Netflix - Wild Wild Country - story of the takeover of a small town in Oregon by cultists. Sex cult - murder - election rigging - poisoning - wild stuff.

I was in high school in Oregon when this took place - pretty amazing story.

Som - about those who study to become master wine sommelier's - i know nothing about wine - but the process was fascinating to watch.
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Rules of engagement I believe had the Sheriff talking to Koresh, and saying come out we won't shoot(as they were shooting).
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When they intend to utilize surprise (and even that seemed unnecessary) and they hear "Hey, we're definitely blown" and the response is "oh...well I guess we need to move in NOW then..."

I just can't wrap my head around what they were thinking. I just don't understand it. The entire basis for the damn warrant was the possession of a giant stockpile of arms and ammunition so when they know you're coming, rather than coming up with a different solution why don't you at LEAST stand down? They're not gonna be on Alert 1 for a month or more.

What was the imminent threat that required you go in right that very second? You know they're armed to the teeth and you have to believe that if a stick breaks too loudly, bullets are gonna start flying. This wasn't any sort of hostage situation - it was a warrant that they'd spent awhile trying to get and it was one that was basically an illegal possession charge. Chill the fuck out for a minute, m'kay?

I did have a vague understanding of that. What I didn't have any concept of was the complete disconnect between the negotiating team and the hostage rescue team. They were often operating completely at odds. The negotiators would say one thing and then the HRT guys would do the opposite and so after a few days the negotiators were completely neutered because they couldn't actually assure anything.

Jeff Jamar just fucked that thing up coming and going. He HAD to establish operational authority on the ground. And I don't care if it's the negotiating team or the HRT folks - both approaches had a ton of merit. And had EITHER one of them taken point the job gets done. But to leave both arms just flapping in the wind like that led to absolute catastrophy.

The families of those people that were killed, both the Davidians and the agents, should be PISSED.

Reno took heat as the AG (and the FBI slapping that one woman that left the compound in irons and an orange jumpsuit within hours of her leaving was certainly idiotic) but it was largely the FBI and Jeff Jamar that completely botched that job.

Williams Session was fired as the Director of the FBI and carried himself as a scapegoat because of it - fuuuuuuck thaaaaat. Your people couldn't have done a worse job on purpose. It was a total top-down failure of leadership.
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That's the thing - If it's the part I'm thinking of, I believe it was a local smokey working on behalf of the FBI who was saying they wouldn't shoot while the FBI was simply ignoring him and doing it anyway.

Again - the disconnect between the negotiating and tactical teams was just unreal. You'd have thought they'd have occasionally been on the same page merely by accident yet it seemed like every time one party made a representation, the other party immediately acted in contravention to it.
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Last summer, I started going through the entire Ken Burns filmography, in rough chronological order (by date of event/life, not date it was produced), with the exception of Baseball, which is what I started with. The green font indicates I've seen it.

Brooklyn Bridge (1981)
The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God (1984)
The Statue of Liberty (1985)
Huey Long (1985)
The Congress (1988)
Thomas Hart Benton (1988)
The Civil War (1990; 9 episodes)[a]
Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (1992)
Baseball (1994; 9 episodes – updated with The Tenth Inning in 2010, with Lynn Novick)
The West (1996; 8 episodes)
Thomas Jefferson (1997)
Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery (1997)
Frank Lloyd Wright (1998, with Lynn Novick)
Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony (1999)
Jazz (2001; 10 episodes)
Mark Twain (2001)
Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip (2003)
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2005; 2 episodes)
The War (2007, with Lynn Novick; 7 episodes)
The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009; 6 episodes)
Prohibition (2011, with Lynn Novick; 3 episodes)
The Dust Bowl (2012; 4 episodes)
The Central Park Five (2012, with Sarah Burns and David McMahon)
Yosemite: A Gathering of Spirit (2013)
The Address (2014)
The Roosevelts: An Intimate History (2014; 7 episodes)
Jackie Robinson (2016, with Sarah Burns and David McMahon; 2 episodes)
Defying the Nazis: The Sharps' War (2016, with Artemis Joukowsky)
The Vietnam War (2017, with Lynn Novick; 10 episodes)
The Mayo Clinic: Faith – Hope – Science (2018, with Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers)
Country Music (2019, 8 episodes)
Hemingway (2021, with Lynn Novick; 3 episodes)
Muhammad Ali (2021, with Sarah Burns and David McMahon; 4 episodes)
Benjamin Franklin (2022, 2 episodes)
The U.S. and the Holocaust (2022, produced and directed with the assistance of Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein)

I'm in the middle of The War right now. Mark Twain was probably my favorite one, although each one of them have been great, except for The Shakers, which was really dull.
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We can make it worse...

The reason the ATF was there was because to convert a semi automatic to a full you have to pay for a sticker..they're 200 a piece...the gubment wanted it's several thousand dollars they thought they were being jipped out of it..

That's literally why they went there.
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Eh, the documentary at least indicated that they were having grenades and other explosives delivered to the place and so there were genuinely illegal items there. Maybe I'll try to learn more about the weeks/months leading up to the raid one of these days.

Because there had to be SOMETHING that kept them from just slow-playing it once they were blown - right?

Or did some dipshit just really want to get his gun off?
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That doc leaves out some stuff, the entire situation was a shit show.

But hey it happened right after Ruby Ridge which was also a shit show.
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I'm guessing there was some sisterfucker along the way saying, "I didn't get all dressed up for nothing."

