December 26, 2010

• Bizarre Idea Of Paying To Keep Your Own Money:
• Obama’s EPA & BLM Gives Raspberry for Christmas
• Stuxnet Attack On Iran Came From China
• Hillary Clinton’s Troubling View Of Israel
• Anti-Israel Parade Grows
• Prepare for oil shock
• Race Charged In New York Pardon
• To Russia With Love?
• High Taxes Killing States
• Emanuel Can Run For Mayor Chicago Board Says
• Planned Parenthood’s Latest Abortion Scheme
• Obama Shifting Toward Homosexual Marriage
• New Solar Fuel Machine ‘Mimics Plant Life’
• Palan Shouldn’t Run: Noonan
• $800,000 Game Show Goof

Comically Obama’s post election ephiphany is being portrayed as something miraculous rather that a dose of stark reality. Certainly he capitalized on the moment to trade some things he wanted for things he did not and Republicans were complicit. Obama’s snobbish ideology still disconnects him from Joe- 6-pack, who continues to put blame on him, and he deserves it.

It’s asinine to argue about paying for keeping your own tax cut. Only can politicians even attempt to propose such an inane premise.

As far as the disassociation of billionaires saying they welcome paying higher taxes that’s disingenuous since no one is prohibited from paying higher taxes so at any time they could voluntarily raise the amount they pay at any time?

 The the paying for your tax cut nincompoops simply should be asked “Explain why I should pay Washington DC for allowing me to keep my own money?” 

 Listen to the answer - try not to laugh in their face.

 Twenty-four-year-old Playmate Crystal Harris COULD BE feelING old age creeping up on her now that she’s engaged to marry Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, 84. She will be his third wife.

Stymied in Congress, Obama is moving unilaterally to clamp down on so-called greenhouse emissions, announcing plans for new power plants and oil refinery emission standards over the next year.

In an announcement posted on the EPA’s website late Thursday, dministrator Lisa Jackson said the aim was to better cope with pollution contributing to climate change.

“We are following through on our commitment to proceed in a measured and careful way to reduce GHG pollution that threatens the health and welfare of Americans,” Jackson said in a statement. She said emissions from power plants and oil refineries constitute about 40 percent of the greenhouse gas pollution in this country.

Obama had said two days after the midterm elections that he was disappointed Congress hadn’t acted on legislation achieving the same end, signaling that other options were under consideration. Indeed including giving Congress and the people it represents the finger.

Jackson’s announcement came on the same day that the administration showed a go-it-alone approach on federal wilderness protection - another major environmental issue. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his agency was repealing the Bush era’s policy limiting wilderness protection, which was adopted under former Interior Secretary Gale Norton. The result is the biggest government land grab in modern times.

When all local, county, state and federal owned or controlled land in America is totaled that equals nearly 90%. That includes recreation, transportation, federal grazing and all other “public uses.

San Francisco passed one of the nation’s toughest ordinances requiring city officials to hire locally. City contractors and subcontractors working on city-funded construction projects worth $400,000 or more would be required to hire at least 20 percent of its workers from San Francisco. That percentage will increase until it reaches 50 percent in seven years. If they don’t t hey’ll be forced to pay penalties if they don’t meet the requirement.

A cyberwarfare specialist said last week that the Stuxnet cyber attack that affected Iran’s nuclear program came from China. His conclusion seems inescapable.

Stuxnet is an incredibly advanced, undetectable computer worm that took years to construct and jumps from computer to computer until it finds the specific, protected control system that it aimed to destroy: in thi case a programmable logic controller deep within Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program.

Vacon, maker of one of the two frequency converter drives used in the Siemens programmable logic controller targeted by the Stuxnet worm, does not make its drives in its home country Finland, but in Suzhou, China.

Beijing customs officials raided Vacon’s Suzhou offices and arrested two employees, allegedly for “irregularities.”

The arrests coincided with the time when experts believe Stuxnet was created.

Once China decided to pursue action against this company and detain two of its employees, they had access to everything: “this is where they manufacture the drives, so they would have easy access if they were looking for that material,” such as engineering specifications, an expert said.

A second link to China was the digital certificate obtained by Stuxnet attackers which was produced by RealTek Semiconductor.

RealTek is based in Taiwan, but has a subsidiary called Realsil Microelectronics in Suzhou, China.

How China came to have access to Windows source code that would have provided ample access to finding the four “zero-day” flaws in Windows that were used in Stuxnet. Is another story. It was Microsoft that signed an agreement with the Chinese government in 2006 that gave officials access to most of Microsoft products’ source code, including operating systems Windows 7, Vista, XP, and Server 2008.

