In A Crummy Economy, Why Are Stocks Soaring?

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Economic growth is pitiful. Unemployment has topped 8 percent for an exhausting 43 months. The nation is careering toward a so-called fiscal cliff, and maybe a recession.

So why is the Dow Jones industrial average, that trusty gauge of corporate America’s strength, just 4 percent shy of an all-time record? And why are the smaller public companies measured by the Russell 2000 index almost there already?

Start with two words: Ben Bernanke.

Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, last week announced unprecedented measures aimed at lifting the sagging economy — and boosting the prices of assets like stocks and houses. The market rallied all summer in anticipation of such a move.

The Fed made an open-ended promise to purchase $40 billion a month in mortgage bonds and said it will keep interest rates low through 2015, even if the economy starts to improve.

Read more from this story HERE.

Netanyahu Circumvents Obama, Makes Direct Appeal to US Voters Regarding Iran Nukes (+video)

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a direct appeal to American voters on Sunday to elect a president willing to draw a “red line” with Iran, comparing Tehran’s nuclear program to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and reminding Americans of the devastating repercussions of failed intelligence.

His remarks were an impassioned election-season plea from a world leader who insists he doesn’t want to insert himself into U.S. politics and hasn’t endorsed either candidate. But visibly frustrated by U.S. policy under President Barack Obama, the hawkish Israeli leader took advantage of the week’s focus on unrest across the Muslim world and America’s time-honored tradition of the Sunday television talk shows to appeal to Americans headed to the polls in less than two months.

Tehran claims its nuclear program is peaceful. Netanyahu said the U.S. would be foolish to believe that, using football metaphors and citing example of past terrorist attacks on U.S. soil to appeal to his American audience.

“It’s like Timothy McVeigh walking into a shop in Oklahoma City and saying, ‘I’d like to tend my garden. I’d like to buy some fertilizer … Come on. We know that they’re working on a weapon,’” Netanyahu said.

The past week, Netanyahu has called on Obama and other world leaders to state clearly at what point Iran would face a military attack. But Obama and his top aides, who repeatedly say all options remain on the table, have pointed to shared U.S.-Israeli intelligence that suggests Iran hasn’t decided yet whether to build a bomb and that there would be time for action beyond toughened sanctions already in place.

Read more from this story HERE.

Unions, Protesters Attack Self-Made Grocery Tycoon For Verifying Legal Status of Workers

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An illegal alien who became a citizen and multi-millionaire grocery tycoon is in trouble with “activists” because he is using the federal E-Verify program to check whether prospective employees are illegal aliens.

Juvenal Chavez, who own the Mi Pueblo grocery chain in California headquartered in San Jose, faces protests because, “activists” say, he has betrayed his “undocumented roots,” the San Jose Mercury News recently reported.

They, apparently, want the Mexican Hortaio Alger to ignore the law and permit illegal aliens to work.

According to the News, “Mi Pueblo stunned some of its more than 3,000 employees last month when it told them it had joined E-Verify, a Department of Homeland Security program that screens the immigration status of new hires. …”

[Also a]ccording to the newspaper, “armed security” booted a county supervisor from the store in what the company called a “media stunt,” after he showed up to investigate “complaints about working conditions.” It appears that union goons, the newspaper reported, are pushing the protests against the entrepreneur. They are “accusing Chavez of betraying his own undocumented immigrant roots and threatening a consumer boycott if he doesn’t pull out of E-Verify by October.” So Chavez “is fighting back in a war of words against the union and political opposition.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Many Black Americans, Seeing No Good Choice, May Stay Home November 6

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The pastors say their congregants are asking how a true Christian could back same-sex marriage, as President Barack Obama did in May. As for Republican Mitt Romney, the first Mormon nominee from a major party, congregants are questioning the theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its former ban on men of African descent in the priesthood.

There’s no question which candidate is expected to win the black vote. In 2008, Obama won 95 percent of black voters and is likely to get an overwhelming majority again. But the nation’s first African-American president can’t afford to lose any voters from his base.

