Last night the music concert was really good. They have an orchestra, band and choir and between them all, they played or sang 16 songs. The kids have made a lot of progress in a year.

Still raining around here, not sure if we’ll have baseball tonight or not. It’s putting a real cramp in our house cleaning too.

Dr. R is at it again, ranting and raving, we have to get her out of there. Time to start working on a plan now. This morning I need to run to the distributor and then to an account all before 11am.

Ty is virtually in play mode at school as are all the kids while they’re still pilling the homework on Jagger even though there’s only a few days to go. I think he had two finals yesterday and am not sure what’s going on today.

No politics today as I haven’t read the news yet but I’m sure whatever it is, it isn’t good. We’re setting up a crowd funding account to start a little farm/ranch in the hills so get ready to donate. If you don’t know what crowd funding is, that’s where you help “fund” worthwhile projects or ideas for people. We’re thinking that baby goats and chickens and all sorts of plants growing wouldn’t be able to rant and rave at Lori! So get out your checkbooks and send us along your donation to Fugate Ranches!

God Bless.

Jag’s last band concert of the year is at 7pm tonight. They always do a good job and he enjoys it. When you think about it, the kids are pretty well versed in a number of different areas. As an example, Ty brought home his art work yesterday which is just amazing, a few days ago he was in a play and a few weeks ago was a DJ at the school. Meanwhile Jag plays in the band, plays baseball and is Vice President of Student Council and both boys are going to camp in a month or so (separate camps) and they’re both going to a church youth group paint ball party coming up sometime soon. Throw in all the funny stuff they say and do and it’s pretty entertaining around here.

Yesterday the govt announced that they told banks to report anyone who takes as little as a few thousand dollars in cash OUT of the bank. So now they want to report you if you deposit cash OR withdrawal cash. Bottom line is, they’re setting up a war on cash as they then can control everything. Imagine you only having a card you use for everything you buy from an account that the govt decides how much is in it. They’d love this as then they can write off or wipe out the hundreds of trillions of dollars they’ve (big banks and crooked official’s and govts Worldwide) rung up over the years. Hopefully smart people will see through this latest proposed sham as it doesn’t address the real issue which is just spending money they don’t have. If you can’t see the road we’re headed down as a society, that’s really sad. Everyday we lose more and more of our rights and liberties supposedly for our own good. It’s the old frog in boiling water thing. That’s where you put a frog in cold water and set it on the stove and it gradually gets hotter and hotter and eventually the frog cooks to death. In other words, when things happen a little at a time, you get used to it. Our main worry is we fear for our kids as I can only imagine life in 10 or 20 years and it doesn’t look all that rosy. I’ll stop now as I’m not trying to ruin anyones day, it’s just sad what life and our World is becoming. It appears a true distopian society is in our future and life as we know it is rapidly changing. I often remember when I was a kid and visiting my grandparents and the quality of life in those days. It didn’t matter how much money you had or where you lived. Even a milkman or a store worker or a factory worker could make a decent living and support their family. Now it seems as though everyone is struggling to just get by. There’s not much individual identity anymore, everyone is just a number or a group of statistics that are captured and categorized by some giant computer program somewhere. And worst of all, our individualism is now looked at as a negative or threat by the powers that be. Enough said, God help us.

Guess I’ll run, sorry for the rant. Time to move to the hills and start a small farm or ranch somewhere, that’s our dream. I wish my dad was here to talk to as it’d sure be nice to get his perspective and advice on this whole thing. Funny how often I ask myself what he’d think or do, guess he’s here after all.

God Bless.

Can you believe it? We can’t. This is officially the last week of school as after next Monday, which is a holiday, they go back for a day to so to play and that’s it. Summer vacation is here.

Yesterday we made a trip to the storage unit and then Jag and I ran to Cabelas. After that, Ty and Ben went to Jump Street where they met Vinny and Elliot. We picked them up at 4 and then Jagger had his church youth group bbq. He needed a white t-shirt as it was “your neighbors your napkin” day. That means you use the t-shirt that person next to you is wearing as your napkin! Jag was smart enough to take an extra shirt to wear after dinner.

It’s raining a bit so not sure if baseball practice is on or not. Jagger has his last band concert at 7pm tomorrow night. We need to see if we can squeeze one more night out of his dress pants and white shirt before summer. His pants are “high waters” now meaning they’re a good 4 to 6 inches too short but if we buy more now, he’ll grow out of those by fall. What’s a parent to do. He says it’ll be a good concert as they’re playing music from the movie the Hunger Games.

