Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
Land Rover has made its Southern California reputation by selling cars capable of fording rocky streams and climbing icy slopes to drivers who rarely face anything more challenging than a lentil soup spill in the Trader Joe's parking lot.
But with a powerful El Niño bearing down upon us, the 2016 Range Rover Sport might be the best vehicle on the market for handling wicked winter weather — in our accustomed comfort and style.
Between their Land Rovers and Range Rovers, the storied English automobile company has been making off-road-capable vehicles since 1948. Although the original Rover company has since become part of larger Jaguar Land Rover (which has since been acquired by Indian automotive giant Tata Motors), they still make ruggedly handsome Jeep-like machines that are capable of handling almost anything.
With the Range Rover Sport HSE Td6, the company is introducing the first diesel Land Rover ever sold in North America. The timing is unfortunate — the company introduced the vehicle just as the Volkswagen diesel "defeat device" scandal was breaking — but its makers expect diesel versions to account for up to 20% of the company's U.S. sales this year.
It's a lot of car. Equipped with a 3.0-liter turbo V6 diesel engine that cranks out 254 horsepower and a whopping 443 pound-feet of torque, the Td6 has massive pulling power, well distributed with the eight-speed transmission. And for a large vehicle, it carries its 4,700 pounds gracefully...
Giffords says she grew up with guns, and she's happily posted pictures of herself sporting an AR-15 rifle, but nowadays she's one of the staunchest leftists pounding for mass Australian-style gun confiscation.
A rank hypocrite, in other words, a perfect campaigner for hateful Hillary Clinton.
Asshole astronaut Mark Kelly rounds out this tiresome threesome of tyrannical leftist trolls.
They met decades ago, when they were first married, and the three sisters-in-law still gather each week at the Dutch Bakery to catch up amid the sweet smell of flour and sugar floating through the air.
Despite the cozy setting here on the state's western edge, they can feel the country beneath their feet slipping away, eroding under the threats of immorality and terrorism.
"I never thought we would live in so much fear," said Joanne Niezen, as her coffee sat cooling before her in a Styrofoam cup.
There's fear on the other side of the state as well, though for different reasons.
In the college town of Iowa City, with its hip music scene and pita restaurant advertising "fresh thinking and healthy eating," Veronica Tessler worries about the harsh rhetoric directed at immigrants and the economic inequality that lingers years after the Great Recession.
"I really fear for our country," said Tessler, who left her job at a foreign policy foundation to open a frozen yogurt shop near the University of Iowa campus.
The two communities, located in the most lopsidedly partisan counties in the state, reflect the vast political chasm here and across the country, a divide that President Obama was unable to heal and which may prove insurmountable for whomever takes his place.
"Republicans see an America where the government is too big at home and too feeble abroad. Democrats see an America where the economy is out of whack," said David Nagle, a Democratic attorney who used to represent Iowa City and surrounding Johnson County in Congress. "It's like two trains in the night, passing in opposite directions."
But the division goes far beyond a profound disagreement on issues. While partisan tensions are nothing new, they have deepened and intensified during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama as the parties have splintered along the lines of age, race and culture. The result is a separation of America into mutually estranged and suspicious tribes...
In a final frenzy to inspire supporters to turn out for Monday's Iowa caucuses, the presidential contenders scrambled to close the deal with the first voters to have a say in the 2016 race for the White House.
The result Sunday was a blur of sometimes conflicting messages. Even as the candidates begged backers to caucus, many hopefuls also tried to lower expectations and look ahead to the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 9 and later contests.
Republican Donald Trump, who has a slight edge over Ted Cruz in Iowa, predicted that "many" senators "soon" would endorse him rather than their Texas colleague. Trump didn't name any such senators, and none immediately emerged.
Democratic Hillary Clinton, in a tight race with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, suggested that political point-scoring helped explain the hubbub over the State Department's announcement Friday that it was withholding some emails on the home server she used while secretary of state.
The Sanders campaign, meanwhile, sought to claim financial momentum, saying it has raised $20 million in January, suggesting he will continue to match Clinton's resources.
One development — the weather — was beyond the candidates' control. A snowfall forecast to start Monday night appeared more likely to hinder the hopefuls in their rush out of Iowa than the voters. Republican John Kasich already has decamped to New Hampshire.
Iowa offers only a small contingent of the delegates who will determine the nominees, but the game of expectations counts for far more than the electoral math in the state. Campaigns worked aggressively to set those expectations in their favor (read: lower them) for Iowa, New Hampshire and beyond.
Meantime, on the final full day before the caucus, a pastor at a church outside Des Moines urged politicians to treat their opponents with love and not attack ads....
The candidates' agreed on one thing: It's all about turnout now.
"If people come out to vote, I think you're going to look at one of the biggest political upsets in the modern history of our country," Sanders told CNN's "State of the Union."
BURNS -- As the anti-government standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge entered its 30th day, the remaining occupiers claimed many of their phone lines no longer worked.
The four holdouts awoke to discover that many lost phone and Internet service overnight, according to Greg Whalen, a Nevada supporter who said he had been in contact with the armed protesters. They have refused to leave the refuge until they are guaranteed they won't be arrested.
The occupiers have produced several online videos detailing their stance, but their account has been quiet since Saturday evening. At the time, they vowed their fight would continue.
Whalen said one of the protestors, Sean Anderson, was able to make a call this morning using a cell phone without Internet to say his other phone, with Internet access, was no longer working. Calls by The Oregonian/OregonLive to Anderson ended with an automated message saying the user was not available.
Anderson, 47, is encamped at the refuge with his wife, Sandy Anderson, 48, of Riggins, Idaho, and two other men: David Fry, 27, of Blanchester, Ohio and Jeff Banta, 46, of Elko, Nevada.
