Kathleen Parker (I thought that she originally wrote for the Orlando Sentinel) has been around a long time, and she has written conservative sexual columns (men she'd like to have sex with tend to be people that kill other people) for a long time. She's kind of a modern Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho, House), who was also fond of her proclivities for sexual interaction, even while she was in the House of Representatives.

What's funny to me is that 99% of Americans have no idea of their history whatsoever. The notion that people can stretch back and look to their Pilgrim, or their Daughters of the American Revolution roots, is just laughable in any broader sense-- especially in the NASCAR sense. THAT'S the problem. Anyone with any doubts, I highly recommend to read Tony Hurwitz's 'Confederate in the Attic'.

But she's also voicing a dysfunctional, racist perspective on something that demographers have been warning about for a while, as well as the incumbent potential for misuse-- the radical increase in immigration in this country for the last 20 years. I can remember reading about it in the Atlantic back in 1989, and the various potential effects that it could have. The fact that these fundamental mechanisms of human societies are coming home to roost should surprise no one.

While it is profoundly true that many migrants take the jobs that Americans don't want, most of us can't establish a direct connection between the benefits of immigrant labor and the problems associated with it. The rich, of course, are the clear beneficiaries. But the fact is that this country has only so much space, and you start putting too many rats in a box, you're going to end up with rats chewing on rats.

Anyone that has any expectations that the conditions around this issue should have clear, fact-based perspectives on the costs and benefits of all immigration hasn't been paying very close attention to the political discourse of the last 20 years.

Diversity is an acquired taste. It requires an expansive personality, and a fundamental inquisitiveness that is not present in the constituency that Parker writes for. With something as simple as food, I know people who eat at McDonald's every day. Forget extending that to family life stories, or different languages and rituals.

We need a controlled immigration policy-- and it is a hot button issue that unfortunately is either discussed in racial terms by the racists, or hand-wringing by the Democrats. And as population pressures increase, none of it is going to be easy. Thank Parker for laying her cards out on the table-- at least she's agreed to take over the bigotry part of the terrain.

This is one thing people need to understand about any commodity-- its total 'fungibility'-- the fact that a barrel of oil from one place, by and large, looks like a barrel of oil from anyplace (sulfur content, etc. being a small differentiator).

Utilities and commodities sit on a price floor of 'cost to make' + 1 penny as long as there is a surplus. However, the minute there is a shortage (demand exceeding supply) then they rocket upwards to the replacement/substitution cost, or until other market factors drive down the demand.

Let's say you're buying electricity to run your supercomputer, which makes you $1M/minute when it runs . You're happy to pay the surplus cost until someone tells you that they're going to cut off your juice-- then you're willing to pay almost anything up to $1M/minute in order to get your electricity.

If you think it's bad for us, think about the folks in 3rd World countries. This has been going on with global food markets (especially seafood) for a long time. Such are the things that famine is made of.

This fact of utility/commodity pricing is why utilities have historically been regulated in the U.S. We are now finding out the hard way what happens when you have an unregulatable utility (oil) as part of your economic structure. When demand exceeds supply, you can have extreme price volatility.

OK Jeff-- here's the thing I don't understand. I read somewhere that there is something like a 5% excess of oil production right now. Yet prices are still skyrocketing.

Is that above figure true? If so, how is this, then, any different than Enron pushing up the price of electricity some five-six years ago?