Pearl River      Who wants to wakeup on a Sunday morning and find out that their president lied and ordered bombs to hit three locations in Iran, bringing us, yet again, to the brink of another endless war in the Middle East.  Now Trump says the two week process to give peace and negotiations a chance was really just a ruse to catch Iran off guard.  He fooled me, too, but he didn’t really have any credibility with me in the first place, and I wasn’t seeing him on the other side of the negotiating table.  Not sure that he had much credibility with Iran before, but certainly he has none now, so we can kiss any chance of a negotiated settlement anytime soon at this point.

Some good news in the papers when I read that the Senate parliamentarian had nixed the effort to sneak into a budget reconciliation bill massive cuts in food stamps, meaning they have to go back to the drawing board.  I think the House parliamentarian had said much the same thing, but the cowboys over there just ignored the ruling.  Maybe the Senate won’t starve more children, but lord save us from what else they may do to keep padding the bank accounts of the rich.

I’m going to stick with my plan though and talk about something we all love:  national parks.  There are two unmitigated bargains that have been offered by the federal government.  One is Global Entry allowing people to be precleared to return to the country when they travel abroad for only a hundred bucks.  The other a couple of years ago was a lifetime pass to enter US national parks for $80.  National parks are inarguably one of the special things that actually have always made America great.

It turns out their natural wonder and huge popularity across the political spectrum is not enough to protect them.  As a parks fan, I also am a member and supporter of the National Parks Conservation Association and their magazine.  Normally, this is just boosterism, but the current issue calls a spade a spade in a multipage spread on the devastation that the Trump administration is meting out to the park system.  They hammered home a timeline of outrages, so I’ll share some of the horror of this attack:

• January 20 – 2000 job offers rescinded and 7000 summer job offers delayed.
• January 25 – 2500 Park Service staff saw writing on the wall and took early retirement and payout offer.
• February 4 – 11 leases are canceled without penalty after 34 were slated.
• February 3 – Secretary of Interior seeks to maximize mining and oil and gas production on public lands, including national monuments.
• February 13 – LGBTQ references are scrubbed from monuments and website.
• February 14 – 1000 probationary Park employees are fired.
• February 24 – Overnight travel is banned and there’s a $1 limit on credit cards for any purchases.
• March 14 – New national monuments are threatened with removal.
• March 20 – Interior says it will pave a road through the Gates of the Artic National Park in Alaska for a pipeline project.
• March 27—Trump issues executive order to witch-hunt all parks for so-called “partisan ideology.”

Let’s stop there.  That’s just the topline damage in the first three months of the administration.  It continues to get worse.  Some park rangers have created a semi-underground organization called Resistance Rangers.  Maybe between the association and the rangers the message to save the parks can get some traction.  Both are worth supporting, even if it’s another war we’re having to try to stop.