Birds of the Sonoran Desert

Birds, ,

 

Black-throated Sparrow

I am a wild flower guy.  But this is the worst wild flower year in Arizona in at least 15 years and perhaps ever. So I have been forced to adapt.  Instead of wild flowers I have pursued birds. I love birds too, but unlike flowers, they don’t often stay in one place. That makes photographing them tricky.

“In many experts’ view, dinosaurs never really went extinct. Small ones, whose scales were modified into feathers, can be seen almost anywhere you look.”[1]

Any creature that lives in the desert has a big challenge–how to survive. Surprisingly many creatures do survive here. Some even thrive.

At first that sounds hard to believe. After all water, which is absolutely essentail for any animal to survvie is hard to find. Added to that, it is often hot here and as it heats up so does evaporations, tending to elminate what little war was here in the first place. As if that is not enough an animal’s need for water increases as the temperature increases. I can testify to that. Sometimes, on a hike, I have thought water was not required. That is always a mistake. I try to make sure I always have water along, and usually I need it.

Finally, when it is hot it is difficult for organisms to maintain their correct body temeprature. So how do they do?

The answer is that every creature that tries ot live here must have a survival strategy. And it must be a good one. That applies to mammals, insects, and birds.

The most common strategy is avoidance. Like lazy boys who hate work do their best to avoid it, so animals of the desert try to avoid the heat. Many do that by sleeping during they day. Usually there are more animals active at night than during the day.

The birds that are nocturnal like owls or crepuscular (dusk-to-dawn) have an advantage. For example. Owls use this strategy. Despite the challenges I was surprised to learn from a veteran birder, that out of the 50 states in the United States Arizona had the third highest numbers of distinct species. Only California and Texas beat it! And both Texas and California have long coasts with wonderful sea birds and shorebirds. Even Florida and Alaska which are both famous for their birds, have less varieties that can be found there.

Why is that? The answer is diversity. Arizona has diversity of terrain. It has mountains, it has plains, it has grasslands, and of course, it has deserts. Add those up and that makes birds. Surprisingly many bird species.Despite the challenges I was surprised to learn from a veteran birder, that out of the 50 states in the United States Arizona had the third highest numbers of distinct species. Only California and Texas beat it! And both Texas and California have long coasts with wonderful sea birds and shorebirds. Even Florida and Alaska which are both famous for their birds, have less varieties that can be found there.

According to Wildbirds.com, California has 664 species of birds, Texas 644, and Arizona 555. Manitoba by comparison has a paltry 390.

Why is that? The answer is diversity. Arizona has diversity of terrain. It has mountains, it has plains, it has grasslands, and of course, it has deserts. Add those up and that makes birds. Surprisingly many bird species.

 

The House Finch was introduced in the eastern USA and over time has expanded its range from their to most of North America, including both Manitoba and Arizona.

Contrary to what I just said, the Cactus Wren is not shy and will stand still for a photograph, unlike my even more lovely grand daughters.

[1] Douglas H. Chadwick, Enduring America, (1995) National Geographic Society, p. 96

Sonoran Desert

religion,

 

We have been staying in southern Arizona for 3 months for the 4th year in a row. Where we live is part of the Sonoran Desert. It is fantastic place. It is what keeps us coming back.

According to A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert it contains 100,000 sq. miles according to the current definition of what constitutes a desert. In any event it is big.

Usery Regional Park where we spend a lot of time contains about 120,000 acres of the Sonoran Desert. This is really just a small part of it. The park is part of the Maricopa Municipal Park system, the largest such system in the United States.

We have often gone on guided walks with Ranger B from Usery Park. He said that when he first appeared in the Sonoran Desert after living in Wisconsin he thought he had landed on another planet. I know what he means. I had the same experience when I first saw the Sonoran Desert and compared it to Manitoba. It was a different world. All the plants and all the animals were so different.

On one of our guided walks, Ranger B asked us what was the toughest thing in the desert. One person said the Gila Woodpecker, another said the rattlesnake, one said mountain lion, and another said coyotes. Ranger B disagreed. He said in his opinion the the toughest thing must be a plant. Plants of the desert are very tough. The animals can move. They can find shady spots when the sun is hot and a warmer spot when it is cold. Plants are stuck in one place. They have no choice but to adapt. If it is 120 °F that is just too bad for the plant. It must accept that for it cannot run away or hide.

There are about 2,500 plant species in the Sonoran Desert and many of them are extremely tough. Otherwise they would not be able to survive here.

