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Armed Militia Occupies National Wildlife Refuge

by ArlethaHibbs Posted on January 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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As many as 100 armed militia members seized control of a Fish and Wildlife Services building in a remote part of eastern Oregon on Saturday and threatened to shoot law enforcement officers who attempt to kick them out.

Led by Ammon Bundy, the son of the Nevada rancher whose standoff with the Bureau of Land Management over cattle grazing fees made national headlines in 2015, the group took over the headquarters of Malheur National Wildlife Refugee shortly after a peaceful march in the nearby town of Burns. The militia’s latest cause celebre is that of Dwight and Stephen Hammond, father-son ranchers who face prison time under an anti-terrorism statute for setting fires on federal lands. Both Hammonds already served short sentences for the crime, but after they got out, they were re-sentenced to the mandatory minumum of five years.

In addition to freedom for the Hammonds, the Bundy group is demanding that the federal government give up control of nearby Malheur National Forest.

The Malheur occupation is only the latest in a long line of armed confrontations between conservative land rights activists and the federal government on public lands. But the clearest historical precedent for Saturday’s takeover came in 1966, when Alianza Federal de Mercedes, a group founded by Chicano land rights activist Reies Lopes Tijerina, occupied a part of Carson National Forest north of Santa Fe and declared it New Pueblo Republic of San Joaquin del Rio de Chama. They even arrested two Forest Rangers who come to confront them, and charged them with trespassing. Tijerina’s occupation lasted all of one day. Ammon Bundy told the Oregonian on Saturday that his group might hold their position for years.

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Armed Militia Occupies National Wildlife Refuge

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Ivy League Eggheads Have Lead Us Into a String of Disastrous Wars. It’s Time For Something New.

by Hilton0041 Posted on March 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Policy intellectuals—eggheads presuming to instruct the mere mortals who actually run for office—are a blight on the republic. Like some invasive species, they infest present-day Washington, where their presence strangles common sense and has brought to the verge of extinction the simple ability to perceive reality. A benign appearance—well-dressed types testifying before Congress, pontificating in print and on TV, or even filling key positions in the executive branch—belies a malign impact. They are like Asian carp let loose in the Great Lakes.

It all began innocently enough. Back in 1933, with the country in the throes of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt first imported a handful of eager academics to join the ranks of his New Deal. An unprecedented economic crisis required some fresh thinking, FDR believed. Whether the contributions of this “Brains Trust” made a positive impact or served to retard economic recovery (or ended up being a wash) remains a subject for debate even today. At the very least, however, the arrival of Adolph Berle, Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, and others elevated Washington’s bourbon-and-cigars social scene. As bona fide members of the intelligentsia, they possessed a sort of cachet.

Then came World War II, followed in short order by the onset of the Cold War. These events brought to Washington a second wave of deep thinkers, their agenda now focused on “national security.” This eminently elastic concept—more properly, “national insecurity”—encompassed just about anything related to preparing for, fighting, or surviving wars, including economics, technology, weapons design, decision-making, the structure of the armed forces, and other matters said to be of vital importance to the nation’s survival. National insecurity became, and remains today, the policy world’s equivalent of the gift that just keeps on giving.

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Ivy League Eggheads Have Lead Us Into a String of Disastrous Wars. It’s Time For Something New.

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Cliven Bundy’s Daughter Slams Sean Hannity

by czeajanvsn Posted on April 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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Since Wednesday night, when the New York Times published Cliven Bundy’s observations about “the Negro”—including his musing that African Americans were better off as cotton-picking slaves than they are today—conservative pundits have scrambled to distance themselves from the Nevada rancher, whose recent standoff with federal officials over grazing fees on public land became a rallying cry for anti-government conservatives. Fox News host Sean Hannity, who had vociferously championed Bundy as a hero, kicked off his Thursday show by slamming Bundy for his “ignorant, racist, repugnant, despicable” remarks.

