The Great Wall:The Senate adjourned for Christmas and President Trump still wants billions for his border wall, so the partial government shutdown will continue at least until Thursday. It is Trump’s third government shutdown this year.

  Administration officials told reporters Trump will not relent on his demand for $5.7 billion to start building his wall. Senate Democrats say they will never give it to him.

  Trump has gotten himself into a political jam in which he has to at least demonstrate to his core supporters that he’s fighting to fulfill the primary promise of his presidential campaign.  He tweeted yesterday, “The crisis of illegal activity at our Southern Border is real and will not stop until we build a great Steel Barrier or Wall. Let work begin!”

  The government is only kinda sorta shutdown during a shutdown. The cabinet departments affected are Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, and Interior — that means national parks — as well as Justice, State, Transportation and Treasury.

  The roughly 60,000 employees under Homeland Security, including Customs and Border Patrol, will have to keep working without pay. Air traffic controllers will be on the job.

  The postal service is an independent agency and will keep delivering.

  Much has been made of government workers going without pay — and they may miss a paycheck — but what usually happens is that everyone gets paid once the government is fully open again.

  The real pawns in this game are the poorest among us, the contract workers who clean the floors and serve food in the cafeterias in government buildings. If they don’t work, they don’t get paid.

Smartest Man in the Room: Military and diplomatic officers are reported to be having difficulty telling American allies in Syria and Afghanistan that they are suddenly being pulled out despite years of assurances.

  Yesterday, Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy assigned to hold together the international coalition fighting the Islamic State, advanced his planned retirement, telling colleagues he could not in good conscience carry out President Trump’s abruptly-announced policy. According to an email Brett McGurk sent his staff, he decided to leave Dec. 31 after Trump ignored the advice of his commanders and blindsided US allies by ordering the withdrawal of the 2,000 troops in Syria.

  Coming after the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis and Chief of Staff John Kelly, the departure of McGuirk appears to be part of a trend.

Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker in The NY Times that Trump is pulling away from his advisers and increasingly going it alone. They say, “Angry that they resist his wishes, uninterested in the details of their briefings, he becomes especially agitated when they tell him he does not have the power to do what he wants, which makes him suspicious that they are secretly undermining him.”

  Haberman and Baker write that, “At the midpoint of his term, Mr. Trump has grown more sure of his own judgment and more cut off from anyone else’s than at any point since taking office. He spends ever more time in front of a television, often retreating to his residence out of concern that he is being watched too closely.”

The Best Revenge:David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland high school massacre last February, went from student to nationally-known gun control crusader in a matter of days. He also failed to get into college with a 4.1 grade point average.

Laura Ingraham, the conservative talker who makes her living being ignorant and mean, tweeted, “David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it.”

  A grown woman said that about a high school student. He fought back organizing an advertising boycott of Ingraham’s show on Fox News.

And yesterday he announced that he got into Harvard.

Batteries Included:A San Francisco driver recently had to pull to the side of the road when a dashboard light on his three-month-old Tesla Model S indicated low tire pressure. He had the car towed to a garage, where it promptly burst into flames, and burned, and burned, and burned.

  Firefighters knocked the fire down once, only to have the batteries restart it. They ended up staying all night.

  The owner told reporters he will never buy another Tesla. “If this had been in the house, and we were on vacation, and this thing caught fire in the garage, the whole house could go under.”

  Tesla fires are not unheard of, but the company says their cars catch fire much less frequently than gasoline powered vehicles. Comforting.

Away from the Manger: Stealing the figure of the baby Jesus from nativity displays around the country has become a thing in recent years, The NY Times reports. Sometimes even Mary and Joseph take a walk.

Now in some cities creche displays are chained and bolted down. Every sheep and shepherd.

  The Jesus figurine in Bethlehem, Penn. — yes, Bethlehem — was stolen two years ago and now is under the constant watch of a security camera. They call it the “Jesus cam.”

Fence Straddling:A few days ago President Trump tweeted a graphic of a possible alternative to his wall, a barrier of 30-foot steel slats sharpened to spikes at the top. He described it as “totally effective while at the same time beautiful!”

Former Michigan Congressman John Dingell tweeted, “Sit on it, you imbecile.”