Bundy, supporters vow to occupy Mars Rover, New Horizons spacecraft

Ammon Bundy and supporters on the surface of Mars (artist's conception).

BURNS, Ore. – Ammon Bundy and his band of armed supporters vowed Tuesday to take their feud with the federal government into space, promising to seize the Mars Rovers studying the Red Planet as well as journey to and pilot the New Horizons spacecraft, which relayed historic photos of Pluto in July 2015.

“The feds will not do to outer space what they did to the American West,” Bundy stated. “It will be open for business – and for liberty.”

As with other plans and ideas Bundy has floated, details were in short supply. 

For instance, it wasn’t clear how he or his supporters would reach the New Horizons, which as of the New Year was 125 million miles beyond Pluto. It took the unmanned probe nine years to reach the edge of our solar system through the vacuum of space, but Bundy, who previously said God is directing his anti-government campaign, shrugged off the challenge.

“The Lord will provide,” he said. “I’ve prayed, and He has assured me that all I need are my blessed gun and my faith. He will deliver me into outer space.”

So far, the small group of gun-toting men, while occupying an out-of-the-way wildlife refuge headquarters in a part of Oregon most people didn’t know existed, has failed to get the federal government to disband.

When asked for comment, several NASA engineers said, “Yeah, sure, very funny,” and then hung up.

An FBI official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said only, “If they really want to be shot into space, I’m sure we can find a way to help them.”

If he was confident about traveling past Pluto, Bundy was positively giddy about the group’s prospects on Mars. NASA landed two rovers on the planet in 2004 – one, the Spirit, stopped working after six years, but the Opportunity is still active.

Indeed, images sent back by the rovers were part of Bundy’s inspiration. 

“That land looks a lot like parts of the West,” he said. “Could be good cattle country. And just wait ’til we find oil!”

Several reporters noted that Mars’ average distance from the Earth is 140 million miles, and that it would take 162 days to travel that distance in a spaceship. It was also noted that temperatures on the Red Planet average -81 degrees Fahrenheit, and that the atmosphere – mostly carbon dioxide – would be inhospitable to humans, cattle and even oilfield roughnecks.

At the introduction of facts, many of Bundy’s supporters began grumbling aggressively, and some drew their sidearms. But Bundy stayed on point.

“We’re Americans,” he said. “We breathe free wherever we want.”   

NRA unveils 'Pack a Piece for Jesus' initiative

FAIRFAX, Va. – In the aftermath of a shooting that left nine dead at a Charleston, S.C., church, the National Rifle Association announced a “Pack a Piece For Jesus” campaign that the gun rights organization said would “ensure religious liberty is protected the only way that liberty can be protected – with high-caliber ammunition.”

“(Preferably hollow point),” the NRA statement added.

All churchgoers should bring loaded firearms to services this weekend, according to the NRA’s call to arms. 

“Any assault in a church is an assault on Jesus, and since Jesus founded America, we must answer force with force and firearms with firearms,” said NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre at a press conference. 

“Pistol-packing parishioners would do well to buy bullets in bulk while brushing up on the Bible.”

The attack on the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shocked the nation, as a white man with apparently racist views allegedly gunned down people engaged in Bible study.

LaPierre also turned to the Bible in advocating for the NRA’s Jesus-needs-your-guns position.

“I know the Bible says, ‘He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone,’ ” he said. “But that was then. What good is ‘throwing a stone’? That’s just bringing a slingshot to a gunfight!”

Aides to the NRA president acknowledged that the program would be controversial, and a wide spectrum of church leaders immediately condemned it, saying that Christianity preaches forgiveness, understanding and community building, not retribution. 

The NRA, however, stood unbowed.

“Listen,” said LaPierre, “it’s just a fact: If Jesus packed heat, he woulda kicked a lot of Roman ass.”

(Want to see Jesus kick some ass? Yes, you do. Click here.)

(Photo credit.)

