Thieves By Nature

Yesterday, in - EVERYONE Should Quit Trading! - I briefly discussed Goldman Sachs and their so-called *proprietary trading*.

For more on that subject, read this insightful piece:

The frog, the scorpion and Goldman Sachs.

Breaking My Vows

So last night I was out at some type of informal dinner party thing - a typical suburban couples thing.

Late into it, I was sitting there in the kitchen lecturing some guy on *self-denial*.

I gave him the example of how when I eat ice cream now, I only take two-thirds of what used to be my normal-sized portion. I most definitely had the gentleman's rapt attention.

For a second example I told him how I was going to go all year without eating pizza.

A moment later my wife's booming laughter interjected:

Mrs. C-Nut - HAH! You had pizza for lunch today.

Like being stomach-punched, I was frozen and speechless.

Mrs. C-Nut - You had those two pieces for lunch TODAY!

"Crap," I thought. I did in fact eat two leftover pieces from my wife's dinner last night for lunch. WTBleep!

Mrs. C-Nut - YOU DIDN'T EVEN MAKE IT THROUGH JANUARY WITHOUT PIZZA!!!

[Yes, she was killing herself with laughter. Consider that it's very rare for scoffers to have the chance to unload on me like that.]

Now I was still stunned, and very upset. At Papa Gino's and the other pizza joints, all month long I had been getting sandwiches while my kids ate pepperoni pizza. But going to some fancy restaurant the night before, that was like a sneak attack on my consciousness. My wife ordered some less-than-masculine, wood-fired, pie with red onions, SWEET sausage, and goat cheese. I actually sampled it Friday night in addition to consuming the leftovers on Saturday.

It was bad enough that I broke my 2010 *resolution* so early - but to do so with that yuppified, broad-flavored pizza??? That realization really pissed me off.

And then guess what....this morning, in my REM sleep, I remembered that not only did I eat pizza on Friday night and Saturday afternoon...

But I also ATE PIZZA on my lunch date Friday afternoon with that castrato friend of mine. We dined at Pizzeria Uno and ordered a friggin deep dish - AT MY BEHEST!

For background, see - Sick Of Pizza.

Y'all realize that ain't (necessarily) pizza pictured above, right?

Weed Worshipers

It used to be that towns and villages would never dare building a structure higher than the church's spire. It'd be deemed blasphemous.

But today, we have skyscrapers, monuments to and icons of the prevailing religion du jour - that of selfishness and monetary wealth. Obviously, they tower over traditional houses of worship, and do so with impunity.

Recently we've had to make way for ascendant new creeds like modern day earth worship. Heck it was 2.5 years ago now that I taught my son about those eco-pagan idols that are euphemized as *windmills* and *clean energy*.

Now consider this proposed, re-purposed building in Oregon:

As part of a $133 million renovation, the General Services Administration is planning to cultivate "vegetated fins" that will grow more than 200 feet high on the western facade of the main federal building here, a vertical garden that changes with the seasons and nurtures plants that yield energy savings.

"They will bloom in the spring and summer when you want the shade, and then they will go away in the winter when you want to let the light in," said Bob Peck, commissioner of public buildings for the G.S.A. "Don’t ask me how you get them irrigated."

The G.S.A. says the building will use 60 percent to 65 percent less energy than comparable buildings and estimates a savings of $280,000 annually in energy costs. Solar panels could provide up to 15 percent of the building’s power needs. The use of rainwater and low-flow plumbing fixtures will reduce potable water consumption by 68 percent. And energy for lighting will be halved.

"It will be one of the more energy-efficient high-rises in America, possibly in the world," said James Cutler, whose architecture firm, Cutler Anderson, led the design work.

A green skyscraper? Bam! That's real clever, delivering both idolatries in a bundle!

But $133 million to save (maybe) $280,000 in utility bills per year? What's that? A best case scenario of 2.1% ROI?

Meanwhile, Oregon's businesses, i.e. the candidates to fill such ambitious buildings, are heading for the borders. See Mish's nice post - Oregon's Death Spiral; Business Owners Say "I'm moving out".

Thanks to Taylor for alerting me to this one. Nothing in the Times ever escapes his attention. I believe he's actually a paying NYT subscriber!

Talking Out Of Both Sides, Of Each Hole

Click graphic to enlarge.

