A novelist would have a hard time topping what actually just happened out in Oregon, as the six-week standoff at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge finally came to an end.
After repeatedly threatening to shoot himself, complaining that he couldn’t get marijuana, and ranting about UFOs, drone strikes in Pakistan, leaking nuclear plants and the government “chemically mutating people,” the last occupier, David Fry, 27, lit a cigarette, shouted “Hallelujah” and walked out of his barricaded encampment into FBI custody.
As if it could get any better than that, the last holdouts had specifically requested the mediation of Franklin Graham, a preacher so rooted in the Gospel of Christ that he once gave a sermon at the Pentagon on Good Friday. Of course, back in 2011, Mr. Graham said that the earthquake and tsunami in Japan that caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster might be the beginning of the Second Coming, so I’m not sure why David Fry was complaining about leaking nuclear plants.
So, yes, it was fitting that they asked for Graham’s intercession, especially since he is beneficiary of the well-known primogenitary Protestant principle: the Divine Right of Succession to the Mailing List.
Also, too, Franklin Graham said Donald Trump would make a great president way back during the height of Trump’s Excellent Birther Tour. And he’s all for outright banning people who adhere to the “wicked faith” of Islam from entering our country.
Yeah, this Malheur standoff was kind of a perfect mirror of what a Trump presidency would look like.
And the beat goes on
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/cliven-bundy-court-appointed-attorney
The article states that the judge wants to see Mr Bundy’s financial records to determine if he is actual unable to afford a lawyer. Routine, I think.
I just hope that part of his final sentence is paying off the debt he owes us all for his freeloading on public land.
Have you heard Ted Cruz’s wife?
Paid for by credit.com
It looks like a news story but it isn’t, no by line, no comment section.
https://taxes.yahoo.com/post/139170616323/5-ways-a-hillary-clinton-presidency-could-affect
I think Michelle Fiore had something to do with it too, came out of it seeming more attached to reality too.
Get used to it. As long as the PermaGov continues to fuck up royally, every possible style of resistance will arise. Dumb people will do dumb things, smart people will do smarter things, and the situation as it now stands in DC will either die the death of a thousand cuts or it will crack down in ways of which we have not yet dreamed.
AG
The federal government is responsible for delusional whack jobs? But wait–they’re all rugged individualists! Their delusions are their own, fer chrissakes. No frigging way are they going to let Uncle Sam mess with their delusions.
Elite shit management of the country and prevention of any challenge to their power has pissed a lot of people off who react in different ways. Is this really so controversial?
Precisely. Thank you.
AG
Keep buying into the hype, JDW. At least you won’t be lonely.
I know…and respect…a great many rural New Englanders who resemble those people at Malheur, and I am sure that if I were to spend real, non-combative time with people from the same general mileu…white, working class non-city dwellers…throughout much of the rest of the country I would feel the same way about many of them. There is an overall revolution of consciousness going on in the U.S., a reaction to the gradual unmasking of the failures and ongoing depredations of the Permanent Government. The riots in Ferguson and Baltimore, the successes of the Trump and Sanders campaigns, the Bundy and Malheur occurrences…they are all symptoms of this revolution. Where it will end no one knows, but it is going to happen. It could end very badly in any number of ways…martial law no matter who wins the presidency, a Trump presidency, a total collapse of the society due to some disaster that strips bare the criminality of the government as did Hurricane Katrina before this distrust in the government became truly widespread…or it could resolve itself peacefully.
I personally think that a Sanders presidency would be the most likely way that a healing could be begun, but then I also think that the odds against that happening are fairly long. The mass media still control a majority of the minds in America…witness the many people here who don’t see what is happening right in front of their eyes…and the media’s job is to preserve stasis. Given the serious threat of a Trump/Sanders election, Bloomberg will be run, and he will be hyped to the skies as “THE ONLY SANE CANDIDATE!!!”
And…the stasis game will be continued.
Watch.
AG
I’m reminded of the infamous (yet successful) “Twinkie Insanity” defense used by Dan White, the ex-San Francisco supervisor who murdered mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk when Moscone refused to re-appoint White to the Board of Supervisors after White had resigned his seat. “Twinkie Insanity” was the claim by White and his lawyers that he had been driven round the bend by eating too much sugar, especially in the form of Twinkies. This defense somehow led the jury to convict White of manslaughter instead of murder.
