Obama's NPS Holds Tourists Hostage

It's ironic that Barack Obama prattles on about how Republicans are holding a gun to the head of the American people when Dear President is using his armed US Park Police and Rangers posses to actually hold tourists hostage.

US 212 closed due to
winter weather conditions.

A small geography lesson is in order. Cooke City, Montana (elevation 7,835 feet) is a tourist town located four miles outside the northeast entrance to Yellowstone National Park. There is one road into and out of Cooke City. To the west the road out travels down through Yellowstone National Park, then outside the park to Gardiner Montana on US 89, continuing down Paradise Valley towards Livingston and points beyond. Leaving Cooke City to the east is US 212, the Beartooth Highway, which crosses the Abasaroka Mountains, Beartooth Pass, (Elevation 10,947 feet) and the Beartooth plateau, before dropping down to Red Lodge Montana, then on to Billings. Due to continuous extreme weather conditions, the eastern route is closed in winter, i.e., most of the year in these parts. Typically, the Beartooth Highway closes in mid-October and opens in late May to early June.

Green Line is Yellowstone NP Border, Red is Beartooth Highway, Yellow are alternate roads.

Early season snow storms this year have closed the Beartooth Highway since September 24, and shut down the Chief Joseph Highway bypass as well, giving tourists in Cooke City no way out because they are blocked by Obama's NPS thuggery.

The most recent storm dropped between 10 and 14 inches of snow, preventing road travel to the Chief Joseph Highway, which can be used as an alternate route out of Cooke City. And Yellowstone closed Tuesday because of a congressional budget impasse that caused the federal government to shut down. Locals can travel through along the still-plowed roads of the park to Gardiner with special stickers they apply for from the park. Tourists, however, are unable to traverse the stretch, barring a medical emergency. “We're trapped,” said Bill Anderson, of Wichita, Kan., one of about 15 tourists in Cooke City. “It's nuts.”

How can it be nuts?  This is the policy of Dear President of the United States. Don't dare call him nuts, lest the plethora of useful idiots on the left label you extremist, racist and bigot.  Just say it's time to turn national parks over to the states. We've had enough of this.