Last week, in - Eating Popcorn - not only did I discuss trader Sol's outlook, but I also mentioned that his partner, Atilla Demiray, was waxing pretty bearish. Seven days ago, he wrote:

This type of divergence will lead a very powerful and very sharp sell off that even I may not be able to fully profit from it, despite the fact that I am the one seeing it, living it, breathing it right now. It will start in such a way that will trap the maximum number of traders on the wrong side and leave bears out of the move.

It will start in a way that the initiating move will erase all the cumulative gains one can possibly make trading this silly range during the last 2 months.

I am very confident about all these, but what I am not confident about is the sit tight part I have to do. Once this thing begins, believe me, the best way to profit from it is to shut down your computer and let your short positions stay for 5-10 days because the move will be perpendicular.

Like I said before, I don't know the exact time or place it will start but I know it will start in a week or so and it will be initiated somewhere within this range.

There you go, he called for a violent, *perpendicular* move to the downside that would start *in a week or so*. (Note, it's been a week.)

But today, I read his latest update - one in which he is now talking about *bouncing* into March. Today he writes:

But now, time to get cautious on the downside.

Yes there is massive down volume, all your oscillators are pointing to down, DMAs are turning but the only thing that matters is controlling trends.

Market will likely reverse to higher on Monday or early Tuesday from approximately where it closed on Friday. There are intermediate and short term TLs being tested across the indices.

This doesn't mean we may not see lower prices or some sort of flush. We possibly will but it will be tricky.

Say what? A 75 point bounce in the S&P from here? What happened to last weekend's perpendicular call? What happened to the drop so steep (within a week or so) that it would even *leave the bears out*???

I grant most everyone the right to change their mind.

That is, provided they have one!

The Ego Cycle

From Wired:

Jobs, characteristically, did not mince words as he spoke to the assembled, according to a person who was there who could not be named because this person is not authorized by Apple to speak with the press.

On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: "It’s bull$hit." Audience roars.

About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.

Apple certainly is *on top of the world* at the moment; and it's oozing the arrogance usually accorded that station.

But these things are fluid. Some 12-13 years ago I saw Michael Dell speak to a standing-room-only hall at the University of Pennsylvania. At that time, Dell Computer was *on-top-of-the-world*, posting the best stock returns over the entire decade of the 90s.

Most of the audience was wide-eye Wharton MBA students. They were positively drooling over the success of Michael Dell, a man only a couple years older, if that, than most of them.

The speech was awesome and at the end the discussion was opened up to the audience. I'll never forget Michael Dell mocking the viability of Apple Computer and then Sun Microsystems who he said was going "...to go the way of our fruity little friend."

He sounded as arrogant as, well, Steve Jobs today!

Check out the longer term charts and recall that I heard Dell speak in either 1997 or 1998:







Sun Microsystems did in fact just about go to zero. AND, Apple, in the early part of this decade traded for *cash on its books*. For example, if the company had $1 billion in cash, then it's market value was also $1 billion. In other words, Wall Street valued Apple's computer making business at ZERO less than 10 years ago.

Obviously, since then Apple has risen 20-fold, while Dell stock has gone nowhere.

And today, there's supposedly only one guy out there saying to short Apple!

Me? I believe I've made a little bit of money over the last few years shorting AND buying this stock. But I have no opinion on it at the moment. But you just watch, if the overall market tanks soon as I expect it to, this stock will trade back down below 100 towards its high from four years ago. Then say, for example, the iPad thingy flops, competition erodes the margins of the iPhone, etc. This is how it begins; this is how high flyers morph into decade-long flatliners like Dell Computer - and how a fall cometh after pride (See Proverbs 16:18) for egomaniacs like Steve Jobs.

Michael Dell is kind of quiet these days, at least relative to the others, isn't he?

Pics For The Unlettered

End of the month here, so it's time to clean out my pic folder. These *good ones* did not make it onto the blog:





































Click that one to enlarge if necessary.











That last one....don't even try to figure out *why*. I'm usually all for being provocative for the mere sake of being provocative....but still, WTBleep?

EVERYONE Should Quit Trading!

Obama Rips Banks, Proposes Ban On Proprietary Trading

President Obama stepped up the heat on big banks Thursday, saying he would fight to ensure that their "binge of irresponsibility" never happens again.

He proposed limits on banks' size and proprietary trading and said he would work to "rein in excessive abuse that brought down our system."

He said banks "backed by the American people" shouldn't be allowed to own or sponsor hedge funds and private equity funds for their own profit, while putting customers at risk.

About the new proposed rule that'd limit the proprietary trading of banks, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, Duncan Niederaurer said,

....implementation is challenging. As a student of the market I can tell you that it all blurs together...

