Sunday. Leftover stew.

When I was a supervisor in the state welfare bureaucracy, one factor that was constant over nearly 24 years was staff gripes re: the status quo. It seemed like there was always something wrong with something, be it federal policy or routine office procedures. Things like federal regulations were beyond my power to change, but I did have authority over conditions like office procedures. As soon as I proposed a new way of doing things though, the immediate response of the people who'd been griping loudest was "We tried that once already; it didn't work."

What I learned from experience was that when you boil it all down, people would rather bitch about the way things are than take a chance on trying something different. Or so it seems to me.

Americans are resistant to change, and the older they get the more resistant they become. These words written by a man who already qualifies for a few senior citizen discounts.

I freely admit I don't know much about economics. What I do know, I picked up in high school about 44 years ago. I only learned enough additional information in college to scrape out the lowest possible passing grade. I can't prove it but I expect most Americans have about the same comprehension, high school level or maybe less.

In HS economics, we were taught there are guns and there is butter, and when there's a shortage of butter, the price goes up. When there's plenty of butter, the price comes down and people have more money to spend on guns. Or something like that.

The price of gasoline has roughly doubled since January 2007, the last month I paid 2.00 per gallon at the corner Exxon station (and yes, I do keep precise records of such trivia.). By any standard, that's an extreme price increase so in the minds of most people with a high school-level understanding of economics (or less), we must have a hell of a gasoline shortage.

My bro in Houston and my buddy Mojo both keep up with economic matters and the petroleum industry more than I do, and today I was extremely fortunate to read their exchange of e-mails on the subject of oil and political lube jobs. Excellent points were made by both, but one in particular sticks in my mind.

My bro: The oil companies are in business to make profits, and right now they're swimming in cash. Why would they want to "start punching a bunch of holes in the ground to generate more supply and drive the price down?"

If the parties want to play political games over gas prices, it seems like the Dems would have a decent checkerboard move in making the same point, getting voters to think about supply-and-demand issues and decide how much they really trust big oil to lower prices to roughly 2007 levels.

I've read several national items lately about the fact polls show the race between Speedo and Obama is virtually tied, with each candidate drawing about 45 percent and roughly 10 percent still undecided. The articles all arrived at the same question: Why isn't Obama way ahead ? The answer seems pretty simple to me. Ace has one big advantage that trumps two wars, gasoline prices, and economic woes: his skin and his hair are the same color. The real question is why isn't Obama behind ?