Gee, ain't this country wonderful or what!

From Laura Bassett at Huffington Post:

"When Laurie-Ellen Shumaker, 59, was laid off from her job as a lawyer for a shopping center in January of 2009, she assumed she would be hired again in no time. In addition to her impressive resume, which includes a degree from a top-tier law school and 23 years of legal experience, she has always been actively recruited for positions.

"But in the past year-and-a-half, Shumaker says she has applied to over a thousand jobs -- everything from secretary to file clerk to daycare worker -- and she has yet to be called for an interview.

" 'It's frightening,' she told HuffPost. 'Interviews are like seeking unicorns. I've even gotten a status update on two different jobs saying I'm the best qualified, but then I never hear anything after that. It's hard not to rake through one's brain trying to figure out why. Is it my age or my gender holding me back?' "

"According to data released Tuesday morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were nearly 5 unemployed workers in America for every open position in May.

"Shumaker, who was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1997, says she has drained her savings and 401K to pay for her medical bills as well as her daughter's, who recently had to undergo a serious surgery that the insurance company refused to cover. The federal subsidy for her COBRA payments ran out last month, her COBRA coverage will run out next month, and she is expecting her unemployment benefits to run out any minute now.

" 'You never think that this situation is gonna keep going on and on and on,' she said. 'You think that you're gonna get a job. When the unemployment check first started coming in, I kinda laughed at it cause it was so low--it's like chump change. But now it's the difference between having to live in a shelter or not. It's humiliating.' "

Or how about this unemployed worker who the GOP considers a moocher and lazy: "Deborah Coleman lost her unemployment benefits in April, and now fears for millions of others if the Senate does not extend aid for the jobless.

" 'It's too late for me now,' she said, fighting back tears at the Freestore Foodbank in the low-income Over-the-Rhine district near downtown Cincinnati. 'But it will be terrible for the people who'll lose their benefits if Congress does nothing.' "

"For nearly two years, Coleman says she has filed an average of 30 job applications a day, but remains jobless.

" 'People keep telling me there are jobs out there, but I haven't been able to find them.'

"Coleman, 58, a former manager at a telecommunications firm, said the only jobs she found were over the Ohio state line in Kentucky, but she cannot reach them because her car has been repossessed and there is no bus service to those areas.

"After her $300 a week benefits ran out, Freestore Foodbank brokered emergency 90-day support in June for rent. Once that runs out, her future is uncertain.

" 'I've lost everything and I don't know what will happen to me,' she said."

Meanwhile, the elected mostly millionaire denizens on Capitol HIll with their six figure salaries, top quality quality health care coverage, retirement and other benefits courtesy of the taxpayers don't give a damn about the tens of millions of jobless, many of whom are unemployed because of Congress and their corporate cronies.    Ditto the White House that changed nothing.