Author: VD

Suprises, surprises and more surprises. No doubt the Eurobookies are hurting, as only a deluded patriot would have gambled on Greece over France, and while the Netherlands are seemingly an eternal contender, who was expecting them to successfully navigate a penalty shoot-out for the first time, especially against a facile and team-oriented Swedish squad?

The Czechs came out flat against Denmark; the game was so slow, dull and poorly officiated that I almost didn’t bother returning to the television after halftime. That would have been a mistake, though, as they clinically executed two assassin-like goals stemming from sharp through passes to Milan Barros. Taken in its totality, the game was like watching a cat toying with a mouse, leisurely dispatching it with ease when it tires of the charade.

It forces me want to rethink my statement on the Northern Alliance show that the winner of the Sweden-Holland game would take all. But if Holland can win on penalties – we got two phone calls from SpaceBunny’s best friend, a Dutch girl who sounded on the very verge of expiring from nervous tension, during the shootout – perhaps it is finally their year. However, I don’t like the managerial matchup between Advocaat and Scolari, as the difference between the Dutchman and the man who doesn’t fear to pull Luis Figo in the biggest match so far is a stark one.

And then, of course, one would be a fool to dismiss the hometown factor in a tournament that has seen the most unusual mix of great – love all the yellow cards being handed out to the divers – and appalling refereeing. So, what to conclude?

The easy game first. The Czechs have not only been dominant, but play an Arsenal-like open attacking style that will have no trouble cracking open the Greek defense. They should win easily, by as many as five goals. Despite the above comments, I don’t trust Portugal. They should have lost to England even though they outplayed them. They’ve choked numerous times in the past and they have a Ewing Theory (see The Sports Guy) thing going with their best player, Luis Figo. I think we’ll see Holland against the Czechs for the whole enchilada.

satan writes:

uh…does Vox actually own a home or does he live with mommy? I mean the guy looks like he’s about…what? 16 years old? what could he possibly know about home ownership other than by proxy? what kind of ass kisser would ask such a thing???

I’m still your Daddy, pitchfork punk. (kiss, kiss on the guns). I buy low and I sell high. If the heat hasn’t fried your synapses, maybe you can figure out where I am on the home ownership curve today.

A time to live, a time to die

A time to laugh, a time to cry

A time to rent, a time to buy

It’s a little known fact that The Byrds were Austrians. By the way, Dread Pirate, don’t get your panties in a complete twist over the Denning report. Sure, it’s possible that he’s right, just as it’s possible that the email I received from a friend of someone who spent 30 years in the intelligence community is correct in saying that the election will be canceled this fall. It’s also possible that even if Denning is correct, he’s off by two years and housing prices will double between now and then as blow-off tops are notoriously hard to predict.

If you’re stretched into a difficult mortgage, I’d get out of it now and rent. If you’re simply living in a house that you can afford, that has doubled over the last few years, then what do you care if it drops 50 percent? Housing prices are basically inflation, and if your house goes up, then you’ll be paying more for a different house. It doesn’t really matter except for your ability to carry debt, which is always dangerous for any individual or corporation. Plenty of perfectly healthy, profitable companies have died because they took on too much debt.

I’m quite familiar with the FNME and FMAC situation and it does look, well, questionable. There’s always funny business going on with these quasi-government institutions, particularly those that control billions of dollars in assets. Then again, I’ve been expecting some form of financial disaster since about 1998, and other than the short stock bear from 2000 to 2002, we haven’t seen it. Remember, a) the world is always ending; and b) it hasn’t ended yet.

That being said, a few rifles, some dried food and a pile of gold coins never hurt anyone. Might even make some money if Prechter counted wrong and what he thought was a 5th wave was only a really big 3rd.

So, I’m working on another Eco translation, this time a recent article on PC language, or the lack of it, in Italy, and have NO FREAKING CLUE what he’s talking about with the following words:

celodurismo

celoflocismo

ostrega (as in pistola dell’ostrega)

Since the latter is the title, this is particularly frustrating, especially since a) none of the fluent Italian speakers I know have any clue; and b) the words don’t appear in my pocket dictionary, my Freelang computer dictionary or a 2,556 page behemoth of a dictionary that I picked up a few years ago. I know that durismo and flocismo probably refer somehow to hardness or softness, but I can’t reconcile the prefix… or the suffix for that matter. It doesn’t help that the only entry for “ostrega” says: exclamation (dialect) GOSH. Yeah, that helps.

I’m on the verge of using some other words, pretty much unprintable. Also, the ismos have to do with one Bossi, I presume Umberto Bossi La Lega Nord, but I could be wrong.

Hindrocket writes on Powerline: The Democrats’ position is that it is OK for Democrats to produce that show images of Adolf Hitler morphing into George Bush; but it is terrible for Republicans to reproduce those images to point out how nuts the Democrats are. Not all Democrats are crazy. But the Democratic Party has gone insane.