I watched this on your recommendation. Thanks for that. I had to get into the right headspace for the kid fucking. My daughter is 9...That shit hits different when you have a daughter that age.

I might start digging into Waco and Ruby Ridge a bit. After the benefit of 30 years of hindsight, holy shit... I'm not starting a cult or anything but the gun nuts are a little less crazy sounding today than they were yesterday. How the hell did the government bumble fuck those 2 instances so goddamned bad, and manage to completely (from my perspective as a kid) control the narrative that these guys were 100% bad guys that had to be taken down? And how the hell does Clinton not have to wear this at least to some degree?

Really interesting stuff. Also depressing....Shit from my youth is fast becoming ancient history to be studied....:-)
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Before the internet, information was controlled with the narrative that was wanted. There weren't a whole lot of dissenting opinions unless it was in a documentary or something like that.
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My oldest daughter is 9 as well.

And the kidfucking, for whatever reason, rolled off my back. I think it's just one of those things where it's just so obviously gross that it barely registered with me.

But Gat DAMN that phonecall between the survivor as a little girl and her dad. She was the same age as my girl is now. And you know he's gotta be pretty certain things are gonna go poorly for him. Just trying to put myself in his shoes (getting left for being a cuckold notwithstanding) - ugh. Not great times. Then she breaks down and I just had to kinda turn my head off for a second to make sure we didn't get into THAT particular headspace. Nah, I don't need to think about my daughters reaction should I die young for any reason, thanks. I've gotta go to work tomorrow and the amount of liquor I'd need to chase away those demons will make for a very unpleasant morning.

But I was also a bit taken aback by how delayed she seemed. "The ride was bumpy daddy..."

My daughter would've been like "Hey - so the gunfire and dead people and y'all having us escorted out of there by armed officers - DAFUQ dad????" I mean there'd be a pretty dang long conversation regarding just exactly what is going on here.

Now I'll be proud papa here and say my kids damn smart (one of 5 kids in the whole damn district that didn't even have to take the primary gifted exam - just shot straight into the class - BOOM!) but I've been around other kids as well and they aren't THAT far removed. I mean that's the conversation I'd expect to have with the 5 year old. And not the 5 year old girl; she's more advanced than that. The twin boy. And he's dumb as a goddamn hammer. He literally ate a mouthful of pepper at the restaurant last night because he tried to screw the top like a pepper grinder directly into his mouth and the lid came off and dumped a bunch of pepper down his gullet.

That's a stoooooopid 5 year old and he's about on par with that 9 yr old girl in the documentary.

So that's a long way to say that maaaaaaybe things worked out pretty alright for most of those kids, even the ones that WEREN'T getting diddled.
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And yeah, as a kid the whole 'unreasonable search and seizure' thing just sailed right past me. Like you, I recall little more than "The Wacko's from Waco" and shit like that.

I mean c'mon folks - this was a paramilitary force with fucking ABRAMS TANKS on the scene all coming from a completely botched attempt at serving a search warrant?

I vaguely remembered their being armored vehicles there but my memory was a couple Bradleys. They're rolling an Abrams out there?

I'd say that everyone involved deserved to be fired but the more digging I did, the more I realized that most of them were. A couple coincidentally resigned or retired within months of it, but the powers that be realized full well that they fucked up in a biiiiiig way.
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That's interesting how differently we processed the kid stuff with our 9 year old daughters. My thought was HOLY SHIT, my 9 year old looks and sounds older than that 11 year old that he's fucking. That just...fuck. Fucking creepers man.

And I kind of tuned out the lady because I kind of got lost in the whole mom/dad thing when Karesh wanted to fuck her. After reading your post, I'm guessing I mentally discredited her for hand waiving her mom objecting to Karesh fucking her. There is no way at her age that any well adjusted person just has nothing to say about it. I think I just subconsciously discredited what she was saying.

And yeah, the tape was tough. Especially from the dad side, but you're right, it's kind of a weird conversation. But then again I have no idea what an 11 year old is supposed to say after going through a firefight. It's hard for me to believe that my daughter wouldn't say at the very minimum, "Dad, this is weird, I'm scared."

What has a kid been through to roll out with strangers after an epic firefight and not be straight horrified? Hell I'm 40 and I'd probably be fucking horrified. Maybe the kid is in shock and is some sort of base functions-only zombie mode or something. Don't know, don't want to know, but I think it's worth asking, just what exactly had that kid been through to respond that way?

One other thing that might impact that conversation was she never saw her father because the mom wouldn't let her see him because of the Karesh fucking. That might be the reason for the lower level conversation. Maybe I'm mis-remembering all that noise, but I think that's right.

One reason I might be more sensitive to the kiddie diddling is my daughter is a goddamned space cadet and seeming oblivious to everything real life, and I legitimately worry about people taking advantage of her. That may be why that part stood out to me more.

Anyway, it's interesting how differently we viewed the events depicted.
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Free solo is good.

I just watched the documentary Wrecking Crew on YouTube about session musicians. It was better than I was expecting.

Music lovers will be astonished at the influence The Wrecking Crew wielded over rock and pop music in the 1960s and early 1970s. These unsung instrumentalists were the de-facto backing band on hit records by The Beach Boys, Phil Spector, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra, Sonny & Cher, Elvis, The Monkees and many more. These dedicated musicians brought the flair and musicianship that made the American “West Coast Sound” a dominant cultural force around the world
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there are alot of 30 for 30 worth checking out. The one that sticks out is Senna about the racecar driver
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