Joseph Lazzaro

Most baseball fans realize that over the course of a 162-game season, there's bound to be a rain delay or two. That's understandable. What's not understandable? Starting a game at 11:08 p.m. EDT.

In his Thursday address, President Barack Obama is expected to call for extensive tax incentives as part of his administration's plan to jump-start job growth, which has ebbed in recent months as the originally stimulus ended. However, the plan faces an uphill battle in House, where ruling Republicans are likely to oppose it.

What's up next for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin regarding the 2012 presidential election? More than likely, Palin won't run, but won't state that until absolutely necessary.

The latest poll numbers are not good for President Barack Obama: if the 2012 presidential election were held today, the race would be very close, and Obama could easily lose in several hypothetical match-ups.

Vermont residents, already max-out with clean-up and repair work in dozens of villages/towns from Hurricane Irene/Tropical Storm Irene, unfortunately are about to be hit with up to another 4 inches of rain in the next two days on already swollen rivers/streams and saturated ground.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is madder than you-know-what about high oil and gasoline prices, and he's not going to take it anymore. He's introduced a bill, the End Excessive Oil Speculation Now Act of 2011, that would impose strict limits on the amount of oil speculators can trade in the commodity and futures markets.

If high-risk stock Sprint can snare Apple's iPhone 5 this autumn, the company and the stock's day will have finally arrived.

The United States enters this Labor Day faced with many problems, and the most serious of which concerns jobs -- the state of working America is in its most trying condition in generations, with the unemployment at a very high 9.1 percent, and the nation short at least 11 million jobs.

The United States is going through a challenging time right now, and it could use a little comic relief. And who better to provide it than, arguably, the greatest comedian of the modern era, Groucho Marx.

To say it's been a discomforting time for U.S. stock investors lately would be an understatement. Europe debt concerns, a tepid U.S. economic recovery that’s not creating enough jobs, and now Hurricane Irene’s damage has jolted institutional investors. Given the above, where’s the Dow headed from here?

Tea Party members and other conservatives would like Americans to believe that the United States’ problems started in 2009, but nothing could be further from the truth -- three major policy errors by President George W. Bush last decade substantially worsened the U.S.’s fiscal condition, and the nation has been trying to recover ever since.

It's been said for many years in Wall Street circles that Sprint has no where to go but up, and if the company can add Apple's iPhone 5 to its smartphone offerings this autumn, Sprint's revenue will likely do just that -- head up.

The U.S. economy created no net new jobs in August -- a disappointing report that will likely increase pressure on the U.S. Federal Reserve to deploy additional monetary tactics to help rev-up GDP growth to create the millions of jobs the nation needs. Also, the unemployment rate remained the same, at an eye-sore level of 9.1 percent.

Longer-term, the CVS story remains enviable: CVS has helped transform the drug store sector from a neighborhood-oriented, proprietor-owned sector in to a methodical, scalable, profitable corporate business model.

Paraphrasing the late, great writer Mark Twain, the reports of the U.S. manufacturing sector's death are greatly exaggerated -- the nation's factory sector unexpectedly expanded in August, easing concern that the U.S. economy is headed for another recession

It's been said for many years in Wall Street circles that Sprint has no where to go but up, and if the company can add Apple's iPhone 5 to its smartphone offerings this autumn, Sprint's revenue will likely do just that -- head up.

Should the United States tolerate slightly higher inflation, in order to have the economy grow at a faster rate and create more jobs?

Just call it a tread water week for U.S. jobless claims, as they fell 12,000 last week to 409,000, the U.S. Labor Department announced Thursday, but the drop is a qualified one because some of the decline stemmed from the fact that initial claims from two weeks ago were revised up to 421,000 from the initially estimated 417,000.

Finally some good news for the American people on the U.S. economy front: Oil is on track to record in August its biggest monthly price decline since May -- something that will put more money in the pockets of consumers and also boost U.S. GDP growth, if the price reduction holds.

If Sprint snares the Apple’s iPhone 5 this autumn, it could give the cell phone service provider a fighting chance versus AT&T and Verizon.

Despite tepid U.S. GDP growth, the U.S. job market has not collapsed, as the private sector added 91,000 jobs in August, ADP announced Wednesday.

The latest Fed minutes show is that the central bank is well aware that the U.S. economic recovery is underperforming -- it's like a car traveling in the right lane on an interstate highway at 40 miles per hour (barely adequate) -- and it's prepared to take additional action to strengthen the recovery, should the tepid growth conditions continue.

U.S. home prices dipped just 0.1 percent in June from May, according to Case-Shiller -- providing a ray of light that the U.S. housing market may be stabilizing.

The recovery from Hurricane Irene in the U.S. has only just begun, but another tropical disturbance, Tropical Storm Katia, is slowly strengthening over the eastern tropical Atlantic, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

Connecticut's utilities, maintenance, and emergency crews continued to play catch-up Tuesday in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, reducing the number of customers without power to about 420,000.

Amid a sluggish U.S. job market, a patch-work recovery in the housing market sector, and now damage from Hurricane Irene, it's understandable if U.S. investors are hesitant regarding deploying new money to the stock market. Where's the Dow Jones Industrial Average headed from here?

Vermont Monday continued to fight back from what is rapidly becoming the state's worst natural disaster since the historic 1927 flood. Dozens if not hundreds of people remain stranded, provisions for food and water are dwindling in certain areas, and swollen rivers continued to be a threat.

Energy firms along the Eastern Seaboard scrambled on Monday to resume operations after Hurricane Irene left 5.5 million customers without power.

With U.S. job growth sluggish, renewed European debt concerns, and now the damage caused by Hurricane Irene, it’s not surprising that cautious investors are reluctant to deploy additional capital to stocks. However, one moderate-risk way to commit new money to equities is to consider stocks that also pay a decent dividend, and here are three options.