But this is funny

a community garden, a squat, or something/someone more sympathetic

It would have been over long ago.  I hate this.   I hate the way it emboldens the gun toteing wing nuts and I hate that this a$$hole who is in fact a very well to do person has been magically turned into some Everyman hero.  He is not.  

Those guys are criminals. They are not cute little ranchers.  Armed thugs.

The desert may be just a bombed out nothing to New Yorkers but it is vast and beautiful and full of life and fragile.  You can still see the wagon wheel ruts from the old Butterfield Stage route.  
What you do not understand is how vast Nevada is.  It takes the better part of an entire day to drive from Yosemite to Salt Lake City.  I have made that drive a number of times.  Not every inch of the Nevada Basin was bombed out....  

Did the Occupy people ever--ever--threaten violence or brandish weapons?.....There is no equivalence.   Get back to me the next time anyone on the Left threatens to wage a violent war on Federal officials.

Those guys should be arrested for all manner of violent felonies.....Brandishing weapons, etc. Spoiled freeloaders....who are probably also wealthy.  Got to have their government welfare....No comparison to the Occupy people.

Rather, this is about a wealthy, right-wing cattleman who consciously and willingly flouts the law for the better part of two decades, and who thinks he can continue to get away with it because his wingbat friends now threaten violence to protect what they believe to be that crackpot's constitutional right to freeload because he conveniently decides to ignore the public trust's title to the land in question.

Anti-government cuckoos like that frighten me one helluva lot more than any armed feds, because they're angry (more at life than anything else), unhinged and have long since proven quite capable of hurting and killing innocent bystanders -- including babies and children -- in their neverending quest to confront the "guvmint." They are the ones who first threatened violence, not the feds.

How are the feds supposed to respond to armed threats like this -- by sending in an unarmed process server dressed in a suit to give the guy a subpoena? These are not sympathetic citizens who are being oppressed. They are dangerous people spoiling for a fight because they've apparently nothing better to do in their miserable and pointless lives.

That said, the feds did good to back off. Now that they know what these clowns are about, they should just surround the place and seal it off from the outside world, cut off all utilities, not let anyone else or any food and supplies in or out of the property, and simply wait them out.

Then when the malevolent Buffalo Bob and the rest of his cockadoodle Howdy Doody chorus are out of food and water and have had enough, arrest and charge every single damned one of them to the full extent of the law to make examples of them, and let Clarabelle Hannity and the rest of the white-wing media squeal away to their clueless Peanut Gallery, like the phuquing Koch-snorting pigs that they are.

BTW, one of the other ranchers have won two huge settlements from the BLM. Of course the BLM didn't pay, just appealed to the 9th which they called "their court." The settlements were for continued illegal actions and harm to the rancher in question.

Also the rancher in question has offered to pay the fees to the state of Nevada. So much for your lap dancing and crab legs...which, BTW, is a terrible analogy.....unless you want to say two wrongs make a right.

It is also noted that land managed by the BLM had its designation changed so that a buddy of Harry Reid could use it for a business.... So much for protecting the land turtles, eh??

People are tired and afraid. Every bureau of government has its own armed police force. Enough is enough and before you say it, yes much of the growth came during a Repub admin but all three of the armed actions, Ruby Ridge, Waco and Nevada, have came while a Democratic administration was in charge.

I was watching Megan Kelly last night as she interviewed an independent film maker. He made a great point.

The ONLY news group there was Fox.

The Bureau of Land Management disagreed and took him to federal court, which first ruled in favor of the BLM in 1998. After years of attempts at a negotiated settlement over the $1.2 million Bundy owes in fees failed, federal land agents began seizing hundreds of his cattle illegally grazing on public land last week.

But any art can have a psychological read. And Bush's series is a body of work that can be read.

"Diplomatic" is actually not a bad word to describe the orientation of these paintings. They are not bad so much as cautious, vacant, even servile - paintings by an artist anxious, or perhaps incapable, of doing anything that might leave a mark.

Any air of intimacy, informality or insight is markedly absent

Yes, I think this says so much about Bush as a man and as a leader. He might not have wanted to reveal so much of his inner self, but he did. He may not have consciously intended to distort but they are distorted and that is a window into his mind.  

Ishtar was the goddess of love, war, fertility, and sexuality.

Ishtar was the daughter of Ninurta.[2] She was particularly worshipped in northern Mesopotamia, at the Assyrian cities of Nineveh, Ashur and Arbela (Erbil).[2
The lion was her symbol (detail of the Ishtar Gate)
In the Babylonian pantheon, she "was the divine personification of the planet Venus".[2]
Ishtar had many lovers; however, as Guirand notes,

"Woe to him whom Ishtar had honoured! The fickle goddess treated her passing lovers cruelly, and the unhappy wretches usually paid dearly for the favours heaped on them. Animals, enslaved by love, lost their native vigour: they fell into traps laid by men or were domesticated by them. 'Thou has loved the lion, mighty in strength', says the hero Gilgamesh to Ishtar, 'and thou hast dug for him seven and seven pits! Thou hast loved the steed, proud in battle, and destined him for the halter, the goad and the whip.'

Even for the gods Ishtar's love was fatal. In her youth the goddess had loved Tammuz, god of the harvest, and--if one is to believe Gilgamesh --this love caused the death of Tammuz.[2]

And I do know what Easter is....that is when Osiris came back from the Underworld with the Easter Bunny, right?

I would like to think I am a reasonable student of religion.....I like Passover as my favorite holiday....and in terms of ceremony, the Tibetan Buddhists have such a peaceful harmonious feeling to them....Religion, as many would say, and the Buddhists in particular, is to be felt and experienced, not rationalized....I think religion is better that way.  So one does not confuse religion with rational thought or factual reality.

I have spent a fair amount of time studying Christianity....and am, I would like to think, a reasonably good student.....

Yom Kippur...always tried to skip that....