The Sonoran Desert has the greatest biodiversity of any of the 30 (or so) deserts of the world. That is because it has more precipitation than most deserts and the granitic soils are permeable and hold water well. It also has mild winters. Some deserts get very cold in winter. It is also blessed by having 2 rainy seasons, one in summer and one in winter. This diversity is quite visible in Usery Park. Looking at the desert from inside that park makes one appreciate the variety of plants. Vegetation is not as sparse as one might expect.

This is from San Tan Mountain Regional Park, another park we frequently visit.

Ranger B explained that this year this year however it received a lot less rain than normal and to make things even worse, with higher than normal temperatures. That is not a good combination for deserts. He said in his 15 years here he has never seen the desert so stressed. That is really bad for a wild flower guy like me. It is the worst wild flower season he has seen in 15 years and it might the worst ever. That is how dry and hot it has been. Great for tourists; not so great for wild flowers. This is a big disappointment for me, as I love to photograph wild flowers.

In extremely dry years plants do not even issue forth leaves, let alone blossoms. The roots lie dormant and wait for better years and thoughts of reproduction are tamped down until the good times return.

Meanwhile wild flower photographers like me gnash our teeth.

Deserts

Natural History, religion

 

What is a desert? That is not as simple as I thought. Deserts are defined by water—or rather, by the absence of water. Dryness and sunlight are what deserts are all about. Buckets of sunlight, rather than buckets of rain. Plants or animals that don’t like that cannot survive here. Some plants, amazingly, even prefer the south facing side of the mountain.

Geographers define deserts as land where evaporation exceeds rainfall. I was surprised to learn that there is no specific amount of rainfall that serves as an agreed upon criteria as what is and what is not a desert. Deserts range from extremely arid regions to those that are ample for the support of life. Geographers classify rainfall into semi-deserts that are ones that have precipitation between 150 and 300 to 400 mm per year. So called “true deserts” are those that have rainfall below 150 mm per year and extreme deserts as those with rainfall below 70 mm per year.

Deserts occupy about 26% of the continental areas of the world. Deserts occur in 2 distinct belts. One is between 15º and 35º latitude in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres—the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn.

There are 14 deserts in the world (depending on who is counting) with an area larger than 52,000 sq. km (20,100 sq. mi.). It may surprise some that the largest desert in the world is not the Sahara desert. It is only the second largest. The largest is Antarctica not often thought of as a desert, but that is what it is. Antarctica has 14,000,000 sq. km. and the Sahara with 9,000.000 sq. km.

There are 5 distinct deserts in the American Southwest: the Sonoran, The Chihuahuan, The Great Basin, and the Mojave. Some also include the Colorado as a separate desert. Although each is a desert, each is also different.

The Sonoran Desert, where we have been living for the 4th year,  is semi-arid desert and it covers part of southern California and Arizona as well as northern Mexico. Because of summer’s “monsoons” and winter storms this is the wettest of all the North American deserts. It is most well known for its iconic tall Saguaros cactus some of which can reach 50 feet in height.

The Great Basin is the most characteristic of the Southwest with its canyon, mesas, buttes, and cliffs.

The Mojave Desert is a large desert that spreads across northern Arizona, Nevada, and California. It is dry most of the year but a small amount of winter rain can bring it to life.

The Chihuahuan desert is found mainly in Mexico but reaches north to Albuquerque, New Mexico, so we spent some time in it too.

One of the things that struck me about the desert was the amazing way that plants grow there. If you have a pine forest, unlike our pine forests, the trees are not crowded. They are well spaced. Where shrubs cover a mountainside, they do so in the most spotty of fashions. Vegetation never covers the ground, even where it grows best. The plants demand space from all around them—like snooty royalty.

The plants even want some separation from those fantastic rocks that I love so much. Usually they are found well-spaced, like surprisingly obedient school children. Willa Cather put it well. She said,

From the flat red sea of sand rose great rock mesas, generally Gothic in out-line, resembling vast cathedrals. They were not crowded together in disorder, but placed in wide spaces, long vistas between them. This plain might once have been an enormous city, all the smaller quarters destroyed by time, only the public buildings left.