Bundy defended his initial comments on Thursday saying, “If they think I’m racist, they’re totally wrong…Again, I’m wondering are they better off under the old system of slavery or are they better off under the welfare slavery that they’re under now. You know, I’m not saying one way or the other.” And on Friday morning, he told CNN that he didn’t see a problem with using terms like “Negro” or “boy” for black people. “If those people cannot take those kind of words and not be (offended), then Martin Luther King hasn’t got his job done yet,” he told anchor Chris Cuomo.

Meanwhile, Bundy’s daughter, Shiree Bundy Cox, is striking back at conservatives who have turned tail on Bundy, especially Hannity. In a Facebook post Thursday night, she accused Hannity of abandoning her father and pandering to ratings. Here’s a snippet:

I’m sure most of you have heard the news about my dad being called a racist. Wow! The media loves to take things out of context don’t they? First off I’d just like to say that my dad has never been the most eloquent speaking person. Like someone said, he’s a Moses who needs an Aaron to speak for him. This is true. Second, however, is that the media has turned this into a circus side show. It’s like their trying to throw us off the real subject. Why was this ever even brought up? What does this have to do with land rights issues? Sean Hannity was all for reporting the happenings at the Bundy Ranch until this popped up. I wonder if someone hoped it would be that way…By the way, I think Mr. Hannity is more worried about his ratings than he really is about what my dad said. If he supports a supposed racist, what will that do to his ratings? He’s already lost his #1 spot on Fox.

Cox, who is one of 14 children, also suggested that the controversy concerning Bundy’s racist comments had somehow been orchestrated to undermine her father’s cause:

Glenn Beck was never 100% on board with my dad, but now he has an excuse to distance himself even farther. Could there be people out there who want it that way? Get the un main stream media out of the way from reporting this situation in a positive light and the battle is more than won for the opposing side…Again I’d like to ask, “What does my dad’s opinion on the state of the Blacks on welfare have to do with the land rights issue?” Nothing! It’s a detouring tactic. It’s taking away from the real issues and what has been accomplished. The mainstream media want this to happen to make people deviate from the real important things and focus on a comment that has absolutely no relevance. It’s a tactic that has been used for decades. I hope people will see this for what it really is.

While she came down hard on his critics, Cox’s defense of her father was not so fierce: “Is my dad a racist. No, I really don’t think so. Could he have said what he means with a little more tact? Sure he could have. But most of all, should it even be an issue right now? Nope.”

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Cliven Bundy’s Daughter Slams Sean Hannity

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Why Was the Right Caught Flat-Footed By Cliven Bundy’s Cranky Racism?

by Kelvin85Yxpqhdj Posted on April 24, 2014

Mother Jones

By now I assume you’ve all heard about Cliven Bundy’s remarks to the New York Times yesterday? In case you’ve been vacationing on Mars, here they are:

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.

“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

I don’t have anything to add that (a) isn’t obvious and (b) hasn’t already been said by someone else, but I do share Paul Waldman’s reaction: “Is anyone surprised that Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who has become a Fox News hero because of his stand-off with the Bureau of Land Management, turns out to be a stone-cold racist?”

That’s a good question. Is anyone on the right surprised by this? (I think it’s safe to say that exactly zero lefties are surprised.) That’s not a rhetorical question on my part. Look: conservatives should never have rallied around Bundy in the first place, but if they’re even minimally self-aware about his particular niche in the conservative base, surely they should have seen something like this coming and kept their distance just out of sheer self-preservation. But apparently they didn’t. They didn’t have a clue that a guy like Bundy was almost certain to backfire on them eventually. They seem to have spent so long furiously denying so much as a shred of racial resentment anywhere in their base that they’ve drunk their own Kool-Aid.

On a tangential note, as near as I can tell Paul Ryan never embraced Bundy publicly. Does anyone know if that’s right? It’s one reason I think he could be a dangerous presidential candidate. Despite his “inner city” gaffe of a few weeks ago, he’s smarter about this stuff than most folks who have managed to stay on the right side of the tea party.

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Why Was the Right Caught Flat-Footed By Cliven Bundy’s Cranky Racism?

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