1. After boy’s death, changes at the border.

 

2. Langford near death.

• Former Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford is in critical condition and nearing death at a Kentucky federal prison where he is serving a 15-year sentence for bribery and public corruption.
• Family was called up to the prison yesterday and is now by his side. A priest was called in to deliver last rites.
• For more than a year, family and other advocates have called on federal prison officials to release Langford and let him die at home. That request for “compassionate release” was denied last November.
• Langford is a legend in Birmingham and Alabama politics. In addition to serving as Birmingham mayor, he also served as mayor of Fairfield, where he got Visionland off the ground, and was a Jefferson County Commissioner. Before politics, he worked in public relations and was a television news anchor for almost 20 years.
• Read and watch more from John Papke who is following the story and in touch with former Mayor William Bell.

 

3. Shutdown: reading the tea leaves.

• It’s day five of the partial government shutdown over border wall funding.
• President Trump is sticking to his guns. He said Tuesday that parts of the federal government will stay closed until Democrats agree to put up more and better barriers along the U.S.- Mexico border to deter criminal elements.
• Here’s the news: Trump said he’s open to calling the wall something else as long as he ends up with an actual wall.
• Speaking to reporters in a Christmas Day appearance in the Oval Office, Trump said a physical wall is the only way to stop drugs and human traffickers from entering the country.
• “I can’t tell you when the government’s going to be open. I can tell you it’s not going to be open until we have a wall or fence, whatever they’d like to call it,” Trump said, referring to Democrats who staunchly oppose walling off the border.
• “I’ll call it whatever they want, but it’s all the same thing…
• “We can’t do it without a barrier. We can’t do it without a wall,” he said. “The only way you’re going to do it is to have a physical barrier, meaning a wall. And if you don’t have that then we’re just not opening” the government.
• Democrats oppose spending money on a wall, preferring instead to pump the dollars into fencing, technology and other means of controlling access to the border.
• Trump has argued that Democrats oppose a wall only because he is for one.
• Reading the tea leaves here, they may be closer to a deal than it sounds.
• If the disagreement comes down to whether a few billion dollars is spent on physical barriers, high-tech systems, security personnel, or on a combination of all three, that’s not a lot. ESPECIALLY if the president is now open to not calling it a “wall.”
• Just remember, Democratic leaders might not want a compromise on this. Their base wants them to fight Trump, and every deal they make with him threatens their left flank.
• Full story HERE.

 

4. This is how it starts.

• So, here’s a concerning lede on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal…
• “Behind the broad, swift market slide of 2018 is an underlying new reality: Roughly 85% of all trading is on autopilot—controlled by machines, models, or passive investing formulas, creating an unprecedented trading herd that moves in unison and is blazingly fast.”
• Wait, are they talking about robots? Robots are controlling the financial markets??
• That report by Greg Zuckerman, Rachael Levy, Nick Timiraos and Gunjan Banerji says this system of more or less automated trading has been baking into the financial markets during this long period of financial growth and hasn’t really been tested in a downturn – until now.
• They talk to some smart sources who convey two important points: (1) that the surge of electronic/automated trading (including day traders) has made the recent stock decline worse and (2) that the recent stock decline is more of a function of failing markets rather than a slowing economy.
• Dadgum robots.
• Seriously, if true, that’s actually good news in terms of economic growth and where we are going. Maybe just more people and fewer idiots.
• My brother is a real, human broker if anybody is looking for one…

 

5. In case you missed it…

 

 

Headlines.

 

Front Pages (images link to newspaper websites, which you should visit and patronize)