The Darkest Hour

Movies, War

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pyouoc0kn3hwvqv/Screenshot%202018-03-01%2022.53.13.png?dl=0

 

I liked this film; I liked it a lot. It was so well done that it really made me believe I was listening to Churchill in the English House of Commons. Of course I admit I get sucked in by movies or television shows like those of Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, Jobs, A Few Good Men etc.) that rely on words and ideas more than action. This film was like that. Frankly, I have loved action movies all my life, but my love has run its course. I am sick of the same thing over and over again. A Good Guy with a gun fights enormous numbers of Bad Guys with guns against enormous odds. No doubt filling the NRA with orgasmic delight. Of course this likely won’t make me skip the next Bond Film, but that only means I am weak.

I liked this movie. As Wendy Ide said in The Guardian, “words, rather than guns, are the main weapons. And wielded by Winston Churchill ( Gary Oldman), peering beadily from behind a fortification of quivering prosthetics and a battery of smouldering cigars), words can be every bit as persuasive as bullets.” I like movies that treat ideas like bullets. After all, ideas are much more powerful than bullets.

I also loved the images of musty old War Rooms filled with cigar chomping old men. Parliament again filled with musty old men and, very rarely, a brave woman. I loved the images of glasses of whiskey and drifting cigar smoke. I found the backroom politics and intellectual skirmishes could build excitement every bit as much as a Good Guy with a Gun fighting a Bad Guy with an AR-15.

Yet I have one major and one minor caveat. First the minor. I found the impromptu poll on the train absolutely unconvincing. With not a word of encouragement from Churchill would the entire train car erupt in patriotic zeal to fight the Huns? Perhaps, but to me it seemed ludicrously staged.

My major caveat was the stunning scene of a Parliament filled with cheering politicians after Churchill’s famous speech on the occasion of the evacuation at Dunkirk, even though I found it believable. It was a great speech and I love great speeches as I said. But I was disturbed by the mob clamouring for war. That image haunts me.

It reminded me of Bertrand Russell’s autobiography in which he described with astonishment the exuberance of the people in Trafalgar Square when England declared war on the Germans at the beginning of World War I. Remember that this was a war that made absolutely no sense. The war to end all wars. That didn’t work too well did it?

We should never forget how after the killing of a Hapsburg Prince in Serbia, the countries of Europe fell into a melee of war against each other in order to protect their right to colonize the world. All in order to support their local business interests. Then they called upon the world’s countries to send their sons and daughters to defeat the enemy. Yet in Trafalgar Square hundreds of people gathered to celebrate! They were ecstatic at the prospect of a dubious war. Few questioned the madness. In the First World War some 40 million civilians and soldiers were killed. And all for no good reason whatsoever.

I know there was more justification for World War II. I would not advocate “appeasing” a second time a political leader like Hitler who had already demonstrated his capacity to ignore international agreements. But I find it difficult to celebrate. The lust for war is not a pretty thing. It is particularly ugly after the fact when the losses are counted. After all In World War II 60 million were killed. Besides that it provided cover for Hitler and the Nazis to slaughter millions of Jews, and others.

I find it difficult to celebrate that. But everyone should see this movie.

Get Out

Movies, religion

This film has been almost universally praised, but I felt it was lame. I know it explores racism and even slavery and it is very important to do that, particularly in a country that seems desperate to forget that there ever was, or still is, racism. I just thought the movie was a lame horror flick. And I hate horror flicks. Perhaps my prejudice blinded my limited critical judgment. I wonder what others think. Was I wrong?

More broadly, the fact that this movie earned near universal applause makes me think that perhaps films are universally overrated as an art from. Films are still a very immature art form. Give them time to grow up. Is that true?

Call Me by Your Name

Movies, religion

In many ways this is a traditional ‘coming of age movie.’ It celebrates the time of a young many finding love for the first time. The twist is that he experiences both heterosexual love and homosexual love and it is homosexual love that triumphs. Yet the themes explored are really universal. Just like Brokeback Mountain’s exploration of a failure to grasp love when it was on offer demonstrated the tragic loss that can occur when that offer is not accepted, whether straight or gay, this film considers the tragedy that can still occur when the chance is taken, but ultimately short-lived, again whether gay or straight. In this film the love ends in heartbreak, but is still treasured. Perhaps that is as good as it usually gets.

What I liked about the film was that while it lavishly explored the excitement of youth exploring new ideas, music, art, and in this film above all the sensuality of love, it did not have to lead us to believe that love conquers all in the end as every Hallmark movie does. Sometimes it is good while it lasts, but when it is over it is never a mistake, but it is still over. A chance was seized. When it was over it was simply over, with heartbreak perhaps, but never for nothing. It is still good.