Guess I’ll run and get to work. Laundry is going, Lori’s making lunches and I think Jag’s in the shower while Ty is still sleeping. Time to get him up!

Hope you enjoyed the extras in the post yesterday. Lots going on and in the immortal words of Bob Dylan, the times they are a changing.

God Bless

We managed to get up, get ready and move some stuff at our garage sale which lasted from about 8 until 11am. I think we did $300 which is nothing to sneeze at. We then donated some stuff to the church via out neighbor next door who is a pastor and also to Lori’s friend Andrea. I was hoping for a bit more as we really need a new couch but we’ll take the $300 and be thankful.

Lori took 4 boys on their new favorite walk or nature hike down along the river. I’m always nervous as there’s lots of homeless people that call the woods down there home but she had Andrea also meet her so there were 7 of them in all when you throw in Andrea’s daughter. I have a ganglion cyst on my foot which comes and goes from too much weightlifting. It seems whenI’m standing lifting a few hundred pounds, it puts pressure on a specific part of my left foot that then fills up a little with fluid. It either goes down on its own or I run up to Panorama Orthopedics and have them drain it. They just stick a thick needle in it and then squeeze it out. It sounds a lot worse than it is as it doesn’t bother me at all.

Today the boys want to go to Cabela’s so we’ll head out early like 8:30. Lori did too much yesterday as usual so I might have to tie her to the couch today. I think we’ll then go to the park or take a drive to the mountains, something relaxing. Lori planted a few things yesterday and I’m sure will be all over the same today but we’ll see.

No politics today as it’s Sunday but you have to see these two articles below. Hope all’s well, God Bless.

What Goldman Is Telling Its Clients: Sell In May And Don’t Come Back For One Year

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/16/2015 18:27 -0400

While Goldman gives the following explicit warning in all of its public research pieces: “Our asset management area, our proprietary trading desks and investing businesses may make investment decisions that are inconsistent with the recommendations or views expressed in this research”, the reality is that in recent months Goldman’s chief equity strategist David Kostin has been getting increasingly “toppish” if not outright bearish on stocks. In his latest report he now openly warns that “the market will rise to 2150 by mid-year but fade after the Fed raises interest rates in September for the first time in nine years.” As a result Goldman’s “year-end forecast is 2100 and its 12-month target equals 2125.”

Which is where the S&P 500 closed on Friday. In other words, sell in May and don’t come back until next May.

Here is what else Goldman is telling its buyside clients:

During the last 50 years, dividends accounted for nearly 80% of the total return generated by US equities. The proportion fell to 45% during the past 25 years and 35% for the past decade. However, since the 2009 financial crisis lows, price return has accounted for more than 80% of the total return of the S&P 500 as the P/E multiple soared from 10.1x to 17.3x. Looking ahead, the market implies 46% of the total return for stocks during the next decade will be generated by dividends, in-line with the past quarter-century.

 

 

The median S&P 500 stock trades at a P/E of 18.2x, the 99th percentile of historical valuation, and has limited scope for further upward expansion. Investors are looking to enhance performance by buying stocks returning cash to shareholders. We forecast S&P 500 firms will return $1 trillion to investors during 2015 via dividends and buybacks. Cash dividends will total $400 billion, a 7% increase from 2014, while buybacks will climb by 18% to $600 billion. The median S&P 500 stock trades with a 1.9% annualized dividend yield, slightly below the ten-year US Treasury note yield of 2.2%.

 

In addition to high dividend yields, investors are also looking to boost returns by finding stocks growing dividends at a rapid pace. The median S&P 500 stock is expected to grow its dividend by 8% annually during the next two years. However, with record levels of cash on corporate balance sheets, many firms are increasing dividends at a much faster clip.

 

The dividend swap market foreshadowed by more than six months the underperformance of shares in our dividend growth basket. The rebound in the dividend swap market at the start of 2015 presaged by two months the recent rally in our dividend growth basket.

 

At the sector level, Telecom and Utilities offer the highest dividend yields at 4.8% and 3.7%, respectively. Information Technology and Financials account for the largest proportion of gross S&P 500 dividends paid, each at 15% of the index total. The fastest dividend growth is found in Financials, Health Care, and Consumer Discretionary, each with a 13% pace.

