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…

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.

Note to self: next time you’re on I-75 and the traffic is terrible (when isn’t it?), be thankful you’re not behind this…

Yet another thing sucks about Michigan – gas tankers exploding on the highway for unkown reasons!

Crossing over 270 on Cemetery Road yesterday I noticed a backup in the eastbound lanes that was kind of funny (which of course tells you what direction I was going). As if the just-after-5 traffic isn’t bad enough at every intersection with ramps to the outerbelt, a family of geese decided 5:10 was the ideal time to chug across from the grassy median to the pond behind Damon’s. At first I saw only the lead goose and thought “I hope that SUV hits that stupid goose,” and then I noticed all the puffball babies and felt like the worst person on earth.

How can it be that the baby version of a useless, hateful thing like a Canadian Goose is so doggone cute? And how is it I could grow up on a farm and remain such a wimp-bag where cutesy animals are concerned?

Last weekend I “met” my cousin’s 4-H pig for the year. We’ll not even go into how my brain justifies loving both the personality and the flavor of a pig. I’d be equally useless as an exterminator or as a PETA activist.

From the Edmunds Inside Line on Thursday, a rumor that Pontiac is getting the axe:

According to a source at General Motors, the company will announce next Monday its new “faster, deeper” reorganization plan, which will likely include a death sentence for the Pontiac brand.

I’m sure friends and family tired of my grumbling each time a Pontiac commercial came on during March Madness. I’ve been saying for months that GM would have to be insane to drop Saturn and keep Pontiac. Rebadge the Solstice, G6, and G8 as Chevys, and call it a day. Is there anything else remotely interesting in the Pontiac line that isn’t already sold as a Chevrolet?

Seriously though, not a rhetorical question; I tried to check Chevrolet.com to refresh my memory and the site is throwing a “Generic failure in middleware” error. Maybe when GM gets that fixed they can come to their senses and instead of killing Saturn stop selling GMC as anything but fleet vehicles. I’ve never understood the GM “strategy” of so many identical models under multiple brands.

I feel obliged to mention that  the first car I bought was a ’99 Grand Am GT coupe. Black. Sunroof. Felt like climbing into an F-14 compared to the ’84 Tempo I had driven in high school. I bought it with around 30,000 miles on it, and loved it for the ~30,000 miles before things started breaking right and left.

That’s what we should put on GM’s tombstone if the billions upon billions in taxpayer bailouts aren’t enough to save the company: “We loved it, before things started breaking right and left.”

This is one of those house-related entries you were promised and have been awaiting with bated breath. As common sense and common knowledge suggested, I got the nicest place I could comfortably afford. All things considered it’s a nice place indeed, thanks to a quarter century’s worth of outlandish and unwarranted generosity from my family. In fact, I bought it thinking I would not need to do anything for a few months at the very least. No small feat, given my perfectionism.

Well, since early June I’ve spent over a grand at Lowe’s and nearly as much at Home Depot. The front flowerbed sits higher than the sidewalk, so I put in edging blocks to keep the topsoil from washing away.

The grass directly behind (and south of) the house was dead (as opposed to the rest of the yard, which is only mostly-dead), which seemed a great excuse to turn the space into a flowerbed.

The deck, I realized, looked as if it hadn’t been stained or sealed since the house was built 12 years ago. And I wanted a grill. And some patio furniture.

One evening before I coughed up a wad of cash to have Sullivan Tree & Yard Service (their work is mediocre given the price – take your business elsewhere) trim the tree nearest the house, I was locked in an epic struggle with the garden hose and hose reel. I heard a small but frantic fluttering and could not find the source. Then, I looked up – there in the tree was a small grey bird with orange wing tips, hanging upside down. I worked my way up the (at most 25 foot tall) tree with my trusty side cutters and trimmed away whatever stringy plastic stuff the little guy was tangled in. For the first time ever, a use for my carefully honed tree-climbing skills!

And not the last time my neighbors will look outside and ask “What on earth is that boy doing?”

Got back a little while ago from the LIVESTRONG Summit Presidential Town Hall on campus, and when I went out back to water the plants something caught the corner of my eye: a fluffy white tail, hopping away from the flowerbed. Little bugger hopped just over the property line – we’re talking a matter of inches – and watched me water what I thought were my plants, but which may more accurately be described as his.

Regarding the Town Hall, it was pretty good. I went to see John McCain and Lance Armstrong in person, and was impressed by both. It’s no wonder Obama doesn’t want to be within a country mile of McCain without a prompter. Sure he’s a stubborn old codger, but he’s also sharp and quick of his feet and brimming with experience. He had my vote before and he certainly has it now, although I could have gone without mentions of McCain-Kennedy and McCain-Feingold.

In the vein of continuity (is that what this is?), continued prayers for the Roeths and Chivingtons. I don’t know how long the page will be accessible, but there’s a good article from the 7/18 edition of the Troy Daily News following Carrie’s passing.

Further continuity still, the book o’ Faces tells me the following:

Griffin House’s performance for The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson is now scheduled for Friday, July 25th.

Tune your TV and watch Griffin performing “The Guy That Says Goodbye To You Is Out Of His Mind” on national TV.

There you have it – a reason to watch Craig Ferguson. Who, apparently, is still on the air? Griffin will be on Conan soon enough, by golly!

Since I still get home with a headache 2-3 days a week, I’ve been keeping up a steady regimen of afternoon naps. As a result, I’ve started a bad habit of night-time gardening. See, my Realtor is throwing a housewarming party this Saturday, which has compounded my desire for everything to be exactly the way I want it. The most ambitious project I’ve taken up called for turning the portion of the backyard that’s directly behind the house and adjacent to the deck into a flowerbed. Flower garden? I’m not sure if the designation is determined by size or, if so, what the limit would be.

Even when I don’t feel like laying down for an hour as soon as I get home from work, I also don’t feel like going straight to Lowe’s while it’s still 90. Thus I’ve found myself at Lowe’s a couple of times a week somewhere between dusk and closing time, which remains a fairly narrow window this time of year. By the time I wander a few circuits around the store and get everything I need, it’s well and truly dark, but that hasn’t necessarily stopped me from spreading topsoil or planting a flower or two. Even when I’ve “planned ahead” the fact that I do everything slowly means it’s after 9:00 by the time I decide it’s too dark to accomplish much more.

After about a week on The Flowerbed Project all I need to do is spread mulch, drive rebar to attach the trellis to, and find a glider swing. And then put the glider together, I guess. Tonight upon return from Lowe’s I went to water the flowers and even in the dark noticed that a couple of them looked pretty sorry. I stooped to see why they weren’t doing as well as the other plants, and the problem was that their leaves HAD BEEN EATEN. Bastardos!

And that’s how, roughly a month after purchasing my first home, I turned into Elmer Fudd. Certainly this is one more tick each for the Dog and Fence columns, but sadly the former requires the latter and the latter is crazy expensive.