You’re doing a great job, Mr Gilroy, of constructing a cop-out pseudo-defense for all the whack jobs, “Patriots”, and “Constitutionalists” who want to carry out seditious activities. THEY’RE not responsible–they were driven to their acts by the evil federal government that was…that was…well, in the case of the Bundy clan, the primary evil act of the federal government was actually demanding that they pay the fees they had been withholding since 1998 for grazing their cattle on lands that belong to you, to me, and to every other US citizen.
Maybe you’d like to fly out here to Portland and join forces with Ammon Bundy’s lawyers, as they’ve been trying to portray him as a civil-rights hero in their efforts to get him released on bail. (The magistrate who made the initial bail ruling deemed Bundy and most of his companions in crime to be both potentially violent and flight risks, and refused bail.) The lawyers actually compared Mr Bundy to Martin Luther King Jr. Good Gawd–what is it about nonviolence that these knuckleheads don’t understand?
You’re absolutely right, Mr Gilroy: I just do not “get it”. I’ll let you in on a dark secret: I am myself a federal employee. I’m part of the conspiracy.
Given that Arthur has expressed explicit support for some of Cliven Bundy’s statements, the scenario you paint at the beginning of your third paragraph has merit.
I would be curious to hear AG channel his reactionary friends again in the wake of their judicious and almost entirely non-violent arrests of Cliven & Company. Interesting that Arthur’s written almost nothing about the illegal armed occupation at the Malheur reserve, and what he does write about it on this thread is full of his own brand of baloney.
Radical left, liberal, centrist, conservative, radical right…it’s really just a big circle, centerfielddj . There is a place where the radical left and radical right begin to meet…directly across the diameter of the circle from the centrists.
That’s when things begin to get really interesting!!!
We are nearing that point now.
Watch.
AG
Yes, we know from your early support for Rand Paul and Elizabeth Warren that policy philosophies are all the same to you. That’s your chief flaw as an analyst. It makes your analysis profoundly uninteresting, because it’s in a fixed, cramped frame which prevents you from considering new information. It also makes your judgement extremely suspect.
You can’t even be counted to defend Americans’ right to vote. With that and other positions of yours, it’s hard to accept insulting lectures from you on how progressives should most effectively move their politics.
You write:
I shoulda known…
An unwitting part of that conspiracy, apparently. Too low on the totem pole. So it goes. Enjoy the fruits of that conspiracy, JDW. Until of course it stops working. So that will go as well, I think.
AG
P.S. “Nonviolence???!!!” It apears to me that no matter whether a truly effective opponent of empire is nonviolent or violent, they all get the same shaft if they begin to get effective enough.
Peace, MLK Jr. and Gandhi. Same result. A bullet to the head.
Good God…you might want to stop digging, Arthur.
Or, alternatively, know that you open yourself up to people forming the same conclusion about you that the speaker here makes about Governor LePetomaine:
You’re consistent, I’ll give you that.
I place Graham in the same cesspool of fundamentalist opportunists as Mike Huckabee, John Hagee and Jerry Falwell. To listen on that live-stream as Graham gushed to these domestic terrorists about how “proud he was of them” and how much he “admired what they were doing” just reinforced what a craven human being he is and how closely linked these right wing terrorists are with the “gospel” that Graham preaches.
Graham is just another iteration in a long history of religious right-wing sympathizers and enablers of domestic terrorism that have come down the pike.
All in all I find him quite a revolting person.
Which reminds me: Who would you cast for the film you know is going to be made of this?
Director(s): The Coen brothers.
[whoever greenlights Coen projects]’s ear.
Copied from my work e-mail. As I noted above in my reply to Arthur Gilroy, I am part of the evil federal government.
******************
To: All Department of the Interior Employees
From: Secretary Jewell
Subject: Update on Malheur National Wildlife Refuge
After more than 40 days, the illegal occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon has ended. I want to express my sincere thanks to the Federal, State, and local law enforcement authorities who worked around the clock to resolve this situation as quickly and safely as possible.
The FBI, in its role as the lead law enforcement agency on scene, demonstrated tremendous patience and professionalism in bringing about a peaceful resolution to the occupation. I am enormously proud of our DOI law enforcement personnel, who worked closely with the law enforcement community to support the response to the takeover and help keep our personnel safe. We will continue to cooperate with DOJ, the FBI, and other law enforcement agencies as the investigation and prosecutions move forward to hold accountable those who broke the law.
