In these difficult times, when it seems everything is declining — corporate profits, individual incomes, assorted varieties and levels of a thing we used to call “hope” — one thing grows ever larger and more robust: our unemployment rate. Let’s hear it for the magical number 9.5, for that is the percentage of Americans who currently don’t have jobs. MORE »

NO JOBS LEFT TO LOSE: New jobless claims fell this week, hooray, due to the number of jobs in the US forming an asymptote with zero. Continuing jobless claims, meanwhile, are just staggering and awful, a wretched 5.47 million and counting. Start growing your Victory Gardens now, because otherwise you might not have food next winter. [MSNBC]

Well here is some cheerful news for a Thursday! Everybody and their mom likes to file unemployment claims these days, on account of the no jobs anywhere, but the claims take forever to be processed because everybody at the unemployment office got laid off due to lack of funding. MORE »

• On DC’s new curfew: “It’s not that city officials want to play parent to every kid in the district. It’s just that, gosh, turns out law enforcement professionals are better parents .” [Hit&Run]
• America is bad at jobs. [Eschaton]
• “The chorus calling for Syrian involvement in crafting a Lebanon ceasefire solution now includes Richard Armitage, Warren Christopher, and Mr. Flat World himself, Tom Friedman. ” [Political Animal]
• Report from the Promise Keepers meeting — it was titled “Unleashed,” and involved clips from The Matrix. [Slice of Laodicea]