Here we are again. We all know the drill by now. We all know pretty much what the eyewitnesses will say, what the talking heads on the television will say, and what the politicians will say. None of it ever seems to change, and none of it seems to change anything going forward, either. We go through the cycle of "mass gun attack" and hear the same words over again. We go through the cycle of grief which will then fade, right up to the time when it happens anew all over again. This is, sadly, the new normal for America.

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As we sat down to write this, the news broke that Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price has resigned. So, of course, we immediately had to come up with a snappy "price" pun for our title. We could have gone with the Rolls Royce slogan ("If You Have To Ask The Price, You Can't Afford It"), or maybe "The High Price Of Airfare These Days," but both are kind of wordy. So we had to settle for "Price Break!" (we did consider "Price Cut," but that would have been more appropriate if he had actually been fired). The news of Price's resignation came immediately following the news that President Donald Trump was going to decide -- tonight -- whether to fire him or not. So, one way or another, the Price would have been lowered, so to speak.

But enough silliness. Tom Price is one of an increasing number of high-ranking Trump officials who are getting shamed for their use of extremely expensive private charter jets and military aircraft to move around -- travel that most such officials are supposed to use commercial airlines to accomplish. Price was the worst so far, having spent over a million taxpayer bucks on both charters and military flights so far (about half of the total, for each). Of this princely sum, he announced this week he would be reimbursing the Treasury for a little under $52,000. The optics, as even Trump admitted, were pretty bad and getting worse.

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There's an old saying that when all you have is a hammer, pretty soon every problem starts to resemble a nail. Which brings us to the subject of Republicans and tax cuts, of course. For approximately the past 35 years or so, there has been no problem the GOP doesn't think can be fixed with a good old fashioned gigantic tax cut, mostly for the wealthiest Americans. Even their recent failed efforts on "repeal and replace Obamacare" were mostly just an excuse to slash taxes on the wealthy. Now that that's over with (for now, at least), Republicans no longer have to even pretend to have any other goal than slashing taxes on the well-off. But perhaps the process will improve. And then again, perhaps that is overly optimistic.

John McCain is right. That's a rare sentence for me to type, but McCain had every reason to be outraged over the process (if you can even call it that) that the Republican leadership has used for the entire year, most notably on healthcare. This process involves no hearings, no congressional committees, no experts, no C.B.O. scores (if possible), not a shred or hint of bipartisanship, and even rampant secrecy among the Republican caucus right up to the last minute. A small group of Republicans retreats to a back room and hammers out a bill. Then this is presented as a do-or-die effort to the rest of the Republicans in Congress. Within hours, a floor vote is called, with little if any chance to amend the bill's text. The entire process could be summed up as "take it or leave it," in fact. McCain decried this lack of (as he puts it) "regular order" while explaining why he was voting "No." Congress isn't supposed to work this way, he insisted. And, again, he is right.

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The Alternative Minimum Tax (as Rodney Dangerfield might have put it) don't get no respect. Few who don't pay it have ever even heard of it. Those who do pay it hate it. The A.M.T. has no real champions among the political class, because there are so many other facets of tax policy to get worked up about. Take the estate tax, for instance -- a tax only paid at death, but one with a rousing political chorus on both sides (Republicans scornfully refer to it as the "death tax"). The estate tax gets some respect in Washington, both pro and anti. The A.M.T., not so much. But it should get a whole lot more attention now that the GOP has released their new tax-cutting outline. Because Donald Trump is effectively trying to cut his own taxes by a whopping 81 percent -- and, really, that's just the minimum tax break Trump would receive.

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Since football and politics collided on the gridiron last weekend, it now must officially be considered "football metaphor season." So, to get in the spirit: Republicans in Congress are facing third down with a long way to go, right before the end of the first half.

The game so far, for those who may have missed it: Republicans won the coin toss (by putting their own referee on the Supreme Court), but since then have put zero points on the board, failing spectacularly in multiple drives (using their healthcare reform playbook). The Democrats have put the only points on the board, scoring twice (since the only two big pieces of legislation that Trump has signed have been largely written by Democrats). Their last touchdown was a spectacular interception (by "Chuck and Nancy") which was run in for a touchdown (hurricane relief) with a two-point conversion (the budget and debt ceiling extensions).