The deal was meant to assuage Chinese concerns about the security features in the software. It seems Microsoft unilaterally granted that access to profit from the Chinese market and freeze competitors out.

What still remains unclear is who triggered the cyber attack? Given China’s  totalitarian nature it’s inexplicable without the pervasive communist government’s involvement. In any case it was like an F-35 appearing over the tranches of World War I, and kablamo.

Sarah Palin is getting into the Christmas spirit. Today, she shot a partridge in a pear tree.-Letterman

U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s address to the Brookings Institutes 7^th Saban Forum on Middle East policy in mid-December should leave little doubt that she is a danger to the State of Israel and, thereby, to the Jewish people. For those who care about Israel, her words, because she expresses the position of President Obama’s administration, are alarming.

Clinton’s speech was praised for not demanding a further settlement freeze; this was because US policy makers realized it would accomplish nothing, and Israeli PM Netanyahu had already agreed to stop, or severely limit building de facto. Instead, she emphasized state-building, “ending the occupation,” and borders. Coupled with international recognition of Palestinian statehood, this side-steps Israeli resistance to a freeze and insistence on Palestinian acceptance of Israel, further isolating Israel. What she did not say is worse.

Not once did she mention official Palestinian Authority support, directly and indirectly, for incitement and terrorism. While passing on the usual gesture to America’s “commitment to Israel’s security,” her focus was elsewhere.

Blindly obedient to the notion of building a Palestinian state, she ignored the recent statement of Fatah, the PA’s ruling party in the West Bank: “No to Israel as a Jewish state, no to interim borders, no to land swaps.” And that’s only for openers.

She did mention how important it was to “ease the situation in Gaza,” and “foster legitimate economic growth.” Yet she forgot to mention the plight of Gilad Shalit. Twenty-four-year-old Cpl. Shalit was captured in Gaza and has been held by Hama since 2006.

Clinton’s focus was “the core issues of the conflict on borders and security; settlements, water, refugees; and on Jerusalem itself.” Her solution was “state-building work of the PA” and support for the Arab (Saudi) Peace Initiative - which grants the Palestinians a state based on the 1949 Armistice Lines, including Jerusalem’s division, and returning the Golan Heights to Syria. Israel gets “normal relations,” as long as that may last.

Clinton waves at “fundamental compromises,” but given her pro-Palestinian agenda, and her “two-state” axiom, this means Israel’s capitulation and surrender. Although she refers to “security arrangements” to prevent terrorism, she never spells out how that is possible; her vagueness is either lack of understanding, or ignorance. Even-handedly, she moves on to the issue of settlements: “we do not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity.”

 n borders: “the occupation will be over.”

On Palestinian refugees: “a just and permanent solution.”

On Jerusalem: “the religious interests of people and all faiths around the world must be respected.”

“Palestinian state-building” inspires her: “The lack of peace and the occupation that began in 1967 continue to deprive the Palestinian people of dignity and self-determination. This is unacceptable, and ultimately, it too is unsustainable.”

She missed the fact that Jordan is a Palestinian state, carved out of the Palestine Mandate by Britain in 1922, with a population that is two-thirds Palestinian.

This is not, however, what makes Ms. Clinton, and those who think like her, so dangerous; it’s the notion of what the core issues really are.

If the dispute between Arabs and Israelis is territorial, it would have been resolved long ago. It’s not about the “occupation in 1967;” it’s about the Nakba (Catastrophe), as Arabs see it, the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

The problem is not the area that Israel occupies, but her existence. Enshrined in the charters of the PLO and Hamas, Palestinians don’t want a state alongside Israel, but one that replaces Israel. Not understanding this is delusional; not including this as a core issue is evil.

Evil is a harsh word, so here’s why I use it. Clinton, Obama and his Administration, and everyone else know that Israel cannot accept her agenda, since that would mean exposure to significant risks. Rejecting her efforts will create more tension, and serve to isolate and vilify Israel, while strengthening the forces of de-legitimization.

She chose her words carefully: “We hope to see a significant curtailment of incursions by Israeli troops into Palestinian areas.” What about the reasons for those incursions? What about the lives that will be saved by capturing terrorists before they attack? From her impressions, Israel is not only wrong, but wicked.

And Clinton knows - as experts have informed her - that the Palestinian security forces that “stood watchful guard” during her visits may easily turn into executioners. They have done little or nothing to protect Israelis, nor should that be expected.