Fry relayed a similar account of the morning's events to OPB.
ONE of the puzzles of the 2016 campaign, unexpectedly defined by the ascent of a billionaire reality TV star and a septuagenarian Vermont socialist, is why now? Yes, voters are angry, yes, they’re exhausted and disgusted and cynical about everything. But why is everything boiling over in this particular cycle, in this presidential campaign?
Consider: The economic picture is better than it was in 2012, when Republican primary voters settled for Mitt Romney and an incumbent president was re-elected pretty easily. (In both Iowa and New Hampshire, the unemployment rate is currently under 4 percent.) The foreign policy picture is grim in certain ways, but America isn’t trapped in a casualty-heavy quagmire the way we were in 2004, when Democratic voters played it safe with John Kerry and George W. Bush won re-election.
As Michael Grunwald argued recently in Politico, the worst-case scenarios of the post-Great Recession era haven’t materialized. Obamacare is limping along without an imminent death spiral, and health care costs aren’t rising as fast as feared. The deficit has fallen a bit, and inflation is extraordinarily low. The stock market is wobbly, but we haven’t had a double-dip recession.
On the cultural front, out-of-wedlock births are no longer rising. Abortion rates have fallen. Illegal immigration rates are down.
The state of the union isn’t all that one might hope, but it could clearly be a whole lot worse.
So what are Trumpistas and Bern-feelers rebelling against?
One answer might be that they’re fed up with exactly this — the politics of “it could be worse,” of stagnation and muddling through. They aren’t revolting against abject failure, or deep and swift decline. They’re rebelling against decadence.
Now it may sound absurd to cast a figure like Donald Trump, the much-married prince of tinsel and pasteboard, as a scourge of decadence rather than its embodiment.
But don’t just think about the word in moral or aesthetic terms. Think of it as a useful way of describing a society that’s wealthy, powerful, technologically proficient — and yet seemingly unable to advance in the way that its citizens once took for granted. A society where people have fewer children and hold diminished expectations for the future, where institutions don’t work particularly well but can’t seem to be effectively reformed, where growth is slow and technological progress disappoints. A society that fights to a stalemate in its foreign wars, even as domestic debates repeat themselves without any resolution. A society disillusioned with existing religions and ideologies, but lacking new sources of meaning to take their place.
This is how many Americans, many Westerners, experience their civilization in the early years of the 21st century. And both Trump and Bernie Sanders, in their very different ways, are telling us that we don’t have to settle for it anymore...
In this election cycle, we've pretty much put the cart before the horse. We mock the folks flocking to Donald Trump, because we never acknowledged their frustrations.
The political class only seemed to notice people's frustration this summer as both Trump and Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist, began running circles around the establishment candidates.
Well, I've been reporting that frustration from locales across the country since 2005. (Yes, people have been building to this moment for 10 years.) A cursory look at the “wave” midterm election cycles from 2006 through 2014, the “change” presidential election of 2008, and the total realignment of state legislative majorities, provides sufficient evidence of America's frustration with government.
This country's political alignment is missing one thing, and it's a big thing — a party that represents the moderately traditionalist values of the country's majority.
America doesn't need two secular, cosmopolitan parties.
Trump's secret is that he has found an unoccupied space to practice politics. Call it the politically incorrect, moderately traditionalist, main-street economics zone, where winners and losers exist (just as in the real world) and it is not a crime to believe unabashedly in American greatness.
Trump has stoked xenophobic fears and used his crass showmanship to mark out this territory. His tactics of strong demagoguery make it completely understandable to lament his success.
Yet, in order for our political system to work, people must feel as if they have real choices that can make a difference — and they haven't felt that way for some time.
This election cycle began with Americans being told that Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton were the inevitable choices. Many people just snapped.
Haynes argues that this is why people looked outside the political system to independent-minded candidates like Trump and Sanders. “If that fails, they will seek to change the system,” he said.
What we don't need are two parties or candidates perceived to be standard-bearers of the secular elites who are economically comfortable.
What we do need is someone who represents a middle-class that holds traditional values and believes all things are achievable, especially if government doesn't drag us down.
That kind of disruption in our political alignment doesn't happen overnight.
Remember, it took the Republican Party 36 years — starting with the 1820 Missouri compromise, followed by several disruptive movements and fractured elements — before it pulled together as a united party, agreed on a unifying platform and elected Abraham Lincoln as president.
ST. GEORGE, Utah —The family of Robert "LaVoy" Finicum said the occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon was nearing a peaceful end when he was shot and killed by police, and they disputed the official account of the confrontation.
In their first public statement since the FBI released video showing Finicum's death as police tried to arrest the occupation leaders, his family said they saw his actions in the video as "animated" but not threatening.
"We know that there are always at least two sides to every story," the family wrote, adding, "Like almost everyone else, we were not there, so we don't know exactly what happened."
The statement was sent to some media outlets Friday and obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive on Saturday. Todd MacFarlane, a Utah attorney representing the family, confirmed the statement was authentic.
The FBI released a 26-minute video leading to the arrest of five people and the death of Finicum, one of the spokesmen for the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. This video breaks down the key moments.
Finicum was shot by Oregon State Police officers during an attempt to stop and arrest the leaders of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation, then in its 25th day.
Aerial surveillance video released Thursday showed Finicum stopping his white truck when police vehicles appeared with lights on, then waiting several minutes before driving off at high speeds. Pursued by police, he tried to drive around a roadblock further down the road before crashing into a snowbank, narrowly missing a police officer.
He exited the truck alone into the snow. Police said he moved his hand several times toward a pocket that contained a loaded handgun before he was shot...
San Diego woke up Saturday morning with the Chargers still here, at least for one more season.
