Free Republic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of people filing new claims for unemployment insurance rose to a higher-than-expected 462,000 in the latest week, the Labor Department said on Thursday, while the number of people still collecting jobless benefits fell to an almost two-year low. First-time jobless claims rose 13,000 in the week ended October 9 from the prior week's upwardly revised 449,000 seasonally adjusted claims. The four-week average of first-time jobless benefits, which economists prefer because it smoothes out weekly fluctuations, rose 2,250 to 459,000. Economists polled by Reuters had expected about initial 445,000 claims in the latest week.

A crowd of twentysomething true believers followed Obama from the campaign to Washington. But 18 months in, the "Yes We Can" crowd is losing faith. Joe Boswell quit his job at Camp David. But first, he played a tennis match with Michelle Obama. Her second chief of staff, Susan Sher, is an avid tennis fan, and Boswell, her assistant, was game for a doubles match. After a straight-sets victory, he leveled with the first lady of the United States. “I was tired of going through the motions,” he remembers. “She told me to go out and save the world and...

Last year at this time, you were giddy beyond words for your part in a historic election. You were utterly smitten with the first bi-racial President-elect of the United States. Like a child on Christmas Eve, you could hardly contain yourselves waiting for that Inauguration morning when this messianic figure would leave the columns in Denver behind and deliver unto you your wildest dreams once in the White House.