Amidst all the continuing distractions emanating from the White House these days (I.Q. tests, the N.F.L., World War III, etc.), something interesting and unprecedented has happened in the past few weeks. The Trump administration has begun actual negotiations with Congress, on two contentious issues. It's rather astonishing when you think about it, but this is actually the first time such a thing has happened since Trump took office.

Perhaps it is due to John Kelly's influence, but whatever the reason, over the past month or so the White House has gotten much more engaged on actual legislative policy. Up until this point, Trump was content to let Congress do all the heavy lifting and just sit back and wait for bills appear on his desk for him to sign. This, quite obviously, hasn't worked out so well for Trump, as no bills appeared at all, even with a Congress firmly in Republican hands.

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I have to warn everyone up front that this is going to be a pretty long and wonky column that really accomplishes nothing that yesterday's column didn't already cover. It's going to be a deep dive into Senator Dianne Feinstein's record over the past decade, as measured by my own subjective views. So if that sort of thing doesn't appeal to you, I'd advise just skipping today's column altogether. Consider yourselves duly warned.

Yesterday, I laid out the reasons why I was disappointed to hear that Dianne Feinstein would be seeking re-election. Since then, I've seen a few other articles also expressing dismay over the news. So I thought it'd be worthwhile to take a look at how I've judged Feinstein over the years. While thinking about yesterday's column, I dug into my own archives to see what Feinstein's score had added up to. I did this by combing the "Friday Talking Points" all-time awards list, to see where she stood. Her current tally is seven Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week awards, and fifteen Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week awards. That's worse than 2-to-1 against, obviously. I did not take into consideration any "Honorable Mention" or "(Dis-)Honorable Mention" awards, because I do not keep statistics for the minor awards.

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Dianne Feinstein was born less than three months after Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn into office for the first time, in 1933. Today, she announced she will be seeking another term in the Senate, even though she is already the oldest sitting senator. If re-elected, she will be 85 years old when she starts her next 6-year term of office.

This is, admittedly, a very ageist way of looking at things. Chalk it up to frustration, from a Californian voter who was truly hoping she would instead have announced her impending retirement. I can be a lot more unbiased when writing about the other 49 states, because their senators are not supposed to be directly representing me personally, in other words. Although Feinstein regularly cruises to re-election, she has not earned my vote since the early 2000s, when she showed her true hawkish colors on both foreign wars and on our own government's surveillance of American citizens' communications. I don't vote for Feinstein because I do not feel she represents my views on such subjects. Since I'm admitting my voting record here, during the same period I enthusiastically voted to re-elect Barbara Boxer each and every time she ran, because I felt she did represent my views -- certainly a lot better than Feinstein ever did.

So perhaps I'm just using age as an excuse when I express my disappointment that Feinstein is going to make another run for office. Then again, perhaps not. One aspect of a long tenure in Congress is that the voters get to see a long record of votes and political stances. Dianne Feinstein's overall record is decidedly mixed, but it puts her a lot closer to "a Joe Lieberman-style Democrat" than "a staunch progressive." I wouldn't go so far as to call her an across-the-board "Democrat In Name Only" (DINO), but she surely does deserve the designation on certain issues.

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It's getting kind of hard to understand why Rex Tillerson is still secretary of state. He just had an extremely rough week, and that's even without counting the breaking news that he had previously called President Trump not just a "moron" but a "fucking moron." It's easy to get distracted by such salacious news (especially when Tillerson pointedly refused to deny the "moron" part of it), but even before that juicy leak, Tillerson was roundly being ridiculed for, once again, how his boss snarkily contradicted and belittled him on Twitter. Last weekend, Trump destroyed Tillerson's efforts to bring North Korea to the diplomatic table, tweeting that Tillerson was "wasting his time."

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That headline should be taken literally, and not as slang. President Donald Trump, supposed dealmaker extraordinaire, the King Of The Deal, seems to be trying to prove to the world that he cannot successfully cut a deal with anyone on any subject. So, literally: Trump can't deal.

Trump, to date, has cut precisely zero deals on the foreign policy front. On domestic policy, he has (to the best of my recollection) cut two deals -- both largely with congressional Democrats. Both of these were on the budget, since Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell have proven time and again how incapable they are of passing any sort of budget that has actual hard numbers contained within it. Earlier in the year, we hit one of those self-imposed budget deadlines and Trump essentially made a deal with Democrats to punt the can down the road, with virtually zero GOP agenda items included. A month ago, Trump cut yet another of these can-kicking deals with (as he put it) "Chuck and Nancy." Other than that, no deals have been struck at all, even with his own party in control of both houses of Congress. A pretty slim record, in other words, especially to a Republican partisan.

But even his abbreviated list of domestic deals stands out in comparison to his performance on the world stage, which, instead of "deal-making," so far consists solely of "deal-breaking." Trump pulled out of the Paris accords on climate change, he torpedoed the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, he's been threatening to pull out of NAFTA, he even threatened to walk away from NATO, and he will reportedly soon "decertify" the Iran deal which prevents them from acquiring nuclear weapons. He's a one-man deal-wrecker, in other words.

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Donald Trump is rightfully getting slammed over his lackadaisical response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. The relief efforts were slow to start and are still pretty disappointing -- the Navy hospital ship just arrived in Puerto Rico yesterday, for instance, a full two weeks after the storm hit. Most of the island still has no electrical power or phone service. Drinking water is not universally available. The critics of Trump are right in pointing all of this out. But there's another glaring absence that also should be raising questions: where is the response from Hollywood? Where is the nationally-televised relief telethon? Why did this happen for Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, but has not happened for Hurricane Maria? Puerto Ricans are justified in calling attention to their second-class citizenship (as far as Donald Trump is concerned), but it's inexplicable why they are being also snubbed by the liberal artists who normally leap at an opportunity to be seen as doing good.

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It's been two months since we last took a look at it, so it seemed like a good time to check in on President Donald Trump's job approval ratings. During this time period, Trump went down, then up, then back down again, finishing up within one point of where he started.

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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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