 PA “corruption and mismanagement,” billions in US funds wasted? No problem; “I was pleased to announce the transfer of an additional $150 million in direct assistance to the PA” - and to Hamas. That should soothe American workers on unemployment lines.

Clinton’s emphasis on “an independent, viable sovereign state,” may be misguided; but in her insistence that there is no other alternative, linking such a state with vital American interests, condemning “provocative (Israeli) announcements on east Jerusalem,” and blaming Israel for preventing peace, Madame Secretary has contributed to a global climate of anathema towards Israel. (Anathema to be formally set apart; banished, exiled, excommunicated; denounced, accursed.)

She cannot say, “I was only following orders;” she gives them.

Nyctophobia (nik-tuh-FOH-bee-uh) noun: An abnormal fear of night or darkness. Etymology From Latin nycto (night) + -phobia (fear). Earliest documented use: 1892. A related word is nyctalopia (night blindness).

In a classic chicken and egger  whether it is entrenched anti-Semitism or a fumbling, misguided US policy the outcome is growing more ominous, Bolivia has joined something of a parade of nations recognizing Palestine as a sovereign state. The anti-Israel campaign is spreding. Israel is fast becoming a pariah and a discredited footnote of history, like apartheid South Africa, East Pakistan, and South Vietnam.

In early December, Argentina, Cuba, Brazil and Venezuela declared recognition of Palestine as a “free and independent state.”

Uruguay has announced plans to do so next year.

The United States has so far refused to recognize an independent Palestinian state.

In mid-December, the House of Representatives passed a resolution, with 435-0 votes, opposing a unilateral declaration of an independent Palestinian state and condemning international recognition of such a state. Ironically at the same time Secretary pf State Clinton was wading, or perhaps waddling right into the middle of this muddy river (see December 20^th newsletter).

It also called on its delegation to the UN Security Council (UNSC) to “veto any resolution by the UNSC to establish or recognize a Palestinian state outside of an agreement negotiated by the two parties.”

The House resolution is in stark contrast to Obama’s promise from day one to push for the creation of an independent Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

That has not happened yet. But, what has happened is a looming crisis.

An Australian environmental group says if you buy an artificial tree you must use it annually for at least 20-years to environmnentally equal using a live tree each year.

Crude oil’s price could soar to nearly $150 a barrel by next summer, says Joe Petrowski, chief executive of Gulf Oil and the Cumberland Gulf Group.

Pump prices now exceed $3 per gallon nationwide, and such an increase in crude price would send that to an average of $4.50 per gallon. If that happens the economy could be dragged backwards into a double dip recession before most Americans feel the first dip ended. In Hilo, Hawaii the average gas price is $3.62 a gallon, five cents more than last week, 15 cents more than last month and 31 cents more than this time last year.

“If we’re not producing it domestically, because we’re trying to achieve administratively what we don’t seem to want to pass legislatively, and our imports are going down and demand’s up, it sets the stages,” he told CNBC.

“I think we’ll be at $100 in the first quarter,” he added, “and there’s one-in-four chance we’ll take out the $147 highs before Memorial Day.”

Oil shot to a more than two-year high for a second day in a row last Thursday. NYMEX now quotes $91.51 per barrel for light crude for January, 2011 delivery and analysts said a run at $100 a barrel is inevitable, as one key OPEC member expressed little alarm over the rally.

Obama’s bumbling foreign policy has uncorked any restraint by OPEC, and its hawks relish much higher prices to punish the U. S. Plus, an ultra cold winter has exhausted stocks, while the White House continues to choke domestic production.

Contrary to Obama’s asserting that American is no longer a Chistian nation 87% of Americans celebrate the penultimate Christian day - Christmas in their family. 70% of that group recognize it as a religious holiday celebrating the birth of Christ rather than a secular one. Twenty-seven percent (27%) celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday.

In a move that has enraged some and with only eight days before leaving office New York Governor David Paterson, who is black and legally blind,   commuted the already lenient sentence of another black man for shooting and killing a 17-year-old white boy. The 57-year-old , was released from a Saratoga County, N.Y., state prison Thursday after serving a little more than five months of his original two- to four-year sentence.

The Suffolk County District Attorney had tough words for Paterson.

“I strongly believe the governor should have had the decency and the compassion to at least contact the victim’s family to allow them to be heard before commuting the defendant’s sentence,”  said in a statment.

The dead boy’s parents were even harsher in their verbal assault on the disgraced Governor who was just been fined over $60,000 for coercion to obtain World Series tickets. Paterson withdrew from a reelection bid after seeing his approvals collapse.