And then there’s the fact that there is about a 75 percent overlap between the historical NASDAP program and modern Democratic Party policies. Democrats often remind me of children, with their almost total inability to remember what they did and said yesterday combined with typically over-the-top emotional reactions to anyone who dares point out obvious inconsistencies and errors in their words, policies and actions.

I despise the current Republican leadership. I believe they are taking the country directly in the wrong direction in a variety of ways. However, I do take them seriously, whereas Democrats simply make me laugh in utter disbelief as they flail wildly about. It takes true ignorance to argue for demonstrably fascist policies while simultaneously tarring the ideological opposition as fascists. Apparently the Kerry campaign knows its idiot audience well, as this latest propaganda effort demonstrates real contempt for its Democratic base’s memory and analytical ability.

If any of you clicked on the BUSH FILMED IN UNDERWEAR link on Drudge today, I don’t want to know. I don’t even want to think about it. The only thing that is scarier is the thought of a John and Theresa Kerry video ala Pam and Tommy showing up on the Internet. She’s cheeky, sexy… whatever.

From Slashdot: I remember buying 5.25″ floppy disks with Lifetime guarantees. I forget the name of the company, being pretty young back then, but they used to have an elephant head on their logo. I guess maybe they figured people might take the term “lifetime guarantee” seriously.

Ah, yes, Elephant Memory Systems. I still have stacks of folders full of pirated Apple II games saved on their floppies packed away in storage. As the two founding members of the Thieves Guild, which tended more towards the distribution end than the cracking front, Big Chilly and I used to spend hours and hours playing Wizardry, Autoduel, Aztec and other great games of the greenscreen era.

Unlike many of the retro games that are being remade, Autoduel and Aztec would actually make for good modern games. Falling through the floors, the creepy tentacled octopus things that have to be chopped to pieces by machetes, and the rooms that unexpectedly fill with water – until Wolfenstein 3D, Aztec was the only game that ever made me jump in my chair. Come to think of it, somebody should have done Swashbuckler 3D.

I think it was the Apple II that convinced me that I like computers better than the average human. I was a social reject until tenth grade, when the ranks of the Beautiful People unexpectedly opened as I grew taller and became a top athlete, but even so I was never quite able to convince myself of the supreme importance of the social hierarchy. I got invited to the right parties and while I sometimes went, it was never a priority.

I remember very distinctly the look of complete disbelief on the football captain’s face when he asked me if I’d be showing up for the bash at someone’s house that Friday night and I told him that no, I’d just gotten a new game the day before and I was itching to get home and spend the evening playing it. I’m not quite as bad as Big Chilly, though, who would sneak out of fraternity parties his freshman year of college in order to get back to his dorm room and play Wizardry – a game he’d played through in junior high – on his Macintosh.

People ask why I don’t get out more. Hmmmm…. I have a hot blonde, a 3.4 GHz machine with a monster 3D card and a 4.5 x 6 foot projection screen. I have no interest in the big room with green carpet – there’s nothing out there for me.

Elephant Memory Systems. “Never Forgets”.

Robert Novak writes: George W. Bush’s campaign planners intend to shorten debate on the party platform at the Republican National Convention in New York in order to limit conservative opposition to the president’s policies. In the past, platform committee members have arrived in the convention city early Sunday the week before the GOP convention begins. This time, however, several delegates have been alerted that there is no need to get to New York before Monday, with platform meetings not scheduled to begin until Tuesday. That would leave only two and one-half days of platform committee sessions during which conservatives could push their positions on prescription drug subsidies, education and immigration.

That’s an interestingly open admission of the president’s anti-conservativism. Perhaps one of these days conservatives will wake up and realize that he has more in common with John Kerry than he has with them. You’d think the fact that his operatives are actively planning and working against them would serve as some sort of notice that he is not on their side and never was.

The entire S&P price action in the Futures is being controlled by one counter party. All the guys strongly hate them: their CME clearing number is 990N and they clear through Gelber trading. That one account is solely responsible for the current level of the S&P.

They are the ones that are throwing the S&P up overnight. Then they are the ones that are sitting on the bid all day long, supporting the market action. The S&P pits have been decimated, absolutely ruined. There is no volatility, so all the traders have left. Now the hot pit is the Eurodollar pit. Go figure, that used to be like watching paint dry. All the traders I have talked to view the market as being rigged. They keep waiting for the price action to break loose, but it never does.

They are stunned by the lack of volatility. And furious. Time after time after time 990 just sits there on the bid. Don’t they ever go away. They just absorb the entire market and then push the price wherever they want it to go. “Gee, I wonder who that counter party is.” They are all terrified of shorting, because every time they do, they get drilled. I thought it was just my systems that weren’t working that well, but they are far more dispirited than I. Intervention at its finest, your tax dollars at work, providing the ultimate tax to us all.