But he's also a *Former Managing Director of Goldman Sachs*!!!

Supposedly, Goldman trades 20 times as many shares for their own account than they do for their customers.

I have no problem with Goldman gambling its own money; but they shouldn't be brokering trades as well. Doing both entails almost the biggest conflict of interest imaginable.

Look, I'm against most regulation of markets. The fund managers (and their investors) who willingly give their trades to Goldman and get ripped off....they deserve the bad fills and whatnot.

But within a regulated market, it's not hard at all to segregate trading and brokering. Any and all arguments against doing so are specious and fall flat.

I got sidetracked here.

Look, it's not *proprietary trading* that got all these banks in trouble.

It was the gambling implicit in no-money-down, high-priced mortgages in residential AND commercial real estate. And credit cards too!

So yes, FDIC-insured banks probably shouldn't be rolling the dice like Sol.

But selling 20 or 50-1 leveraged homes to José Sixpack has proven far riskier.

Getting back to Obama for a minute. He's right to be slamming the banks - even it he's clueless at the to extent of Big Government culpability in their behavior. They were born of leverage for crying out loud, with their fractional-reserve sanction, FDIC insurance, and whatnot.

You see while Obama inveighs against banker's "binge of irresponsibility"....

Not only will this anti-trading rhetoric do nothing to lower the risk profile of Bank of America, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, et al,....we're still left with very little to combat the *binge of irresponsibility* from politicians. Consider the hypocritical irony of Barney Frank, serial apologist for Fannie, Freddie, and subprime lending, up there next to the podium. What a farce!

Looking Forward To This One!

Hah!

Greed is *now legal*!!!

This film, just like the original, will prove a most timely release.

See also:

Wall Street The Movie

More Popcorn

Recall last weekend in - Eating Popcorn - I discussed trader Sol from XTrends.

He came into this past Monday long *1600* S&P 500 emini's - a position that was worth $80,000 per point.

Here's how the index performed these past five days:



And here are his reported trades for the week:



Click image to enlarge if needed.

So it looks like Sol was able to scalp the long he carried over the weekend, making ten point on half of his position and breaking even on the other half - for a net profit of $400,000 on Monday.

Then it looks like he gave it back in the next two days - losing on two more attempts at going long, losing on three attempts to short the S&P, and he lost at bit, 51k, trying to whack gold.

His luck then turned, winning with a market short and a gold short, and then later, on Thur-Friday with a big scalp on the long side. Not counting his last few trades, the numbers show almost a $2 million profit for the week. Not bad, right?

Well, maybe it's not as good as it seems.

You see, a 1,600 long futures position, what Sol came into the week with, represents:

1,600 x 50 x 1092 = $87,360,00

That's right, it's an 87 million dollar long position.

Sure, I undertand that margin is 10% for futures, and therefore Sol's account might only have $8.7 million in it.

In that case, yeah, a $2 million weekly profit off a base account of 8-10 million would indeed represent some spectacular returns.

But it would also represent substantial risk - something no one has to explain to me, a veteran profit-eraser!

I highly doubt that Sol only as $10 million in his account. I'd wager that he has at least $20 million; and that it's not all his. (Though I could be wrong, of course.) I just think some numerical perspective is warranted before anyone anoints this guy a *great trader* - because turning $80 million into $82 million, even in a week, don't mean squat!

After giving back 200k of his profits on Friday, Sol is coming in, what seems to be, seriously long yet again this Monday. He held *overnights* in the S&P 500, the NASDAQ-100, and the RUSSELL-2,000 representing, yet again:

56,726,250 + 10,409,000 + 21,213,500 = $88,348,750

Now don't get me wrong, I respect anyone who's got the stones to publicize their trades - even if on a somewhat delayed basis.

One thing's for sure, Sol's got more balls (and brains?) than I do. I could never bring myself to come in that long in THIS MARKET.

Good luck to him. May he get out of his long before the market moves *my way*.

Win Some, Lose Some

Amidst the woes of his exposed polyamory....Tiger Woods has thus far lost endorsements from Tag Heuer, Gatorade/Pepsi, Accenture, AT&T, GM, and Gillette.

But he did gain one new deal:



Thanks to the PrivateCaller clan for this one!

See also - Tiger, Fully Loaded For 2010.

Coming Soon?

The future of PCs?

I love my desktop; but can't stand typing on phones and laptops!