The pardon ignited accusations of race. So far there has been no violence. Paterson leaves office in little more than a week.

Confirming what has long been suspected an officer of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has been captured supplying weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan for attacks on British and American troops. Plus, the Iranian government has released al-Qaeda terrorists from prisons to join the fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan. An intelligence official stated that three members of Osama bin Laden’s family were among those released. Longer term implications are developing.

The arguments felled and enough Republican Senators jumped onto the bandwagon to pass the START 2 treaty and block all efforts to block it. In so doing everything that President Reagan accomplished has been chucked aside for political expediency including:

• 1. The new START treaty limits the U.S. missile defenses and the preamble suggests that we would not engage in any new military technologies to thwart nuclear weapons.
• 2. It also says we cannot convert any of our rockets into interceptors and it locks in about a 10,000 unit tactical nuclear warhead edge for the Russians.
• 3. It reduces strategic warheads - where there is now rough parity - but not tactical ones where Russia has a huge advantage.

Why should we be rewarding Russia by relieving them of the expense of building new missiles and defense systems?

Had Reagan followed this line of woolly-headed thinking, the Cold War would never have been bloodlessly won.

Remember that Russia’s economy is less than one-tenth the size of ours. So the best way to reduce their power is to make them divert spending into the military. That is the best way to accomplish our basic goal: To bring down a Russia under Putin increasingly focused on domination and replace it with a democratic nation that lives at peace with the world.

This could be a watershed setting the course for the entire world for decades to come for better or worse, and what America’s leadership does right now will dictate that.

With all this water, suddenly the name “L.A. Lakers” makes sense. — Leno

Dick Morris provides the following analysis: High taxes kill states. There can be no better evidence than the 2010 Census. The states that lost House seats — because they’re shrinking, relative to the nation — had taxes 27 percent higher than the ones that gained seats.

Of the seven states that don’t have a personal income tax, four (Texas, Florida, Nevada and Washington) account for eight of the 12 seats apportioned to the fastest-growing states.

New York and Ohio lost two more seats. Other losers — down one each — are Massachusetts, Missouri, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Louisiana and Iowa. What do they all have in common? High taxes.

Texas, with the second lowest taxes in the nation, gained four seats, Florida picked up two and Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah, and Washington state each gained one. All have low taxes.

The states that lost seats ranked an average of 24th in taxes and had an average tax burden of $2,267 per capita (weighted more toward the states that lost more than one seat).

The states that gained seats ranked an average of 39th in taxes and had an average tax burden (weighted) of $1,788 — 27 percent lower than the losing states.

People vote with their feet and flee to low-tax states. It’s not the climate; it’s the taxes.

In New York, the city grew from 7.3 million in 1990 to 8 million in 2000 to 8.4 million in 2010 — but population upstate shrank dramatically. Some 1.7 million people left New York state in the last decade, the largest exodus any state experienced. Upstate New York is dying, killed by high taxes.

The New York City metro area can grow despite high taxes. It’s the historical center for immigration from overseas, a glittering attraction for migration from within the country and the foremost global city. But upstate has no such offsetting attractions.

Consider Buffalo. From half a million people in 1960, it has fallen to a quarter of a million. It’s lost half its population in 50 years.

The trend is unmistakable: The “losing” states drove out their high-income citizens (and middle-income jobs) with heavier tax burdens. As New York and other high-tax states confront their budget difficulties, they need to be mindful of this trend — lest they wind up taxing their states into oblivion.

With warplanes whizzing overhead, and tank and naval cannons barking South Korea openly flexed its military muscles  as close as 15 miles from the North Korean border. South Korea also poked its finger into its Communist atheist neighbor’s eye by lighting a 100 feet tall Christmas tree topped with a gleaming white cross as loud speakers pumping out carols into the north. Religion is officially banned in North Korea as it ironically threatened a “sacred” war with nuclear weapons then backed down having achieved its financial, diplomatic and political goals at a cost of little more than hot air from U. S.

To no one’s surprise the Chicago Board of Elections has ruled that former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel should be allowed on the February ballot for Chicago mayor.

The board made its ruling Thursday after a hearing officer presided over days of testimony in residency challenges to Emanuel’s candidacy.

The hearing officer recommended early Thursday that Emanuel be allowed to run for mayor. The board’s decision is almost sure to be challenged in the courts. But, things haven’t been so bad that the political mafia there has had to lay off judges so it is unlikely it will change anything.

