that has taken years. Now that he has had the temerity to stand up for him self and family they have nuked him with all the fees and penalties for all of those years that he has tried to pursue his legal avenues. Basically they gave him enough rope to hang him self and then arbitrarily ruled against him. It was never about any thing but the money and they knew that they would just take it from him in the end.

What we should be talking about is not whether or not what he is doing now is wrong. I mean he has been in violation of this regulation as he has made his legal appeal against it. And now he is in armed resistance against the government. What we should be talking about is the nature of this agency and it's operations and the lack of over sight and regulation over it. How did this come to an armed conflict.

For me it's not a question of whether what he is doing now is right or wrong. I would have to side against him on that. I think the separate and much more interesting question of whether what the BLM has been doing for years is right or wrong should be examined. And much more importantly how they operate, which has always been rather controversial. This is small potatoes in comparison to how they control the logging and mining industries.

Lee

sorry, sorry, i was grouchy this morning. what i meant to say, is that i hope bundy pays the debt to the BLM that numerous courts have upheld. and, that he promptly removes his cattle from their ongoing trespass on public land. he had his day(s) in court, and he lost, and "i don't recognize the federal government" just makes him look more douchey.

speaking of uninformed opinions, before your side accuses the BLM of wantonly shooting his cattle, how do you know they werent euthanize cattle that needed to be put down because bundy doesn't know how to manage them, i.e. keep them safe on his own property? you know, for every person who hates the BLM for supposed over-reach, there is another citizen who hates the BLM for pandering to agri-business interests, i.e. derogatorily, "Bureau of Livestock and Mining." Man it must be tough to be the BLM these days.


hah i'll tell you who's NOT getting laid-- that guy who told the world on Fox News that he would put his wife between him and the feds. yeah happy valentines sweetheart, be my human shield??

still a douche.



(i haven't made any personal swipes at you, why make it personal against me?)

That might be the only sensible paragraph in this entire thread. I could get behind that. The problem was there long before it was obama's turn to not give 2 shits about bundy.

My understanding, which is very weak at this point, is that BLM directives have the force of law, much like FAA regulations.

In the Federal Land Management Policy Act of 1976, there is a clause that says it does not override existing agreements.

I think one condition of Nevada's grant of statehood is that they had to sign over nearly all of their land to the feds and let the feds generously let them have a tiny fraction of their land back for towns and schools. Nevada became a state in 1864.

I think Bundy's basic claim is that his family had established an agreement for grazing rights that predated the creation of the BLM (1976) and that the Bundy family had established their grazing rights agreement in the 1870s.

Who is legally right? According to the federal courts, the BLM is, but since what the BLM says has the force of law, then it is a rigged game.

The more you look at the US government's long history of dishonest dealings with everyone it has come into contact with, the worse they look.

I don't know enough to say that the BLM vs. Bundy case is an open and shut case and that the BLM is right but I certainly do not dismiss the possibility.

Your comment that the central issue is the BLM's actions--military invasion based on a civil dispute--and threatening to kill US citizens without any due process whatsoever, I think it's clear that the entire BLM management chain belongs in prison. I'm a bit biased, though, because unlike the current federal government administration, I do not think that murdering US citizens without due process is a good thing. I'm funny like that.

Nor do I think that calling in a mercenary strike against US citizens because you want to "teach them a lesson" is ok. I'm funny like that too.

YMMV.

I have met Sheriff Mack briefly. It was a very emotionally heated situation and he got very carried away. I'm sure he deeply regrets it.

Maybe you don't understand his history with the federal government, but he put his ass on the line fighting the feds and won against them in the Supreme Court. He is an honorable man and a patriot but yes, he screwed up this time.

I can actually somewhat understand your anger/disgust with the Bundy supporters but I think in time most people (maybe even you) will see that this type of pushback against the federal government is absolutely necessary. Without it, we will surely end up as even more of a totalitarian society than we already are.

Consider the protesters of the civil rights movement and those who strongly opposed the Vietnam war. Many who were angry and disgusted with those protesters at the time were appalled not so much at their views, but their apparent arrogance at questioning something that had been up to that point, so widely accepted.

In retrospect, the overwhelming majority of those protesters had a lot of valid and important things to say, whether others liked the way they said it or not.

Taking the emotion out of it, it is undeniable that the BLM's behavior has been absolutely heinous in its handling of the Bundy Ranch protest. As a country, we cannot tolerate that sort of flagrant abuse of citizen's rights by the government--especially by an agency that in this role, is essentially a landlord.

The BLM's behavior nearly caused a bloodbath. They are out of control and in my opinion are far beyond being fixed. They need to be disbanded and those who ordered the actions need to be held criminally accountable.

Just my 2 cents.

If you start holding Politicians/Governments accountable for their actions throughout history, you may find out who the real criminals are in society.

You are right and I owe you a public apology for doing so. I apologize.

Sheriff Mack's words *were* the words of a douche. I believe that most Bundy supports hold that opinion. But, I look at it as one fuck up by an honorable man. We all fuck up and he did that day.

There is a lot of extremely biased rhetoric on both sides and I think when the dust settles, the BLM will be seen as an extremely out of control group of thugs.

My bias is heavily on the side of the Bundy supporters--not so much because I don't think that he owes the government money, but because I think the government went way too far in handling it and I want to see people spend the rest of their lives in prison because of it. Even so, I do not automatically believe every pro-Bundy or anti-government thing I read. Pictures and video are extremely convincing, though. There was a picture of a BLM mercenary helicopter in flight with a guy in the door with a rifle that was supposedly taken while they were herding cattle. I'm a gun guy so the presence of a gun does not bother me in the least but the presence of a gun in some contexts does.

