Were you curious as to whether Ticketmaster is still an awful company? They are!

Tickets at Nationwide Arena are available exclusively through Ticketmaster. That should make it super easy to find tickets, and maybe even translate into reduced service charges for Nationwide events. It doesn’t.

For one, locating seats and figuring out what they’ll cost takes an elaborate hokey-pokey of clicking through calendars and lists. Is the game you’re interested in linked on the Jackets’ home page? I hope you didn’t expect that shiny red “Tickets” button to take you straight to a purchasing page for that game. No, it’s going to drop you on a screen listing all the games, with a separate link for each package deal. If you found a game next month on the Jackets’ site, you’ll have to find it again on Ticketmaster.com before you can search for tickets. If you want to compare prices for a package versus a block of individual seats, you’re going to click roughly 900 times.

And don’t forget! Ticketmaster’s website is so mind-bogglingly handy, they’re going to tack on a convenience charge – but only after you’ve completed the Seat Search Kabuki. Were you buying package seats because of their reasonable advertised price? Sorry, sucker!

When last I complained about the stupid fees Ticketmaster adds to the price of every ticket, it was $4 per ticket to order online. The “convenience” charge has since gone up 50% …in less than a year. Great way to keep people attending events during an economic slump! Charging nearly $200 for $150 worth of tickets is a perfect strategy for getting butts in seats.

The Jackets remain desperate for ticket sales, churning out new package deals – the “Ticket and Meal Deal,” “Guys Night Out,” various promotions around Christmas and New Year’s Eve – while the team stumbles and the organization tries to shake down the taxpayers. Would it make a huge difference if the cheapest tickets weren’t loaded up with a 24% convenience charge? Probably not… but it’d make me less annoyed, and it seems fair to guess I’m not the only one.

The first sentence of this Associated Press story really says it all:

After a disappointing new unemployment report, President Barack Obama pushed on Friday for an expanded government program..

No, scratch that – the first half of the first sentence says it all. Unemployment is much worse than President Obama said it would be, so let’s spend more of that stimulus money! Subsidizing green jobs – however the lobbyists and leftists define “green jobs” – is the obvious solution. This is really all Glenn Beck’s fault; if he hadn’t ruined the tenure of sweet, gentle communist Green Jobs Czar Van Jones our economy would be so green right now… you don’t even know!

Speaking of environmental boondoggles, someone remind me to dump all my GE if it gets back around $20. I should’ve learned before I started buying GE that two of the pillars of their business model are:

1. Lobby for government strangulation of things we don’t make.
2. Lobby for government funding of things we make that nobody wants to buy.

I read something this fall about the possibility of a “Cash for Clunkers” sort of racket for buying Energy Star appliances starting early 2010. After talking about it a little with my family over Christmas, I thought I’d poke around The Webs to see what the story was.

Lowe’s has some info on their website, but nothing very useful…

Each state will run its own rebate program and will be free to select which ENERGY STAR® appliances qualify along with the rebate amounts. Plus, any state or local utility district rebates will be added to the federal Cash for Appliances rebate, which could add up to even greater savings for you!

States will submit their application for funding along with their appliance recycling plan to the Department of Energy (DOE) by October 15, 2009. The DOE plans to have funds available by November 30, 2009, so start planning and selecting your new energy-efficient appliance from Lowe’s today.

So at this point we know there’s federal money set aside from that oh-so-successful stimulus bill, but the rebate amounts, processes, and eligible products will vary by state. Or in other words, we know nothing. To the Dispatch! They provided a helpful update in a Consumer 10 report from 12/27:

This month, the agency approved Ohio’s proposal for using its share of the funds: about $11 million.

The state’s program won’t be finalized until the first quarter of 2010, but some details are available:

Ohio will give almost 90,000 rebates to residents who buy qualified refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines and water heaters from Ohio retailers.

To be eligible for a rebate, an appliance must bear the federal government’s Energy Star label.

Sounds like a decent deal, if you’re in the market for new appliances – rebates for Ohioans will range from $100 to $250. I’m assuming my appliances have been around for as long as my kitchen, which would make them all 14 years old. Will I be “lucky” enough for something to break during this latest ingenious government plan, or will what I’ve got keep on tickin’ for a few more years?

I’d love if we could keep more of our money, instead of being invited into the shifting miasma of loopholes that high earners must constantly navigate. What will the government reward me for buying or selling this year? How can I take advantage of a maximum number of government programs that are paid for with my money, whether I use them or not? These are questions we should never need to ask, but here we are…

I should start an occasional feature about what a bad idea it is to follow the stock markets.

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Case 1: Ford Motor Company. When the housing bubble burst last fall and took everything with it, I thought about buying shares of F. I thought about how well Ford should do when people realized the world wasn’t ending and decided to buy new American cars not built by a company teetering at the edge of bankruptcy. Ford bottomed out around $1, but I didn’t have cash and didn’t want to sell something else only to second-guess myself later.