Opponents say Emanuel shouldn’t be on the ballot because he doesn’t meet the one-year residency requirement. Until October, Emanuel worked for almost two years in Washington for President Barack Obama and had rented his house to others there.

Emanuel contends he didn’t forfeit his residency when he moved to Washington and always intended to return. This is another small step to preserving Chicago’s well earned image as America’s most politically corrupt city.

Former President Bill Clinton was the first national figure to show up to fondle and fawn racing Santa to show up before Crhistmas..

If the TEA PARTY can coalesce in 2011 it can be the decisive force in the 2012  presidential election.  Absent that it will be consigned to being locally effective but nationally impotent. It now needs national leadership.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) mandates that all its affiliates provide facilities where abortions are done even while abortion numbers are dropping nationally. Enter the core of its 2015 Strategic Plan expanding abortions at every Planned Parenthood clinic in the country through the use of a “telemed abortion.”

“Telemed abortion” is a process where abortion pills are dispensed via teleconferencing hook-up. An abortionist sits in front of a webcam and pushes a button to electronically open a drawer in the faraway clinic containing the abortion drugs. A licensed physician never physically examines the mother.

Critics say the telemed abortion scheme is dangerous, illegal, and violates FDA protocols for usage of the drug, known as RU486, or Mifepristone.

Abortion rates nationally have dropped, as have the number of abortion clinics, and because abortions account for 95 percent of PPFA services and income so its motivation to do more is self evident. Like many non profits fund raising has sagged overall.

When Planned Parenthood of South Texas didn’t want to add abortions so it could focus solely on promoting contraception and birth control it was given the bum’s rush out the door. The former affiliate changed its name to Family Planning of the Coastal Bend.

PPFA affiliates did over 324,000 abortions in 2008 a 6% increase over 2007 bagging taxpayer money for every aborted fetus. In fact PPFA is criticized for setting quota’s for abortions on affiliates to increase revenues. In 1997, Planned Parenthood did about 160,000 abortions and received approximately $160 million in total taxpayer funding from various levels of government. Both the number of abortions and the amount of money received from government, supposedly for family planning to reduce abortions, has double since then. The increase in its abortions has outpaced population growth.

Critics point out that, “In addition to the dangers, telemed abortions are a cash cow for the abortion cartel. Planned Parenthood is charging insurance companies twice the price of cash patients, without having to pay an on-site abortionist. If this dangerous scheme is allowed to spread, it will increase health care costs for everyone.” Of course even that does not speak to the moral or ethical issues such as minor’s parents not be advised but the parents still responsible for medical care if problems arise.

Vice President Joe Biden said there has been no “substantive damage” to the United States by Julian Assange in the whole WikiLeaks scandal. He says it has been embarrassing, but you can’t prosecute people for embarrassing the United States. If that were true, Joe Biden would be serving life in prison-Leno

Obama says he is still wrestling with whether homosexuals should have the right to marry, now that a new law will allow them to serve openly in combat.

The question came just hours after he signed landmark legislation repealing the ban on gays serving openly in the military. The law ends the 17-year-old “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that forced gays to hide their sexual orientation or face dismissal.

Obama says his feelings on the gay marriage issue continue to evolve but he still believes in allowing strong civil unions that provide certain protections and legal rights that married couples have.

All this signals his support for homosexual marriage before the 2012 Presidential election.

A new poll shows President Obama ahead of Sarah Palin 54 percent to 39 percent in a potential matchup. You know what that means? John McCain could get Barack Obama elected twice. - Leno

A prototype solar device has been unveiled which mimics plant life, turning the Sun’s energy into fuel.

The machine uses the Sun’s rays and a metal oxide called ceria to break down carbon dioxide or water into fuels which can be stored and transported.

Conventional photovoltaic panels must use the electricity they generate in situ, and cannot deliver power at night.

The prototype, which was devised by researchers in the US and Switzerland, uses a quartz window and cavity to concentrate sunlight into a cylinder lined with cerium oxide, also known as ceria.

Ceria has a natural propensity to exhale oxygen as it heats up and inhale it as it cools down.

If as in the prototype, carbon dioxide and/or water are pumped into the vessel, the ceria will rapidly strip the oxygen from them as it cools, creating hydrogen and/or carbon monoxide.

Hydrogen produced could be used to fuel hydrogen fuel cells in cars, for example, while a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide can be used to create “syngas” for fuel.

It is this harnessing of ceria’s properties in the solar reactor which represents the major breakthrough, say the inventors of the device. They also say the metal is readily available, being the most abundant of the “rare-earth” metals.

