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Articles Posted by Grampa Dave

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  • Return to Normalcy seems distant in Sonoma County (re fires)

    10/16/2017 8:01:41 AM PDT · by Grampa Dave · 33 replies
    Press Democrat- Santa Rosa, Ca. ^ | 10/15/2017 | Derek Moore
    long Highway 12 through Sonoma Valley, world-famous vineyards beginning to show off their brilliant fall hues are now juxtaposed against a jarring backdrop of mountains blackened by flames. Majestic parklands ringing the valley have been scarred, including Sugarloaf Ridge State Park and Hood Mountain Regional Park near Kenwood, where flames Sunday continued to send a massive plume of smoke into the sky visible for miles, fueling fresh rivulets of anxiety for both residents and firefighters. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Tom Siragusa, an assistant chief for the San Francisco Fire Department and Petaluma resident who has worked in the...
  • Napa County Sonoma County WildFire Update

    10/13/2017 8:09:47 AM PDT · by Grampa Dave · 20 replies
    self ^ | 10/13/2017 | Grampa Dave
    Two places to donate money to help the California fire victims! All of your money will go to that effort! The family that owns Hall’s Winery has started a matching fund drive to help the people in the fire areas needing financial aid. Every $ donated will be matched and will go to help those in need and not line some rich liberal so called charity’s pockets! Many of the evacuees left their homes at night with minimal clothing and basically what money they might have had at home. Many will have no homes to return to and maybe no...
  • Gold vs. Guns: One Investment Outshoots the Other

    06/20/2013 7:23:53 AM PDT · by Grampa Dave · 5 replies
    TheStreet.com ^ | 6/20/2013 | Robert Weinstein |
    The S&P Gold Trust, GLD, can't gloat about performance while near 52-week lows. Sturm Ruger delivers a big caliber dividend over 4%, while GLD slowly eats value from management and trading costs. Now trading near $130.60, GLD was $45.30 at the beginning of 2005, an impressive gain. During the GLD peak in 2011, an investment in GLD was almost a four-bagger. Not bad at all, but Sturm Ruger started 2005 at $4.09, and is now over $48, a 12-bagger by itself, but Sturm Ruger paid out enough dividends since to return most of your original investment. The bottom line is...
  • US to Let Spy Agencies Scour Americans' Finances

    03/14/2013 8:31:24 AM PDT · by Grampa Dave · 9 replies
    CNBC/Reuters ^ | 14 Mar 2013 | 1:34 AM ET | unknown
    Reuters excerpt
  • BOND: A Tipping Point For Wall Street

    12/17/2012 6:13:46 PM PST · by Grampa Dave · 9 replies
    Seeking Alpha ^ | 12/17/2012 | jeff-binkley
    Seeking Alpha Home |Portfolio |Market Currents |Investing Ideas |Dividends & Income |ETFs |Macro View |ALERTS |PRO   This article was sent to 832 people who get email alerts on  . Which cover: new articles | breaking news | earnings results | dividend announcementsGet email alerts on   » This article was sent to 84,459 people who get the ETFs & Portfolio Strategy newsletter. Get the ETFs & Portfolio Strategy newsletter » BOND: A Tipping Point For Wall Street December 17, 2012 by: Jeff Binkley  |  about: BOND Disclosure: I am long BOND. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses...
  • Is Norton™ Online Backup a good backup system?

    12/09/2012 10:02:54 AM PST · by Grampa Dave · 40 replies
    self | 12/9/2012 | self
    Recently I had a problem with Comcast's cloud backup. Then, I went to MyPC Backup Premium, and I started a year of their Premium program. Everything appeared to go well until this past week. I couldn't back up my files, and the system wanted me to go into a new package. Finally, after several days, I got a response re what to do, and it didn't work. I went on line and checked out their ratings. Once you got past the bs, there appeared to be a lot of people having similiar problems as I had. I really don't want...
  • How ETFs will destroy Wall Street (not a bad option)

