The FBI is about to do a Waco style assault

LIVE call from Refuge -- FBI Siege Happening. https://t.co/UZZ97ZxCKj via @YouTube

— Lem (@Lemang01) February 11, 2016

Update... The FBI and the four people they are after came to an understanding. After the FBI promised to back off, the four promised to surrender in the morning.

The video above is now an archive of events that have already transpired... If you click play you will be listening to a recording.  In other words, if you weren't here when it was happening, you missed it. What can i tell you? Come back more often ;-)

"I’m an Oregon rancher"

"Here’s what you don’t understand about the Bundy standoff. The Obama administration has pushed our livelihood to the brink." (excerpts)

Most days, I’m up before the sun rises. I spend my mornings tending to my horses, dogs and livestock. In the winter, when it’s bitter cold, I’m outside with my cattle, making sure their water isn’t frozen and that they’re properly fed. In the summer, I often work 15-hour days, cultivating my crops and tending to the animals. In the afternoons, I’m in my office, reaching out to customers and handling the ranch’s business side. Over the course of a given day, I act as a vet, a mechanic, an agronomist and accountant.

I love the work, but it’s grueling. As a rancher, I’m always one bad year away from financial disaster. Every purchase I make — from new cows ($2,000 each) to a new piece of equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — is a major investment. And my ranch operates on very slim margins, so I have to be savvy to make ends meet.

Money isn’t the only challenge. Raising cattle requires a lot of land, much more than most ranchers can afford to own outright. I lease about a third of the space I use from private owners. But most ranchers aren’t so lucky. The federal government controls a huge amount of land in the west (more than 50 percent in some states, like Oregon), and many ranchers must lease that space to create a sustainable operation.

Utilizing federal land requires ranchers to follow an unfair, complicated and constantly evolving set of rules. For example, a federal government agency might decide that it wants to limit the number of days a rancher can graze their cattle to protect a certain endangered plant or animal species, or they might unilaterally decide that ranchers can’t use as much water as they need because of a fight over water rights. Or they might take over land that once belonged to the state or private individuals, imposing an entirely new set of restrictions.

I saw this play out firsthand when the federal government considered listing the sage grouse, a chicken-like bird, as endangered. That regulation would have shrunk the amount of land where ranchers could graze cattle, putting many out of business and decimating the industry. To avoid this, ranchers like myself and local officials spent months meeting with federal officials looking for compromise. We ultimately found middle ground. But we already have an enormous workload in our daily lives. The pressure of having to drop everything to lobby against a rule (which happens more often than you’d think) is a tremendous burden.

Most of the time, those regulations are written by people with no agriculture experience, and little understanding of what it takes to produce our nation’s food.

Ranching is a billion-dollar industry in Oregon. Overall, agriculture accounts for 15 percent of the state’s economic activity and 12 percent of the state’s employment. The income of a local farm generates double the money for the local economy as a supermarket’s income in the same area, according to the London-based New Economics Foundation.

The siege on our industry has only increased under the Obama administration. Officials are effectively regulating us out of business by enforcing a string of unprecedented environmental restrictions. In Malhuer county (next to Harney county, where the current standoff is taking place), the Obama administration is considering a measure that will turn 2.5 million acres of federal land into a “national monument,” a move that would severely restrict grazing. These restrictions would cause a huge economic downturn for those communities.

These decisions are being made by people who are four to five generations removed from food production. The rule-makers don’t quite understand our industry, and are being spurred on by extreme environmentalist groups asking for unreasonable policy changes.

"In Oregon, frustration over federal land rights has been building for years"

Washington Post: The federal government owns more than half the land in the state, as it does across much of the West. It used to be routine for ranchers to get permits to graze cattle or cut timber or work mines — a way to make a living from the land.

Then came increasing environmental regulations, and the federal land became more for owls and sage grouse than for local people trying to feed their families, said Soper, 39, who lives 100 miles up the road in Bend.

“What people in Western states are dealing with is the destruction of their way of life,” said Soper, a father of four who was once a professional rodeo rider. “When frustration builds up, people lash out.”

Anger at the federal government boiled over this past weekend, when a small group of people took over a remote federal wildlife refuge east of here. Their specific aim was to support two local ranchers sentenced to prison over arson charges. But the larger issue is a decades-long struggle over federal land rights in the West that often flies under the radar in much of the country.

“White Friends, Pay For My Therapy”

"An Oregon woman has raised nearly $1,500 to pay for illnesses she claims were brought on by being an Asian-American living in a predominantly white city."

“I grew up in and live in the [Portland] area. The stress of living as a Thai-Cambodian woman in such a white city replete with constant interpersonal and institutional racism has a big toll on my health and wellbeing,” according to the YouCaring posting by Rinna Rem.

Rem claims to be 29 and suffering from depression and the connective-tissue disorder Marfan syndrome.

“I’m 29 and really tired,” she wrote. “I want to live a healthy, happy life. I want to have a healthy, happy family in the future too. Help me pay for therapy to deal with the stress of racism. Please don’t let racism shorten my life or kill me.”

Why not move? If living there is so detrimental?

"Oregon marijuana shops begin sales to recreational users"

"I'm just trying to basically stock up for maybe four or five times what the normal volume would be"

Some of the more than 250 dispensaries that already offer medical marijuana in Oregon opened their doors soon after midnight — just moments after it became legal to sell to anyone who is at least 21.

At Portland's Shango Premium Cannabis, co-founder Shane McKee said the first sale to an excited customer came about a minute after midnight, with many others waiting.

"It looks like there is about 60-70 in line out front," he said in a telephone interview shortly after midnight. "They all seem extremely eager."

Green Oasis, which has two locations in Portland and more on the way, has prepared by trying to cultivate strong relationships with growers. On Thursday evening, it will entice customers with a band playing outdoors. People who spend at least $40 on Thursday will get a 10 percent discount, co-owner Matthew Schwimmer said.

"We don't know of anyone else doing a band, and we thought it was a good idea to give back to the community," Schwimmer said.

Wait until you hear the latest

"15-year-olds to get state-subsidized sex-change without parents knowing"

"The list of things 15-year-olds are not legally allowed to do in Oregon is long: Drive, smoke, donate blood, get a tattoo -- even go to a tanning bed.

But, under a first-in-the-nation policy quietly enacted in January that many parents are only now finding out about, 15-year-olds are now allowed to get a sex-change operation. Many residents are stunned to learn they can do it without parental notification -- and the state will even pay for it through its Medicaid program, the Oregon Health Plan."

More at this link