Two decades ago our Double Rafter Cattle Drives hosted a Tennessee cowboy affectionately tagged Dr. Nate.  He stood six-foot four, weighed 300 pounds, and had a redneck, southern accent.  He claimed to be the first member of his family to graduate college and his first day at med school, the faculty thought he “was there to fix the air-conditioning.”  We loved Dr. Nate. 

We were camped along the Little Horn River and the intense afternoon sun had the cattle brushed-up in the shade.  We unloaded the chuckwagon and set up camp before deciding to cool off in the river.  Many guests packed swimwear and plodded to the river in their boots, hats and board-shorts.  The cowboy crew, responsible for packing everyone’s gear on mules, specialized in lightness and efficiency, so skipped personal, non-essentials like swimsuits.  Also, substituting boxers for swim trunks allows a cowboy to stretch six days out of four-day underwear.  Like a quiet code of the west, everybody does it, but nobody talks about it. 

Our favorite swimming hole was beneath an old bridge approach where the cracked concrete abutment served as our diving platform.  Bathers used a two-plunge approach:  Jump in, climb out, lather up and jump in to rinse.  The total bath time was less than 15 seconds.  More adventuresome cowboys demonstrated their high-diving skills, which brings me back to Dr. Nate.  Calling it his Wabash cannonball, he leapt from the concrete, scrunched into a massive, 300-pound ball, whomped into the swimming hole and sloshed a tsunami from bank to bank.  We skinny cowboys stood speechless waiting for the river to refill our bathtub and this brings me to my point.

President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago cannonball has created a Dr. Nate-sized splash on the American economy.  Payrolls are exploding, unemployment is plunging, the Dow has rocketed through 25K and America is once again awash in opportunity.  By quietly correct-o-taping over dozens of President Obama’s senseless environmental restrictions, President Trump has freed the American economy.  Just when you think the news can’t get better, it does.  On January 4^th, Interior Secretary Zinke announced a draft proposal opening our nation’s coastal waters to energy exploration.  This is huge and timber, mining and grazing resources could be freed next.

Obviously, Marxist ecoterrorist groups, all Democrats and cocktail-caucus Republicans will scream hysterically and spew climate change mythology to attack Trump and advance dependency.  Freedom thrives when ambitious Americans earn market wages outside government control, but progressive swamp dwellers hate that and prefer the little people on their knees begging for crumbs from the master’s table.