Breaking News: Hillary Clinton uses telegraph, carrier pigeons

Despite Hillary Clinton's admission that she should've used a government email address instead of a private one while she was secretary of state, controversy continued to dog her with revelations that she routinely uses a telegraph and carrier pigeons in order to get around federal public records rules.

"Oh yeah, she's got a whole squad of retired Navy guys in command centers around the world, manning telegraph machines," said a source who pleaded for anonymity because divulging the information could endanger his testicles. "She can send a message to anywhere, and almost no one has access to it, and even then they'd need to know Morse code."

Stranger still is the use of carrier pigeons by the former First Lady, senator and secretary of state who is poised to be the automatic front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. She apparently commissioned a top-secret aviary on the roof of the State Department in Washington, D.C., which served as headquarters for a pigeon messaging network that stretched from Montreal to Arkansas.

She reportedly had an elite kit of pigeons – nicknamed "Pigeon Force One" – that she took with her on overseas trips to conduct secret diplomacy by strapping coded, handwritten messages to the birds' legs.

"When you think about it, it's [expletive] brilliant," said Quincy B. Arthur Chesterfield III, an Australian diplomat and dilettante who runs the only security consulting company that would return Senseless City's calls. "Who looks at [expletive] pigeons? One more 'rat with wings' flying through the air – I mean, who gives a flying [expletive] [expletive]?

"Except for the pigeons, of course," he added. "I'm sure they flying [expletive] [expletive] all the  [expletive] time."

The revelations stem from a bar bet made by Randall Chowley and Thomas "Neo" Anderson (no, not that one), who used to work at the State Department aviary. They had pictures and video from the top-secret site, and therefore won free drinks for the rest of last Friday night as well as 10 minutes apiece alone in the back booth with waitress and bartender Betty Sue, who reportedly turned both of them down for prom 18 years ago.

According to co-workers and neighbors, neither man has been seen nor heard from in several days.

LIVE BLOG UPDATE: Hillary Clinton has called a hasty press conference to deal with these new revelations. I'll do my best to post as we go.

7 p.m.: There are A LOT of people here. I guess you could say we're "flocking" to the story. Ha ha, LOL.

7:06 p.m.: Mrs. Clinton is speaking, but it's weird. She's not looking at the teleprompter, and she's not looking at us either. She seems to be looking at her Secret Service detail and blinking very rapidly .... hold on, she's communicating! My Morse code is rusty, but I'll give it a whirl.

7:09 p.m.: I'm caught up. I'll type as I go .... O O R S  L O C K E D  H A V E  T H E M  A L L  K I L L E D ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

An interview with Sarah Palin's speechwriter

After Sarah Palin’s jaw-dropping performance at the Iowa Freedom Summit, I reached out to her not-quite-official presidential campaign and scored an interview with her speechwriter, here referred to as SPS – Sarah Palin’s Speechwriter.  (He insisted on anonymity because he said being named would interfere with his career as an Alaskan pipeline performance artist. No, I don’t know what that is.)

AC: How did you become Sarah Palin’s speechwriter?

SPS: Well, like all things good, it started at an all-American freedom gun show. Me and my buddy were at the backlot range with the .50-cal, and the guv and her passel came wanderin’ back. She took a turn with the rifle and dropped the engine block out of a pickup truck on the range, and I said, ‘Any woman who can do that should be president of the United States of America.’ So I showed her my book.

AC: What’s your book?

SPS: Grab Freedom By The Balls. It’s my life story.

AC: So then what happened?

SPS: A job interview. I thought it would be all formal, but it was just me and her and a plate of Rocky Mountain Oysters at this joint called the Dewdrop Inn.

AC: Wow. That’s all of a theme, your book and the oysters.

SPS: Huh?

AC: Please continue. 

SPS: So she said, ‘I need strong words. Grizzly words. Words that stomp all over the lame-stream media with all their canoodlin’ with the Meetup Wall Street activist types that’s corroding our country into jackboots between a rock and a hard place in the frying pan.’

AC: Huh?