 

 

The historical relationship between the cyclically-adjusted P/E multiple (currently 23.4x) and forward equity returns suggest the prospective 10-year annualized total return for the S&P 500 will be 5%. Dividend levels implied by the swap market suggest that 46% of the total return during the next ten years will be derived from dividends, and 54% from price gain.

Which means annualized capital appreciation (i.e., price increases) over the next decade will be just about 2.5%. And that is assuming record central bank intervention. One wonders: what happens if and when the central planners finally pull the plug?

 

AND NOW, FROM THE TRULY UNBELIEVABLE……

Jefferson Parrish, LA — In a Jefferson Parrish School District in Louisiana, an eighth grader was handcuffed and dragged out of the classroom…for throwing skittles. He was then held for six days.

For throwing skittles.

The boy had allegedly thrown the candy on a school bus the previous day. A report from Vocativ states:

“The following day, as the boy was taking a social studies test, a police officer assigned to the school handcuffed him, dragged him out of class and arrested him. He was charged with “interference with an educational facility” and battery.

As the officer led the handcuffed teenager out of the school, both students and faculty heard him threaten to “beat the f*** out of [the boy],” or to have his son, who is about the same age, do it for him. The student, who is African-American, spent six days in a juvenile detention facility before seeing a judge, whose first comment was: “Am I to get this right? Are we really here about Skittles?”

The mother has pulled the young boy from the school.

This is no isolated incident. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Jefferson Parish School District has had over 1600 kids arrested for things like carrying a cell phone, swearing, or not adhering to dress code. Arrested.

In what universe is this acceptable?

They also found that black students make up 80% of those arrested, despite that fact that black students make up only 40% of the school district. The SPLC has reportedly called on the Department of Justice “to intervene with the school’s unwarranted arrests of overwhelmingly minority students.”

According to SPLC attorney Eden Heilman,

“The Jefferson Parish Public School System has continued its destructive practice of arresting and jailing children for minor, and often trivial, violations of school rules and decorum. It’s nothing less than a racially biased system of criminalizing African-American children.”

The school district stated publicly that it was aware of the situation and will be working to fix it.

It’s 6:20 and we have a few hours to get stuff outside and signs up. Lots of crap which is hopefully other folks treasure is ready to go.

Lori’s headache is so so with it virtually going away yesterday for a little bit. So we’re hopeful that the steroids are working but too early to tell.

Baseball practice was fun and Ty had four friends there to play with, 2 girls and 2 guys. After practice I let him hang at Vinny’s for a few hours.  I think Vinny is coming over today to “help” with the garage sale. Last night he said he’d give us some stuff to sell and we could keep the money. His Mom and I laughed as she said the last thing we probably want is more junk. Ty had also made Mom a plate of almonds along with a big glass of almond milk with a note taped to the plate that said “I love you mom, I hope your head feels better”. How sweet is that. We really have two great kids. He was also in a play at school about the Boston Massacre trial in the 1700’s. They all had period costumes on and did a great job. Lori came from work to watch and then drove back to the office and I was there too.

Ty and I picked up ice cream on the way home and the kid behind the counter gave me $5 too much change. I realized it and told the little girl behind the counter and gave it back (they’re all like 18 working there) and Ty said “that was nice dad, I would have done the same thing”. That was good to hear from your child as a parent as he was totally sincere when he said it.

That’s it for today, time to run, God Bless. (I keep saying that for two reason, one so God will Bless you and the other as the way things are going, it might be illegal to say it some day!)

Last night our game started at 5 and ran right until 7 when the minute it was over, the wind and rain started to blow like in a movie.

We won 11 to 0 and most kids on our team played well (we had 1 error as a team) but Jagger stood out like an MVP. He had 4 rbi’s (runs batted in) scored once himself, stole two bases, hit a double, pitched two scoreless innings and stuck out 4 batters and threw two guys out, one at home to preserve the shut out! It was quite a performance by one kid. My buddy’s kid Jake, also had 4 rbi’s, two strong hits, stole a few bases and played great as Jagger’s catcher. We were all super happy.

We have practice tonight but first work and school. I have a sales meeting at 9:15 and then a bunch of calls sandwiched around that. I also need to run a few errands and do some things around the house as we’re having a garage sale tomorrow morning.

