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.

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.

The other day on Fox news, they had an attorney for a convicted sex offender and Marc Klass on to discuss the 2500 foot “barrier” around schools that dictates where a convicted sex offender can and can not live.

The attorney was saying that we are a mobile society and keeping a convicted sex offender from living in that 2500 foot radius makes no sense, as the convicted sex offender can still get in his/her car and go to a school. He also said that the half mile radius was too large and, in an urban area, would just push the convicted sex offender further out, into the suburbs, causing the same problems there.

Marc Klass was agreeing with him on this point.

Is it just me, or isn’t the point of the 2500 foot radius to keep our children from walking past the convicted sex offender’s home on their way to and from school? Generally, (at least in my town) if you are within a half mile of a school there is no bus service and the children must walk to school. I don’t want my children walking past a convicted sex offender’s house twice a day, every school day.

Consider that this rule is to the benefit of both the children and the convicted sex offender. For the children, they don’t have to be so afraid to walk to school. I would think that the sight of many children walking past the house each and every day would pose a great temptation. By removing the convicted sex offender from the path the children walk to school, this temptation just isn’t there.

Without this rule, a convicted sex offender could wait for a child to come by by him/herself and get them into the privacy of their own home quickly, with a much better chance of getting away with it. With the rule, the convicted sex offender must look for victims where it will be harder to do so.

I think our children are far safer with this rule in place, than they are without it.

Welcome Basil’s Blog readers! Please look around.

Launching August 29th – The Grand Old Portal

From the press release:

The Grand Old Portal is a human-edited search engine of Republican websites on the World Wide Web. This search engine is different from other search engines as it only lists sites that support the Republican Party. Each site that is submitted is reviewed by an editor who then determines if the site will be listed in the search engine.

Webmasters who run websites that support the Republican Party are invited to visit http://www.GrandOldPortal.com and submit their website for inclusion in the search engine. Even though the website will not be launched until the 29th of August, webmasters are still encouraged to submit their websites now for inclusion.

Via GOPBloggers

Angry’s new address is http://agwnblog.com and his new email is agwnblog at gmail dot com.

This change has been made in our blogroll.

MuNu is back up!

Rusty Shackleford is at his backup site http://mypetjawa.blogspot.com/

The MuNu emergency site is http://munuemergency.blogspot.com/

John Gibson had two guests today talking about immigration, Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO)and Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the Minuteman Project.

The transcript follows:

Gibson: A week after Arizona declared a state of emergency along its border with Mexico, the Feds have finally stepped up and responded. The Homeland Security has promised to help the state fight illegal immigration, drug smuggling, human trafficking, and the violence that comes along with those activities. So what does this promise really mean?

Congressman Tom Tancredo joins us now. The Colorado Republican is Chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus. Congressman, Governor Napolitano in Arizona put on a lot of pressure and the Feds have said OK we’ll come help. What kind of help can she realistically expect?

Tancredo: Well that’s a great question. I don’t know what help has been promised and I don’t know what they’re actually going to do because, of course, everyone in America has been begging them to go down on the borders and do something about the fact that we have an invasion. And so far they’ve ignored it. Now I am happy that both Governor Napolitano and Governor Richardson have done a U-turn, a political U-turn on this issue. You know you do wonder I have to tell you when those two folks look in the mirror in the morning how many faces do they see? {laughs} Because, honestly, it’s just incredible to me that you can be so pro-open borders, work so hard for the ah you know to placate the immigration crowd and then the next day when you decide it’s politically, the thing to do, popular, make a big turnaround.
Continue reading →

The Right Nation a wonderful Italian Blog who has linked to us in the past ( South Park Conservatives Roundup and Piccoli maccartisti digitali crescono ) Now has an all English version of their website for those of us who don’t speak Italian…

The Right Nation

Via Brian Maloney‘s Linkfest at Michelle Malkin

Just heard on Fox News:

Cindy Sheehan is leaving the anti-war protest in Crawford because her mother has had a stroke.

Our prayers are with her mother.