The number of U.S. workers filing new applications for jobless benefits tumbled last week, a government report showed on Thursday, reversing a recent spike that had raised concerns about renewed labor market weakness.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped by 43,000 to a seasonally adjusted 440,000 for the week ended February 6, down from a revised 483,000 in the prior week, the Labor Department said. ...WaPo
Recent Posts
- Yes, he is a fascist.
- GOP top
- The many lives of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- Incredibly yuge!!
- Some of us hang together; some hate everyone
- Is Hillary in the clear?
- Time for a delicious, well-seasoned roast of Bush
- Brentrance
- With Britain's exit from Europe, US also loses international clout
- How the Republicans (reds) are (slowly) taking over
The Scribe
- Four types of Democrats, five types of Republicans. Too partisan to govern?
- November 2011: What is OCCUPY?
- Nation-killer: America has an inequality problem that's bringing our society down
- US gun-runners force confrontation between Obama and NRA
- Obama's principles, his skepticism, his pragmatism, and his game plan
- Our "hidden brains" -- political decisions, the Republican disconnect, and how politicians connive with voters
- Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act: Who gets reformed and who gets protected?
- Searching for "truth and accuracy" in the media
- Health care reality check. Interview with Uwe Reinhardt.
- LOL! How the internet was born
- The danger next time: the pressures to keep financial instruments unregulated
- "Uh-oh. Wall Street has got its swagger back!" Interview with economist Simon Johnson
- T. R. Reid: How to win over the right and get "better, cheaper, and fairer health care"
- Eugene Jarecki on "The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Man, and the Republican Peril"
- "The Predator State": an interview with James K. Galbraith
- Interview with George Packer on "The Fall of Conservatism"
- The "shadow system" and the US economy
- "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." Discussion with Norman Solomon
- Failures, lies, and cover-ups of the 9/11 Commission
- "Gotcha Capitalism": about those capitalist predators we love to hate
- "Free Lunch": David Cay Johnston on hidden government subsidies for the very, very rich
- Matt Bai, "The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics"
- Why Iran distrusts the US
- Drew Westen, "The Political Brain"
- Analysis: Right to choose
- How a third candidate affects how we decide who to vote for: "The decoy effect"
- "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America"
- Jeff Sharlet on how fundamentalists are "reimagining" American history
- Interview with Chalmers Johnson
- "One step too far:" Serious shifts in the federal balance of power, and some excerpts from Justice O'Connor's Georgetown speech
- "American Coup d’État: Military thinkers discuss the unthinkable”
- Joe Biden on partisan politics, secrecy, Iran, Supreme Court
- Paul Pierson and Jacob Hacker interview: "Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy"
- Nina Totenberg reports on Judge Samuel Alito -- his revealing rulings and dissents on Roe, states' rights, church/state, affirmative action
Finders Keepers
- Whew! Ed Sheeran!
- Redman, Mehldau, and generosity
- Too damn much gratitude
- "Ascending Bird"
- "Crap cars"
- Monk and Coltrane together again
- Marsalis plays Coltrane
- Jeanne-Claude, Christo, and Tinkerbell
- Rubens and Warhol
- Not entirely what it seems: Istanbul to Meshed to Srinagar to Saigon
- Self
- More pattern language
- Wanted
- Wind in the Willows, apple wood smoke, and finding home
- Notes from a prurient January evening in the late 1980's
- Having time
- Details: Larsen and Salinger
- Breasts of savages not soothed but driven away by Pavarotti
- Abstraction and (not or) realism
- Seeing our world (and hiding in it)
- Richard Wilbur
- Pynchon, plots, and puritanism
- John Gardner on "catching on"
- Sor Juana
- Family Secrets
Legal stimulants
- ALEC Exposed
- Attytood
- Bad Attitudes
- Balkinization
- Balloon Juice
- Beggars Can Be Choosers
- Booman Tribune
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- Corrente
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- Daily Yonder
- Democratic Strategist
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- Microréplicas
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- MoJoBlog
- Monkey Cage
- Naked Capitalism
- No More Mister Nice Blog
- Open Congress
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- Paperblog
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- Please Cut the Crap
- Plumline-Greg Sargent
- Pruning Shears
- Reality-Based Community
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- Sirota
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- Talking Points Memo
- The Impolitic
- The Politics Blog
- The Reaction
- The Rest is Noise
- The Root
- This Can't Be Happening
- TomDispatch
- View From My Kitchen Table
- Washington Monthly-Political Animal
- Washington Note
- WAWG Blog
- Whites Creek Journal
- Working in Bare Feet