SPS: So I said, ‘Guv, I got rogue grizzly words. No rules with my words. You can maverick the shit out of them, pardon my Swahili.’ She liked that. ‘Pardon my Swahili.’ I’m surprised she hasn’t whipped that one out on the trail.

AC: Well, people pretty much think she stepped in it at the Iowa Freedom Summit. Did you write that speech?

SPS: Darn tootin’. And she didn’t step in it – she stepped on it. She stomped her boots down on all comers and floored that NASCAR attack through the glass ceiling.

AC: That doesn’t make any –

SPS: Listen, to the conservative real Americans, all the guv has to do is remind ’em of her family values and the mama bear instincts and handlin’ a moose when she finds one, and remember, the man will try to ride you like a Saul Alinsky trick from his Black Friday anarchist’s cookbook, but don’t buy any retreads – the truth is in the American pie. And Sarah Palin has the birthday cake for America.

AC: She has cake, but no pie?

SPS: Exactly. It’s birthday cake in America. Let’s blow some candles.

News executives infected with bullshit virus, officials say

A virulent and aggressive strain of brain fungus has infected American newspaper executives, causing them to say and believe fantastical things while expecting those statements to be taken seriously, health officials confirmed this week.

The fungus — encephalagic locos deleriumus, or "bullshit virus" — was once thought to be limited to low-level politicians and vacation timeshare salesmen. However, this week's announcement of drastic changes to the New Orleans Times-Picayune and other Advance Publications papers was the final evidence officials needed that the bullshit virus had infected a new population.

"We've suspected this for a long time," said Earnest Chambers, an epidemiologist with the National Institutes of Health. "When executives began cutting costs and trimming staff, they would talk as though they're boosting the fortunes of their papers. That flies in the face of reality, and yet it seemed they genuinely believed their ridiculous statements."

A memo from T-P publisher Ashton Phelps Jr. provides the best example.

In it, he says the now-daily paper will switch to publishing only three days a week, but that the newspaper will be "more robust." He also wrote that to "accelerate the digital growth of NOLA media group," there will be "a reduction in the size of the workforce."

Lisa Kanahi, who leads a quarantine strike team for the Centers for Disease Control, said she started preparing for a massive quarantine of newsroom leaders when the leaked memo hit the Internet Thursday.

"He's clearly delusional, and he's not alone," Kanahi said. "If you publish less, how is that more robust? How can you grow a media group while cutting staff?"

"It takes a team of bullshit-infected people to come up with something that big. We're worried this could take down the entire news industry."

A quarantine site hasn't been selected yet, she said.

This week's newspaper news wasn't the first time health officials saw evidence of the bullshit virus.

When the Las Vegas Review-Journal laid off nearly two dozen journalists in August 2011, Publisher Bob Brown stated that the cuts were "about growing this enterprise." He promised that "our advertisers and readers will see absolutely no impact at all," a statement that managed to be crazy and insulting at the same time.

The key is that the executives were not "spinning" the announcement, said Chambers. They actually believed that gutting an operation would help it grow. A mind free of the bullshit virus would be able to say something as simple as, "This is a tough move, but our troubled balance sheet demands it."

As for how they became infected, researchers think that the bullshit virus has lain dormant at newspapers for decades.

Journalists, after all, spend a lot of time around low-level politicians and could easily pick up the fungus from them. Due to the toxic levels of bullshit flowing through newsrooms, however — from phone calls, faxes, e-mails, reader comments and upper management — rank-and-file newshounds have developed a powerful immunity to bullshit.

News executives, however, have been away from that bullshit stew for a long time, and many never spent time in a newsroom, advancing instead from advertising or other sections. Without that built-up immunity, it was only a matter of time before they fell prey to the bullshit virus.

There is no known cure. A possible solution, at least temporarily, is to put more journalists in senior positions.

"They are infected," cautioned Kanahi. "But they know bullshit when they see it."

Paul backers run amok in Sparks, Reno

Caffeine- and adrenaline-fueled Ron Paul supporters took to the streets of Reno and Sparks following their surprise convention success this weekend, looking for more rooms to stack and contests to rig — with decidedly mixed results.