I also like the fact that the older boy (man really) may have appeared to be a shallow cad, and perhaps even turned out to be one, but he was not without empathy and understanding in the end. Shallow maybe, but deep too. Are such contradictions not permitted in matters of the heart?

Homeless Veterans and Hopeless Presidents

politics, Trump, War

I have been thinking about Donald Trump again. It is hard to avoid in the US. He is ubiquitous. He wants to have a military parade. It will cost millions, but that does not matter. Trump wants it to celebrate his own greatness. He is the President of the greatest military power on earth. Isn’t that worth celebrating? Isn’t that worth spending millions?

This President is the same man who glibly answers a question about whether he will bomb North Korea with a shrug and, “We’ll see.” To Trump it hardly matters that if he bombed North Korea they would likely respond with an atomic bomb on South Korea and that would likely mean that millions of people would die.

I remember last year when my friend Dave and I went to downtown Phoenix to see a college basketball game. As we dined I could not help but notice a homeless couple inhabiting a bench on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. A sign beside them indicated that both of them were veterans. Could this be true? The man was slumped over in his chair–asleep. I think his chair was a wheel chair but it was hard to tell, because it was so loaded with “stuff.” The woman sat on the bench in the small part of it not loaded with her stuff. I suspect that they kept their entire belongings with them.

Both of them looked like they had worn their clothes for a long time. The clothes were heavy winter clothes. This was appropriate for the night, which was bound to be cold. Arizona is a better place than Manitoba to be homeless but it was still not great to be homeless. Both looked like their clothes had not been washed in a long time. At one point the woman tapped the man in the head. She tapped him hard, trying to wake him up. But he did not wake up. He was “out of it.” She picked up a cigarette butt from the ground and smoked it. He did finally wake up but soon fell back asleep. I thought of cats that lived with humans. They had nothing to do, so they sleep for about 22 hours a day. Is this what he did? I had no idea.

I really don’t know what the status of the couple was. It just did not look very good. I know I should not be judgmental, but it is hard to avoid. I felt sorry for them. Their life seemed harsh, cold, and boring.

I had many questions about the couple. Were they really veterans? What did they do there all day? How long did they stay there? Did they have a better life than I imagined? Was someone helping them out? What had a brought them to this position?

I learned that at the time there were 564,708 homeless people in America on average every night. This is according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Many estimate that the real numbers are much higher than that. Nearly half of those are people in families. Homeless families in other words. I heard on the news that many college students are now homeless in the United States. How can that be? The main reason for homelessness is the cost of housing. Many people just can’t afford to rent, let alone, buy a home. The problem is that housing in the United States, like it is in Canada, is expensive. Too expensive for many people.

The number of homeless veterans is surprising. 17% of homeless people in America are veterans. Even more surprising, to me at least, the number of homeless female veterans is on the rise. In 2006 there were 150 homeless female veterans of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. By 2011 that number rose to 1,700 according to the Disabled Veterans National Foundation. In fact female veterans are 2 to 3 times more likely to be homeless than any other group in the American adult population. I found that stunning.

I also learned that veterans as a whole are 50% more likely to become homeless than other Americans due to poverty, lack of support networks, and dismal living conditions in overcrowded or substandard housing. The greatest risk factors for veterans are a lack of social support and isolation after discharge from the armed forces. Veterans have low marriage rates and high divorce rates. At this time 1 in 5 veterans live alone. It is also well known that social networks are vitally important for those who have a crisis or need temporary help. Without such assistance veterans are at high risk of homelessness. Added to that, many veterans suffer from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder that frequently goes undiagnosed.

Nearly half a million veterans are “severely rent burdened and pay more than 50% of their income for rent. More than half of veterans (55%) with severe housing cost burdens have fallen below the poverty line. 43% of veterans receive food stamps. Times are tough for veterans. Times are good for Donald Trump who avoided the draft 5 times.

Lets compare the President of the United States to the homeless veterans I saw today. Or as Leonard Cohen said, “let us compare mythologies.” I am assuming they were veterans as advertised since I have no reason to believe their sign did not tell the truth.

Steve Eder and Dave Phillips wrote an interesting article on Donald Trump’s military “career”. It was not just brief; it was non-existent. This is how they described that “career”,

 

Back in 1968, at the age of 22, Donald J. Trump seemed the picture of health. He stood 6 feet 2 inches with an athletic build; had played football, tennis and squash; and was taking up golf. His medical history was unblemished, aside from a routine appendectomy when he was 10.