Hank Paulson - Alarmist, Scapegoating POS Thief

Paulson Says Russia Urged China to Dump Fannie, Freddie Bonds

Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Russia urged China to dump its Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds in 2008 in a bid to force a bailout of the largest U.S. mortgage-finance companies, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said.

Paulson learned of the "disruptive scheme" while attending the Beijing Summer Olympics, according to his new memoir, "On The Brink."

The Russians made a "top-level approach" to the Chinese "that together they might sell big chunks of their GSE holdings to force the U.S. to use its emergency authorities to prop up these companies," Paulson said, referring to the acronym for government sponsored entities. The Chinese declined, he said.

"The report was deeply troubling -- heavy selling could create a sudden loss of confidence in the GSEs and shake the capital markets," Paulson wrote. "I waited till I was back home and in a secure environment to inform the president."

Russia sold all of its Fannie and Freddie debt in 2008, after holding $65.6 billion of the notes at the start of that year, according to central bank data. Fannie and Freddie were seized by regulators on Sept. 6, 2008, amid the worst U.S. housing slump since the Great Depression.

Paulson said he was surprised not to have been asked about the Fannie and Freddie bonds during a trip to Moscow in June. "I was soon to learn, though, that the Russians had been doing a lot of thinking about our GSE securities," he said of his meeting with Dmitry Medvedev, who succeeded Putin in the Kremlin the previous month.

So there, we've got them!

Russia is guilty of *thinking about our GSE securities*!!!

If I owned them, I'd certainly dump those bonds as well. Who with an iota of brains wouldn't?

This is just another pathetic, deflective ruse on the part of Goldman's secret-agent crook. Does Paulson really think people are going to read this and re-direct their blame to Russia - a Third World country?

First of all, the hypothetical *dumping* of Fannie and Freddie bonds by investors WOULD NOT force the U.S. to prop up any companies. Bond prices all over the world, for centuries, have fluctuated to find new market values. Nobody forced Congress, Bush, Obama, or the Fed to *monetize*, (i.e. print money) to artificially prop up the debt of the GSEs. If their extant bonds fell, that would only effect NEW FUNDING for GSE debt. It'd become harder for Fannie and Freddie (and FHA) to issue any more mortgages....AND THAT WOULD BE A WONDROUS THING!

Secondly, it's not the trading of Fannie and Freddie debt that got these *companies* in trouble. It was their ill-conceived mandate, their flouting of lending standards, and their typical unbusiness-like operation that did them in. For crying out loud, Freddie Mac wasn't even listing a loan as *delinquent* until the mortgage had been unpaid for 2 FREAKIN' YEARS!!!





Mr. Mortgage reports:

The approval process was for the underwriter to run the loan through DU/LP and if the system did not issue an approval (or an approval the borrower and the loan officer were happy with) to go back into the input file and edit the income, assets, retirement (or all three) until the system approved it. Some loans were edited 30 or 40 times until the system issued an approval.

I believe Big Government has already dumped a staggering $85 billion into these entities which should never have existed in the first place.

Only a Moron could possibly believe any of this is Russia's (or China's) fault!

Paulson's book is well-titled, "On The Brink"...

A lying thievery of this magnitude certainly put him on the *brink* - of going to hell!

Seriously, this is how wars break out. Paulson gets mad at Russia, and then threatens China, "If you dump our bonds, we'll tax your imports..." China gets pissed and threatens to monkey with their dollar peg....And who knows what one of our clueless Presidents ends up doing in the heat of this needless provocation - in the fog of this alarmist smokescreen designed so Paulson could funnel taxpayer monies to his Goldman cronies.

This isn't to make Paulson's case of Russia as an antagonist. If a country wants to float bonds to international buyers and perhaps make itself somewhat dependent on their funding....then that country can't or SHOULDN'T tell its investors what to do with the bonds THEY PURCHASED. Is our *capitalist* nation selling with strings attached or what?

See also - Wall Street Alarmism.

Almost Died

At the end of a long drive yesterday (70 miles, two anxious kids, going to Grandma's house) I almost died - laughing AND via a car accident.

I was driving my wife's technologically advanced new car, which is hard enough for someone who's only ever driven clunkers, when that famous Door's song came on the radio. Before I could change the station from that grating 'old coot', depressing ditty....I saw that the digital radio dial had *mis-identified* the title of the song playing.

Instead of *Touch Me*....

It listed the song as *Douche Me*!!!

So I had to scramble for my Droid phone, while I was on a crowded highway, and rapidly approaching my exit.

