I am so glad govt employees were not harmed during this recent craziness by the knuckleheads.
Cliven Bundy just asked for a government-appointed lawyer to defend him. That’s hilarious. The federal government is so horrible that it provides him with a attorney.
Edited to correct the auto correct. I wrote Cliven but the iPad changed it to Cloven. I should have left it!
Maybe Mr. Cliven Bundy should use all the money he saved from not paying his grazing fees to pay for his lawyer. 
After 20 years of not paying up he should have enough!
I heard that the charges against him could result in up to 42 years in jail. Hoping it is so.
Such a great coup that they rounded up Cliven too!
My D3 was studying conservation biology in January and had several field studies cancelled or shortened because of militia fears. She’s in northern Arizona, not far from where one of the arrestees lived. It just burned me up that they took over for so long!
Excerpt from the federal case against Cliven Bundy:
Not being familiar with cattle ranching, I don’t know to what extent these practices deviate from the norm. I’d love to hear the comments from a knowledgeable person.
I would love to hear from someone knowledgeable as well. In the meantime:
Although I wasn’t paying as much attention as I might have, this is what I remember about my grandparents and parents and a sibling raising beef cattle: 1) you had to have the land. 2) you had to fence the land and fence repair was a constant chore. 3) you had to have pastures. The land was cleared and planted with various grasses. Some grasses were better than others. Cattle were rotated among pastures. Hay was fed in winter. 4) You kept the bull(s) separate from the cattle and controlled breeding. Records were kept of crosses. (my family had pure bred (?) cattle but for a while used different breed bulls. It didn’t work out that great. 5) Calving was monitored and you helped with breech births. Calves were tagged in their ears, wormed, males were generally castrated since not many bulls are needed.
Cattle income sent my grandfather and father to professional school, but was an income supplement, rather than the main income source. Even my great-grandfather had to have diverse income sources, not just cattle. Sometime in the early 90s, we sold the last of the cattle and quit maintaining the pastures, because no one could figure out how to make money off cattle any more.
In the rural area where I now live, some young people are raising cattle. They sell them directly to local farm to table restaurants and are doing pretty well. Their parents, who had gotten out of the cattle business, are getting back in to help them. Timber is being cut and pastures planted and fences put up. Cyclical, I guess. However, this market is one which didn’t exist a few decades back. And these young farmers are never getting really rich. They have other jobs as well. They should be able to send their kids to college off ranching. They can only make money on cattle because they inherited the land with no debt.
I have known lots of farmers of various sorts my whole, long, life. I never heard any opine they were owed a certain way of life. They all seemed to believe it was up to them to figure out how to make money off the land, with the help, of course, of the extension service and ag agents. But if something became unprofitable, they had to come up with a new plan. Usually it was a subdivision.
…
They believe God gave them this land:
And just to be clear, this is a fringe belief.
Disgusting!
http://news.yahoo.com/fbi-finds-trench-human-feces-cultural-oregon-refuge-035649348.html
Here’s another link. More than 2500 comments!
OMG. The comments! 2700 and counting!
Never mind cattle, these people are pigs!
Their rebellion, as it turned out, was a total crapshoot.
It was always obvious to me that the occupiers would have despoiled the refuge with their crap. There’s a reason portapotties exist. I never expected the Ranch Stupidians to be less ignorant of reponsible outdoor sanitation than they were of anything else.
@BunsenBurner #451: <slow_clap> =D> </slow_clap>
Ranchers can’t handle their manure, apparently.
Best comment I read: “New meaning for Militia Movement”
Ding dung the militia is dead
This thread made me burst out laughing in a waiting room. I’m getting weird looks now. ;))
Well, we knew they were full of …
Too many snacks!