We're almost halfway between congressional elections, meaning we're fast approaching the first two-minute warning. And while Republicans are still deep in their own territory and face third and long, they're feeling a bit optimistic, because the next play they're going to run (tax cuts) is their favorite play of all time. It's worked well for them repeatedly in the past and they usually function smoothly as a team on this particular play, so it could do wonders for them right now (they hope).

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Most Americans alive today have no memory of our country ever changing its borders. And the last time it happened, many Americans alive at the time had no memory of the country adding previous states, either. The 47th state (Arizona) was admitted to the Union in 1912. Hawai'i and Alaska joined in 1959. Since then, we've now gone 57 years without the United States of America changing its outline on the world map. "This sort of history happens to other people in the world, not us," we tell ourselves. I was thinking of this while watching the muted attention given to Puerto Rico after it got hammered by Hurricane Maria this weekend. But that's a really subject for another column. What made me think about our historic cartological stability again today was the vote for independence being conducted in the parts of Iraq under Kurdish control.

The Kurds are voting either for or against becoming their own country. As of this writing, the results of the vote are not known, but most predict an overwhelming majority will indeed vote for independence.

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The zombie legislation attacks (again)! While much else was going on in the political world this week, the most important event was the reanimation of the Republican "repeal and replace Obamacare" effort: It's not dead! It's alive! And it's lurching around threatening millions!

We went with a different metaphor, earlier in the week, that of the Republicans as Sisyphus, pushing the same damn rock up the hill once again. But we could easily just have gone with Yogi Berra's famous: "It's déjà vu all over again." That might have fitted onto a tweet better, anyway.

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The Republican Party, from all accounts, seems to be busy channeling their inner Sisyphus. It's really hard to come to any other conclusion, when they are once again focused on a healthcare bill that is likely to fail in the Senate next week. For the GOP, hastily-written and underanalyzed healthcare legislation seems to be the giant rock they are condemned for all eternity to roll up a hill, only to watch it roll back down again in the end.

Sisyphus, according to Wikipedia, was "punished for his self-aggrandizing craftiness and deceitfulness" by Zeus. Sisyphus was subjected to the eternal torture of pushing a heavy bolder up a steep hill, only to watch it roll back down again -- "an eternity of useless efforts and unending frustration." Sounds pretty familiar to anyone who has paid attention to the Republican "repeal and replace Obamacare" efforts all year long, doesn't it?

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President Donald Trump gave his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly yesterday, which was notable for the amount of bluster it contained. Now, blustering is a time-honored tradition at the U.N., but it is usually reserved for heads of state from countries that are insecure in their standing in the world and led by charismatic totalitarians. Think: Hugo Chávez, or Fidel Castro in his prime. So it was pretty unusual to hear such a speech from an American president, who at one point threatened to obliterate another country from the map. Bluster has long been a cornerstone of Trump's foreign policy (such as it is) -- a deep-seated belief that talking tough with lots of swagger will cause all foreign countries to see the error of their ways and thus do exactly what the United States (or Trump) wishes them to do. It hasn't been working in any noticeable way yet, but that didn't stop Trump from giving it another try yesterday on the world stage.

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I have to admit I don't have time today to write a proper column with lots of deep thought behind it, so instead I'm going to let President Trump's first United Nations speech percolate a bit before soberly commenting upon it. But rather than running just a "Program Note: No Column Today," I thought it'd be amusing to briefly comment on the newest Trumpism, one he used in his speech today: Trump's new "Rocket Man" nickname for North Korea's Kim Jong Un.

Now, figuring out what goes on in the mind of Trump is an exercise best left to the professionals, so I won't even try to fathom why he latched onto this particular label. But he sure does seem to like it, using it in a tweet this weekend and then announcing it to the whole word at the U.N.

The problem with Trump's use of Rocket Man is that it isn't particularly insulting. It actually sounds pretty cool, in a retro 1950s-sci-fi kind of way. Elton John and Bernie Taupin didn't write the song until 1972, and Taupin admitted being influenced by a 1970 song of the same name by the band Pearls Before Swine. But both songs were inspired by a short story by Ray Bradbury ("The Rocket Man," from the book The Illustrated Man), which is about as retro 1950s-sci-fi as you can get.

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