I had to unlock the touch-screen phone, somehow find the camera function, and snap a pic of this obvious *blog material* AND keep my eyes on the road. Meanwhile, the kids were melting down in the back and I was practically wetting my pants at how funny *Douche Me* was. Did some smart-alec manually type that in? Or was it just a failed voice-recognition? Or maybe they outsourced the data entry to 30 cents an hour ESLs in India?

These pics were the best I got under the circumstances.

No doubt a tech-savvy, 'young coot' like Taylor would have taken much better ones. (And I needed his help to upload them too!)

Aging - A Downhill Death Spiral

So I had lunch yesterday with an old (going back to HS) friend of mine.

His wife is due any minute with their second child.

My 35 year-old buddy nonchalantly mentioned that he had a *consult* scheduled in two weeks.

A *consult*? What the bleep does that mean? A divorce lawyer or something?

I forget how he articulated it, but think he said or gestured *snip, snip* or something to that effect.

A VASECTOMY???

Are you freakin' kidding me? We were eating lunch for crying out loud!

First off, I told him that he'll *lose 15 yards off the tee* automatically, perhaps 20.

Secondly, is he out of his mind? Why can't SHE have the operation?

I was in complete and utter disbelief. What about those Commandments:

Accept children lovingly from God.

And,

Hit'em LONG and straight.

???

Exactly how freakin' old am I getting?

My hair is lightening in some spots and I have nasty varicose veins popping out. I'm turning into my father in terms of wardrobe and wandering around the house all night investigating *sounds*. Last year I went to my first 40th birthday party. I wintered in Florida last year. Et cetera.

I've known this friend of mine since puberty, since the thing just started to function!!! And now he's ready to voluntarily *disarm*?

I'd never, ever get a vasectomy. Especially not now with those high end sperm banks offering me $1,000 for deposits. (I'm holding out for 5k, per.)

Maybe this will change his mind:



I've also heard of wives who make their husbands get snipped on account of their philandering suspicions.

That I simply don't get. Wouldn't it just embolden a *hound* to be less careful?

Try as I might, I don't think I'm ever going to understand the mindset and ways of earthlings.

But Teenage Angst Lives On!

So J.D. Salinger died the other day - no news there, he was a very 'old coot'.

When I was in 8th grade of government school, the English teacher assigned one book to the rest of the class (can't remember what it was) and he pulled me aside and made me read The Catcher In The Rye. He pointedly said, "It's you."

Even after reading the book I was too young and too dumb to be offended. Plus I don't recall hardly anything from the book; except that the lead was some tall dude named Holden; and that the book was centered in NYC (I think). Whatever. And now I'm too wise to go back and re-read it for fear of discovering myself in whatever happened!

One of my friends, let's call her PhillyBroad, today she alerted me to a famous quote from that book, one that rightfully belongs in my *quote reserve*:

All morons hate it when you call them a moron.

Indeed!

I'm not sure if that's a straight Holden Caulfield quote or what. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

The book was pretty controversial. I had no idea it got Lennon shot!

Maybe I should go back, re-read it, and find myself in it?

Wall Street Alarmism

Last year, in the heat of an alleged financial panic, Hank Paulson, a Goldman Sachs alum, asserted that if AIG's counterparties weren't bailed out, i.e. GOLDMAN SACHS, that there'd be 25% unemployment!

At that, incumbent jelly-spined, econo-ignorant Congressmen acceded and handed over $15 billion of our money to Hank's cronies.

You'd think that in a country where millions sneer at, I don't know, say the exagerrated threat of *weapons of mass destruction*....that those same skeptics would deride and berate the $hit out of Hank Paulson's self-serving, rank alarmism.

What he meant was...."25% of Goldman Sachs would be UNEMPLOYED"!

[Actually, the $13 billion or so that Goldman extracted from taxpayers via AIG....that's pocket change that could have been easily raised on the stock market - don't let anyone tell you different. If they drop the offering price low enough, they'll get the capital they need - they just didn't want dilute their stakes away!]

It's hard to imagine that the public hasn't caught onto Big Government's endless stream of scare tactics: global warming, WMDs, Amnesty for illegals or our economy falls apart, swine flu, falling behind China in math and science, *25% unemployment*, etc.



See also:

Goldman Arrogance

More On The Secret Goldman Sachs Bailout

Eviction Update - Scat Leverage

Recall I have only a couple of weeks before I have to appear in Housing Court - where my landlord is trying to get some money from me(!) and boot me out of his GMAC's house.

Let's go waaaaaay back to 2.5 years ago when I moved in.