“When President Obama made the public statement on gay marriage, I think it put a question in our minds as to what direction he’s taking the nation,” said the Rev. A.R. Bernard, founder of the predominantly African-American Christian Cultural Center in New York. Bernard, whose endorsement is much sought-after in New York and beyond, voted for Obama in 2008. He said he’s unsure how he’ll vote this year.

It’s unclear just how widespread the sentiment is that African-American Christians would be better off not voting at all. Many pastors have said that despite their misgivings about the candidates, blacks have fought too hard for the vote to ever stay away from the polls.

Black church leaders have launched get-out-the-vote efforts on a wide range of issues, including the proliferation of state voter identification laws, which critics say discriminate against minorities. Last Easter Sunday, a month before Obama’s gay marriage announcement, the Rev. Jamal-Harrison Bryant of Baltimore formed the Empowerment Network, a national coalition of about 30 denominations working to register congregants and provide them with background on health care, the economy, education and other policy issues.

Read more from this story HERE.

Diplomat Killed in Libya Told Fellow Gamers: Hope I ‘Don’t Die Tonight’

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On Tuesday, Sean Smith, a Foreign Service Information Management Officer assigned to the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, typed a message to the director of his online gaming guild: ”Assuming we don’t die tonight. We saw one of our ‘police’ that guard the compound taking pictures.” The consulate was under siege, and within hours, a mob would attack, killing Smith along with three others, including the U.S. ambassador.

In his professional and personal life, Smith was a husband and father of two, an Air Force veteran, and a 10-year veteran of the Foreign Service who had served in Baghdad, Pretoria, Montreal and The Hague. But when gaming with EVE Online guild Goonswarm, he was a popular figure known as “Vile Rat,” and alternately as “Vilerat” while volunteering as a moderator at the internet community Something Awful. Smith’s death was confirmed on Wednesday morning by the State Department and reported widely in the news media. But the first people to report Smith’s death were his friends. Their reaction was shock and mourning.

“My people, I have greivous [sic] news. Vile Rat has been confirmed to be KIA in Benghazi; his family has been informed and the news is likely to break out on the wire services soon,” wrote Goonswarm director Alex Gianturco in a message mirrored to Something Awful at 11:21 EST. “Needless to say, we are in shock, have no words, and have nothing but sympathy for his family and children. I have known Vile Rat since 2006, he was one of the oldest of old-guard goons and one of the best and most effective diplomats this game has ever seen.”

According to his friends, Smith had emerged as a key leader for the community, and was known as a senior guild diplomat who helped engineer the destruction of Goonswarm’s chief rival, the Band of Brothers. He let his guildmates design his tattoo. On Wednesday, Gianturco posted an obituary for his friend of more than six years. “He was on jabber when it happened, that’s the most fucked up thing,” Gianturco wrote. “In Baghdad the same kind of thing happened – incoming sirens, he’d vanish, we’d freak out and he’d come back ok after a bit. This time he said ‘FUCK’ and ‘GUNFIRE’ and then disconnected and never returned.”

Next, media reports began circulating that the consulate in Benghazi, and the U.S. embassy in Egypt, had come under attack. Gianturco, known in the EVE Online community as The Mittani, “freaked out.” Gianturco wrote that he was “in shock” and felt dead inside.

Read more from this story HERE.

Black Flag of Islam Flies Over US Tunisian Embassy as Attacks on America Continue Worldwide

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A black Islamic flag is currently flying over the U.S. embassy in Tunisia after it had been stormed by an angry mob of protesters, who were upset over an anti-Islam film that was made by Americans.

This is just one of many incidents occurring around the world today, in which Americans are being targeted.

In Tunis, the mob overran the compound, scaling walls and setting fire to trees before tearing down the American flag and replacing it with a symbol of Islam. It is not thought that any U.S. staff were actually in the embassy in Tunis. An American school in Tunis was also set on fire. Police responded to the mobs by firing tear gas, and police gunfire could also be heard.

Several dozen protesters were also briefly able to enter the embassy compound and set fire to cars in the embassy parking lot. Police and special forces pushed them back outside.