We have watched 2000 contract market orders on the Bid at key down levels of – 50 and – 100 on those rare days when 990N decides the program trading will revert to a well-defined pattern of “allowable” retracements. The Mini’s are being rigged in order to provide “support” for swollen price levels. They have to be for now, as without the daily rigging, “Price” would revert to its inherent “Value”, a disturbing proposition to those benefiting from the financial economy’s adolescent denials.

Counterparties provide an important function in any exchange, liquidity. Given the incessant “intervention” by 990N, there is very little liquidity beneath these markets to provide real support. I am actually writing you to alert you to this complete market manipulation and to see if you had any pull to get the word out to different traders and the media. I am one of the biggest S&P traders in the world as far as volume per day in that I average over 40,000 round turns per day on the screen in the e-mini. I tell you this because that is how I know one house is completely manipulating the market everyday because of all the trades I do with this guy. I know it sounds hard to believe that one person can control a world market but trust me: this is occurring. He works for the firm Gelber, which is house 990.

This is the basic premise for his game. He waits until the market is relatively slow, around 9:30 to 10:00 everyday, usually when the “paper trade” starts to subside then he begins a theme, mostly always long and he begins to buy. He is always looking for confirmation of his theme with what other people are doing. When the market stops trading in his direction he then drops in a offer of 300 to 700 which he sees if anyone is interested in buying it. If there is no interest he then buys the order from himself, with the order actually trading. He does this enough times until he attracts other buyers which then hits price points and the market runs violently in his direction.

I am sure I do not have to tell you that this is completely illegal to do. He started doing this with 300 lots back in November, now he has made so much money doing it that he is up to 2000 lots. He is completely in control of the market (illegally) the majority of the time. My firm and I have contacted the Merc on three different occasions with video proof that I recorded of my trading. It shows blatantly this guy crossing his orders thousands of times a day. The first person we talked to in compliance admitted that he saw something there when they reviewed the video of the trades I taped of him. He was mysteriously fired the next day.

We then came up with more examples for them to review and in the beginning they claimed he wasn’t doing it. We called them a third time, this time talking to the head of compliance and he finally admitted that they had the guy under investigation because they saw something, but in the meantime he is still allowed to trade and make millions until their “investigation” is concluded.

They obviously love the volume the guy is putting up and how it makes the emini S&P look from a standpoint of a liquid market. But if the public had knowledge of what this guy was doing I don’t think they would be too impressed with the liquidity. There is obviously some kind of cover-up. Do any of the pit traders you know have knowledge this is happening? And do you have any advice on how I can anonymously get the word out with what this guy is doing? I know you are not a true tick by tick “scalper,” but this is getting to the point where it is starting to effect everyone in the marketplace.

I have no way of knowing if this is true or not, but both the VIX as well as Adam Hamilton’s analysis demonstrate that volatility has been at a historically low level for an incredibly long period of time, which is anecdotal support for what this trader is asserting. I have no doubt the markets are manipulated – they are regulated, after all, which is nothing but open manipulation, and one has to presume that the Working Group of Financial Markets was created for a reason.

You might think that we have a free market in this country, but a few minutes reflection about the myriad of regulatory agencies and their actions will soon convince you otherwise.

I’ll be making my monthly appearance on the Northern Alliance radio show on the Patriot 1280 AM at 2 PM central today – some of the gentlemen are out and about so it looks as if we’ll be postponing our cage match showdown on the Iraqi occupation until next month – but in the meantime we’ll probably be discussing the implications of Iraq on the president’s bid for a second term, Air America’s financial shenanigans and how the soccer gods paid back France for its perfidy in Iraq and at the United Nations.

In somewhat related news, the Fraters Libertas are lamenting the fact that their favorite 20-something lesbian blogger turned out to be a 30-something man. This is news? I always thought the first rule of intersexual relations and the Internet is this: if a girl is on the Internet and you have no direct evidence of her sex, she’s a guy.

By the way, no Northern Alliance web streaming yet, but I’m told there will be next month.

Most Americans now say that sending U.S. troops to Iraq was a mistake, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll finds. For the first time, a majority also says that the war there has made the nation less safe from terrorism. The survey taken Monday through Wednesday shows a turnaround in views toward the war in less than a month. Continued violence in Iraq and questions about the war’s justification apparently are eroding support even as the U.S. moves to turn over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government next week.

It is the first time since Vietnam that a majority of Americans has called a major deployment of U.S. forces a mistake. When the war in Iraq began last year, the public by three-to-one said sending troops wasn’t a mistake. Just three weeks ago, 58% still held that view. Now, 54% say it was a mistake.

I’m not the least bit surprised. The Iraqi War has been over for some time now and the return of the troops is long overdue. Military force should be used wisely, judiciously and only for the purposes for which they are created. The armed forces went in, took out Hussein, captured him and so accomplished their mission. At that point they should have either been given a new military mission or brought home. Nation-building is a foolish and doomed enterprise in which we should never have engaged. The administration’s decision to engage in it will have the net effect of severely weakening the war on method and is unlikely to help the coming war against the jihad.