Ford closed today at $9.90 a share. I deftly avoided that tenfold gain!

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Case 2: Athersys, Inc. I actually did buy ATHX, a Cleveland company researching adult stem cell therapies, this spring when I was spreading around a little dividend money. I picked up a few interesting penny stocks, partly to diversify my tech-heavy portfolio but mostly for fun. Three hundred of this, three hundred of that, with the hope that more would double or triple than went out of business.

ATHX closed Friday 12/18/09 at $1.00 a share after opening at $1.01 – not too shabby since my cost basis is 64 cents. Yesterday morning, this happened:

Athersys, Inc. (Nasdaq:ATHX) announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Pfizer Inc. (PFE)…

Excellent news! ATHX closed yesterday at $2.40. ATHX closed today at $5.55. Guess which company I bought the least of when I was buying penny stocks in March. When I sold my Cedar Fair shares last Friday, guess how much of that money I invested in what I now know would more than quintuple over the next two days.

Hindsight: A great reason not to dwell on stock prices. Whether I do well or poorly, I always see how easily I could have done better. A bird in the hand, etc. etc…

Let your senators know exactly how you feel about Reid’s health care bill! I sent the following to Sherrod Brown, Ohio’s first term Progressive who continues to support support the Reid bill despite its heap of federal programs being less heap-ish than he would like. You can send a message to Senator Brown via the form at http://brown.senate.gov/contact

How do you feel, Senator, about the fact that Nelson’s support for the health care bill is being purchased at cost to Ohio taxpayers? Will you ask Senator Reid to also dedicate federal funds to the cost of Ohio’s increased Medicaid rolls?

I’m a conservative from rural Ohio, and I’m sure there are few policy positions you and I would agree on. But let’s be frank, there are a lot of Ohioans between us on the political spectrum who will wonder why you’ve supported a massive expansion of D.C.’s power that demolishes the state budget. Why commit political suicide for something voters oppose that also compromises your own wishes? Ask Senator Reid to give you all a Christmas break, and see what Ohioans have to say about this bill.

You won’t have Bob Taft and George Bush to whack around like pinatas in the next election, Senator. This is something you really ought to keep in mind unless you’d like to serve just one term.

I noticed the Senator’s office is in the Hart Senate Office Building… no relation. T-minus 10 days before an aide sends some boilerplate response thanking me for my stupid opinion.

As a Christian it’s difficult to deal with the question of capital punishment. I don’t believe “Thou shalt not kill” is a commandment that extends to governments who provide fair trials, but that’s not something I’m generally confident enough to shout from the rooftops. Then I see a story like this appalling one from Cleveland:

A convicted rapist was charged with multiple murders on Tuesday after police dug up 10 corpses at his home, which produced a stench of death in the depressed Cleveland neighborhood.

That no innocent should ever be put to death by the state is, to my mind, the most convincing argument against the death penalty. So long as we remain human, there will be tragic cases where people are convicted of crimes they did not commit.

Neighborhood residents said they avoided Sowell, who was released from prison in 2005 after serving 15 years for raping a pregnant woman.

Anthony Sowell got a second chance, and he used it to rape and murder women. I can think of no punishment too cruel or unusual, but a series of injections guaranteeing he can never rape or murder again seems to be in order here.

Forget Iraq, Afghanistan, Pah-kee-stahn, Iran, North Korea, Venezu… actually, let’s save time and say “forget foreign policy.” I’m not in the mood to pretend Nobel Laureate Obama has much capacity to shock me when it comes to his dealings with other countries. Why feign disappointment when anyone paying attention knows the progressive position on any foreign policy initiative is, “What can America stop doing wrong so you’ll leave us alone?”

The main concern for President Obama – and maybe an equally troubling issue for Americans – is his dedication to Health Care Reform. President Obama is so serious about increasing the government’s role in health care that he doesn’t have time for opposition, and doesn’t really need anyone in Congress (let alone the public!) to read whatever bill Pelosi and Reid can ram through. From a Wall Street Journal opinion piece:

Washington spent the week waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to roll in with its new cost estimates of the Senate health-care bill, and what a carnival. Behold: a new $829 billion entitlement that will subsidize insurance for tens of millions of people—and reduce deficits by $81 billion at the same time. In the next tent, see the mermaid and a two-headed cow.

The political and media classes are proving they’ll believe anything, as they are now pronouncing that this never-before-seen miracle is a “green light” for ObamaCare. (What isn’t these days?) The irony is that the CBO’s guesstimate exposes the fraudulence and fiscal sleight-of-hand underlying this whole exercise. Anyone who reads beyond the top-line numbers will find that the bill creates massive new spending commitments that will inevitably explode over time, and that this is “paid for” with huge tax increases plus phantom spending cuts that will never happen in practice.