Team owner Dean Spanos announced Friday afternoon that while he's reached an agreement that would enable him eventually to join the Rams in Inglewood and tap into the greener financial pastures of the nation's second-largest media market, he'll renew negotiations with local government officials on building a new stadium here.
"This has been our home for 55 years," he said in the note addressed to Chargers fans, "and I want to keep the team here and provide the world-class stadium experience you deserve."
The announcement was greeted mostly with optimism from elected officials, sighs of relief from longtime backers of the NFL team, and caution if not skepticism from others weary of stadium machinations that have been going on for almost 15 years.
Now comes the hard part: working out an agreement on where a new stadium will be built and how it will be funded, and then getting approval from voters...
I am calling on David Fry, once again, to LEAVE THE MALHEUR WILDERNESS REFUGE. David is one of five holdouts at the refuge. He was not a part of the original group to go to the refuge. He had no part in the great amount of social, legal and political work that Ammon and other people did in the years prior to the takeover of the refuge. David is a Johnny-come-lately who was a media disaster from the start due to his wild public rants.
I remember when I first read some mentions of David in the media shortly after he went out to the refuge. Initially, I thought that he may have just been a naive young man who said some dumb things off the cuff in social media and was being slammed for it by left-leading media outlets. I opened a dialogue with David to find out if the reports about him were true. If he was being inappropriately maligned in the media, I wanted to be able to defend him. But if he was truly an extremist who had infiltrated the ranks at the refuge, I wanted to see him removed from the compound for the sake of the good people of the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom (CCF). So I began an investigation.
David is in his late 20s. He believes in some very good foundational principles regarding issues of morality and freedom. However, David's worldview takes those principles and runs to the fringes. I don't believe that he is altogether mentally stable. He seems to have no sense of social propriety and sees every issue as either black or white with no layers of gray in the middle. Following my investigation, I spoke with David and told him that I felt that, even if his intent was good, his methods of communication were too extreme and would be damaging to the reputation of Ammon and the others at the refuge who did not share his extremist ideologies. I was in no position to tell him to leave the refuge, but I advised him that if I were in charge I would ask him to leave. I also recommended that if he was going to stay on at the refuge, at the very least - for the sake of the reputation of the others - he needed to stop making public statements on social media that were provocative. I recommended that if he wouldn't delete his previous inflammatory messages, to at least change their status from public to restricted.
David chose not to take any of my advice or counsel. Having worked for decades as a political strategist with a keen awareness of the psychology and propensities of the individuals I've worked with, I foresaw David as becoming a serious threat to Ammon's work and to the CCF as a whole. I sent numerous warnings to individuals I knew out at the refuge to ask them to boot David from the group. David later related to me that they had given him a firm warning that if he caused any more trouble that he would be asked to leave. But then more pressing matters began to rapidly accelerate over the next week and the issue of David Fry fell by the wayside.
Today, Ammon and other CCF leaders are in prison. LaVoy Finicum has been murdered. The militia has fled. And, to my shock and disgust, David Fry has become the self-appointed leader of a 5 person band of holdouts who are continuing to defy the FBI. They are armed and, at least as of this writing, they are determined to stay - come hell or high water. Up until yesterday, David Fry was simply a foolish young person with some socially inappropriate views. Today, David is putting the lives of other people at risk, as well as his own.
If any of the other members of David's party can see my words - PLEASE, abandon David and leave. He has become unhinged and seems to have a death wish. Yesterday he was screaming on video that the world was going to get to watch him get killed on live TV. Last night he sent out a Livestream of him and a few others smoking dope together. He is bringing shame upon the CCF and NO GOOD can come from following him.
David, if you continue to wield weapons and defy the federal authorities, they are going to kill you. For the love of God, lay down your arms and come out.
But once again, how's the Trump Train's turnout machine shaping up? I sure hope he doesn't end up doing his own Howard Dean scream from Des Moines on Monday night, lol.
DES MOINES — The presidential race hurtled over the weekend toward a watershed moment: voting that will start to reveal the true depth of Americans’ desire to cast aside traditional politicians and Washington-style compromise and embrace disruptive outsiders appealing to their passions.
After a year of countless and often conflicting polls, more than 250,000 Iowans are expected to attend caucuses on a relatively mild Monday night and render judgment on insurgent candidates who would bar Muslims from the country (Donald J. Trump), oppose concessions to Democrats (Senator Ted Cruz of Texas) and pursue a high-tax, big-government agenda (Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont). Voters are poised to bring order to the race, or reorder politics, as in no other recent election.
Money, experience and endorsements — advantages that usually turn candidates like Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, into inevitable nominees — will be tested against the potent messages of rivals promising upheaval.
The importance of aggressive fund-raising and campaign commercials, which have cost a combined total of more than $100 million so far, will become suspect if the social-media-driven organizing by grass-roots groups helps yield upset victories for candidates like Mr. Sanders.
And the national mood about entrenched power — Wall Street, political dynasties and Washington — will almost certainly be reflected in the outcomes of the nominating contests this winter.
On the Republican side, Mr. Trump, who spent Saturday barnstorming across eastern Iowa, projected the supreme confidence that has defined his campaign. A Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll released Saturday found that 28 percent of likely Republican caucusgoers supported Mr. Trump, while 23 percent favored Mr. Cruz and 15 percent backed Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.
Mr. Trump, in an interview on Friday, barely dwelled on those two rivals, saying that he was already looking ahead to the prospect of a general election matchup against Mrs. Clinton, a former secretary of state and senator.
“Our popularity is strong enough to put states in play in November that Republicans don’t usually win anymore: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, Ohio,” Mr. Trump said. “I’m a little surprised that I’ve done this well, to tell you the truth. But my message is something that people want to hear, more than just going along with the usual politicians.”
