> I don't think military spending is going to provide much of an
> economic kick, but a $100b stimulus package - including, according to
> the WSJ's Alan Murray on CNBC an hour ago, payroll tax rebates and
> expanded unemployment insurance coverage - will. How much, I don't
> know, but these numbers are getting significant.
The comments from many about the surreal state of things ("surreal" - a word that has undergone an interesting evolution since its coinage and emergence into popular discourse) and the alleged, but as yet unproven, death of irony, are nonetheless well-taken when a Republican administration is proposing substantial relief for unemployed workers and Democrats counter that it is far too much, wringing their hands and essentially making clear that the potential for deficit spending outweighs the well-being of workers.
When I was contemplating this photo last night (couldn't find a suitable image of Noriega): http://www.winternet.com/~arouet/nycsummit2.htm I came across a 1990 article on the Iran-Iraq War that appeared in Z Magazine wherein the author, Stephen Shalom, reminds us that, "The U.S. removed Iraq from its notoriously selective list of nations supporting international terrorism (despite the fact that terrorist Abu Nidal was based in the country)..."
http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/ShalomIranIraq.html
Yet another example of how U.S. condemnations of "states harboring terrorists" ring especially hollow, and the New York City backdrop of the aforementioned image seems especially... ironic.
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/ dave /