Issue with information on WWM page 5/6/08
While I was researching Lunar Wrasse I came across this link below and it has some information that just shouldn’t be there. The statement is, <The world's primary troubles are due to overly bloated large civil servant bases (including militaries... civil servants with guns)... The way out of this particular predicament is to do away with career, lifetime, free retirements...>
<Is my opinion, actually more of the plain truth... is my website... this, the U.S. still has some individual liberties (remember the Constitution, Bill of Rights?). Move to your own planet, tax yourself 100% and pay yourself what you will. Bob Fenner>

Non-paid political announcements... Excepting the thievery of taxation, devaluation of all's property...
Stipendium peccati mors est – 3/18/08
"Moolah for co-editing and your cichlid piece! Convert it to Euros > > quick... before the dollar tanks completely".
Hi Bob,
Thanks for this. Consider this including the Malawi AND the Tanganyikan piece, since they've both been used (in part) elsewhere, so come under our "two for one" agreement on this.
<Mmm, someone should take you to task for being overly generous... but then again... as E.O. Wilson might be mis-paraphrased: "Likely our writing is at least partly self-serving..." Think of the time we stand to save (working for free nonetheless...) by being able to refer those too-lazy queriors to our more fully-explained positions!>
As for the mighty dollar... I'm hoping the citizens of the Great  Republic will manage to elect someone who can add up and do long division next time.
<... the choices again... are exceedingly poor. I would NOT vote for McCain for anything... he's multi-faced flim flam... another bag boy for the real rulers dntn. Hillary and Obama? Too little likely to be able to effect change... THEY are PART of the problem... Need to put in foxes that aren't so entirely entrenched in the proverbial hen house>
Having a well-trained monkey in the White House was fun, but play time is over and America needs to lead the free world rather than mess it up.
<... too late for the U.S. to do anything but revert, or try, to basic commerce... As of last August, the real controllers of "our" destiny/debt pulled their investing of more than a billion dollars a day (that we pissed away, along with another figure more than that in money we don't have either), and became net sellers... the end of U.S. hegemony and more is nigh/here... Like the so-called impending recession. What idiots the citizenry has been... Now I see the "Fed" has lowered the commercial banking rate another 3/4 pt. today... D'oh! The same agency pays more interest on the public debt!!! Heeeeeeee! What imbeciles... but what else to do but hang on for the ride? BobF, a real citizen, who is voting, yes, for Ron Paul... the only honest and competent candidate thus far.>
 Cheers, Neale

Question for RMF... In ref. to Geo. Bush and co.'s poor mgmt. of the U.S.?   2/15/08
Good day Crew. Bob, why am I an idiot?
<Mmm, don't know...>
A dolt perhaps. Why don't you climb down from that high seahorse that you ride and join me in reality. It is murderers not murderer. The radical islamic terrorists that killed innocent people all over the U.S. that day, I refer to.
<Uhh, they're dead. Might I ask re the third million or so, mainly children "we" killed in Iraq twixt invasions? Or the fact that most of the so-called trouble of "9/11" being perpetrated by Saudi's, why we didn't invade their country?>
Not your misguided hate for the Commander and Chief.
<Not hate, nor misguided>
You came across as a real newbie on this one. So next time you must expel waste, please research first. I know who the hypocrite is RMF. A mere thank you for the protection I provide
<Are you a civil servant with a gun? Please, stop stealing>
would suffice next time you are exercising your freedoms in some far away country.
<Mmm, am a vet... my father was a lifer in the Nav...>
Hate for the right reasons Bob not because of political affiliations.
<Mmm... don't know what you're referring to here either... But am willing to listen>
Life to you my friend, Mike.
<Life to all Mike... not just the privileged folks and their minions in the West... Might I ask: "Do you support the oppression and murder of indigenous Middle-Eastern peoples for cheap gas?" I don't. Bob Fenner>

Re: Turtle FAQs work on WWM, call for articles, U.S. pres. choices, choosing   1/16/08
Hi Bob,
<Neale>
Since that article isn't all that long, and the one on turtle eyes likely won't be either, happy to do a 2-for-1 sort of thing here. Seem
fair? But honestly, you know the market better than me, so happy to be paid whatever seems right to you.
<Real good... will send along via PP presently>
Trying to follow your presidential election system from here. Boy, it seems crazy to me...
<Is... more folks who don't "believe" in things like "evolution"... Nor other "theories" no doubt, e.g. gravity... and Barack now has a simple servant bail out plan... Won't vote for him either... Am casting/tossing my vote for Ron Paul... about the only honest choice that has a platform I agree with... so it goes>
the Dems didn't bother running in Michigan at all, so registered Dems ending up helping to choose for the Repubs?
<Mmm, no, not really... just the first bout... real election/Electoral comes later... We'll see>
Cheers, Neale
<And you, BobF>