The "zombie apocalypse" is below, showing the mess of items left behind when most of the remaining militiamen hightailed it out of there, fearing a Waco-style incursion by the feds. Considering the massive convoy of vehicles into the refuge, and the enormous numbers of LEOs, that was probably the smart thing to do.
Now, though, Sean and Sandy Anderson, David Fry, and Jeff Banta are all of whom remain at the compound, and they're definitely not giving up. I've blogged the reasons a few times already. Fry's crazy. Sean Anderson's got a troubling criminal background and is probably looking at some major time behind bars. His online rants have been threatening. And there's been talk among the holdouts of "suicide by cop." And of course they're heavily armed. Something like 20 additional firearms were left behind in the panicked exodus of the militiamen on Thursday.
BURNS -- Six miles beyond an FBI roadblock, the four remaining holdouts at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge huddled around a small fire Saturday and waited for divine intervention.
That's what Sean Anderson told his hometown sheriff, who called from Idaho County, Idaho, to ask if he could help. Anderson, 47, and his wife, Sandy, 48, remain encamped at the Oregon wildlife refuge with Jeff Banta, 46, of Elko, Nevada, and David Fry, 27, of Blanchester, Ohio.":
"I'm hoping for a miracle," Anderson told Sheriff Doug Giddings, who has been Idaho County's top law enforcement officer for eight years.
"I believe God put us here."
Their Saturday afternoon conversation was broadcast live on the Internet -- one of their only connections to the outside world. The video showed the four occupiers gathered beneath plastic tarps, sitting in lawn chairs next to a white truck.
"If we don't stand up 'til the end on this, then why did we come here in the first place?" asked Sean Anderson, who had recently moved with his wife to Riggins, a community of 400 people in Idaho County.
Giddings told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Saturday that he reached out to the Andersons to let them know their options. "I'm not speaking to him on behalf of anybody but me," he said, rebutting Sean Anderson's assertion that the sheriff was acting as an intermediary to the FBI.
"They pretty much are limited by the FBI to one decision, and that's to come out," Giddings said.
The four reiterated their key demand: assurances they won't face charges.
Until then, Banta said, "nothing's going to happen because we're just camping out."
The audio feed crackled as he squeezed a can of Coors Light in his hand. He started another sentence that Sandy Anderson finished. "We're armed but -- "
"We're always armed," the only woman at the refuge said...
Near the refuge, a sign says “FBI Go Home” and roadblocks seal off 4 remaining occupiers — David Fry, Jeff Banta and married couple Sandy and Sean Anderson. They claim the FBI will let all but Sean Anderson go, and he believes it’s because of an online outburst:
“Don’t be afraid of those roadblocks, drive up there and shoot them. They are dishonorable, not following their oath.”
In a later clip, Anderson said he “thought that was the last day of my life and I was hoping American people would stand up.”
Ammon Bundy, through messages delivered first by his lawyer and now through a videotaped cell phone call with his wife Lisa Bundy, told the remaining occupiers to stand down and “go home to your families.”
But Sean Anderson rejected that plea from the now-jailed militia leader.
“Your husband and your brother-in-law and all your friends are in prison right now because they do what they want to do. I have to submit to people I don’t believe or trust. You say Ammon is directed by God. So am I.”
It's an interesting discussion, which I agree with for the most part. Once LaVoy reached down, even if it was to the left side, which wasn't the side he kept a holstered weapon, the LEOs had reason to suspect a catastrophic threat to life.
And Wild Bill's discussion of the need for, and coming likelihood of, a massive campaign of civil disobedience is something I talk about every semester in my American government classes.
West slams Clinton for take that "Wall Street money."
And hey, maybe Cornel's gonna help mobilize the "Black Lives Matter" constituency, heh.
And Sanders takes the podium, nailing down to the bottom line issue: "We will win the caucus Monday night if there is a large voter turnout. We will lose the caucus on Monday if there is a low voter turnout."
David Fry has uploaded a new "Defend Your Base" video to YouTube, indicating he's not ready to pack it in and wondering why he's not getting a deal from the feds. Listen, "Response to Ammon Bundy."
The Republican secretary of state says 'voting violation' piece is 'not keeping in the spirit of the Iowa Caucuses.'
AMES, Iowa — Iowa’s top elections official condemned Ted Cruz’s campaign on Saturday for sending mailers to Iowa voters designed to look like official documents that accuse them of a “VOTING VIOLATION” for failure to turn out in past elections.
Republican Secretary of State Paul Pate said in a statement that Cruz’s mailers, which has the words “official public record” printed in red at the top, “misrepresents the role of my office, and worse, misrepresents Iowa election law.”
“There is no such thing as an election violation related to frequency of voting,” said Paul, who was elected statewide as a Republican in 2014. “Any insinuation or statement to the contrary is wrong and I believe it is not in keeping in the spirit of the Iowa Caucuses.”
The controversial Cruz mailers show the name of the person receiving the mail at the top and then give them a grade on an A to F scale. Below, it shows their neighbors and their voting scores. It then urges them to caucus next week and warns, “A follow-up notice may be issued following Monday’s caucuses.”
Political science studies have shown that such voter-shaming and peer-pressure techniques can be effective to motivate less likely voters. Past campaigns have sent such mail but they come at the risk of backlash from voters who feel their — and their neighbors’ privacy — has been compromised.
Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said Saturday that the piece was “a standard mailer that folks at the Iowa Republican Party and other get-out-the-vote groups have used to help motivate low-propensity voters.”
“We're going to do everything we can to turn these folks out,” she said. She did not immediately respond to comment about Pate’s criticism.
The Republican Party of Iowa did not immediately respond to requests about whether they had sent such mailers in the past...
