On Sunday, a local gas station was charging $2.689 per gallon for regular unleaded. Today it’s $2.899. Another station nearby was also at $2.899. Around the corner and down the street a station had regular unleaded at $3.299. Down the street from there (at a place that is usually higher than the rest) regular unleaded was being sold for $2.799.

There was actually someone pumping gas at the $3.299 place!

Today, Chuck Schumer once again called for draining the Strategic Oil Reserves.

“If there was ever a time for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to be tapped, it would be now,” he said.

(Source)
As if this will do anything at all. There isn’t a problem with the supply of crude (which, of course, the Strategic Oil Reserve contains). The problem is with refining the oil we do have. 8-10% of America’s refining capacity is temporarily unavailable.

It doesn’t matter how much crude you have if you don’t have the capacity to refine it. More oil isn’t the problem. Turning it into gas (with all those “boutique” mixtures), diesel and heating oil is the problem and has been for quite some time.

After Hurricane Ivan, pipelines and platforms which produce and deliver crude were most affected. Now it’s the refineries. Refineries are currently running at near 100% capacity, more oil isn’t the answer, more refineries are.

More on this topic at Blogs for Bush.

Our 40,000^th visitor just came from Taiwan.

Regular Musers will know that my wife and I are expecting. It looks like her contractions have started (BTW I won’t actually be live blogging it, my wife would kill me – I just like the catchy title).

This whole birth thing is wild stuff!

Lady Jane over at A Lady’s Ruminations has just one question… Will any other country come to our aid over Katrina?

She has the transcript of a radio address by Gordon Sinclair (a Canadian broadcaster) from June 5, 1973…

The Americans
The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany. It has declined there by 41% since 1971 and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least-appreciated people in all the earth.

As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtse. Who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did.

They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges and the Niger. Today, the rich bottom land of the Misssissippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.

Go read the rest of the address and the rest of the story of why Gordon felt he needed to do this.