My take on how News agencies cover important issues   1/14/08
A true reflection of today's topics and "Network News" covering important issues that affect our lives. Americans can base their decisions intelligently using our" Media" as a source of information on the most definitive and relevant coverage. It seems more and more difficult to access spin free News. These are prime examples of what we have come to expect from our "Networks". I know we have come to enjoy our "Fluffed" media and that is all fine for entertainment value with the left and the right taking pot shots at each other, it is great for a laugh but where does it end? And where can we get unspun truthful reporting on topics that determine our future? The time is past due for government and corporations to give ownership of the news back to the people.
The recommended page is: Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters and http://www.theonion.com/content/video/report_nation_s_wealthy_cruelly?utm_source=videomrss_71036
<John... too late... folks have been sucked in, the nation sold. Get out (with me/us) while you can, or become more satisfied to live amongst a bunch of crowd-driven brain-washed ovines. B>

The Tipping Point?   America... you been sold 12/27/07
My brother in law, MikeM sent these links along about the economy and recent troubling economic events around the world. What do you think of all of this?
Mike
<Are more evidential pieces re the switch/shift from demagogic civil service rule (no chance of voting them out...) to the new aristocracy... Let's see how much of going out "not with a bang but a whimper" the "news"-manipulated public will take/suffer with this new decentralized communism... My bet is still on the idiots in America just bending over... What say you re these patterns, consequences? B>
Note: forwarded message attached.
The Tipping Point?
Singapore may invest $5 Billion into Merrill Lynchhttp://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071222/news_1b22merrill.html(I thought Singapore was one of those really poor countries?)Consumers Spending Soars in Novemberhttp://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071222/news_1b22economy.html(Negative savings rate does not stop US consumers from spending more borrowed Asian money!)U.S. Subprime Mess Spurs U.K. Bank Runhttp://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/17/business/realestate/main3267575.shtml?source=RSS&attr=_3267575(Coming soon to a US bank near you!)Largest Swiss Bank gets bailed out from Singapore and Middle East Investors because of U.S. Subprime Messhttp://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071210/ts_afp/switzerlandsingaporebankingmarketsfinance_071210120811(Wow...Swiss banks are not even safe to keep you money)Morgan Stanley gets cash infusion from China & Middle East due to Subprime Messhttp://www.forbes.com/2007/12/19/morgan-stanley-subprime-markets-equity-cx_er_1219markets09_print.html(At least it not those poor pesky Singapore folks again...)Economic power of China has been bolstered after rescuing banking giants like Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/21/2125549.htm(Bear Stearns reports first loss in 76 year history.....probably not it's last.)Citigroup lined up a $7.5-billion cash infusion from Abu Dhabi's state investment fund due to Subprime Messhttp://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-petruno22dec22,0,2780149.column?coll=la-home-center(American housing and mortgage-market mess of 2007 may well be remembered as the tipping point of a monumental global power shift.) It goes on and on and on. Are we headed for just another normal down cycle in the economy or something much more? I don't know the answer, but it sure seems like we need to get back to the basics of saving, producing and living within your means before the house of cards begins to collapse.70% of the economy is based on Consumption Incredible amounts of National and Consumer dept We (not all of us..) consume with money that we borrow from Asia The government grossly manipulates the Inflation rate numbers (CPI & CPI) Real inflation is more then double what is reported. We all know that when we buy food and gas....our real "CORE" purchases The US Dollar is losing value and Gold is raising rapidly The Dot Com bubble followed by the Real Estate Bubble...what will the 3rd act be?//MM--

