Chris Hayes hit the nail on the head, and with some emotion.

Every day we hear about the high price of gasoline and diesel, in the context of the war with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. Every day, day in and day out.

Mr. Hayes finally named the irony of it all—that, day in and day out, much is made of high gas prices, but people keep buying gasoline, no matter how high the price goes. They keep complaining, day in and day out, but the price seldom responds to the protest.

As Hayes reminds us, this is not new ground. We’ve been here before, we’ve been complaining off and on about the high cost of fossil fuels for over 50 years, and we just keep paying for it, even as there are viable energy alternatives that have been knocking on the door for decades now. We’ve had unending opportunity to wean ourselves from the fossil fuel teat, but the powers that be won’t let it happen—even though there is a certain inevitability regarding our vulnerability to exactly what’s going on now: political unrest and war. And let us not forget the mounting environmental damage!

The Trump administration is in the pockets of the fossil fuel behemoths, who very well may be seeing writing on the wall but are flush with cash and able to lobby their way out of one tight corner after another.

At some point hopefully soon, one might think we reach a tipping point, a point of no return, when forces and realities conspire to render the fossil fuel hold-outs, well, fossils.

Pirro, Kennedy, Jr., Patel, Hegseth, Leavitt, Blanche, Miller, Vought, Graham, Comer, Tuberville… Trump. There’s just no let-up in the pretension and ineptitude and shameless bootlicking.

Yet another attempt on Donald’s life has juiced up the clamor for The Ballroom, a $400 million project now being funded by us, apparently. If Republicans get their way and this boondoggle comes to fruition, it will probably end up costing us way more than $400 million.

Meanwhile, there is no money for cancer research and food programs and infrastructure and help with medical insurance and a thousand other things.

This administration has given us nothing, and has no intention of paying attention to needs and issues we consider important. This administration exists for the benefit of the Heritage Foundation. Its MO is wallowing in old thinking and bad religion, and breaking America into a million pieces. All for the benefit of a relative few.

Imagine that. This is what 77 million of us have let in the door—a gaggle of power-hungry people with a terribly skewed vision who don’t care about anything beyond their own well-being and forcing their will. They are a living, breathing caricature of coldness and evil and monumental selfishness…

… people inspired by capital gains and tax shelters and impenetrable bunkers where they and their “loved ones” can usher in Armageddon while the rest of us suffer the consequences of the collapse they initiated.

Oh, sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s just that it’s gonna be really hard to get excited about or inspired by our 250th birthday with these clowns running the show. They couldn’t care less about the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Well, the 10-day sojourn to New England is coming to an end. It began and will conclude with time in the old stomping grounds, next to the house in which my brothers and sisters and I grew up.

We tended to some tasks, were treated to a wonderful stay with my wife’s sister, got some work done, and in between visited with our son and his kids in Mid-coast Maine, along with another sister-in-law and her husband and his daughter in Connecticut.

I reacquainted myself with Maple, a mixed breed dog getting up in years but still willing and able to run like the wind in pursuit of a tennis ball, and Georgie, a younger Golden Retriever who, perhaps longingly, wishes she could run like Maple. I chopped some wood, drank coffee, we ate fresh fish as one can only find it near the coast of Maine, and waited extra long for an order at McDonald’s.

We were entertained by our two Mainer grandchildren who have no fear of performing, and who are busy with one thing or another for almost the entire duration of their waking hours. I was moved by how our oldest child has grown into a loving, attentive father who, like most parents at various points in time, must take a deep breath when parenthood gets heavy and weighs on your nerves.

Time was spent prepping for the Mom’s homecoming from a trip to an exotic tropical destination, a trip she earned as one of Maine’s best teachers.

We leave for PA in a little while, via a stop to see an aunt and maybe an uncle, the two remaining siblings from my Mom’s family who have both reached their 90s and are still percolating, and marveling, like the rest of us, at the inexorable passage of time and that puzzling dynamic of thinking like you’re still in your twenties but moving more like you’re trapped in a sometimes uncooperative old body.

By day’s end, we should be back in PA, somewhat refreshed and mostly ready to get on with Spring and engage the routine once again.

Donald Trump is such a putz. When asked why he thought he’s been a target for assassination so many times, he said, in a self-congratulatory way, that maybe it was because people (like himself) who make such an impact on the world become targets. Or something like that.

It couldn’t be because he sows fear and hate and animosity and maybe people have reached the end of their ropes with him.

I’m not condoning the violence, but I’m not surprised by it, either. It all tracks with the old saying about living by the sword.