A man named Harry Reid represents the state of Nevada in the United States Senate. As Senate Majority Leader, he also holds one of the most powerful political offices in Washington. His former top aide heads the Bureau of Land Management, which mounted an offensive operation against the Bundy ranch earlier this month using armed agents, armored vehicles, and snipers. His son Rory represents the Chinese energy company that plans to build a huge solar panel plant on public land in the Nevada desert, as soon as the last of those annoying cattle ranchers can be evicted from real estate controlled by the federal government. The only thing standing between the Reid dynasty and the realization of its lucrative dream is a single cattle ranch near the town of Bunkerville, plus an undetermined number of dedicated and well-armed patriots who have gathered to guard it for the past several weeks.
Senator Reid is understandably frustrated with the situation in Bunkerville. Several times over past week he has referred to Oath Keepers and other patriotic groups as “domestic terrorists”, and their actions as “domestic terrorism”.
The following graphic, borrowed from Sipsey Street Irregulars, highlights the capricious nomenclature employed the federal government when it talks about “terrorism”:
See Western Rifle Shooters for more graphics, articles, and links.
Mr. Reid’s repeated use of the term “domestic terrorism” is deliberate, and has a specific purpose. As a member of the Legislative branch, he is prepping the battlespace for the Executive by describing the events in his state using those words. What we may expect next is that the Executive will also invoke “domestic terrorism” concerning ongoing events in Nevada. When that occurs, it will activate provisions of the Patriot Act that permit the suspension of certain constitutional rights for those citizens so designated.
Which is what those patriots gathered in the Nevada desert this weekend predicted when the Patriot Act was first passed — by a Republican administration, mind you, with overwhelming support from a Republican Congress. Osama Bin Laden and the Great Jihad were incidental to the purpose of the Act, which was to ensure that the federal government could crack down on armed domestic dissent whenever it became necessary.
The liberty-minded people who have gathered near Bunkerville to guard the Bundy ranch do not believe the current stalemate will end well. The federal government is unlikely to slink away from the scene, never to return. Its invincible power must be seen to be irresistible, pour encourager les autres.
Yet this will not be another Waco. Spend a half an hour browsing the patriot websites, beginning with Western Rifle Shooters, and you’ll see what I mean. Not only is the Resistance present in large numbers in Nevada, it is well-armed, well-equipped, and assisted by former members of the military who have experience with the army surplus equipment that is likely to be used against them.
In addition, events as they unfold will be reported, recorded, and live-streamed from the scene. Even shutting down the cell towers and the internet will not suffice to staunch the flow of information about whatever eventually transpires near Bunkerville. This revolution will be televised.
No, this won’t be another Waco.
In the meantime, the patriots gathered yesterday to take refreshment and listen to music on the banks of the Virgin River in Nevada — guarded by armed members of the militia. According to The Las Vegas Review-Journal:
BUNKERVILLE — Wearing a cowboy hat and with a copy of the U.S. Constitution poking from his shirt pocket, controversial rancher Cliven Bundy on Friday asked dozens of supporters of his cattle-grazing feud with federal land managers what they thought of U.S. Sen. Harry Reid calling them “domestic terrorists.”
“Are you guys domestic terrorists?” he asked the crowd gathered around a stage near the north bank of the Virgin River.
The supporters, many wearing name tags that said “domestic terrorist,” erupted with cheers and applause.
“That’s what I thought. I thought Harry was right,” said the 67-year-old Bundy, who was accompanied by armed escorts.
He made the statement before a “Patriot Party” that started at 5 p.m. with music by Madison Rising and Ron Keel, who sang with Black Sabbath briefly in 1984. A party atmosphere among a few hundred people grew as more supporters trickled in around 5 p.m. Some people were cooling off in the river while dozens of armed militia members wearing camouflaged fatigues patrolled in and around the area.
[…]
At Friday’s news conference, Bundy said, “We’re not asking the county sheriff to disarm the citizens of the United States. We’re asking the United States to take the government-issued guns away from these people, and when they have uniforms on they shouldn’t be packing a gun.”
Asked what he’d do if he was served with a warrant for violating federal laws, Bundy answered, “What I said is, I’d yield to the sheriff but I wouldn’t yield to the feds.”
If the sheriff served the warrant he said he’d surrender. “Well, I’d have to.”
He said he has a right to graze his cattle on public land, not just a privilege.
“They’re rights. And I own those rights,” he said.