Re: Why we must invade Iraq
<Because Geo. Dumbya Play-It-Again Bush, is a doltish sham of a front for military and death industry interests, and doesn't have a clue... but is direly interested in not being found out to be the patsy idiot he is... and have to join his friends in prison for being a crook. Yeah, that about sums it up. Bob F>
Why we must invade Iraq
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 14:32:29 EDT
It all becomes clear once you view this site.
> <A HREF="http://www.markfiore.com/animation/corrections.swf">http://www.markfiore.com/animation/corrections.swf</A>
>
Untested administration hawks clamor for war
By James Bamford
Beware of war hawks who never served in the military.
That, in essence, was the message of retired four-star Marine Corps general Anthony Zinni, a highly decorated veteran of the Vietnam War and the White House point man on the Middle East crisis. Zinni is one of a growing number of uniformed officers, in and out of the Pentagon, urging caution on the issue of a pre-emptive strike against Iraq.
In an address recently in Florida, he warned his audience to watch out for the administration's civilian superhawks, most of whom avoided military service as best they could. ''If you ask me my opinion,'' said Zinni, referring to Iraq, ''Gen. (Brent) Scowcroft, Gen. (Colin) Powell, Gen. (Norman) Schwarzkopf and Gen. Zinni maybe all see this the same way. It might be interesting to wonder why all of the generals see it the same way, and all those (who) never fired a shot in anger (and) are really hellbent to go to war see it a different way.
''That's usually the way it is in history,'' he said.
Another veteran, Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., who served in combat in Vietnam and now sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, was even more blunt. ''It is interesting to me that many of those who want to rush this country into war and think it would be so quick and easy don't know anything about war,'' he said. ''They come at it from an intellectual perspective vs. having sat in jungles or foxholes and watched their friends get their heads blown off.''
The problem is not new. More than 100 years ago, another battle-scarred soldier, Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, observed: ''It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation.''
Last month, Vice President Cheney emerged briefly to give several two-gun talks before veterans groups in which he spoke of ''regime change'' and a ''liberated Iraq.''
''We must take the battle to the enemy,'' he said of the war on terrorism. Cheney went on to praise the virtue of military service. ''The single most important asset we have,'' he said, ''is the man or woman who steps forward and puts on the uniform of this great nation.''
But during the bloodiest years of the Vietnam War, Cheney decided against wearing that uniform. Instead, he used multiple deferments to avoid military service altogether. ''I had other priorities in the '60s than military service,'' he once said.
Cheney is far from alone. For instance, neither Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy Defense secretary, nor Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, has served in uniform, yet they are now two of the most bellicose champions of launching a bloody war in the Middle East.
What frightens many is the arrogance, naïveté and cavalier attitude toward war. ''The Army guys don't know anything,'' Perle told The Nation's David Corn earlier this year. With ''40,000 troops,'' he said, the United States could easily take over Iraq. ''We don't need anyone else.'' But by most other estimates, a minimum of 200,000 to 250,000 troops would be needed, plus the support of many allies.
Even among Republicans, the warfare between the veterans and non-vets can be intense. ''Maybe Mr. Perle would like to be in the first wave of those who go into Baghdad,'' Hagel, who came home from Vietnam with two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star, told The New York Times.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Vietnam combat veteran and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has often expressed anger about the class gap between those who fought in Vietnam and those who did not.
''I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units,'' he wrote in his 1995 autobiography, My American Journey. ''Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country.''
Non-combatants, however, litter the top ranks of the Republican hierarchy. President Bush served peacefully in the Texas National Guard. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spent his time in a Princeton classroom as others in his age group were fighting and dying on Korean battlefields (he later joined the peacetime Navy). Another major player in the administration's war strategy, Douglas Feith, the Defense undersecretary for policy, has no experience in the military. Nor does Cheney's influential chief of staff, Lewis Libby.
The top congressional Republican leaders -- Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, House Majority Leader Dick Armey and House Majority Whip Tom Delay -- never saw military service, either; only one, Armey, has shown hesitation about invading Iraq. In contrast, House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., a World War II combat veteran, has expressed skepticism about hasty U.S. action, as have some prominent Democrats -- House Minority Whip David Bonior, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and former vice president Al Gore -- who were in the military during the Vietnam War.
No administration's senior ranks, of course, have to be packed with military veterans in order to make good military decisions. But what is remarkable about this administration is that so many of those who are now shouting the loudest and pushing the hardest for this generation's war are the same people who avoided combat, or often even a uniform, in Vietnam, their generation's war.
Military veterans from any era tend to have more appreciation for the greater difficulty of getting out of a military action than getting in -- a topic administration war hawks haven't said much about when it comes to Iraq.
Indeed, the Bush administration's non-veteran hawks should review the origins of the Vietnam quagmire. Along the way, they might come across a quote from still another general, this one William Westmoreland, who once directed the war in Vietnam.
''The military don't start wars,'' he said ruefully. ''Politicians start wars.''
James Bamford is author of Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
<I am always leery of folks who advocate something which they haven't done, wouldn't do personally... Once you've seen the wasteful destruction that passes for "modern war", the lives left destroyed as well... you will not take up arms. Bob F>