But after he graduated from college in the spring of 1968, making him eligible to be drafted and sent to Vietnam, he received a diagnosis that would change his path: bone spurs in his heels.

The diagnosis resulted in a coveted 1-Y medical deferment that fall, exempting him from military service as the United States was undertaking huge troop deployments to Southeast Asia, inducting about 300,000 men into the military that year.

The deferment was one of five Mr. Trump received during Vietnam. The others were for education. [1]

It is well known that many wealthy people influenced their physicians to give them “favorable” (bad in other words) reports to the Draft Board. We have no proof at all that this is what Trump did. It is just that it would not have been unusual for people in his circumstances to do that. Nothing from his known character, or that of his father, makes this unlikely either.

Eder and Philipps added the following to their story about Mr. Trump,

“Mr. Trump’s public statements about his draft experience sometimes conflict with his Selective Service records, and he is often hazy in recalling details.

In an interview with The New York Times last month, Mr. Trump said the bone spurs had been “temporary” — a “minor” malady that had not had a meaningful impact on him. He said he had visited a doctor who provided him a letter for draft officials, who granted him the medical exemption. He could not remember the doctor’s name.

“I had a doctor that gave me a letter — a very strong letter on the heels,” Mr. Trump said in the interview.

Asked to provide The Times with a copy of the letter, which he had obtained after his fourth student deferment, Mr. Trump said he would have to look for it. A spokeswoman later did not respond to repeated requests for copies of it.

The Selective Service records that remain in the National Archives — many have been discarded — do not specify what medical condition exempted Mr. Trump from military service.” [2]

 

Such a report does not inspire confidence about Mr. Trump’s military deferments. What is clear from this skimpy record is that everything turned out rather conveniently for Mr. Trump. As the Times reporters said,

 

Mr. Trump said that he could not recall exactly when he was no longer bothered by the spurs, but that he had not had an operation for the problem. “Over a period of time, it healed up,” he said.

In the 2015 biography “The Truth About Trump,” the author, Michael D’Antonio, described interviewing Mr. Trump, who at one point slipped off a loafer to display a tiny bulge on his heel. And during a news conference last year, Mr. Trump could not recall which heel had been involved, prompting his campaign to release a statement saying it was both.

Mr. Trump, who has hailed his health as “perfection,” said the heel spurs were “not a big problem, but it was enough of a problem.”

“They were spurs,” he said. “You know, it was difficult from the long-term walking standpoint.”

In December, his longtime personal physician, Dr. Harold N. Bornstein, announced that Mr. Trump had “no significant medical problems” over four decades and that, if elected, he “will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” Dr. Bornstein made no mention of the bone spurs but did note the appendectomy from Mr. Trump’s childhood.

The medical deferment meant that Mr. Trump, who had just completed the undergraduate real estate program at the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania, could follow his father into the development business, which he was eager to do.” [3]

 

The reporters also said,

“There is absolutely no evidence anywhere that Trump actually had a medical condition resembling a heel spur, other than the “strong letter” which his doctor wrote.

For many years Trump never mentioned the medical deferment. Instead he credited his deferment to luck. His personal good luck for which he was famous. He was lucky though that is clear–he was born rich.

For many years, Mr. Trump, 70, has also asserted that it was “ultimately” the luck of a high draft lottery number — rather than the medical deferment — that kept him out of the war.

But his Selective Service records, obtained from the National Archives, suggest otherwise. Mr. Trump had been medically exempted for more than a year when the draft lottery began in December 1969, well before he received what he has described as his “phenomenal” draft number.

Because of his medical exemption, his lottery number would have been irrelevant, said Richard Flahavan, a spokesman for the Selective Service System, who has worked for the agency for three decades.

“He was already classified and determined not to be subject to the draft under the conditions in place at the time,” Mr. Flahavan said.

In a 2011 television interview, Mr. Trump described watching the draft lottery as a college student and learning then that he would not be drafted.

“I’ll never forget; that was an amazing period of time in my life,” he said in the interview, on Fox 5 New York. “I was going to the Wharton School of Finance, and I was watching as they did the draft numbers, and I got a very, very high number.”

But Mr. Trump had graduated from Wharton 18 months before the lottery — the first in the United States in 27 years — was held.