[…]
When a few of the supporters were asked what they thought of Reid calling them “domestic terrorists,” they welcomed the label.
“Him and his organization are the terrorists of this country,” John Vasilchin, 85, of Las Vegas, said about Reid.
“They’ve been destroying this country for the last eight years and previously back to (President Bill) Clinton,” Vasilchin said.
Mike Vanderboegh [of Sipsey Street Irregulars] said he will unveil the “2014 incitement to civil war trophy” to Reid on Saturday at the protest area.
“Harry Reid said this ain’t over. You better believe this ain’t over,” said Vanderboegh, a self-described “Second Amendment activist” from Alabama.
Another event is scheduled for later today. Check out the original article for photos of relaxing partygoers surrounded by guards wearing camouflage and carrying semi-automatic weapons.
Needless to say, a large amount of disinformation about the Bundy ranch has been flowing through the congested channels of the Internet. III Percent Patriots reminds people not to believe everything they read without checking it out through reliable sources:
**CAUTION** The net is beginning to populate with “first-hand accounts” from people claiming to have been on-site. Some of those reports simply do not sound reasonable to my ear. Just be careful before swallowing every report you see as gospel.
Also: There are several groups who “support” the Bundy’s that have been putting out hyperbole and in one case a call-to-action that was issued without the Bundy’s approval. If you see a call-to-action, cross check the veracity at either the Bundy BlogSpot or official FB page below.
Bad information will spend resources that are limited, create bad PR, and may get someone hurt. We are now in a different era of American life. Stupid may get people hurt, or dead. Don’t be that guy.
Cliven Bundy was carrying a copy of the Constitution yesterday. The patriots gathered in Nevada concur with him, asserting their God-given rights as affirmed by the First and Second Amendments to the United States Constitution.
However, the unfolding events may be more accurately referred back to July 4, 1776, when the newly independent colonies issued the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
The federal government has been usurped by power-hungry opportunists who disregard the Constitution they are sworn to uphold. Our government has become tyrannical and despotic. It is our right, it is our duty, to throw it off and replace it with one that guarantees our God-given liberties.
Time for the people of Nevada to recall Reed if that is possible……
Nepotism is not becoming of a US Senator and Oath taker.
Nepotism is so very evident in the political class, the elite.
*The Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, is being publicly groomed for some sort of public office beyond being the caretaker of what was originally Bill Clinton’s Library and has now become The Clinton Family Foundation (or some such title).
*Hillary is determined to ride Bill’s coat tails into the White House once more.
*The Bushes have been proliferating in politics now for three generations and look likely for a fourth
*The Kennedys? Not so much. Riven by alcohol and scandal and family jealousies, they evidence all the weak points of Irish DNA. Look at them and understand how the English were able to prevail over the Irish chieftains.
*Joe Biden’s son has plans.
*Ron Paul’s son has set off in his own direction away from Papa’s isolationism.
It is a sign of family ‘health’ when children follow in the footsteps of their parents. The Adams’ family in America’s beginnings served well. But Washington is corrupt at the core. And “doing well by doing good” has come to mean filling your pockets at the public trough, the public be damned.
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The irony of those middle class dissenters is that they are better educated in the history of America than the Reids and their ilk. The law school mills don’t teach Constitutional theory as normal people would recognize it.
Thus, when the Baron and I personally confronted our then- congressional representative (chosen by Soros to unseat a dedicated independent) it was an awakening. He was a leftist through and through, a Yale Law School grad. And he had no idea from where individual rights derive. When we asked, he replied that they came from the government. Yale.Law.School.
The Dissenters will be hard to defeat because they refused to drink the Kool-Aid the left hands out. Their eyes are open and they know the risks they are taking. Better to die standing than to live under the whip of a bloated plutocratic governmental behemoth.
These folks are not resentful; they are deeply determined. Their red line does not get re-drawn based on political calculations. They have no list of you-owe-me entitlements, no aggrieved demands.
They stand by the principles of the Constitution and they are ready to die for those principles.
The Left will never, ever understand. And The Dissenters know that, too.
Not so sure about the Addams family, though.
Lousy jokes aside, insofar as I understand the situation, I admire Cliven Bundy and his supporters. Here in the UK, government usually owns land only when used for hospitals, defence establishments and the like, though it can be slow to release it when no longer needed.
The slow release is probably mere socialist bureaucrat stumble. If it were a private business with non-productive assets, those would be quickly sold and would have again entered the market via the aegis of someone willing to put it to good use.