I recognize and appreciate this has been an incredibly disruptive and distressing time for our employees and their families in the area, as well as the entire Harney County community of which they are a part. I also know this incident, and ones that have come before, cause deep concern across the entire Department.
Over the course of my career, I have traveled on multiple occasions to Eastern Oregon and have met with ranchers who make a living working these lands. As recently as last year, I was in Oregon to celebrate the collaborative relationship between ranchers and public land managers, both of whom value these lands and are partnering to sustain working western rangelands for future generations.
The successful partnership in Harney County is just one example of our work with local communities across this great Nation, and those important efforts must continue while the community works to heal from this terrible situation and get back to normal.
While many of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife and Bureau of Land Management offices in the immediate area were closed during the illegal occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, our employees continued to perform their duties remotely, even as we worked alongside law enforcement authorities to monitor and ultimately resolve the situation.
Finally, our foremost priority continues to be the safety and security of our employees as they get back to the business of serving the American public.
I am absolutely committed to maintaining a safe work environment that allows employees to uphold the laws of the United States and carry out our mission of responsible public land and water stewardship for the benefit of all Americans.
There is tremendous support for the work we do on a daily basis, even as we recover from the unfortunate situation at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
As the healing begins, I thank our employees, law enforcement, county, State and Federal leaders for your partnership, your understanding, and the work we will continue together into the future.
In the face of difficult challenges, we have shown that we can persevere and make progress by working together, in close partnership with those who have called these lands home for generations.
Yeah, but…
She writes:
Putting out a small fire is not “resolving” a larger situation. The success of the Trump and Sanders candidacies is testimony to an overarching contempt amongst the people of the U.S. from every political viewpoint regarding the federal bureaucracy of which you are an obviously willing part.
Secretary Jewell also writes:
This is bureaucratic, boilerplate executive doublespeak at a very high level. Sure, she “met” with ranchers who are working those lands. But which ones!!!??? And in what circumstances? In what context?
Really.
Here is a pic of her.
And here is her career path to Secretaryship.
She is a career corporate executive.
Mobil!!! One of the polluters of the universe.
Rainier Bank. She worked in banking for twenty years…Security Pacific, WestOne Bank, Washington Mutual. All part of the financial system that completely tanked this economy by 2007/2008.
REI!!! A mall and outlet-based company that makes glitzed out so-called “outdoors” clothing that no self-respecting rancher or farmer would even dream of wearing.
Now let me ask you something. Do you really think that she dressed down and ventured anonymously into the coffee shops, bars and town meetings where people who are not hustling the federal government for favors gather to talk about their troubles? I have a hard time envisioning that. She “met” with creatures of that area who are in agreement…translation: are making money with…her bureau. They met in some nice office surrounded by the trappings of cabinetship and guarded by state cops or worse. She’s just another part of the corporate/PermaGov revolving door system, and I…along with obviously lots and lots and lots of others…am no longer willing to genuflect before an increasingly failing federal bureaucratic system on all levels.
You’re making your salary? Great. The pension’s coming along; the kids are going to go to good schools? Wonderful. Mazel tov!!!
You’re surviving.
You are surviving as a collaborator in a rotted-out, rapidly failing system; and I don’t like your act much, myself.
So it goes.
Best of luck in the future.
You’re gonna need it. When the next crash comes Secretary Jewell will be living comfortably in some expensive Seattle neighborhood. Guaranteed. Or safely retired to Aspen or someplace like it.
You? Unless you are really high up in your department, you will find things getting very…uncomfortable.
Bet on it.
Those people that you so despise as criminals?
Most of them are worth more than an SUV full of bureaucratic paper shufflers, as far as I am concerned.
That’s my story, and I am sticking to it.
Later…
AG
Regarding Malheur, this is BY FAR the best piece I have seen on the people inside it, and it further confirms Martin’s thesis that “this Malheur standoff was kind of a perfect mirror of what a Trump presidency would look like.” Clueless and uncaring.
https://www.hcn.org/articles/malheur-occupation-oregon-ammon-bundy-public-lands-essay
This is a GREAT article.
Thank you for sharing.