In Lebanon today angry protesters ransacked a KFC and Hardee’s restaurant, police were firing on protesters in Yemen, and there was also unrest in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and Turkey.

Read more from this story HERE.

NYT Reports: Kansas Ballot Challenge Over Obama’s Birth Is Ended

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Citing a wave of angry backlash, a Kansas man on Friday withdrew a petition in which he argued that President Obama should be removed from the state’s election ballot because he did not meet citizenship requirements.

The challenge filed this week by Joe Montgomery of Manhattan, Kan., prompted state election authorities to seek a certified copy of Mr. Obama’s birth certificate and reignited long-running conspiracy theories that the president was not born in the United States. The state will continue to try to obtain the birth certificate, and officials will meet on Monday as scheduled to close the case officially. But without the petition, Mr. Obama will remain on the ballot, Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach told The Associated Press.

Mr. Montgomery, the communications director for the Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine, explained his decision in an e-mail to Mr. Kobach.

“There has been a great deal of animosity and intimidation directed not only at me, but at people around me, who are both personal and professional associations,” he wrote. He added that he did not “wish to burden anyone with more of this negative reaction.”

After a hearing on Thursday, the state’s Objections Board, led by Mr. Kobach, a conservative Republican, said it needed more information before issuing a ruling.

Read more from this story HERE.

House GOP Snookers Public Again: “No More Solyndras” Bill Allows $90 Billion of Solyndras

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Four groups – Taxpayers for Common Sense, Heritage Foundation, National Taxpayers Union and the Competitive Enterprise Institute – warned today that a number of energy boondoggles would remain in the federal pipeline under the No More Solyndras Act.

While the “No More Solyndras Act” would limit federal loan guarantees for future energy projects, it would allow dozens of major projects already in the federal pipeline to move forward. The four groups are concerned that a number of the “zombie” projects that would be allowed to live could be, in fact, even more costly to taxpayers than the widely publicized Solyndra loan-guarantee failure. So instead of being a fix for what ails the federal loan guarantee program, the No More Solyndras Act would countenance exactly the opposite of what its name suggests: the prospect of more Solyndra-like loan guarantee defaults, on an even larger financial scale.

Ryan Alexander, president, Taxpayers for Common Sense, said:

Despite some merits, ‘The No More Solyndras Act’ has a glaring loophole that should have it redubbed the ‘Even More Solyndras Act.’ The bill protects roughly 50 projects in the pipeline, including one that could cost taxpayers 15 times more than we lost on Solyndra. Lawmakers need to stop the program from putting taxpayers on the hook for billions in loan guarantees instead of passing bait and switch legislation.

Andrew Moylan, vice president, National Taxpayers Union, said:

The ‘No More Solyndras Act’ is an important effort to protect taxpayers against future losses from reckless energy loan guarantees, but it doesn’t do nearly enough to address boondoggles that were approved under the same failed regime that lost over $500 million on the Solyndra bankruptcy. While it takes the vital step of preventing new loan guarantees and improving transparency, Americans could still be on the hook for struggling multi-billion dollar projects. The House should amend the bill to strengthen provisions dealing with loan guarantee applications already in the pipeline to ensure that these ‘zombie’ projects don’t draw any more blood from taxpayers.

William Yeatmen, energy policy analyst, Competitive Enterprise Institute, said:

The No More Solyndras Act has a major flaw. The bill would end the Energy Department’s clean energy bank, which is great and is why we support it, but the fact is it sunsets the program too late to stop most of these subsidies from going out the door. Despite the bill’s weakness, it has engendered bipartisan opposition. These days, unfortunately, it seems that the only thing that both political parties can agree on is the merit of pork barrel politics.

Jack Spencer, senior research fellow, nuclear energy policy, Heritage Foundation, said:

The No More Solyndras Act begins to protect taxpayers from future bad bets the government makes with market-distorting loan guarantees. While setting a definitive end date to the program is important, this will not remedy the problem of loan guarantees still lurking out there. The legislation could be strengthened by ensuring that the risk of any loan that moves ahead is objectively determined and not skewed for or against any technology or project. It’s also important for the legislation to make sure the training wheels come off as soon as possible by requiring that the loan be privately refinanced once the project begins operations. To be clear, however, the federal government needs to get out of the commercial finance business altogether. The bottom line is that there is no set of protections that can make a loan guarantee program good, you can only stop the bleeding. No more Solyndras helps stop the bleeding.