That did. Bigtime. It convinced me that the BLM are murderous thugs who need to be held accountable. They were shooting cattle from the air. Were there so many cattle that needed to be euthanized that they could not land and investigate from the ground.

No way in hell.

BLM is pure evil and needs to be stopped. Have you seen the video of the BLM thugs aggressively attacking protesters with tasers? Or with the attack dogs? I don't care what kind of civil judgement Bundy has against him--that was not justified.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Obama doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself, so I'm sure he doesn't care about Bundy. Looking at a slightly bigger picture, though, under Obama, federal agencies and even local police departments are becoming very militarized.

It has reached a point that I think DHS (Department of Homeland Security) is *far* more of a threat than the people labeled as terrorists. I have no love for the terrorists but I do not see much difference between DHS and the terrorists.

BLM is clearly a military force and clearly used extreme retaliatory measures in the Bundy case. How does that relate to Obama? The BLM is within the Dept. of Interior, which reports to Obama. The other heavily armed federal agencies who are preparing to slaughter US citizens also report to him. Whether he cares or not, it happened on his watch.

Hey, like I said myself earlier in this thread:

Your analogy to the vietnam protesters is interesting. I might have been protesting the war too in that era. Or signing up to fight in it. I dunno. There are Jane Fondas and there are Sheriff Macks on both sides, though as far as I know Sheriff Mack may regret his words his actions never killed any Americans, which so far, is better than you can say for Ms. Fonda



Clearly both sides could have polished their approach a little more. The BLM rangers on the scene, in my own personal opinion, and their own too no doubt, were probably following orders that were legal and at least proximally justified. Like RiggerLee mentioned, the deeper issue here needs to see some more public debate... it's too bad the Bundy party has to be the public media face for an issue I'm otherwise sympathetic too, at least in principle. It's really hard to support his cause when every day another appalling quote emanates from his side.


its all good dude, no worries. you write your thoughts clearly and i totally respect the principles behind them, even my sympathies are strained. I did not know you were personally acquainted with Mack and I woulda toned it down a little had I known. I know that even reputable news outlets like Fox can twist words for the shocking sound bite, and I don't know what the full context was off-camera. Though Mack sure didn't make that job difficult for them, that's the most charitable I can be.

I'd rather see Bundy fight his war in the courts and the arena of public opinion than in desert with guns... he doesn't seem to be very good at the first two though, and if he can't gain public opinion, guns in the desert wont get him anything but a short-term reprieve.

I cannot say that I really know Sheriff Mack, but have met him and admire him. I went to a gun rights rally at the Texas state capitol. He was one of the speakers. I spoke with him briefly and have read a couple of his books. He's pretty deep into trying to get people to realize that the federal government has become something it was never intended to be--a self-serving enemy of the people. I could not agree with him more.

I brought up the Vietnam war because of how much my own attitudes have changed over the years.

Here's another one: drugs.

I was in high school in the early 1970s at at the time, possession of *any* amount of weed in Texas was a felony. At first, my attitude was that anyone stupid enough to get involved with weed *belonged* in prison. During my time in high school I met one of my brother's friends who thought weed was the greatest thing ever. I could not reconcile my attitudes about weed with my attitude toward him. He certainly was not hurting anyone, so why would he belong in prison? I finally concluded that it was a bad law and I had been greatly misled by propaganda over the years.

Years later, the feds started their "War on Drugs". I didn't really give a shit at the time because I did not do drugs but over a period of years I heard the horror stories about people being killed for no reason and having their property permanently seized by the government without any kind of due process.

Then I got pulled over by a Texas DPS trooper who said he was with the "Chambers County Drug Task Force". This was on I-10, east of Houston, pretty much in the boonies. For some reason, he had profiled me as being the type who was trafficking drugs through his county. It was a damn scary experience yet it was (and still is) the mildest form of contact anyone can have with the "War on Drugs". I quickly realized that what is really going on is a war against the American people.

What does this have to do with the Bundy Ranch?

Life has taught me that there is no greater truth than the saying about truth being the first casualty of war. We do not have a truly objective media in the US today. All have a political agenda and they have turned into little more than propaganda machines.

The propaganda regarding Cliven Bundy is rampant and on the upswing and verifiable facts are hard to find.

My exposure to the "War on Drugs" has led me to give great pause before condemning anyone who is involved in a dispute with the federal government, even if it seems obvious that the government is right.

The "War on Drugs" further taught me that the government has no issue with committing heinous acts against innocent people, for little or no reason and completely without provocation.

No matter what anyone, including me, thinks of a rancher who refuses to pay grazing fees, that rancher does not deserve to be attacked by a mercenary strike force.

Nor do protesters deserve to be threatened with attack dogs, tasers, and deadly force by government thugs. There is no stronger evidence that we no longer have a legitimate government in this country.

YMMV, of course, but I think it is worth thinking about.

http://youtu.be/h3NjcBNRxAo

and then backs it up with some more

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2612703/Rancher-Cliven-Bundy-attempts-defend-racist-comments-negro-making-racist-comments-negro.html#v-3504372282001

In your post 29 you mentioned the 1976 creation of the BLM. As I had a job offer from them in 1956 which I did not accept, I did an internet search. Seems like they were established in 1946 as a consolidation of the 1812 established General Land Office and the 1934 established US Grazing Servlce.

Thankyou for posting that. I will research. It is entirely possible I either misread some information or read some incorrect information.

Walt