#OCCUPYFAIL: First Day of Occupy Darien Draws Small Crowd. I’ll say. Here’s the photo caption: “Trudi Goldberg delivers a speech to Cole Stangler, Richard Duffee and Bennett Weiss at Occupy Darien.” It’s an overwhelmingly white crowd, too.

But wait, it gets worse:

More than one hour into the Occupy Darien protest Wednesday at Tilley Pond Park, there were as many police officers or more on hand than there were protesters. And once 2:30 p.m. rolled around, people began clearing out of the park.

The event’s coordinator, 61-year-old town resident Margaret Rague, is hoping for a better turnout tomorrow. And she’s agreed to pay $1,000 to bring in protesters from New York City.

“It wasn’t originally my idea,” she said, but the $1,000 will buy train tickets and a meal for the demonstrators. I will lay out more than $1,000 happily if I need to.”

She added that she offered to give up to $3,000, but fellow protesters said it would be a waste of money.

Oh, I think they’re right. Pity they don’t have the same good sense about spending other people’s money.

TONIGHT’S THE LAST OF FREE TWO-DAY SHIPPING FROM AMAZON. You’ll still be able to do one-day shipping tomorrow. But not for free.

BACK IN 1988, TWO WEALTHY MEN promised middle-schoolers a free college education if they’d graduate high school. They gave them a lot of support along the way. How’d it work out? Not as well as hoped.

KARDASHIAN REFLECTIONS: Why Kris Humphries Should Serve As A Role Model For Men.

AT AMAZON, Blu-Ray players and streaming devices (think Roku) for under $100.

Plus, new “lightning deals” every few hours. (Bumped).

AMY ALKON: Why Did I Have To Go To Pravda To Get My Op-Ed About TSA Rape Published?

A BUBBLE OF LIES: US Housing Market Was Artificially Inflated By 14% In 2007-2010 NAR Reports.

AN AR-15 FIELD KIT REVIEW: “Keep your AR clean on the go with this compact kit that’s easy to carry, anywhere.”

ARE “MAXIMIZERS” LESS HAPPY THAN “SATISFICERS?”

SCIENCE: Why You Always Have Room For Dessert. “The sugar in sweet foods stimulates a reflex that expands your stomach, writes senior researcher Arnold Berstad and assistant doctor Jørgen Valeur from Lovisenberg Diakonale Hospital in the latest issue of The Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association.”

My brother had a girlfriend who used the term “dessert stomach.” She was righter than we knew.

SHOCKER: Shock – Completely misleading story about Newt saying gays should vote for Obama.

Related item here.

JONATHAN ADLER ON THE NTSB: Texts, Lies, And Distracted Driving. “The National Transportation safety Board (NTSB) is supposed to be ‘an independent federal agency charged with determining the probable cause of transportation accidents’ that, among other things, conducts ‘objective, precise accident investigations and safety studies.’ So why is NTSB Chair A.P. Hersman falsely claiming that 3,000 people died in traffic accidents last year due to the use of cellphones or other ‘portable electronic devices’ while driving? As Walter Olson notes, the 3,000-death figure is the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s estimate for deaths due to all sorts distracted driving, and only one-third of these deaths were attributed to the use of portable electronic devices.”

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Cameltoe Is The New Mistletoe.

SHOCKER: Marriage Chances Rise With Your Salary.

JULIAN SANCHEZ: SOPA: An Architecture For Censorship. “The Stop Online Piracy Act—a bill misleadingly named for its aspirations, not its probable effect—has provoked an outpouring of justified opposition, much of it centered on two primary concerns: The virtual certainty that it will result in the ancillary blocking of much legitimate free speech, and the damage it would do to the basic architecture of the open Internet. One point I haven’t seen pressed forcefully enough thus far, however, is that architectural and free speech concerns are not entirely independent. The practical effect of SOPA will be to create an architecture for censorship—both legal and technological—that will radically alter the costs of engaging in future censorship unrelated to piracy or counterfeiting.” To some this is not a bug, but a feature.

HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” STUFF WORKING OUT? Harper to Obama: I’ve got plenty of buyers for our oil. “Canada has patiently waited for Americans to help themselves improve our energy policy by installing a pipeline from Canada’s oil sands to our refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, but this week Prime Minister Stephen Harper signaled that their patience has limits. Speaking to CTV, Harper reminded the US that they have a very thirsty China as a potential customer, too.” This is why the “green” opposition is either incredibly stupid or just dishonest Saudi-shilling: The oil is coming out regardless of whether the pipeline gets built. The only question is whether it will come here, or go elsewhere.

UPDATE: Reader Nick Calapa writes: “What makes you think shipping Canada’s oil to China isn’t Obama’s preferred outcome?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Prof. Stephen Clark writes:

In all seriousness, Obama’s punting on Keystone is inexplicable. Does the White House really think that a decision in favor of the pipeline would be that politically damaging – when they can wrap a favorable decision in a jobs creation agenda while pointing to a map like the one you linked to yesterday? As inexplicable as that is, for the life of me, I can’t understand why Republicans – especially presidential candidates – aren’t hammering Obama every single day on this issue.

If it were me, I might take a page from Cato the Elder and conclude every speech, no matter what the topic, with the sentence, “Furthermore, I think Keystone should be approved”. It might have an effect similar to that which Cato’s apothegm had on Carthage.

Well, I don’t give many speeches, but I am continuing to blog about it.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN — OH, HELL, YOU KNOW THE REST: Obama Moves Toward War With Iran. “Quite possibly before November of 2012.”

GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE: The Painkiller That Saves Money But Costs Lives.

SHOCKING NEWS: The Green Lobby is a “Special Interest,” Too.

THOUGHT: In Inman Majors’ excellent novel, The Millionaires, a political consultant explains that there are really only two kinds of political campaigns: “Back to Basics,” and “A Bright New Day.” Given that Obama in 2008 probably soured the “Bright New Day” approach for a generation, which of the GOP candidates extant can best pull off “Back to Basics?”

MYTHBUSTER ADAM SAVAGE: SOPA Could Destroy the Internet as We Know It. “Make no mistake: These bills aren’t simply unconstitutional, they are anticonstitutional. They would allow for the wholesale elimination of entire websites, domain names, and chunks of the DNS (the underlying structure of the whole Internet), based on nothing more than the ‘good faith’ assertion by a single party that the website is infringing on a copyright of the complainant. The accused doesn’t even have to be aware that the complaint has been made.”

DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO: DOJ indicts gundealer for Fast&Furious-like sales.

ON SALE, TODAY ONLY: V-Moda Crossfade Headphones, $79.95.

KOREA: STATISM IMPOVERISHES, ABSOLUTE STATISM IMPOVERISHES ABSOLUTELY: Dan Mitchell has the data.