Donald Trump has muscled ahead in Iowa, regaining his lead on the brink of the first votes being cast in the 2016 presidential race.
Trump stands at 28 percent, while rival Ted Cruz has slid to 23 percent. But there’s still a strong case for Cruz in this race — he’s more popular and respected than Trump, the final Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll shows.
“The drill-down shows, if anything, stronger alignment with Cruz than Trump, except for the horse race,” said J. Ann Selzer, the pollster for the Iowa Poll.
Mainstream Republicans, faced with seeing governors Jeb Bush and Chris Christie stalling and the grim reality looming of a victory by a smash-mouth game show host or an ultra-conservative obstructionist, have gravitated toward Marco Rubio. The young-looking, first-term U.S. senator from Florida is now at 15 percent. Still, Trump gets more of their support.
“Donald Trump could win Iowa,” said Stuart Stevens, a Maryland-based GOP strategist who has worked on five presidential campaigns but is neutral this election cycle. “But he has little room for error. He is almost no one's second choice.”
David Fry’s online friendship with militant LaVoy Finicum led him to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, where he is one of the last remaining occupants.
Ten days into the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, David Fry was looking forward to going home. Shunned by the alpha-male militant leaders in the camp, Fry — a skinny, bespectacled 27-year-old from Ohio — was waiting to talk to one person before he left.
“I want to say goodbye to LaVoy, but then I have to go home,” Fry told OPB the afternoon of Jan. 14. “I think I make some of the guys nervous here because of the bad things people are saying about me.”
Those “bad things” included criticism that Fry supported the radical terrorist group ISIS and had repeatedly praised Adolph Hitler in long, anti-Semitic rants. OPB had just published an article about Fry hacking into the federally owned computers at the refuge, revealing those details and others.
Finicum, who had just returned to the refuge after meeting with elected leaders in Irons County, Utah, had yet to meet with Fry. But the militant leader did message Fry to stay put until he could talk with other members of the leadership.
Still, Fry expected to return to his rural home outside of Cincinnati that weekend.
“Before my dad gets back from his vacation,” Fry said.
Less than two weeks later, LaVoy Finicum would be shot dead on the side of a country road in deep snow, and David Fry would be one of the last militant holdouts on the compound...
Frankly, a lot of the folks out at Malheur are rank losers. Criminals and losers and poseurs.
Blaine Cooper's never been in the military but all he wears are military camouflage fatigues. This Ain't Hell notes that he failed to correct a TV interviewer last year for being identified as a U.S. Marine. Cooper claimed he didn't want to embarrass the correspondent.
Margaret Hoover and John Avlon are married Rockefeller Republicans. I don't recall CNN making note of that during the broadcast. I like CNN's coverage, but I quickly bailed out on these two losers. Besides, Fox's "The Five" is on right now, and they're both beautiful and hilarious.
Check back for more coverage of just about everything this weekend, lol.
.@CNN had on Margaret Claire Hoover and John Phillips Avlon -- and I promptly changed the channel to @FoxNews lol!
I forgot to post my Jackie Johnson update last night, so until I can get to the local weather, here's the lovely Kristen Van Dyke at KOIN News 6 Portland. Looks like awesome skiing conditions up there, although it's going to be a bitch out at Malheur if the holdouts keep holding out.
I've never felt this way before, but I swear I wish I was campaigning in Iowa right now, heh.
I don't think I even know anyone who lives there, but I can imagine living out of my van to travel all around the Hawkeye State to rally Trump voters. God, that'd be a blast.
Sabato's Crystal Ball said that Sanders' support is in Iowa's more urban areas, so he's probably gonna have a shortfall of turnout in the more rural areas (which sounds funny, since it's Iowa for crying out loud).
Bernie Sanders delighted in telling a crowd of a couple of thousand people here this week about his journey from “fringe candidate” to serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, rattling off poll results reflecting his momentum and boasting that “the energy, the enthusiasm is with our campaign.”
But shortly before Sanders took stage, an organizer for his presidential campaign asked members of the crowd to raise their hands if they had signed up to volunteer. Only a few did.
“Oh, no. Not a lot of people here, I don’t think,” he said. “We need each and every one of you to rise to the occasion.”
It was a glimpse of Sanders’ toughest challenge as his sweeping call for a political revolution faces its first concrete test Monday in the Iowa caucuses. Their outcome will reveal whether the Sanders campaign operation, which has defied expectations with the enthusiasm it has drawn from disaffected liberals and college students, can harness that energy into votes the way Barack Obama did in 2008 when he beat the same establishment favorite Sanders now faces, Hillary Clinton.
Obama bested Clinton by motivating huge numbers of voters who normally wouldn’t participate in the caucus process to show up. Sanders himself is doubtful his campaign can reproduce the turnout Obama achieved, saying this week that the 2008 election “is really going to stay in the history books. It was an unbelievable campaign. In places they ran out of ballots, as I understand it.”
But he will be using a lot of the same organizational tools Obama did in claiming victory over a front-runner who seemed to have all the advantages in getting out the vote.
Targeting technologies pioneered by Obama’s campaign have made it possible for outsider candidates like Sanders to turn out Iowans who a decade ago might have showed up at a rally and then faded away before the caucuses. Now, computers can quickly link them up with a caucus coach who can walk them through the bewildering voting process and even make sure they have a ride on election night.
But ultimately, much of the work of sealing a commitment from voters happens through human contact. And to avoid the disappointment fellow Vermonter Howard Dean endured in the 2004 caucuses, when he failed to leverage similar insurgent momentum, the Sanders campaign has been rushing to build the infrastructure to capture enthusiasm and turn it into votes...
It's all about the college students for Sanders. Seriously. If young people are away at college, the campaign has to get them back to Iowa. And the winner is the one who wins the most precincts around the state, not the most individual votes, so a concentration of votes around the college towns hurt Sanders.
