RUSHING THE SEASON, AND PUSHING THEIR LUCK

LET'S GO FISHIN'...

WELL, MAYBE WE'RE RUSHING THE SEASON

Saturday, 8:30 AM.  34 degrees F, wind NNE, light.  The sky is overcast and it looks like rain.  The humidity is 84% and the barometer has risen to a quite high 30.04", which seems rather counterintuitive.
   The ice is evidently getting rotten in the Bayfield City Harbor, and the fishing tug Elizabeth was fired up to tested it.  I don't think they really intended to go fishing,  as there is still several feet of ice in the channel and reportedly over five feet of ice at the LaPointe dock on Madeline Island.
   I am incensed at the Gestapo-like tactics being used by the Bureau of Land Management in its altercation with Nevada ranchers using the hitherto public open range.  The sons and daughters of pioneers are being assaulted with tasers and dogs by uniformed men in body armor and armed with automatic weapons, and their cattle are being harassed and herded by helicopters and are dying.  One expects this kind of action, reminiscent of the Nazis,  in Russia or China, where all are subservient to a dictatorial State.  Is this what the United States of America is coming to?
   The ranchers have been using the open range since they settled it in the 19th Century.  It is a tough existence in a harsh environment, and these are tough people. They are confronting a faceless bureaucracy run by an anonymous elite in faraway places.
  The federal government has denied these Americans their constitutional rights of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech by declaring they may only assemble and speak freely in arbitrarily established Free Speech Zones in the middle of the desert.
    I thought all of America was a Free Speech Zone.
   American citizens are being goaded into armed rebellion over issues that are not in any way critical to the government and that should be resolved in a reasonable and peaceful manner. The supposedly endangered desert tortoise is a side issue, and an obvious ploy.
   The Bureau of Land Management is yet another out-of-control Statist bureaucracy that should be shrunk to size or abolished, and the idiots at the top of the food chain that have provoked this confrontation fired.  The federal government controls much of our western lands,  around 50% (84.5% in Nevada), which would be better sold at an affordable price to the people who actually live there and make the land productive.
   Dictatorial, obnoxious and dangerous federal agencies continue to push their luck.