Bonfire of the Bundys
by digby
A growing number of Bunkerville residents want to see the armed militiamen guarding rancher Cliven Bundy leave Nevada, according to a letter from Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., to Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie.
Horsford, whose congressional district includes Bunkerville, wrote that his constituents are concerned about Bundy supporters carrying weapons near local churches, schools and elsewhere.
Militia members flocked to Nevada to support Bundy in his fight with the government over his refusal to pay fees for his cattle to graze on federal land.
“I urge you to investigate these reports and to work with local leaders to ensure that their concerns are addressed in a manner that allows the community to move forward without incident,” Horsford wrote to Gillespie.
The letter also says militiamen have a presence on state and local roads as well as federal highways. In some areas, according to the letter, militiamen have set up checkpoints where drivers are stopped and asked to provide a proof of residency.
They’ve been seen carrying high-caliber weapons and keep a round-the-clock security detail on Bundy.
But hey, these guys are all highly responsible, well-trained professionals, right? Uhm:
The Oath Keepers, one of the groups organizing the armed standoff at Cliven Bundy’s ranch in Nevada, issued a bizarre, meandering “advisory” today claiming that a rumor that the group promoted that Attorney General Eric Holder had authorized a drone strike on the ranch was in fact a “psy-op” meant to discredit the protesters.
An Oath Keepers “editor” identifying himself as “Elias Alias,” writes:
Yes, it is true: Oath Keepers received a bizarre bit of leaked info which could not be verified but which also could not be ignored. Our contact is connected with the Department of Defense – or “was”. The info we received stated that Eric Holder of the Department of Justice had okayed a drone strike on the Bundy ranch near Bunkerville, Nevada, within a 48 hour period over the weekend of April 26/27, 2014.
…
This mis-info came from a trusted source, a former Special Forces soldier with significant connections inside DOD. Though the info was unbelievable, in the present climate generated by the BLM and Senator Harry Reid (who called the ranchers and their friends “domestic terrorists”), Oath Keepers decided that the info must be regarded as indicating that a drone attack was at least “possible”.
Knowing that this sort of info is at least bizarre, Stewart and our Board members who were there at the ranch finally, after painstakingly going over all possible angles, decided that this should be handled just as the authorities would handle a bomb threat at a school – evacuate the kids from the school immediately and then sift for the bomb, if indeed one turned out to exist there. Stewart knew this was a potential trap for Oath Keepers, but felt that he could not remain quiet about the info which had come to us. Better safe than sorry, in a nutshell, defines his thinking on this. Oath Keepers is tremendously happy that nothing happened and that this was a bad tip, a piece of “dis-info”, a “psy-op”.“Elias Alias” then claims that conflicts among militia groups at the ranch can only be the result of FBI infiltration of militias in another “psy-op” on behalf of the “UN’s Agenda 21 domestic usurpations.” He also repeats the debunked rumor that Sen. Harry Reid is working on behalf of a Chinese energy firm. “This is United Nations covert activity inside the United States and it involves the planet’s largest Communist nation, China,” the advisory states. “The Bundy connection connects also the relationship of the BLM to the Reid family. It is deep stuff.”
Oy.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the government has some agents undercover with these people. They do that with lefty groups and they certainly do it with Muslims. And since these guys are armed to the teeth and openly threatening the federal government, you couldn’t blame them for doing it. There are a lot of federal facilities in this country. But these loons are convinced that the federal government is working on behalf of the UN and “Communist China” and God knows what other nonsense. Their conspiracies are completely insane.
I probably wouldn’t drive around that part of Nevada if I didn’t have to. You have a whole bunch of excessively armed, highly unstable nuts out there looking for trouble. In fact, if Tom Wolfe weren’t such a right wing nut he’d be writing about these folks with the same sharp wit with which he wrote Bonfire of the Vanities. Everyone thought the unintended consequences of taking the wrong exit and winding up in a 90s era inner city was such a clever twist on the subject of urban decay. Today, the plot device would be this Congressman Horsford taking a wrong turn in the desert and confronting a bunch of halfwit conspiracy buffs packing heat and completely full of comic book libertarian bullshit. Who are the super-predators now?
By the way, here’s the congressman:
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