But we'll see. We'll see.
I really don't want to see Sanders' version of the Dean Scream on caucus night.
I swear I despise far left-wing public shaming and intimidation tactics, and guess what? Ted Cruz's campaign is fully down with them, going so far as sending targeted mailers threatening to out Iowa residents as scofflaw non-voters if they don't caucus in Monday's presidential caucuses.
As Iowans prepare to head to the caucuses on Monday for the nation’s first votes in the presidential primaries, the campaigns are pulling out all the stops. The mailer sent out by one Republican campaign, however, might end up backfiring.
Tom Hinkeldey, a resident of Alta, Iowa, tweeted a photo (which was later deleted because it included his personal address) on Friday evening of a mailer Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign sent addressed to his wife, Steffany. The mailer was a large card printed to look like a manila envelope on one side and was labeled in all capital letters, “ELECTION ALERT,” “VOTER VIOLATION,” “PUBLIC RECORD,” and “FURTHER ACTION NEEDED.”
On the other side, the mailer said in red letters at the top, “VOTING VIOLATION.” The text then reads:
You are receiving this election notice because of low expected voter turnout in your area. Your individual voting history as well as your neighbors’ are public record. Their scores are published below, and many of them will see your score as well. CAUCUS ON MONDAY TO IMPROVE YOUR SCORE and please encourage your neighbors to caucus as well. A follow-up notice may be issued following Monday’s caucuses.
The mailer then listed his and Steffany’s name, along with five of their neighbors...
The Cruz campaign confirmed they're using the mailers, saying that their targeting was "'very narrow, but the caucuses are important and we want people who haven’t voted before to vote'."
In my view, this is not how you go about convincing people and persuading them. This is a Donald Trump tactic and Cruz’s team should know better. Shaming people into voting is a great way to get them to vote for somebody else if they decide to do so.
Either way, this could turn into one of those things that the media will harp on for the next two days and throw Cruz off message.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The lawyer for a Mexican national charged with fatally shooting a young San Francisco woman as she walked on a city pier wants his client's murder charge dismissed, saying the killing that rekindled the national debate over illegal immigration was an accident.
The judge canceled a hearing scheduled for Friday, saying he wants more time to consider the issue. Attorneys will argue the matter on March 24...
Well, I hope Bill O'Reilly hasn't moved on from this case. If Sanchez's case is dismissed there are going to be howls of protest, rightfully so.
The attorneys discuss efforts to contact the last holdouts at the Malheur refuge. Recall, that they created a video to reach out and facilitate communication.
KANAB, Utah -- The day after the FBI released footage from an incident in Oregon that ended with the death of protester LaVoy Finicum, the man's family has released a statement saying they don't believe the fatal shooting was justified.
The nearly three-page statement from the family opens by saying "We know that there are always at least two sides to every story. We also know and recognize that the FBI and law enforcement agencies involved will do everything in their power to make it appear as if the needless death of our husband, father, grandfather, brother and son, LaVoy Finicum, was justified."
The family states they believe the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was on track for a peaceful resolution and that the authorities should have been more patient rather than seeking a confrontation.
As to the video, the family states they believe Finicum was moving away from the vehicle to "draw any hostility or violence away from the others" when he was shot.
They further state he was not holding a weapon and said from their view it appeared he was gesturing or trying to keep his balance, not trying to reach for a gun in a pocket.
The family’s attorney, Todd McFarlane, spoke to FOX 13 on the phone Friday night.
“I would have to see a lot better, clearer, slow motion, blown up version, to be in a position to say that it looked like to me that he was going for something in his pocket or on his hip," McFarlane said.
FBI Special Agent in Charge for Oregon, Greg Bretzing, said in a statement of that portion of the video: "On at least two occasions, Finicum reaches his right hand toward a pocket on the left inside portion of his jacket. He did have a loaded 9 mm semi-automatic handgun in that pocket."
Finicum's family said they are not "accepting at face value" the FBI's statement Finicum was armed, but they state even if he was armed they don't think he was posing a threat through is actions.
McFarlane said: “Why would he put his hand down there and then raise his hand again? I would be more inclined to say that he was moving around, using his hands and arms again gesturing, and trying to keep his balance."
Finicum was shot by an OSP trooper, and 30 seconds after that, law enforcement, according to Bretzing, deployed "flash bangs to disorient any other armed occupants. Shortly after that, they deployed less-lethal sponge projectiles with OC capsules. Those OC capsules would be similar to pepper spray."
The family goes on to offer their interpretation of the legality of the FBI and Oregon State Police's actions, citing Supreme Court precedent, and they claim their loved one was left lying in the snow as agents "terrorized" the others in the vehicle that had crashed while avoiding a police road block...
Very interesting juxtaposition, between a national outsider take on the impact of the occupation on Burns, Oregon, seen here, "Burns, Oregon: Torn Apart by the Malheur Occupation"; and a local newspaper's version, familiar and intimate.
BURNS — As residents debated the shooting death of LaVoy Finicum — a spokesmen of the weekslong occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, who was shot and killed Tuesday during a traffic stop by state and federal officials on a state highway north of here — a small protest broke out Friday afternoon at the Harney County Courthouse.
The shooting of Finicum by an Oregon State Police trooper “was the needless taking of a life,” asserted Monte Siegner, 79, wearing a cowboy hat and holding a handmade sign that said “Ambushed & Assassinated.”
Siegner, from the small community of Riverside, about 60 miles east, stood with his son, Clint Siegner, 43, who drove from Eagle, Idaho, on Friday to support his father.
The younger Siegner stood with a sign that said, “Federal Supremicists Murdered an Innocent Man.”
