With few exceptions, politics has always stopped in the past for Dec 5 festivities. Even the 2008 airport seizures ended in time to allow celebration. Kamnan Thep and his mob seem ready to fold Dec 5 into their political protests, continuing their occupation of areas near the Royal Plaza and paying lip service to, but without making any actual sacrifice for the institution. It was a week where measuring winners and losers was difficult. Did the finance ministry, occupied and used as a party room and urinal, lose more than the Department of Special Investigations, whose officers were run out of their building entirely? Was the small turnout of red shirts at Rajamangala stadium more humiliating than Mr Suthep's failure to produce his promised final victory three times in a row? Did the army lose face by failing to keep out the mob, while the police gained face by succeeding?