Gas - of the hot air variety

Well, gas prices hit another record high today - what's that? Something like seventeen straight days in a row now.

It's $3.75 per/gal here in Palmer, Alaska, well above the national average, but below the $4.00 per gallon in certain parts of California. And in a minute I'm going to run into town and fill up my tank and my gas cans before it goes any higher and the value of my money drops any lower.

If anybody was hoping for a solution or relief from the White House - well, you can kiss that idea good bye. I watched the President this morning - and what exactly the point of his address from the Rose Garden was I'm not sure, other than to tell us to take high energy costs and go fuck jolly well off. He made it clear that he's not going to do a damned thing until Congress lets his buddies in the Oil Industry drill in ANWR. I noticed he didn't bother to mention that even if Exxon got the green light today, it would be a minimum of five to ten years before those wells started putting significant petroleum into the pipeline, and probably more like fifteen. He also didn't mention who would pay for the feeder pipelines from the wells to the main Alyeska Pipeline at Prudhoe Bay, a couple of hundred miles, that can only be built during the two months of Arctic Summer and will take years to complete. How exactly that would lower gas prices at the pump in the near future he also did not bother to mention. He's also not interested in cutting summer gas taxes or halting the filling of the strategic reserve - despite the fact that we don't have the refinery capacity to process the oil held in the reserve and maintain enough output for civilian use.

Now, he did mention building new refineries on abandoned military bases. An interesting idea there, but he didn't mention how those refineries will reduce energy costs or who's going to pony up the billions necessary to construct them. And based on my own experience with reutilization of military installations, I figure the licensing and leasing of federal property, especially for HAZMAT operations such as a refinery, ought to take, oh, about five to seven years, minimum before construction even begins. Figure at least another five years for construction and well, it's not really George's problem is it?

The Decider did call on Congress to cut subsidies to 'multimillionaire' farmers - yet, strangely he made no mention of cutting subsidies to the oil industry, despite record profits over the last couple of years and especially in the first quarter of this year.

So, another day goes by. Congress blames the President, and the President pouts and whines and points his little finger at Congress. Both talk about leadership and neither have any idea of what the word means. If they were my children, I'd bang their heads together. I see revolution coming, I do. And not the good kind either.

What are the gas prices where you're at? And what's the general mood?