Palin will never win a majority as long as the majority are literate. What she will do is confound putative Republican leaders, and unless she founders, eventually fracture the coalition of populist conservatives with neoliberals and imperialists that forms the modern Republican party. Perhaps that's why Salon seems to be rooting for her lately.

I love any form of success for Freaks and Geeks alumni. For some reason I see it as vindication. It's probably pretty offensive for actors who've been grinding away for a decade to gain that success.

They're calling Twilight a 'saga'? Are we as a culture going to just take this lying down? It's a pretty grandiose way to talk about fan fiction-grade teen romance hawking a grotesquely unhealthy view of gender relations.

My loyalty lies with my humanity, not my nationality. I would far rather 30 million human beings came and settled in Australia than that they be imprisoned, even if I thought that increasing the number of people living in a given territorial state (as opposed to living in the world althogether) were in any way harmful. Of course, this is baffling to your thought processes, where humanity is assigned along with citizenship at birth.

Anyway, what you consider 'the point' is ridiculously reductionist. Here are some more points.

1. The US has been instrumental in the creation and continued subjugation of the 'Third World'.

2. Latin American economic migrants are fleeing countries where they would be a source of cheap labour for the enrichment of the United States, to do the exact same thing in the much safer environment of the US (where it's generally frowned upon to fund genocidal authoritarian militias).

3. For most of the history of human civilisation, borders have existed to differentiate where you can move your army, not where individuals can go for economic opportunity. So why is securing them so important that 30 million people should be imprisoned?

4. The use of absolute numbers is ridiculous. 30 million people is only 10% of the US population, yet is greater than the population of many smaller states.

5. Who is the 'we' that doesn't want 'them' in the country? I know, and you know, and we both know it's a racial divide.

6. Do you think some of the terrible social problems you're blaming on illegal immigration (which I'll guess are crime, a dodgy education system, and a falling share of wealth for middle class Americans) are a fault of the deliberately brutal neoliberal economics that have dominated the US for the last 30 years? Noting that central to the claims of this branch of economic thinking is that the more people there are, the richer everyone will get.

The question of immigration is as much at the centre of the culture wars in Australia as it is in the US. Google 'Tampa' or 'Children Overboard' or look at the Amnesty International reports on Australia from 1996-2007 if you think being Australian disqualifies me from an opinion on immigration. I hear the exact same weak, culturally chauvinistic arguments here on a daily basis that you're using. The fact is, it always comes back to falsely inferred responsibility for social problems, and a xenophobic fear of cultural and linguistic differences. It's always 'go to Hurstville and they're just speaking Chinese!' or 'go to Lakemba and they're all wearing headscarves!'

I'm seriously confused by the linguistic element, in particular. What is it about hearing someone speak a language aside from the one you've grown up with that so intimidates you? Personally I love that feeling, and it's one of the things I travel in search of. I'm asking from a genuine desire to learn from another human being here, not to make some rhetorical point.

A simple question for you, Unlovely: Do you believe that Latin Americans, like any other economic actor, create wealth when they come into a country's economy? Or is there something unique about them that means they are merely a drain on the resources of others? Something cultural, or dare I say it, racial, perhaps?

A follow-up: How is it that they go about gaining these resources? I mean, if they're making no contribution, then they couldn't possibly be exchanging labour for them.