Tag Archives: Cliven Bundy

Quote of the Day

“I don’t think I’ve been abandoned. I think maybe they misunderstood me a little bit.  But I think Fox and I, I think, Hannity and I are just right on. I have no doubt that he would support me if he understood really what’s in my heart. And I think he does understand me.”

Cliven Bundy

Now persona non grata (non Greta?) at Fox News, Bundy has moved to CNN, which apparently has stopped getting ratings on the Malaysian airliner.

Top Republican Plays (?) Dumb

In an interview with CNN, RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer says he doesn’t understand why on earth Cliven Bundy has been tied to the GOP.  He finds this linkage just “ridiculous.”  Really, where could it possibly be coming from?

Is it possible Spicer doesn’t watch his house propaganda organ Fox News?  Or doesn’t keep an eye — and ear — on Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and Rick Perry and Dean Heller, to name just a few.  That he doesn’t follow conservative publications and web sites and talk radio?

Sean Outdoes Himself

Yes, Cliven Bundy said some racist things, Sean Hannity admitted tonight, but…Benghazi, but…the IRS, but…Obamacare, but…Katrina, but…Jon Stewart, but…eminent domain, but…the Delta smelt.  If you’re wondering how any of this made sense, it didn’t.  As his incoherent and irrelevant rant became more and more bizarre, I kept waiting for guys with a straitjacket to emerge from the wings, but they never arrived.

Sean, much more defiant than apologetic, played old clips of himself interviewing African Americans.  And I mean old — like nine years ago.  Sean had an African American guest, David Webb, a conservative talk show host.  You could imagine Sean reading Bundy’s quotes this morning, and screaming, “Get me Webb!”

I doubt Hannity’s staff EVER had a worse day.  But it’s tough to feel bad for people who have sold their souls to the devil, and even harder to feel sorry for the devil himself.

Quote of the Month

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro. …  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.”

Cliven Bundy

Anybody surprised by this?  What say you now, Dean Heller and Sean Hannity, and all you morons defending your fellow moron?  I especially love that “family life” part.  Oh, yes, family life on the ole plantation.  Getting raped by the master, having your husband and children sold to other masters so you never saw them again.  Good times…

More on the Bundy Bizarreness

From “Deadbeat on the Range,” Timothy Egan, NYT:

“Imagine a vendor on the National Mall, selling burgers and dogs, who hasn’t paid his rent in 20 years.  He refuses to recognize his landlord, the National Park Service, as a legitimate entity.  Every court has ruled against him, and fines have piled up.

“Would an armed posse come to his defense, aiming their guns at the park police?  Would the lawbreaker get prime airtime on Fox News, breathless updates in the Drudge Report, a sympathetic ear from Tea Party Republicans?  No, of course not.

“Ranching is hard work.  Drought and market swings make it a tough go in many years.  That’s all the more reason to praise the 18,000 or so ranchers who pay their grazing fees on time and don’t go whining to Fox or summoning a herd of armed thugs when they renege on their contract.  You can understand why the Nevada Cattlemen’s Association wants no part of Bundy.”

To me the story here isn’t Bundy — this country is brimming with crazies — it’s the right-wing embrace of him as a martyr, not a mashugana.  It feels as if Fox has jumped the shark in a way that their customary Benghazi/IRS/Obamacare BS never achieved.

Comrade Bundy

“’We want freedom,’ [Cliven] Bundy said. I don’t know what freedom Bundy’s talking about. He does not own the land nor does he even pay the modest fees required to use it. Thousands of ranchers across the West pay fees for their businesses, but Bundy thinks he should get to use public resources to make a personal profit.  Cliven Bundy, far from being a patriot, is also clearly a straight-up communist.

“Bundy is using the language of freedom, patriotism and outright paranoia to further his business interests.”

Edwin Lyngar, “Fox News’ demented poster boy:  Why angry rancher Cliven Bundy is no patriot,” Salon

This Is Just Outrageous, Even for Fox

Sean Hannity gave two segments last night to Cliven Bundy, and he took the opportunity to refer to the U. S. as a “foreign government.”

Why is Fox News championing this delusional lunatic?  Put him in jail or in an insane asylum, but don’t put him on TV.

Sean also kept asking how Bundy could owe the feds a million dollars in grazing fees, saying cows can’t eat that much, either not knowing or pretending not to know that Bundy owes court-assessed daily penalties as well.

Why Are Conservatives Making a Crazy Criminal a Hero?

“Pretty soon, there was an armed standoff as men with guns assembled around the ranch. The BLM people wisely backed off, and there was a great cock-a-doodle-do’ing all over the right, because Cliven Bundy’s inalienable right to get something for nothing from the rest of us had been upheld with Second Amendment enthusiasm. Bear in mind that Bundy’s entire position is that he can not pay his bills, and that he can ignore a federal judge, because he feels the federal government is illegitimate. … This is conservatism — and, therefore, Republicanism — playing footsie with sedition. This is not the first time, either.

“Republican politicians, especially in the west, have slow-danced with the militia movement for quite some time. A Republican congresswoman named Helen Chenoweth was so close to the movement that, after Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, she pronounced herself upset that the government had failed truly to understand the militia movement.

“In the states, the Republican party has embraced the traditional historical basis for this movement, having actively discussed — and, in some cases, tried to implement — the doctrine of nullification. This, of course, was the fundamental theoretical basis for the greatest act of sedition of all time, and one for which too many people seem overly nostalgic these days. The difference between the present moment, and the days when Helen Chenoweth was riding the range, of course, is the fact that there is a powerful and loud right-wing media infrastructure at the disposal of the people peddling this constitutional poison. Americans For Prosperity jumped right on the Bundy case. Of course, AFP — and the Koch brothers who fund it — isn’t in this for airy philosophical debates on the role of government. They’re in it to break the control of the federal government over the lands that they want to exploit for their own profit, and they are willing to help engage the single most destructive political theory in the country’s history to help them do it. It is reckless and dangerous, and anybody who gets used by these people is a sap. And useful idiots, like Sean Hannity and all the someones like him, are going to get somebody killed behind this stuff.”

“Range War in Nevada,” Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

I get party differences over abortion, gay marriage, taxing and spending, etc.  But why shouldn’t D’s and R’s agree that a man who refuses to pay his grazing fees is a criminal and should be punished, not celebrated?  I thought the GOP was supposed to be the “law and order” party.  Why are they all freaked out about food stamp fraud, but don’t want this guy to pay the million bucks he owes?

Quote of the Day

“I totally get the very correct desire to avoid violence. But allowing a bunch of militia freaks and gun-toting thugs to run off federal agents trying to act against a rancher who’s refused to pay grazing fees for using federal lands for 20 years seems like a very, very bad idea.”

Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo

Amen to that.  Fox News has really outdone themselves on this story.  Sean Hannity didn’t challenge Cliven Bundy when he claimed his cattle aren’t on federal land.  That’s because in Bundy’s alternative universe, there’s no such thing as federal ownership of land.  I doubt Sean would be so sympathetic if a bunch of  young African-Americans took over a federal building in New York City.  But when it’s an old white guy in a cowboy hat, Sean doesn’t call him out for the criminal he is.