Ancient Rome 
In 1919, Joseph Schumpteter described ancient Rome in a way that sounds eerily like the United States in 2002:
"There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest -- why, then it was the national honor that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors. The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, it was manifestly Rome's duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs."
<I frequently refer to the recent "powers that be" as the "New Centurions"... their arrogance amazes and disgusts me. I wish we could ignore them and that that would make them go away. Did you see Sixty Minutes last night? The seventy million "new age" so-called Christians that are rooting for the Jews that call themselves Israelis... urging them on to give the boot, murder the Palestinians in "Israel"? Such perfidy... such a waste of life. Bob>

Check out ajc.com | Opinion | Bush's real goal in Iraq 
<A HREF="http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/opinion/0902/29bookman.html">Click here: ajc.com | Opinion | Bush's real goal in Iraq </A>
<I consider the major point here valid. It really strikes me as odd (to fantastic) that the vast majority of Americans don't stand up, recognize this "pax americana" world-grab for what it is, realize it won't work to their advantage (for long or well), and complain loudly (as in toss out Rummy and Dumbya). I still have my bumper sticker on my truck (self-made): "Do you support the oppression and murder of indigenous Middle Eastern peoples for cheap gas?". Get the U.S. out of Germany, Japan (57 years!) ridiculous, and "our" military out of the dozens of other countries it is occupying. NOW!
Bob F

Onion's Bush Prophecy
The Onion already knew, January before last...
http://www.theonion.com/onion3701/bush_nightmare.html
<Great... sad Bob>

Do You Do REITS'?!? Affording the marine hobby...
Dear Robert, 
I know that this isn't any of my business, however, I'd like to know if you invest in REITS' (Real Estate Investment Trusts) and if you do, can you recommend any. Better yet, I would like to know your opinion regarding these.
<Have not invested in these vehicles. Do buy, hold real estate... just Single Family residence types... on the sound advice of my father, "Never buy anything you wouldn't want to live in... because (among other things), you may end up doing so (I have). Do know of REITs, but don't know specifics well-enough to recommend them for you.>
My investments, i.e. growth fund, growth and income fund, and other mutual funds as well as individual stocks are quite dismal. Why, even my supposed liquid safe haven (money market funds) have recently just returned 2.85% in dividends - the same amount as savings accounts. Talk about ludicrous. I use to have 10% returns, then it went down to 6% (just for the liquid safe havens), now it is down 2%!!! In your opinion, what smart moves if any should I take?!? My investments are separate from John's. There is very litle investments, if any in both our names. I'd like some of your insights as to what you think might have helped you. 
<I'm sure you've heard this enough... but "just hold on"... the cyclicity of diversified stock investment is such that all will/does "turn around"... Assuredly, the U.S. government is/will continue to overspend, borrow, in essence devalue the dollar... with a strong position in leveraged or fixed assets you'll do fine. I am fully vested (even margined) in the U.S. (and foreign) exchanges...>
The reason I am inquiring about REITS' is because of an article from the Kiplinger's Financial Magazine recommending this as a safe haven with higher yields.
<Mmm, define "safe"... I am aware of a few of these trusts that have folded flat, leaving their "owners" with zip...>
Or am I being naive about this?!? I no longer know what CD's yield. What do you think?!?
<Contact your brokerages, read on E-Trade, Ameritrade on the Net, call your bank... they'll tell you about what current yields are... they're more than 2%...>
You are my link to the world since I am not getting that much exposure to the world and I am not as well travelled like you nor like my family (siblings, parents, nieces and nephews, in-laws).
<You're in Southern California... intelligent... you read... have computer skills, access...>
I am letting you know that before I got into the Marine Fish Keeping, I made sure that I had enough money to indulge in this expensive hobby. I am not working and obviously neither is John. However, John is not paying for my hobby, I am. And I rely on my investments to keep up with my hobby!!! 
<I understand>
I shall ask other questions by sending you a different e-mail regarding the upcoming Christmas Party. For now, this Q&A shall suffice. Hope to hear from you, my dear sir!!!
<Be chatting. Bob Fenner>
Thanks a million (wish my portfolio were worth that much)!!! 
Sincerely yours,
Aleida Ann Graichen