    11/28/2012 9:29:53 AM PST · by Grampa Dave · 7 replies
    Motley Fool ^ | 11/28/2012 | Dan Caplinger
    For decades, ordinary investors with modest sums to invest had limited options. With even low discount-broker commissions making a big dent into regular investments from typical paychecks, individual stocks were largely out of reach, leaving actively managed mutual funds as the primary alternative. Through active funds, money managers got used to the idea of taking 1% off the top on an annual basis, regardless of whether the funds they managed produced gains or lost money for their shareholders. Index mutual funds have been around for 35 years, but they largely coexisted peacefully with active funds throughout most of that time....
  • How Carter Beat Reagan

    10/02/2012 10:44:20 AM PDT · by Grampa Dave · 27 replies
    American Spectator ^ | Jeffrey Lord
    Remember when Jimmy Carter beat Ronald Reagan in 1980? Washington Post admits polling was "in-kind contribution"; New York Times agenda polling. Dick Morris is right. Here's his column on "Why the Polls Understate the Romney Vote." Here's something Dick Morris doesn't mention. And he's charitable. Remember when Jimmy Carter beat Ronald Reagan in 1980? That's right. Jimmy Carter beat Ronald Reagan in 1980.
  • Need help from Freepers with Photo Morphing skill

    09/12/2012 10:29:11 AM PDT · by Grampa Dave · 26 replies
    Self | self
    We need a picture of Jimmy Carter morphing into Obama and back. Many of us with our embassies under attack are feeling the pain of Carter deja vue. A picture of Carter morphing into Obozo and back might help the younger folks who wern't around when Carter allowed the Islamofacists to take over our embassy. That picture of Carter morphing into Obozo and back should/might wake up a lot of voters in a semi conscious daze.
  • Obama authorizes secret US support for Syrian rebels

    08/02/2012 7:48:15 AM PDT · by Grampa Dave · 30 replies
    NBC World News ^ | 08/01/2012 | unknown
    Updated at 8:14 a.m. ET: President Barack Obama has signed a so-called "intelligence finding" authorizing covert aid to the Syrian rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government, NBC News has confirmed. White House and intelligence officials declined to comment on a Reuters report about the aid. A U.S. official also said that while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the U.S., is providing non-lethal aid and communications to the rebels, the presidential finding provides more intelligence resources than had been previously known. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The administration has been under constant criticism for months from Sen. John...
  • Boatload of subsidies buoy new South S.F. Ferry

    06/25/2012 3:37:55 PM PDT · by Grampa Dave · 32 replies
    San Francisco Chronicle, Bay Area ^ | 6/25/2012 | Phil Matier
    SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – It turns out that the much-heralded new ferry line between South San Francisco, Oakland and Alameda is being subsidized – heavily – by the public. The numbers have been crunched, revealing that for every $14 round trip ticket sold, the public has – or will – kick in nearly $100. In all, the subsidies for the new ferry service total roughly $94 million over a 20 year period. Among the publicly-financed elements of the transit service: the Oyster Point Ferry Terminal, paid for largely with San Mateo County sales tax funds; Bay Area bridge...
  • A run on Guns is making investors happy

    04/04/2012 9:53:26 AM PDT · by Grampa Dave · 9 replies
    Seeking Alpha ^ | 28 March 2012 | Michael J. Ray
    That being said, every once in awhile I stumble onto certain investment opportunities that fall outside these two realms. Recently it has become apparent that one such opportunity is in full swing, and that is in the world of firearms manufacturing. We are not talking about the military industries, but more the firearms made for the general public. Like them or hate them, one cannot argue that an investment in guns and the companies that manufacture them are making investors very happy. To validate the claim, consider the following two companies and their current stock prices.
  • Why did the liberal mayors oust the Occupier/scumbags this week?

    11/15/2011 7:35:12 AM PST · by Grampa Dave · 54 replies
    self | 15 November 2011 | self
    Why have so many major cities turned on the Occupiers? The liberal mayors/leaders of Oakland, Portland, New York City and other cities, this week have decided that the Occupier/scumbags are not welcome. Across the nation liberal mayors have sent in cops in their cities , to move the scumbags out of their encampments and tear down their encampments. So what has happened and why this week? Did the mayors finally wake and realized that these scumbags were not the 99% of he/she/its in white hats? Did the merchants in the impacted areas finally convince the mayors that their businesses were...
  • State Department wants to make it harder to get a passport.