You’ve just pointed out another socialist malfunction: when faceless government “owns” stuff, no one is in a hurry to make it profitable for government or to reduce the tax load on its subjects. Who cares? Sell it or not, the civil servants still get paid. And the higher up the ladder the decision lies, the less likely is it to be made in a timely manner…
The perverted use of language. The specialty of the FSB (KGB), OIC, UN, EU, and Marxists/Statists world wide for way too many years. So many in fact that they are as predictable as sun rise in the morning. Those on the left didn’t just discover this technique. They have been honing and practicing this skill for at least 100 years. The trouble is they don’t know when to stop. As a result their knee jerk destruction of the English language has now been so over exposed that they have become the laughing stock of our nation. Deservedly so.
NLP, Neural Linguistic Programming. Control the language and you shall control the argument. The outcome will be as you have predicted. It is bloody (sorry, I know it’s Easter) frustrating to meet people who have swallowed the ordure fed to them by the powders that be.
Civil War 2!
Reid is a supercrook, and runs a crooked family dynasty too, in Nevada. “Discover the Networks” — David Horowitz’s great contribution that I am sorry he marred through all the shenanigans with Diana West, has a good piece on the loathsome Dem creep: perhaps one of the ten most revolting characters in the U.S. Senate since 1945.
But the subjugation of the serf population of nonferal Americans goes way beyond the happenings in Nevada now. John Fund shone some light on it here: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/376053/united-states-swat-john-fund
Leftists have one standard of evil, and that is the Western racist. Bundy is Western – in both senses of the term – and his alliance with conservatives makes him suspect as a racist, as absurd as that may sound.
Islamic jihadists do not fit the bill.
This isnt absurd at all. When I first watched black students, full of sullen resentment even though they were attending a fairly prestigious public university, deliberately and with malice aforethought re-segregate themselves into race-exclusive clubs without so much as a demur from school administrators, I knew the fix was in.
A few years later, at the very last “Race Workshop” I ever attended, the facilitators told us only whites could be racist; my heart sank almost as low as the integrity these two shysters showed. I stood up and asked him why that was and was more or less told we were the source of all evil. So I waved ‘bye and left, annoyed I had given up a Friday evening to people who wanted to con me. And RILLY RILLY annoyed with the church that sponsored such tripe.
But Professional Grievance Mongers earn a good living selling their poison. Sadly, many people are willing to drink that swill. Maybe they think they need forgiveness.
When will your militiamen take a stand against organised militant mohammedans – like attacking one of their training camps (Islamberg & co)? Mind you, this would actually be a job for your federal government.
Will Rogers never met Harry Reid.
Baron:
I believe that your statement about the Chinese solar company is incorrect. You wrote:
His son Rory represents the Chinese energy company that plans to build a huge solar panel plant on public land in the Nevada desert, as soon as the last of those annoying cattle ranchers can be evicted from real estate controlled by the federal government.
First of all, the ENN Mojave Energy was building a giant array of panels to catch sunlight for generating electricity. And secondly, the project has been cancelled. See the Las Vegas Sun reporting here.
While the business decision made by the Chinese company is important, your point about Dingy Harry and his deals is unchanged. Rush Limbaugh called him a “despicable, grotesque little man” and I believe those words succinctly cover the terrritory.
gad-fly —
Thank you for the correction. I pick up little tidbits here and there, and try to report them as best as I can remember them.
One tidbit I remember, but couldn’t find again, was that Harry Reid (or one of the other players in this sordid deal) had specifically mentioned the Bundy ranch in a public conversation about where the solar energy project intended to expand. But I couldn’t find the source where I read it, and didn’t have time to search for it in depth.
This site seemed to have a pretty creditable background on the Big Solar behind the Reid/BLM move on the Bundy grazing lands:
Nevada standoff: Yes, it’s solar-industry cronies (but NOT the Chinese
Read more at http://libertyunyielding.com/2014/04/12/feds-want-relocate-desert-tortoise-chinese-solar-farm-sponsored-harry-reid/#sr0evgtZA2HcYPXV.99
( As an aside – I do find it richly amusing that in spite of China’s need for every calorie of energy it can get, every well-connected individual and organisation in China is getting their money out of the place ASAP. Like the USA needs the Chinese to build solar farms in Nevada ? Really ??
And yes – nobody needs to build any subsidy-whore ‘alternative energy’ plants that rely on Joe Schmuck taxpayer to exist. That bit I got too 😉 But some interesting Big Wheels are orbiting Casa Bundy )