The Shutdown: Good morning. The federal government is shut down after the Senate failed to pass a bill to keep it running. It’s Saturday, so you might not notice.

President Trump was up early this morning furiously tweeting blame. “This is the One Year Anniversary of my Presidency and the Democrats wanted to give me a nice present. #DemocratShutdown.”

Four Republicans voted against their own party and five Democrats said “yes” to a continuing resolution to fund the government.

In the end, they failed to pass legislation on which the majority of both houses of Congress agree: continuing the Child Health Insurance Program for nine million kids and protecting the illegal immigrants brought to the US as children.

The Republicans put the CHIP program in the bill, daring the Democrats to vote “no” on something they desperately want. But the Democrats held out for DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. With no movement on either issue independent of the funding bill, the Democrats held out to get everything they want.

As the night wore on, vending machines ran out of junk food. One reporter tweeted the following: “Reporter asks another reporter for pizza. ‘Sorry, this is just for our team.’ ‘Aren’t we all on one big team here?’ ‘….no.’”

It was looking somewhat hopeful in the afternoon. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer spent 90 minutes with the President and came away saying, “We made some progress, but we still have a number of disagreements.” Evidently the disagreements outweighed the progress.

In the closing minutes before the vote, Trump was hurling insults via Twitter at the people he needed the most. “Dems want a Shutdown in order to help diminish the great success of the Tax Cuts, and what they are doing for our booming economy.”

He’s always so helpful.

Stormy Weather: In a scandal that would topple most politicians, new details keep emerging about President Trump’s 2006 affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels and a subsequent payment to keep her quiet during the 2016 political campaign. The affair is having trouble competing with all the other shocking things about Trump.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen,  set up a Delaware corporation and used a pseudonym to pay $130,000 to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. The corporate payment went to “Peggy Peterson.”

Daniels has refused to talk about the deal, presumably because she signed a nondisclosure agreement. But the magazine In Touch dug up and published a 2011 interview with her in which she talks about having sex with the Donald.

They met at a golf tournament and she went to his hotel room to have dinner with him, she said. “He was very full of himself, like he was trying to impress me or something. But I do remember he just kept talking about this magazine that he was on the cover of, like, ‘Look at this magazine, don’t I look great on the cover?’”

The two spent several hours together. Daniels said she mentioned Trump’s wife, Melania. “I was like, ‘Yeah, what about your wife?’ He goes, ‘Oh, don’t worry about her.’ Quickly, quickly changed the subject.”

Later in the evening, Daniels went to the bathroom. “When I came out, he was sitting on the bed and he was like, ‘Come here.’ And I was like, ‘Ugh, here we go.’ And we started kissing. I actually don’t even know why I did it but I do remember while we were having sex, I was like, ‘Please don’t try to pay me.’ And then I remember thinking, ‘But I bet if he did, it would be a lot.’”

Her evaluation: “It wasn’t bad. Don’t get me wrong.”

The Supremes: The Court has agreed to hear arguments on the constitutionality of President Trump’s third travel and immigration ban naming  eight countries, six of them predominantly Muslim. Currently, most people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea are barred from entering the US.

The Russians are Coming: Despite having banned the Russian team from next month’s Winter Olympics for systematic doping in previous games, the International Olympic Committee left open a loophole that may allow nearly all the Russians to compete. The IOC will allow into the games nearly 400 Russians who have proven they are clean.

They did declare 111 Russians to be ineligible.

Free Falling: Rocker Tom Petty died last October of an accidental overdose of pain medications, his family says. Petty was on a grueling 53-date tour while suffering with a fractured hip that was described as extremely painful.

The Obit Page: Peter Mayle, who started his career writing sex education books and hit the bestseller list with his 1989 memoir, “A Year in Provence” about moving to France, has died at age 78.

Mayle and his wife had moved to a little village in Provence to give him the quiet to write a novel. Instead he became deeply distracted with renovating an 18^th century stone farmhouse, eating French food, and just living in the bucolic area of France. His agent advised him to skip the novel and write a memoir.

Mayle later said, “Up to that point, I had kept a halfhearted diary. After that, I took copious notes, and the chapters more or less wrote themselves.”

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