There was another family here renting this house for a few months. On their way out, there were some expensive *septic issues*, an occasion which my landlord used to keep their security deposit. The young lady who lived there was bull$hit about the whole thing. She and her husband are rather well off and didn't see the point of fighting over their deposit. But she was irate because the landlord tried to blame a poorly-installed septic system on something she might have done. The contractor who was digging the thing up informed her that the problems with the poop shoot had nothing to do with anything she may have flushed; they were all due to a cheap jerry-rigged installation.

Now since we've been here, right away the blower blew out costing my idiotic landlord $770. See - Homeownership Sucks!

Furthermore, the tank alarm has gone off frequently for who knows what reason. Once some septic dude came and started cursing something its *problematic installation*. I'm quite sure the matter was brought to the attention of my landlord....and summarily ignored.

And this past fall, while hitting golf balls deep in the backyard I started to smell some *crap* - at least once in a while. Leakage?

Fast-forward to today. It's been winter-time so I haven't been outside much. But today I followed up on a suspicion of mine out back. I went right up to the septic tank machine or whatever it is and discovered that the blower was not working. I flipped the switch a few times; tried to reset it; but all to no avail.

Why was I suspicious? Well, for one thing the blower is pretty loud and I felt like I hadn't heard it in quite some time. Secondly, our toilets have been burping, swirling, and clogging quite a bit recently.

Hmmmmm.....so what's going on here?

Could the tank be getting backed up? Or could it be full?

I read something today that said a septic tank should be pumped every 2-3 years. Well we've been here precisely that long and have never seen the tank get emptied. Go figure. Recall that 75% of my family is home all day long - pooping and peeing rather prolifically. Only my wife here has the option of an occasional septic-tank-relieving *work $hit*. So if the average person's tank needs pumping that often, then I'd bet ours is most certainly overdue.

So what should I do with this development?

Septic issues are more delicate, or precarious than run-of-the-mill tenant gripes. Yeah, if there's a rat I can complain, withhold a little rent, etc....but I can still live here.

But if the toilet were to blow up, there's no way I can spend the money needed to fix it and deduct such a large sum from my rent. No, I'd be defecating in a bucket!

Thus my first instinct was to contact my landlord right away:

CaptiousNut - I don't know what you did to turn the septic system off....but it's not going to look good when brought to the judge's attention in two weeks.

Hee hee...

And if he had any designs on getting me out of here, or collecting any allegedly unpaid rent, he'd have to go into his pocket and call a septic repair service. (And of course, I've already decided that anyone he sends out for anything....I will caution them against doing work without getting most of the money upfront! Yes, I am that thorough, and that devious!)

But I'm going to do some more research before communicating this problem. I want to continue slow playing my hand; I could save this revelation for the judge in two weeks as yet more evidence of his negligence.

Or I could contact local authorities. I have to assume that malfunctioning septic tanks are the stuff that Boards of Health take a keen interest in.

For the prior installment of this melodrama, see - Water Torture.

Hope, Co-opted!

Even if hard to quantify, Ted Kennedy's death certainly felt like a windfall profit for taxpayers, fetuses, documented citizens, the employed, et al.

Then Republican Scott Brown's surprise nabbing of his seat definitely got a lot of otherwise sullen people jumping for joy...

And, until the next emotional letdown, it'll spur many to continue dreaming - like this guy who's trying to extrapolate from the Senate race to find other potentially weak Congressional seats here in Massachusetts. (The Democrats have all 11 seats in the House at the moment.)

Since I don't, and never did, follow local politics much I know very little about most of these clowns. In my head I have it that William Delahunt is a loon but can't put my finger on why I might think that.

But Barney Frank....that's another story.

With Ted Kennedy gone, he's become, well, let's just say a guy whose next Congressional opponent might receive EVEN MORE national support and monies from out-of-staters than Scott Brown did.

Is he really vulnerable in his highly gerrymandered 4th district? I don't know. As you can see above, the 4th split 50/50 on the Senate race.

While he may be *no Martha Coakley*, a shrill, unaccomplished dingbat....

By the same token, she, who lost(!), hadn't his record of destruction either!

See also:

Everyone's A Sucker For False Hope

Barney Frank - An Invert's Grand Inversion

Raw Footage In Mouthage - Barney Frank

Barney Frank Redefines ZERO LIKELIHOOD

Facts On Fannie Mae = Homophobia

Barney Frank - Unapologetic Shakedown Artist

Dodging Barney Frank

Barney Frank-ly Is A Dissembling Socialist