The fact that a candidate seeking the presidency received military deferments or otherwise avoided fighting in Vietnam is not unusual. Voters have shown themselves willing to look past such controversies, electing George W. Bush, who served stateside in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam era, and Bill Clinton, who wrote to an Army R.O.T.C. officer in 1969 thanking him for “saving me from the draft.” [4]

Trump’s attitude to veterans is itself deeply troubling. I am surprised it is not more troubling to conservatives who always claim to be such avid supporters of the military. Of course, I am frequently surprised at how little support American veterans get even while political and business leaders wear their claims of supporting “our” vets on their sleeves. Words are cheap; actions not so much. I was dismayed last summer when he made derogatory statements about a real veteran, John McCain, the current Republican senator from Arizona that I met personally in Arizona 4 years ago. Trump said McCain was not a war hero because “I like people who weren’t captured.” Really he prefers people who did not serve at all.

In the 1990s in an interview by Howard Stern Donald Trump said, “Avoiding sexually transmitted diseases while dating “is my personal Vietnam.” [5]

So Mr. Trump avoided the draft. We can’t say that he dodged (illegally evaded) the draft. We might suspect it, but we have to admit we can’t prove it. But the fact is he did avoid the draft and instead went into business with help from his rich Daddy and he did very well. Had he not got the “strong letter” as he called it, from his doctor, he would very likely have been drafted. As Eder and Phillips reported,

“On the day of Mr. Trump’s graduation, 40 Americans were killed in Vietnam. The Pentagon was preparing to call up more troops.

With his schooling behind him, there would have been little to prevent someone in Mr. Trump’s situation from being drafted, if not for the diagnosis of his bone spurs.” [6]

There was also an interesting issue that arose at the Democrats Convention last year. It arose because Trump made disparaging remarks about another genuine veteran and war hero who happened to be Muslim. That veteran’s father, publicly addressed Trump by saying he did not understand the Constitution and had, unlike his son made no sacrifices for his country. Trump’s response was interesting. Trump said,

“I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices,” Mr. Trump said to Mr. Stephanopoulos. “I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I’ve had tremendous success. I think I’ve done a lot.” [7]

The important thing here is that Trump believes this. He believes he has made sacrifices by making a lot of money and creating jobs. Since when is having worked hard a sacrifice, particularly when it is work that was extremely well paid? Since when is having “tremendous success” a sacrifice? Mr. Trump’s views of what constitutes a sacrifice is odd to say the very least one can say.

All that is certain in this history is that Donald Trump the son of a very rich man who was not averse to using his power to his own advantage or that of his family, got 5 very convenient deferments. The two veterans (if they were that, but there are many others who certainly are) were not so fortunate. Many veterans have not been so fortunate.

I could not help but believe that this couple on a public sidewalk in Phoenix represented the sick underbelly of the richest country in the world. America is a place where many people are homeless. Many young people in the US suffer from mental illness before attaining the age of 21 years. At the same time, funds are often not available to help the mentally ill. People in gated communities, like Johnson Ranch where we are living here in Arizona for 3 months (though it is not even gated just ‘wanna be’ gated), pay little attention to people like this. I really paid little attention either I had to admit. People are more concerned about cutting taxes than avoiding the cutting of social services. His current budget also proposes to cut the State Department budget by 30%. The State Department uses much of its money on diplomacy with the object of avoiding wars in which members of the Armed Forces often die or get hurt.

Then what does President Trump now suggest we do for our veterans? Have a costly military parade where the country boasts about its weapons. Is that the best this country can do for its veterans?

All of this is found in the richest country in the world. We have to ask, ‘Is America great?’

[1]Steve Eder and Dave Philipps, “Donald Trump’s Draft Deferments: Four to College, One to Bad Feet,” New York Times (August 1, 2016)

[2] Steve Eder and Dave Philipps, “Donald Trump’s Draft Deferments: Four to College, One to Bad Feet,” New York Times (August 1, 2016)

[3] Steve Eder and Dave Philipps, “Donald Trump’s Draft Deferments: Four to College, One to Bad Feet,” New York Times (August 1, 2016)

[4] Steve Eder and Dave Philipps, “Donald Trump’s Draft Deferments: Four to College, One to Bad Feet,” New York Times (August 1, 2016)

[5] Steve Eder and Dave Philipps, “Donald Trump’s Draft Deferments: Four to College, One to Bad Feet,” New York Times (August 1, 2016)

[6] Steve Eder and Dave Philipps, “Donald Trump’s Draft Deferments: Four to College, One to Bad Feet,” New York Times (August 1, 2016)

[7] Steve Eder and Dave Philipps, “Donald Trump’s Draft Deferments: Four to College, One to Bad Feet,” New York Times (August 1, 2016)