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.

In a conference call today with religious leaders from around the country, President Obama framed the debate over health insurance reform in terms of right and wrong: anyone who hearts big government is right, and anyone who doesn’t is wrong. Trouble is, President Obama is wrong about practically everything.

“These struggles always boil down to a contest between hope and fear,” he said. “That was true in the debate over Social Security, when F.D.R. was accused of being a socialist. That was true when J.F.K. and Lyndon Johnson tried to pass Medicare. And it’s true in this debate today.”

This is President Obama’s argument? If throwing additional tax dollars and half-baked regulations at a serious national issue passes for hope these days, I’ll take fear. Look at Social Security and Medicare! Don’t you wish everything could be managed to insolvency by Washington bureaucrats? President Obama does.

The Weekly Standard has an Obama quote that’s not included in the NYT story:

“You’ve heard that this is all going to mean government funding of abortion. Not true. These are all fabrications that have been put out there in order to discourage people from meeting what I consider to be a core ethical and moral obligation–and that is that we look out for one another, that I am my brother’s keeper and I am my sister’s keeper. And on the wealthiest nation on earth right now, we are neglecting to live up to that call.”

“I am my brother’s keeper,” “we are neglecting to live up to that call” – does President Obama have any concept of Americans as individuals? I feel bad for the self-proclaimed socialists out there; Obama keeps annexing more and more of their worldview as bipartisanship/pragmatism/realism/centrism/whatever we’re calling it this week.

The Weekly Standard story goes into more detail about the abortion question and the general tone of Obama and Congressional Democrats lately. Republicans are stifling debate – on a bill that Obama wanted to pass weeks ago, before anyone had even read it. Republicans are lying about what’s in Obamacare – although the Mad Libs legislation being pushed by statists would leave politicians to fill in the blanks while taxpayers foot the bill.

I didn’t mean for “Mad Libs” to have a double meaning in that last sentence. Looking at it now, though… that may accidentally be the wittiest thing I’ve ever written. A low bar to clear, I know.

A coworker sent me a link to an interesting story from KeithHennessey.com, a site I hadn’t visited before. Hennessey was an economic adviser in George W. Bush’s administration, and offers more detailed analysis of the problem – and more recommended solutions – than anyone I’ve stumbled across.

First, a post from way back on April 9, “How many uninsured people need additional help from taxpayers?” takes a close look at the “46 million uninsured” number we hear from President Obama, leading Democrats, and most media outlets. A brief excerpt:

Of that amount, 6.4 million are the Medicaid undercount. These are people who are on one of two government health insurance programs, Medicaid or S-CHIP, but mistakenly (intentionally or not) tell the Census taker that they are uninsured. There is disagreement about the size of the Medicaid undercount. This figure is based on a 2005 analysis from the Department of Health and Human Services.

That’s one point from a bulleted list wherein Hennessey lists categories of people included in the 46 million number advocates of expanded health entitlements use to paint a Dickensian picture of uninsured Americans dying in the streets. Six million here, four million there, and it’s obvious that far fewer than 46 million Americans need the ~$1,000,000,000,000 legislation slithering through Congress – unless you consider every good and service a “right” to be doled out on the government’s terms.

And here’s Howard Dean:

But, wait a minute, that’s, that is the farce of the argument, uh, on the conservative side. The farce is consumers can make informed decisions about medical care. You can make some informed decisions, but I practiced for ten years, I never had anybody with substernal chest pain get off my table and say, “Doc, the guy down the street does it $2,000 cheaper, I’ll see you later.”

In a single (bolded) sentence, the rotten core of Progressive thought. There’s an element of truth in Dean’s point – yes, medical decisions can be very complicated and difficult. But the conclusion that citizens cannot make decisions, and thus Government must make them, is telling. Replace “medical care” in the bold sentence with “credit,” “automobiles,” “home buying,” et cetera, and you have the foundation on which all the Democrats’ policies are built.

The Associated Press reports on the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., in a story titled, “Black scholar’s arrest raises profiling questions“:

Cambridge police say they responded to the well-maintained two-story home after a woman reported seeing “two black males with backpacks on the porch,” with one “wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry.”

By the time police arrived, Gates was already inside. Police say he refused to come outside to speak with an officer, who told him he was investigating a report of a break-in.

“Why, because I’m a black man in America?” Gates said, according to a police report written by Sgt. James Crowley. The Cambridge police refused to comment on the arrest Monday.

Emphasis mine. I can think of just one question this raises: Why is Henry Louis Gates Jr. such a jackass? Police responded to a phone call, and apparently it’s too much to ask of a Harvard professor that he behave like an adult. In America, where – as Professor Gates may not have realized – we have a black President, jumping to complaints of racial profiling is about as much an issue as racial profiling itself.

The Rev. Al Sharpton is vowing to attend Gates’ arraignment.

More salve on societal scars. Wait, “salve” is the wrong word… salt. That’s what I meant.

“This arrest is indicative of at best police abuse of power or at worst the highest example of racial profiling I have seen,” Sharpton said. “I have heard of driving while black and even shopping while black but now even going to your own home while black is a new low in police community affairs.”

“The Reverend” is a blowhard who does more harm than good. Each time I see his Malcolm X impression, I’m grateful to have grown up in a world where skin color is only a big deal to a few of my racist white peers — and a few of my racist black ones.