The State Of The American Economy

This is what the US economy has been reduced to: McDonalds reports that as part of its employment event to hire 50,000 minimum wage, part-time (mostly) workers, subsequently raised to 62,000 it received a whopping 1 million applications, or a Tim Geithner jealousy inducing 6.2% hit rate (h/t X. Kurt. OSis). Alas, the US economy is now so pathetic that the bulk of the population will settle for anything. Literally anything. And the saddest part: over 938,000 applicants were turned away.

Via ZeroHedge: McDonalds Hires 62,000, Turns Away Over 938,000 Applicants For Minimum Wage, Part-Time Jobs

What Obama Care Did For Me

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Fundraiser For Sean Duffy

In case you don’t remember, Sean Duffy was caught on tape complaining that he could barely survive on $174,000 a year.

Let’s Get Personal

It’s been a while since I’ve done something like this. Back when ProseBeforeHos got started in 2005, it existed as an outlet for personal musings without a direction or purpose. Up until 2008, we were lucky to get 100 hits a day.

With a little perseverance and a lot of internet addiction, ProseBeforeHos developed into 5 different sites that would form the PBH Network. By April 2010, we hit a new marker of over 2 million visitors in a month. This April, we surpassed 4 million visitors a month.

Needless to say, I never imagined this happening, as I had always thought that PBH would be a hobby-horse as I meandered through life. Now, PBH has become a full-time commitment, not only for me, but a couple of other people. Truth be told, it’s really intimidating and isolating, and I still haven’t found a way to explain what we do to others (what do you do when the most serious website you run is called ProseBeforeHos?).

I want to say thanks especially to Kit — the intrepid PBH co-founder, contributor, and all around tech wizard — for his help in this transformation, our fans and visitors for enjoying our content, and everyone else that’s been along for the ride. We have some really exciting things going on with PBH that we hope will improve the experience of using our sites and increase the community and caliber of the PBH Network. Thanks again everyone.

Always,
Alec

Subjection And Local Rule In A Unipolar World

The Title: An Empire of Failed States by Alfred W. McCoy, Brett Reilly, and Tom Engelhardt on Antiwar.com.

The Text: Imperial powers hedge their bets. The most striking recent example we have of this is in Egypt. While the Pentagon was pouring money into the Egyptian military (approximately $40 billion since 1979), it turns out—thank you, WikiLeaks!—that the U.S. government was shuttling far smaller amounts (millions, not billions) to various “American government-financed organizations” loosely connected with Congress or with the Democratic and Republican parties. Some of that money, in turn, was being invested in “democracy-building campaigns” aimed at teaching young Egyptian activists how to organize a movement against their autocratic ruler, how to make the best use of social networking sites, and so on.

In other words, in Egypt (and elsewhere in the Middle East), Washington was funding both the autocrats and the young activists who opposed them and who, in Egypt, would be crucial players in the Tahrir Square movement that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak. As one of those activists told the New York Times, “While we appreciated the training we received through the NGOs sponsored by the U.S. government, and it did help us in our struggles, we are also aware that the same government also trained the state security investigative service, which was responsible for the harassment and jailing of many of us.”
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