Methane can be produced using the same machine, they say.

The prototype is grossly inefficient, the fuel created harnessing only between 0.7% and 0.8% of the solar energy taken into the vessel.

Most of the energy is lost through heat loss through the reactor’s wall or through the re-radiation of sunlight back through the device’s aperture. (Before I get snide comments about “reactor dangers” this is a chemical reactor not nuclear in the sense of radioactivity.)

But the researchers are confident that efficiency rates of up to 19% can be achieved through better insulation and smaller apertures. Such efficiency rates, they say, could make for a viable commercial device.

“The chemistry of the material is really well suited to this process,” says Professor Sossina Haile of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). “This is the first demonstration of doing the full shebang, running it under (light) photons in a reactor.”

She says the reactor could be used to create transportation fuels or be adopted in large-scale energy plants, where solar-sourced power could be available throughout the day and night.

However, she admits the fate of this and other devices in development is tied to whether states adopt a low-carbon policy.

“It’s very much tied to policy. If we had a carbon policy, something like this would move forward a lot more quickly,” she told the BBC.

It has been suggested that the device mimics plants, which also use carbon dioxide, water and sunlight to create energy as part of the process of photosynthesis. But Professor Haile thinks the analogy is over-simplistic.

“Yes, the reactor takes in sunlight, we take in carbon dioxide and water and we produce a chemical compound, so in the most generic sense there are these similarities, but I think that’s pretty much where the analogy ends.”

Daniel Davies, chief technology officer at the British photovoltaic company Solar Century, said the research was “very exciting”.

“I guess the question is where you locate it - would you put your solar collector on a roof or would it be better off as a big industrial concern in the Sahara and then shipping the liquid fuel?” he said.

Solar technology is moving forward apace but the overriding challenges remain ones of efficiency, economy and storage.

New-generation “solar tower” plants have been built in Spain and the United States which use an array of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto tower-mounted receivers which drive steam turbines.

Church Bulletin Blooper: The peacemaking meeting scheduled for today has been cancelled due to a conflict.

Ronald Reagan White Houser, now Wall Street Journal columnist, best selling author and historian Peggy Noonan said Sunday on Meet the Press that Sarah Palan will not run for President in 2012, and if she does she will not be supported. To Noonan’s analysis I add that I hope she is right.

An ABC News - Washington Post poll six in 10 voters say they would not even consider voting for the former Alaska governor if she launches a White House bid, and she loses badly to Obama in a hypothetical 2012 general election test.

A slim 8 percent of all registered voters say they would definitely vote for Palin for president, while 31 percent say they would consider doing so. Fully 60 percent say they definitely would not. Among all Americans, 59 percent say they would not vote for her, up from 53 percent in November 2009.

FINALLY: Mr. Okoye, 25, and his girlfriend, Brittany Mayti, 30, were contestants on the very first episode of “Million Dollar Money Drop,” a Fox game show that had its premiere last Monday. Mr. Okoye was confident about a

+ Post-it Notes question - so confident that he persuaded Ms. Mayti to go along. Together, they wagered $800,000 of the $880,000 they had banked, out of the $1 million the show’s producers had challenged them to keep at the beginning of the program.

Fox decalred Okoye’s answer wrong. True to the show’s title, wads of hundred-dollar bills dropped off the table with a loud whoosh. The studio audience gasped, and Mr. Okoye hung his head in his hands, bent over like he had been punched in the stomach.

But, it turns out Okoye’s answer was right about the Post-it Notes.

In an embarrassing about-face, the show’s producers admitted on Thursday to having had “incomplete information” about the history of Post-it Notes, and they invited Mr. Okoye and Ms. Mayti back to try again. But, there is no show to go back on, and there may not be. They did not, however, return the $800,000.

In the history of game show blunders, Monday’s blunder ranks right up there with the episode of ABC’s “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” in 1999 that wrongly asserted that Lake Michigan was larger than Lake Huron. When the producers of “Millionaire” learned that the contestant’s answer was correct, they invited him back on the show.

Something of a brouhaha has erupted and it is unclear where it will end. One thing seems sure the producers better hope a jury doesn’t get involved. At minimum Fox and program sponsors look like dopes.

Consider there are 40,000,000 Americans on food stamps. Even with monumental inefficiency that means about one in eight need help to feed themselves. Most of those are women with children and the elderly. Thouands are recent Iraq and Afghanistan veterans whose unemployment rate is over 20%.