Filled with coffee and hubris, Ron Paul Revolution faithful took on a lounge act, a bingo parlor and some blackjack tables, convinced that the tide of fate was breaking their way. Earlier, Paul backers claimed an outsize number of delegates to the Republican National Convention at the Nevada convention meeting this weekend, just as they have at other recent state-level gatherings. 

The Nevada RonPaulios went on a celebration jag, first taking over Trader Dick's Lounge at the Sparks Nugget. All live music was limited to Elvis, Sinatra and Dean Martin.

When the band tried to compromise by playing Hall & Oates, Paul supporters shouted, "We don't need no Adult Education!" and peppered the stage with martini olives and lemon and lime drink garnishes.

Paul's backers next hit the Sparks Bingo Bonus Bongo Bar, where they figured there were so many of them that one of them had to win. But the prize - $1,000 and a pair of bongo drums - was won by June Blythely, a retiree from Sacramento who said she hadn't voted since 1972. 

"They kept telling me that my prize money was only worth $400 because of fiat money," said Blythely. "I told them, 'I own a Buick, and I wouldn't drive a Fiat if you paid me.' "

The Paul group then ventured to the blackjack tables at Harrah's Reno casino, scheming that if they worked together and occupied multiple tables they could beat the house.

Given the Paul supporters' penchant for betting long shots, though, too many kept hitting on 16 and 17. They were broke within an hour.

"Was very strange," said one of the blackjack dealers, Iliana Svetmonivich, a Ukranian-born nuclear physicist who emigrated to Reno in order to find a living-wage job. "They keep saying, 'Audit the Fed. Audit the Fed. No! Audit the deck!' "

Svetmonivich didn't know who Ron Paul is, but she grasped that her fervent blackjack players were politically motivated.

"If they want crazy person as president, they should make move to Russia," she said. "All politicians very crazy there."

Media flap turns into all-out war

A Twitter-driven feud between rival Las Vegas news organizations escalated into a full-blown terror campaign this week when journalists decided to put down their pens and take up swords — specifically, homemade explosives and high-caliber firearms.

The dispute between reporters at the Las Vegas Review-Journal and KLAS-TV star George Knapp started when the R-J scooped everyone in town on the arrest of a suspect who allegedly committed several brutal murders and sexual assaults.

Knapp initially Tweeted that the report was "greatly exaggerated" and insisted that "No one has been arrested for the double murders." After police confirmed that an arrest had been made, Knapp followed with a piece asserting that the paper's stories had endangered the investigation, a charge the R-J vigorously disputed.

Then, in the words of Anchorman Ron Burgundy, things "really got out of hand fast."

It started with the detonation of an improvised explosive device intended to take out Knapp on his drive to work. As a longtime investigative reporter, though, Knapp is insanely paranoid, and he drives a double-armored Cadillac Escalade with a swivel-mounted .50-caliber machine gun on the roof. 

The bomb did no damage and no one was injured.

A group called the RJL took credit for the attack. RJL purportedly means "Righteous Justice League." But seriously, that's not going to fool anyone.

Knapp allegedly retaliated by strafing the R-J's offices with his machine gun. The bunker-like building absorbed the rounds without incident, although the luxury automobile that Publisher Bob Brown flaunts to his cash-strapped employees exploded, most likely from a bullet that pierced the gas tank.

Finally, members of the rival news teams gathered on the site of the demolished Moulin Rouge casino for a brawl to settle it all, just like in "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy":

Handicapping the match was tough. The R-J has superior numbers, but KLAS cameramen, like television cameramen everywhere, are roughly the size of midget Bigfoots and have calves as big as turkey breasts. They're tough to stop once they get momentum.

Instead of fighting, though, the sides took turns quoting lines from "Anchorman." 

"No commercials - no mercy!" got a big laugh, and they decided to skip to the part of the movie where everyone has a Miller High Life. Also, no one had a trident.

Both groups decamped to Larry's Villa, where they drank cheap beer but did not eat the food, because that place is kinda nasty.