    04/27/2011 9:00:54 AM PDT · by Grampa Dave · 18 replies
    Consumer Traveler.com ^ | April 22, 2011 | Edward Hasbrouck
    If you don’t want it to get even harder for a U.S. citizen to get a passport — now required for travel even to Canada or Mexico — you only have until Monday to let the State Department know. The U.S. Department of State is proposing a new Biographical Questionnaire for some passport applicants: The proposed new Form DS-5513 asks for all addresses since birth; lifetime employment history including employers’ and supervisors names, addresses, and telephone numbers; personal details of all siblings; mother’s address one year prior to your birth; any “religious ceremony” around the time of birth; and a...
  • Should-community-colleges-cut-lingering-students

    01/24/2011 10:05:28 AM PST · by Grampa Dave · 17 replies
    California Watch Daily Report ^ | January 24, 2011 | | Erica Perez
    A proposal to cut off access to community college students who linger too long – loading up their transcripts with gym classes, poor grades and far more units than they need to transfer or graduate – has merit and should be explored, the system's chancellor says. A report [PDF] from the state legislative analyst last week recommended giving first-time students a higher priority for class registration, capping the number of taxpayer-subsidized units that students can take and limiting the number of times students can repeat certain courses on the state’s dime – moves that could save an estimated $235 million....
  • Documents detail Ariz. suspect's college outbursts(51 Pages)

    01/13/2011 7:45:53 AM PST · by Grampa Dave
    Comcast News/A[ ^ | 1/13/2010 | MICHAEL R. BLOOD, AP
    Loughner's on-campus behavior grew increasingly erratic, menacing, even delusional. Fifty-one pages of police reports released Wednesday provided a chilling portrait of Loughner's last school year, which ended in September when he was judged mentally unhinged and suspended by Pima Community College.
  • US deploys 'game-changer' weapon to Afghanistan

    12/01/2010 8:56:24 AM PST · by Grampa Dave · 8 replies
    Yahoo/afp ^ | Wed Dec 1, 2:09 am ET | Michael Mathes
    by .WASHINGTON (AFP) – It looks and acts like something best left in the hands of Sylvester Stallone's "Rambo," but this latest dream weapon is real -- and the US Army sees it becoming the Taliban's worst nightmare. The Pentagon has rolled out prototypes of its first-ever programmable "smart" grenade launcher, a shoulder-fired weapon that uses microchipped ammunition to target and kill the enemy, even when the enemy is hidden behind walls or other cover.
  • Tighter attendance rules for American Canyon schools (IDs required & not Arizona)

    06/21/2010 7:32:07 AM PDT · by Grampa Dave · 12 replies
    Napa Register ^ | June 19, 2010 | KERANA TODOROV,
    Tighter attendance rules for American Canyon schools By KERANA TODOROV, Register Staff Writer | Posted: Saturday, June 19, 2010 12:00 am Starting this fall, public school parents in American Canyon will have to show proof that they live in American Canyon, not only when they register their children, but every year after too. The Napa Valley Unified School District is imposing a strict residency test to keep interlopers, including those from Vallejo and Fairfield, from squeezing out American Canyon youngsters from local schools. Under district policies, only American Canyon children can attend the city’s three elementary schools, middle school and...
  • San Francisco weighs sweeping boycott of Arizona

    04/28/2010 8:19:27 AM PDT · by Grampa Dave · 52 replies · 837+ views
    La Times Now ^ | 4/27/2010 | unknown
    San Francisco officials on Tuesday will consider a sweeping boycott of Arizona in the wake of that state's passage of tough anti-illegal-immigration measures. A resolution before the Board of Supervisors calls on the city to cancel contracts with companies based in Arizona and halt business ties between city government and the state.
  • Oil futures fall on jitters over Goldman Sachs

    04/19/2010 11:02:53 AM PDT · by Grampa Dave · 27 replies · 600+ views
    Market Watch via Yahoo ^ | 04/19/2010 | Claudia Assis & Polya Lesova
    "The possibility of investigations spreading to other business areas cannot be ruled out ... As Goldman Sachs is one of the biggest and most important players on the financial commodities market, some market players evidently fear disruptions now and are realizing profits," analysts at Commerzbank said in a note to clients Monday.