Saturday afternoon, a shocking story shook the nation to its core. Not trivia about North Korean nukes, massive flooding in Puerto Rico, or the collapse of the US healthcare system. This was urgent.

Within minutes, millions across the country interrupted conversations with their kids, set aside their chores, and canceled their Saturday night plans. A battle is afoot and their nation needed them.
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Remember when multimillionaire President Trump criticized a multimillionaire football player last night? Well today, a multimillionaire basketball player said he didn’t want to go to the White House no more. So, President Trump said the multimillionaire basketball player wasn’t welcome at the White House in the first place. And then a different multimillionaire basketball player tweeted something mean at President Trump.

Honestly, I’m just happy the Republic hasn’t collapsed.

Ever since President Donald Trump entered the Oval Office, the message from the left has been “resist.”

His inauguration weekend was marred by protests; some peaceful, others violent. There was the Women’s March, March for Science, Tax March, People’s Climate March, March for Truth, and an Impeachment March. Not to mention Antifa’s holy war against newspaper racks and Starbucks windows.

Democrats resisted him in Washington, New York City, Mar-a-Lago, and pretty much everywhere else he showed his orange face. Above the White House, they hung a resist banner from a crane and floated a giant Trump chicken nearby.
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Strangely, none of these changed the fact that Trump is still president of the United States.

On Monday, the International Olympics Committee “awarded” the 2024 Summer Games to Paris and the 2028 Summer Games to Los Angeles. The leaders of both cities were thrilled at the announcement, pointing to the honor, legacy, and other unmeasurable vagaries the Olympics will bring.
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But hosting the five-ring circus hasn’t worked out well in modern history:

Ever since Hurricane Harvey slammed into Texas two weeks ago, we’ve seen countless images of heroic rescues, flooded interstates and damaged buildings. 

As awful as the human toll was, it was not as bad as many of us feared. But it will take months to repair the homes, businesses and infrastructure of Houston and the surrounding area. The same will be true in Florida after Hurricane Irma.

​The economic impact could be felt for years, but many economists and financial experts think there’s a silver lining.

President Trump asked the crowd last week at his Phoenix rally, "Was Sheriff Joe convicted for doing his job?" Had the hall been filled with an accurate cross section of Arpaio’s former constituents, the answer would have been a resounding “no.”

Nevertheless, Trump pardoned the ex-sheriff on Friday, though he had not been sentenced and had shown zero remorse for his crime.
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America’s self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff” was convicted of criminal contempt of court last month after refusing to obey court orders. This most recent legal battle involved numerous federal attempts to get Arpaio to stop racially profiling residents of Maricopa County.

I’m a proud member of Generation X, the oft-forgotten demographic between the utopian Baby Boomers and the self-adoring Millennials. Granted, not all the members of any generation fit their stereotype, but the culture spawned by these groups defines them in aggregate.

After the Greatest Generation survived the Great Depression and returned from a bloody world war, they sought a quiet sanctuary in suburbia, sparing their kids such pain. The Boomers decided that life was boring and inauthentic, and tried to replace it with a Summer of Love that would usher in the Age of Aquarius. That experiment didn’t go too well.

Gen X was sold the Boomers’ utopian dream throughout our youth, but never quite bought it. The culture of our childhood was infused with the wreckage wrought by hippies and yippies. Vietnam protests and the loss of that war. Drug addicts and dead rock stars. Kiddie shows that toggled between LSD trips to eco-apocalypse. We watched the failure of the War on Poverty, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. (Not to mention the hideous fashions.)

Outrage is the currency of modern America. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “An extremely strong reaction of anger, shock, or indignation.”
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Every day, another statement, joke or action provokes anger, shock and indignation against the hapless offender.

A dentist hunts a lion in Africa. Outrage! A woman tweets a joke before boarding a plane bound for Africa. Outrage!! A white cisgendered male op-ed writer mentions Africa in three different outrage examples. OUTRAGE!!!

It’s exhausting just to read about the outrage, so it must be debilitating to those peddling it.

Someone flew a giant inflatable chicken with Trump hair next to the White House.

I’m not sure why someone flew a giant inflatable chicken with Trump hair next to the White House, but apparently it made an important political statement. Perhaps something about animal rights, vegetarianism, or the importance of free-range conditions. Or that Trump is chicken for not doing something that the balloon owners want him to do. Maybe a basic cable channel is premiering a show that has something to do with flying poultry.
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Regardless, the picture was passed around social media by people thinking it was a “sick burn,” as the kids liked to say a decade ago. But, as with most silly protests, I was left with a simple question: Why?

I was AWOL from Ricochet last week because I finally took the fam on an old-fashioned summer vacation. I dropped off Calvin the Wonderbeagle at the kennel, loaded up the missus and the wee ones in the family truckster, and headed off on a Four Corner tour. Raced through Payson, earned a speeding ticket in Overgaard, ate my weight in enchiladas in Albuquerque, then ate more in Santa Fe. Hiked in Los Alamos, giggled at Taos hippies, hiked more near Pagosa Springs, exposed the lie that is the Four Corners Monument, and was nearly struck by lighting in Monument Valley.
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I drove 1,400 miles, meeting people rich and poor, urban and rural, liberal and conservative (if their Subarus and F-150’s were any guide). We talked about where we were from, where we were headed, kids, work, food, coffee, and the weather. But the subject that consumes much of the internet never seemed to arise.

When people invoke the Beltway, it usually means something bad. Especially to Arizonans 2,000 miles away, the Beltway represents a far-off, out-of-touch elite, intent on telling us how to live our lives while they desperately grope for more power.

Nothing reflects this fact as powerfully as Washington, D.C.’s control of our most fundamental resource: the ground beneath our feet.

While our imperial capital controls just 3 percent of its neighbor Maryland, the Beltway controls nearly 39 percent of Arizona’s far larger area.

Compared to other western states, Arizona gets off easy. The feds own 61 percent of Alaska, 63 percent of Utah, and a staggering 80 percent of Nevada. In fact, the federal government controls more than 50 percent of all land west of Kansas.

​To many in Washington this isn’t a crisis; it’s just a start.