“Terrible,” he said. “It didn’t have to happen. The FBI says it’s been doing everything for a peaceful resolution, and then they arm on the highway and have that kind of show of force? It’s not about peace.”
Both men, part of about 25 people who joined the protest, including members of the Pacific Patriot Network, which is encouraging people from across the country to come to Burns on Monday for a rally to tell the FBI to leave and let the last four occupiers at the refuge go, say they have seen the FBI aerial video of Finicum’s shooting.
Released publicly Thursday, it shows Finicum quickly jumping from his vehicle after it swerved and plowed into a deep snowbank at a law enforcement traffic stop. After exiting the vehicle, Finicum rapidly steps in one direction then another in the snow, repeatedly turning and alternately raising his arms high and lowering them and reaching into his jacket, as two law enforcement officers, handguns drawn and aimed, move in on him. Finicum’s vehicle had previously sped away from another traffic stop in which occupation leaders Ammon and Ryan Bundy and others were arrested and charged with federal felonies.
Authorities said Finicum had a loaded gun in his jacket.
“I think it’s a bunch of garbage,” said B.J. Soper, 39, of Redmond, one of the founders of the Pacific Patriot Network, standing with others in front of the courthouse, as sheriff’s deputies could be seen holding rifles at the ready, keeping watch on the rowdy crowd. “There is confirmed eyewitness testimony that LaVoy Finicum was shot in cold blood.”
Asked if he thought Finicum was going for his gun, Soper said no.
He was reaching down “because he was shot in the hip,” Soper said. “And then the chest, and then the final shot that took him to the ground.”
Law enforcement officials have not said how many times Finicum was shot or where he was hit...
This story, from Julie Turkewitz, at the New York Times, takes a step back from the breaking news cycle, assessing the costs of the occupation on local residents. It's been harsh.
The arguments that broke out in Harney County early on, shortly after the seizure of the Malheur refuge, feel almost quaint now, people said: Were the ideology and tactics of the occupiers valid? Many people supported the goals of the protesters — the return of federal lands to local or private control and the release from prison of two local ranchers convicted of arson for a fire that spread to public land — but disagreed with their illegal armed showdown.
As things dragged on, the questions and fears got darker — about whether the F.B.I. and other law enforcement agencies were doing the right thing and whether the nightmare sympathizers arriving in town — guns on their hips — should be seen as specters of intimidation or of comfort.
After this week’s events, the county has been thrown into kind of debate that was, until now, a headline from somewhere else like Ferguson, Mo., or Baltimore: police violence. The F.B.I. released the video Thursday showing Oregon State Police troopers shooting Mr. Finicum, 54, after he tried to drive around a roadblock and reached for his gun. The state police hoped the release of the video would quell speculation and accusations that Mr. Finicum was gunned down with his hands up. But not everyone was satisfied, and many citizens who watched the video do not accept the F.B.I.’s account of what happened....
Linda Gainer, 63, runs a restaurant about six miles from the refuge. She is one of many people who say the occupation has torn her community apart. Ms. Gainer has fed nearly everyone involved with the standoff: occupiers, F.B.I. agents, journalists, visiting environmentalists and others, but has received criticism for permitting the occupiers to buy food from her cafe.
“People say that we’re unpatriotic, we’re terrorists,” she said.
“You shouldn’t go around and say nasty things about people just because you don’t agree on something,” she said.
Some residents are simply leaving, which does not bode well for a place that has long struggled with an eroding economy and population. For instance, the 17 employees of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge were relocated by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which received “nonspecific” threats about taking them hostage, said Jason Holm, a spokesman for the agency, which runs the refuge.
One Malheur employee, speaking anonymously to protect his safety, said he was living apart from his wife and young children. His family has lived in the area for decades, he said, but is considering moving on for good. “It makes us very angry,” he said.
The Harney County sheriff, Dave Ward, who has been a vocal opponent of the occupation, said the tires of his wife’s vehicle were slashed, prompting her to leave town. The authorities are investigating the matter; no arrests have been made.
Four of the area’s top public officials have resigned since the occupation: the county school superintendent, the principals of the county middle and high schools, and the head of the fire department. The fire chief, Chris Briels, is a supporter of the occupation, and resigned when other officials refused to allow the Bundy group to a host a meeting in town. The educators cited nonoccupational reasons for leaving, saying they wanted to spend more time with grandchildren or seek a position in a larger school...
The FBI video was released hours after Todd Macfarlane, a lawyer for Finicum's relatives, said other evidence may exist that shows Finicum was not threatening authorities.
Macfarlane said one potential source of information about the shooting was Victoria Sharp, a woman who says she was friends with some of the armed protesters and claims she was at the scene and watched Finicum die.
Sharp said in an interview with Reuters that Finicum was shot with his gun in his holster and his hands in the air, shouting and walking toward police.
Neither state nor federal law enforcement would comment on whether Sharp was at the scene or on her description. Reuters was not able to independently confirm her version of the events.
As four armed anti-government protesters held their ground at a U.S. wildlife refuge in Oregon on Friday, the family of a protester killed by police said he seemed to have been shot in the back with his hands up, although authorities said he was reaching for a gun.
Relatives of Robert "LaVoy" Finicum, 54, a spokesman for the group that seized buildings at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, said he posed no threat and they were not accepting the authorities' assertion that he was armed.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation released video on Thursday of state police fatally shooting Finicum, and contended it showed him making a move for a gun in his coat pocket.
"LaVoy was not 'charging' anyone. He appears to have been shot in the back, with his hands in the air," the family of the Arizona rancher said in a statement through their attorney.
"At this point we will await the outcome of any investigation, but based on the information currently available to us, we do not believe that LaVoy's shooting death was justified."