Read more from this story HERE.

US Credit Rating Cut Again

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Ratings firm Egan-Jones cut its credit rating on the U.S. government to “AA-” from “AA,” citing its opinion that quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve would hurt the U.S. economy and the country’s credit quality.

The Fed on Thursday said it would pump $40 billion into the U.S. economy each month until it saw a sustained upturn in the weak jobs market.

In its downgrade, the firm said that issuing more currency and depressing interest rates through purchasing mortgage-backed securities does little to raise the U.S.’s real gross domestic product, but reduces the value of the dollar.

In turn, this increases the cost of commodities, which will pressure the profitability of businesses and increase the costs of consumers thereby reducing consumer purchasing power, the firm said.

In April, Egan-Jones cuts the U.S. credit rating to “AA” from “AA+” with a negative watch, citing a lack of progress in cutting the mounting federal debt.

Read more from this story HERE.

Lebanon News: US Ambassador Was Raped Before He Was Killed

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[Publisher’s Note: Lebanon News apparently misattributed the rape report to AFP. The Libyan Free Press also reported the rape, but its post is no longer available. The Examiner has recently published two related stories, “Did Hillary Clinton send a gay ambassador to Libya as intentional provocation?” and “Rep. Gohmert nauseated upon hearing reports of what they did to Ambassador Stevens.” Both provide additional information on the ambassador’s death.

Some reports are suggesting that the ambassador died of smoke inhalation in a safe room prior to his capture. However, if you look at the Ambassador’s picture HERE, it appears that the Ambassador could still be alive. Note his left hand being held, without assistance, near his head. His condition in this photo suggests that he has been abused.

Until the autopsy by US authorities is complete (and assuming it’s not scrubbed for political purposes), we may not know with any level of certainty what happened to the ambassador before his murder. Read about this HERE. What follows is the story we originally posted on the ambassador’s murder.]

This report just broke from an Arabic site called “Lebanon News.” The Arabic Lebanon News (Tayyar.org) is the number one Lebanese online news site (ranked number eight of all sites in the nation) and has significant coverage throughout the Arab world.

What follows is the rough Google Translation of the site’s report on the Ambassador’s gruesome murder:

Sources AFP that “the U.S. ambassador to Libya was raped sexually before killing by gunmen who stormed the embassy building in Benghazi last night to protest against the film is offensive to the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh),” The sources said that “Ambassador was killed and representation of his body in a manner similar to what happened with Gaddafi, such as murder. ” has reported: kill the U.S. ambassador in Libya Christopher Stevens and three Americans in an attack on Tuesday evening 09/11/2012 the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, also announced Wednesday a senior official at the Interior Ministry Libyan told AFP.

The deputy interior minister and Nice Sharef “kill the ambassador and three other staff members,” said Libyan Deputy Prime Minister Mustafa Abu Hakor killed the U.S. ambassador in its note on his Twitter page.

For his part, President of the Supreme Security Committee in Benghazi Fawzi and Nice that the U.S. ambassador was at the consulate when the attack occurred.

The demonstrators attacked by gunmen on Tuesday evening consulate and fired upon shells by security sources Libyan reported in a first stage for the fall of American lives and wounded during the attack. and condemned U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday 09/12/2012 strongly “attack infamous” that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three Americans others in the U.S. consulate in the city of Benghazi and ordered to tighten security at diplomatic missions around the world.

Obama said in a statement after the murder of the U.S. ambassador and three employees in a rocket attack on their vehicle in Benghazi “I have asked my department to provide all the necessary resources to ensure our employees in Libya and tighten security at diplomatic missions around the world.”

Here is a related story regarding the Koran-burning pastor from Florida and the phone call he received from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff several days ago concerning the video trailer that allegedly sparked the Egyptian and Libyan violence.