Permawar: With hopes for peace after years of civil war, The United Nations Security Council agreed on a plan yesterday to end the slaughter in Syria and trade the regime of President Bashar al Assad for an elected government.

Secy. of State John Kerry said, “No one is sitting here today suggesting to anybody that the road ahead is a gilded path. It is complicated. It will remain complicated. But this at least demands that the parties come to the table.”

The agreement calls for elections in Syria within 18 months after the beginning of political talks starting in January. It calls for all Syrians, even refugees who’ve left the country, to be able to vote. What they have not been able to write into their agreement is the exit of Assad, who has shown no intention of leaving power and may even be able to run for election. A further complication is whether opposition groups would even participate in peace talks if Assad does not agree to step off. And the last unanswered question is how to stop the Islamic State from sweeping into a power vacuum if Assad should actually agree to go.

Real Money: Congress pulled together yesterday morning to pass a $1.15 trillion spending bill that includes $650 billion in tax breaks for businesses and people who don’t make much money.

The bill also appropriates money to wage war against the Islamic State.

After two years of automatic budget cuts, the so-called “sequester,” overall federal spending increases by $66 billion, split evenly between defense and domestic spending.

It’s a big win for both Democrats and Republicans and they were quick to say so. The new House Speaker Paul Ryan got through his first spending bill without a government shutdown while Democrats protected Planned Parenthood and fought off restrictions on the immigration of Syrian and Iraqi refugees. Republicans got their tax breaks and the lifting of a 40-year ban on exporting American oil.

Econ 101: The Dow Jones dropped 367 points yesterday as investors woke up to the impact of the Fed’s slight hike in interest rates. The day it actually happened, the market went up. Go figure. Apparently a slowdown in the Chinese economy also has them worried.

Homeland: All the schools in Augusta County Virginia were closed yesterday after the district was spammed with angry phone calls and messages about a class in which a teacher assigned students to copy a Muslim statement of faith in Arabic calligraphy. The passage translates to “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”

The district says it received tens of thousands of angry messages, many claiming that the students were subjected to religious propaganda. The administration released a statement saying that the course in question exposes students to many different faiths and cultures and next time instructors will choose a non-religious quote.

On the Runway: The French parliament has passed a bill designed to prohibit the employment of fashion models deemed too skinny. Models will have to get a doctor’s certification that they are not too thin for their age and height and that their health is “compatible with the practice of the profession”. That would be, in medical terms, “skinny.”

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