Small News

A day of small news stories, but all of them remain noteworthy:

1. A week ago, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) praised President Obama's Fiscal Cliff proposal as an excellent offering. You'll recall it's the proposal that emphasized taxing the rich, and at the same time spending more money on still another stimulus (well why not, the first one really worked so well -- set item 2 below). There were no meaningful spending cuts at all.

Yesterday, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) called Reid's bluff and proposed that the entire Senate vote on Obama's plan. Reid flat out refused. Maybe that's because he worries that it will be defeated handily with many democrats voting against it. Recall that Obama's last budget was defeated in the senate 99 - 0.

An aside from Daniel Henninger:

Presidents, kings, queens, generals all have accomplished a modus vivendi with their opponents and mortal enemies. Until now. What deal of Clintonesque majesty has Barack Obama ever pulled off?

The fiscal-cliff negotiation is a train driven by an engineer who doesn't know how to use the brake, doesn't know where the brake is and doesn't care. His idea of politics is giving campaign speeches outside Washington to assemble a Sandy of public sentiment that will blow congressional Republicans off the cliff.

Aw, we're okay, it's the little train that could with Barack Obama at the stick.

2. Now that the election is over, the media is reporting that unemployment has gone up above 8 percent. No surprise. But remember, Obama will do soooo much better in his second term.

3. The supporters of Barack Obama and his big government dreams supported by trillion dollar annual deficits fantasize about the success of Europe with it's cradle to grave government support, it's universal health care, it's huge government pensions, it's mandatory eight weeks of vacation. Today the EU reported that growth for 2013 is projected to be -0.3 percent (that's a minus) meaning the Europe is in still another recession. And as far as big government policies go, today Greece announced that its unemployment rate is 26 percent! We've only got 18 percent to go.

4. It looks like the President instructed the CIA to arm Syrian rebels earlier this year. The only problem is that those rebels are vicious Islamists who now talk of Israel as their next target. Still more benefits of leading from behind and soft power, wouldn't you say? Of course, the President avoids any responsibility for this debacle because he used Qatar as a cut-out in the arms transfer. Even more intriguing, the NYT reports that Jihadi forces in Libya also got their hands on some of those arms. Perfect! Another triumph for Obama's Middle East foreign policy.

5. Rioting continues in Egypt as the rotten fruit that is the harvest of the Arab spring falls to the ground. That fruit will probably hit the tanks that have been deployed around Egyptian "president" cum dictator, Morsi's headquarters.

Just another day as we approach Barack Obama's second term. As the Dems are fond of saying, elections do have consequences, don't they?