President Donald Trump, once again, has been caught in numerous despicable lies, this time both to and about Gold Star families. This continues a pattern for Trump, of disrespecting other people's military service when they are not whole-hearted supporters of Donald Trump. But over the past 48 hours or so, Trump has hit new lows in this regard. And yet he still has the gall to denounce professional football players for "not respecting the flag."

Previously, Trump disrespected John McCain, who spent over five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese, saying Trump only liked soldiers who didn't get captured. Astonishingly, he paid no political price for this outrageous snub. Later in the campaign, Trump got into a battle of words with a Gold Star family who spoke out at the National Democratic Convention. Again, Trump paid little political price for this unseemly spat. Earlier this year, Trump reacted to the news that a U.S. Navy vessel had been in a collision that resulted in sailors' deaths by saying: "That's too bad." Again, Trump paid little political price for this callous reaction.

On Monday, Trump held an impromptu press conference, and he was asked why he had not even mentioned the fact that four U.S. soldiers had been killed in Niger twelve days earlier. Not only had Trump failed to utter one word about these deaths, but when the body of one of the soldiers who died in action was returned to the United States, Trump was out on the golf course with Lindsey Graham.

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The CBS newsmagazine show 60 Minutes and the Washington Post may have just clinched a Pulitzer Prize, for their bombshell reporting on how some bought-and-paid-for congressmen did the bidding of Big Pharma for campaign cash and, as a direct result, made the opioid crisis in America worse by limiting the enforcement powers of the Drug Enforcement Agency. But, Pulitzer consideration aside, they've already won an even-more-impressive award: a politician's scalp, metaphorically nailed to the newsroom wall. The television show and the companion print articles appeared Sunday. Tuesday morning, the White House announced that former Representative Tom Marino had been withdrawn from consideration for the job of running the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy -- a job more commonly referred to as "the drug czar."

To state all of this in a slightly different fashion, journalists did a bang-up job of exposing what on the face of it appears to be not only blatant garden-variety corruption, but also a rather inhumane disregard for human lives at the expense of both corporate profits and campaign cash. It also highlighted how major corporate lobbyists can essentially write their own legislation, which will then be passed by a supine Congress without a single voice being raised against such self-serving legislation. That is what good journalism is supposed to do -- hold our elected officials responsible for their heretofore hidden actions.

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President Donald Trump gave an unexpected press conference today, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell by his side. What is really remarkable, though, almost ten months in to his term in office, is how few press conferences Trump has so far given. In fact, the true measure of the "adult day care center" situation at the White House is how effective the people surrounding Trump have been at blocking Trump from giving freewheeling press conferences. Before he became president, he used to love doing these out on the campaign trail, but not so much since he was sworn in.

By a strict accounting, Donald Trump has only held one formal solo press conference. One. He surprised everyone by appearing in front of a podium and he answered questions for the better part of an hour. That was in mid-February, not even a full month in to his term. Since that point, he has not given a single formal solo press conference at all. But perhaps that's being too rigorous in definition, because Trump did have a second long-format press conference, in Trump Tower.

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On Harry Truman's desk famously sat a sign which proudly proclaimed: "The Buck Stops Here." If Donald Trump had such an item, it might read: "Buck-Passer In Chief." His governing style (if it can even be dignified as such) is to cause a crisis on his own, and then dump the entire problem on Congress to deal with. Because we all know what masterful problem-solvers the Republican-led Congress are, or something. This could lead to utter disaster on many fronts, within the next few months.

Consider the "bucks" Trump has passed to Congress recently. First, he created a crisis out of thin air by setting an end date for the DACA program (for the Dreamers). At least with this one, he announced a six-month pause before full implementation, which (in normal times) would give Congress enough time to act. This year's budget process was also punted to early December, along with a necessary raise in the debt ceiling. That's a pretty full plate already, but Trump didn't stop there.

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A major geopolitical goal is now in sight, and should arrive within months if not weeks. The Islamic State is about to become stateless. They are about to lose the last shreds of territory they still control in Iraq and Syria, forcing their transformation into a stateless terrorist network (like Al Qaeda) or even their total collapse. Because their self-proclaimed "caliphate" is about to disappear.

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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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