Four armed protesters were still holed up on Friday at the remote refuge, 30 miles (48 km) from Burns, a small ranching community in the state's rural southeast. The FBI says it is working "around the clock" to negotiate with the holdouts.
Ammon Bundy, who led the occupation that began on Jan. 2, was arrested on Tuesday along with other protesters including his brother, Ryan...
I'm sure family members will be able to review the autopsy report. And c'mon, it's not like Finicum was just peacefully surrendering. He almost plowed down one LEO right there in the snow.
After waiting for nearly a month, staying mostly out of sight and trying unsuccessfully to negotiate behind the scenes with the leaders of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge takeover, federal agents and state police in the last week were facing intensified pressure from the Harney County community and Oregon's governor to end the occupation.
When they became aware that the key figures were planning to head north to the next county along a remote, two-lane stretch of highway, they no doubt considered it a prime opportunity to arrest them, former FBI agents and police experts say.
"The best way is to divide and conquer,'' said Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI chief hostage negotiator. "If we know through intelligence that the leadership of the group is leaving, what we need to do is intercept and arrest them.''
The FBI and state and local police early on seemed to hope that a "wait-them-out" approach would work. But they probably soon realized that they had a future chance to make arrests when Ammon Bundy and members of his inner circle began attending meetings outside the refuge.
"I'm sure that thought came up as time went by and they noticed them coming and going from the refuge," Van Zandt said.
On Tuesday, the masterminds of the armed siege were separated from the refuge and the other occupiers, a core group that seemed to fluctuate between 20 to 40 people since the takeover began Jan. 2. They likely were armed but wouldn't have access in their trucks to a big stash of weapons and other ammunition.
And the narrow spot along U.S. 395 between Burns and John Day, hemmed in by tall snow banks, was isolated from homes and businesses, leaving few options for an escape route, experts said Friday.
"Frankly to take someone mobile on the road is a lot safer than in one location, such as the refuge or around a populated area where a lot of people could be watching or reacting,'' said Danny Coulson, who served as special-agent-in-charge of the FBI in Oregon before becoming the agency's deputy assistant director in charge of terrorism operations.
Moving in just before dark was also ideal.
"You want to do it in daylight so everybody can see what's going on,'' Van Zandt said...
The FBI and OSP set up all kinds of roadblocks around the wildlife reserve yesterday. Anyone attempting to cross the lines would be arrested.
So it's interesting about the PPN's "Call to Action." What, are a bunch of cowboys and ranchers going to hole up at all the hotels in Burns, Oregon, and reminisce each morning over eggs, biscuits and gravy at the local diner?
Calling on any and all Americans to come to Burns, Oregon to come to the aid of the American people standing against these violent, malicious and deceitful tactics. Come stand together with other Americans, and express our Constitutional right to PEACEFULLY assemble and air our grievances.
This operation will demand the following:
- Immediate detention by Oregon State Police of the FBI special agent in charge along with all agents and LEO involved in the shooting death of Lavoy Finicum. A first hand eyewitness account presents reasonable cause for arrest while the investigation takes place.
- Immediate removal of all militarized FBI personnel and equipment from Harney County. All State and County Law Enforcement officers are not included and requested to stay and assist in the process to keep the peace.
- Immediate resignation of Judge Steve Grasty, Sheriff David Ward, County commissioner Pete Runnels, and County commissioner Dan Nichols.
In order to successfully accomplish our mission, we will need any and all Americans to PEACEFULLY assemble within Burns, Oregon immediately. The success of this mission depends fully on the number of people that will come to PEACEFULLY stand and demand the items above be initiated.
A letter of intent will be legally served on the FBI special agent in charge at the time of Lavoy Finicum's death, Judge Steven Grasty, Sheriff David Ward, Dan Nichols and Pete Runnels by January 29th, 2016. We will request to escort the FBI presence out of Harney County, Oregon and once complete, the attention will return to the resignation of the County elected officials.
PPN is dedicated to a PEACEFUL operation. If you have any ill intent, please do not come. We do not need you. Please come prepared with civilian attire and adhere to the policy of no long guns within the community.
Please come self sufficient and able to care for yourself for the time you plan to stay. Donations arrive daily but they are not sustainable for a large or lengthy contingency.
We ask that you email us at volunteer@pacificpatriotsnetwork.comg if and when you are planning to come and stand in Burns, Oregon.
Bac Duong, one of the three inmates who escaped from the Orange County Men’s Central Jail, turned himself in Friday morning, said Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens.
Duong, 43, was arrested about 11:50 a.m. after he got in touch with a woman in Santa Ana. He was arrested without incident near the Auto Electric Rebuilders shop at 1421 N. Harbor Blvd.
Trin Nguyen, whose father-in-law owns the shop, said Duong walked into the building and told his wife that he wanted to turn himself in. He said his wife seemed scared. She called police.
Nguyen, who has known Duong for 10 years, said “he's a good friend of mine, he's a good person. I think he was scared. He just showed up and told my wife.”
Other employees at the store also spoke to the throng of media:
[VIDEOS EMBEDDED AT THE STORY.]
The other inmates – Hossein Nayeri and Jonathan Tieu – were not arrested and are still fugitives. After the arrest, investigators conducted a car-by-car search in the Auto Electric Rebuilders parking lot with their guns drawn. They are also searching an adjacent motel.
Duong had been held on an attempted murder charge after a shooting in Santa Ana in November.
Investigators said Duong stole a car on Saturday, and they believe all three inmates were living in the white utility van. That GMC van is still missing...
CNN's been giving the O.C. jailbreak storymoreairtime than the Malheur siege. I don't know, but white militiamen probably aren't going to get as much sympathy from the network's leftists than the other two suspects, who're Iranian and Vietnamese (hardly oppressed minority groups, but still).
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