Democrats, remember when you’re deriding conservatives for “opposing change” that, while some of us may be doing no more than that, Americans are going to have to pay for this. You’ll never find a majority of people who trust D.C. to do anything that resembles efficiently managing the health care of 300,000,000 people… which is why the White House and Congress will hide behind the latest CBO numbers and work out the details in the Obama-style ‘transparency’ of closed meetings.

I’m reminded of one of many Mark Steyn quotes I love:

More to the point, the only reason why Belgium has gotten away with being Belgium and Sweden Sweden and Germany Germany this long is because America’s America. The soft comfortable cocoon in which western Europe has dozed this last half-century is girded by cold hard American power. What happens when the last serious western nation votes for the same soothing beguiling siren song as its enervated allies?

Emphasis mine. We’re responsible for Obama, Pelosi, and Reid holding the power they have today, and before too long we’re going to find out what that costs.

From CNN, “Spate of terrorism arrests not connected, analysts say,”

“The profiles of the people… generally speaking is much closer to what we see among European Muslims,” he said. “They tend to be less well integrated” into mainstream society, and in many cases have faced economic difficulties and unemployment, Bergen said.

If there is a link among the suspects, Bergen said, “it’s a feeling of exclusion from the American dream.”

Emphasis mine. I’m not sure why CNN needs to ask analysts. Isn’t the root cause of terrorism always the same?  If only we could wring some more money out of the Haves, the Have-Nots would stop trying to blow things up.

Consider Najibullah Zazi. He can afford gallons upon gallons of explosive reagents. He can pay for a rental car to drive across the country. He has connections in Colorado and in New York. Seems like he and his pals could get by pretty well, if they’d invest their money in something other than bombings and spend a teensy bit less of their time planning the murder of infidels.

But no. If Muslims rich and poor are killing their neighbors all around the world, it only proves that we need to work harder not to exclude people.

I am still terrible at electrical work. All I’ve really done is change light fixtures, but working on things attached to the ceiling is not any kind of fun. As a result, I’ve had trouble getting motivated to finish a couple really minor projects. They weren’t even ceiling-related, but I associate wiring with getting dust and fiberglass in my eyeballs – which makes me a little hesitant to wire things! Yesterday I replaced the rusty old polished brass number at the back door with something that matches the new door hardware:

A running joke at home is that mom always wants before and after pictures when dad works on a project, but we never remember the “before” ones. Dad will be replacing shingles or siding, building a barn, pulling out old shrubs, etc… and halfway through the job someone will say “this is going to look so much better – we should take before and after pictures!” True to form, I forgot to take a picture of the old porch-light.

Though vertically-mounted lighting is much, much easier than mounting friggin’ ceiling fixtures, I still bungled around twisting wires together and getting them to fit nicely into the wall. So, I was glad when I pulled out the old doorbell and remembered that low voltage stuff is a cakewalk.

Why put in a brushed nickel doorbell when the front door is bedecked with polished brass? Well, I hate polished brass, and the old doorbell was good and broken.

The plastic disappeared from the button a few months ago. I don’t know if it fell off, or what, but it’s gone. I was not crazy about the button at the front door looking like some tiny cyclops robot from an 80s movie, but I put off changing for fear that whatever I bought wouldn’t fit right. The new mount was a bit short; thankfully its self-driving screws were nice and sharp. I don’t think the drill driver would have worked so well with the bricks sticking out right in the way.

Oh yeah – I forgot to take a picture of the old unit until after I was finished putting in the new one. Fail.

At this rate, maybe we’ll all be dead before the country goes bankrupt.

The Obama administration launched a criminal investigation Monday into harsh questioning of detainees during President George W. Bush’s war on terrorism, revealing CIA interrogators’ threats to kill one suspect’s children and to force another to watch his mother sexually assaulted.

So now we’re not allowed to say mean things to suspected terrorists. Another guy was pinched! Pinched so hard he passed out! We’re basically barbarians.

In one instance cited in the new documents, Abd al-Nashiri, the man accused of being behind the 2000 USS Cole bombing, was hooded, handcuffed and threatened with an unloaded gun and a power drill. The unidentified interrogator also threatened al-Nashiri’s mother and family, implying they would be sexually abused in front of him, according to the report.

The interrogator denied making a direct threat.

Another interrogator told alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, “if anything else happens in the United States, ‘We’re going to kill your children,’” one veteran officer said in the report.

Death threats violate anti-torture laws.

These are the ACLU’s poor, downtrodden examples of prisoner abuse? Couldn’t they find a few people not responsible for hundreds of American deaths? I’ve compiled a list of questions acceptable to ask of, say, hapless innocent Saudi Arabians nabbed in Afghani huts full of bomb-making materials, schematics for American bridges, and fake passports:

1. Are you planning to kill Americans?
2. If detainee responds “yes” to (1). Could you stop, maybe?
3. Please?
4. Would you like another cappuccino?

The board of experts being assembled by the White House will have to be mindful of tone when asking the third question, but I think this is a list that will totally keep America safe while respecting the inalienable rights of foreign combatants captured overseas.