That’s about it except B.B. King passed away last night. He was 89. If you don’t know who he is, you’d better find out. Just turn on the radio today and you’ll probably hear him.

God Bless, now check this out,

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/05/dhs-caught-busing-in-illegal-somalis-from-mexican-border/#Sbgmj0O3iw2gl8gk.99

Man where does the time go? We can’t believe it’s already Thursday. Yesterday we had a good trip to Vail and the misses is on steroids for the next 5 days, hold onto your hats! Hopefully that’ll calm things down, if not, we’ll move up to some nerve block injections. If that doesn’t work, then surgery could be back on the table. At least we know what to do this time around.

The drive was nice and we hit sun, rain and snow going up and coming down.

Silver and Gold shot up yesterday in unprecedented fashion. It’s just a matter of time before Greece goes down meaning defaults on their loans, (as they borrowed $650 million dollars from the organization they owed $750 million dollars to so they could make their monthly payment????) as they only have $92 million dollars left as a country. Their next payment of $750 million to the IMF (International Monetary Fund) is due in less than 30 days and they no longer having borrowing capabilities. Imagine calling your bank and telling them, “I know I owe you money tomorrow but I’d like to borrow some more money from you so I can pay you”! What do you think they’d say? This may not sound like much to you, but we are so tied together globally that what happens on the other side of the World, is the same as what’s happening next door. I won’t go into it in anymore detail as it’d take a few pages to explain, but hold on to your hats and get your money out of stocks now! For God’s sake, at least diversify temporarely if you don’t believe me, enough said.

We finally have a baseball game tonight at 5pm. Saturday we’re having a garage sale and are continuing to fix things up around here. It’s 6:42 so time to run, hope all’s well, have a good day and God Bless.

This morning Lori and I are headed back up to her doctors for an MRI and then an appointment. Her neck is giving her problems again (headache) ever since she painted the basement about 3 or 4 weeks ago. We’re hoping it’s not another disc that needs to be fused. If it is, I think we’re just going to go all in and fuse the remaining 3 or 4 all at once, just like Peyton Manning.  Say a prayer or knock on wood or whatever you do so maybe we don’t have to have another round of surgery. It’s funny as we just paid off her hospital bill a few months ago. I don’t even want to think about the cost again, hell, the MRI is killing me!

I cleaned up the kitchen and lower breakfast area yesterday as it was a mess. The kitchen looks pretty good, all nice and white. We need to keep working away one day at a time.

The boys are fine, only like 11 days of school left, wow. Time to run as we need to be at the hospital for check in by 9:15. Take care and God Bless.

It’s 6:28 and I’m supposed to be on a call with the east coast so no time this morning. Jag’s in the shower, Ty’s sleeping and Lori is making breakfast. They cancelled our ball game last night saying the fields were still too wet so no baseball, again! We do have one Thursday though and all looks good for that one.

Another earthquake in Nepal, a 4 pointer in Dallas and two in California over the past few days. Sure glad we don’t live in tornado or earthquake country. The boys and I made a trip to the storage unit yesterday. I’m trying to move a little bit at a time and hopefully sooner rather than later, things will start to get cleaned out around here. You wouldn’t believe all the stuff we’ve purged and yet we still have such a long way to go.

Time to run, hope you all are well, God Bless.

That’s right, we have not enough time, for housework, homework, cooking, cleaning or even sleep! Forget about playing or doing much of anything fun, we can barely get through the day doing chores. We need a professional organizer to come in!

Today after school we have baseball, assuming the fields are in shape. Ty let us know at 10pm last night that he thinks his mural (about 8 feet by 4 feet) depicting a court room in the 1700’s, is due today! He brought home a blank canvas Friday but told me then he thought is was due Tuesday. So we’re not sure when it’s due but Mom and Ty are getting on it right now. Funny thing is this is all extra credit, he volunteered to do it!

We did get the mud room and its shelves cleaned out and boxed up yesterday. Lori did some work in the guest room too. Our neighbors the O’Connell’s house is under contract for $515,000! This is great news as they’re smaller than us, plus we have more curb appeal, which I guess is a big part of buyers feelings. So we’ll keep working away.

Guess I’ll run as I have a lot to do today. As I said earlier, I just don’t know how I’ll get it all done. I guess I’ll just take it one minute at a time, God Bless.