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Dontgomovement.com has a “Caption It” graphic challenge up today.  Check it out and give it your best shot!

When gas prices fell below $4.00 a gallon, did anyone else feel a fleeting moment of happiness, quickly followed by this thought:  ”Hey, how is it that I feel GOOD about paying $3.85 a gallon for gas?!” 

The fact is, we’ve been gouged into thinking that anything under $4.00 a gallon is good.  To bring yourself back to reality, see this graphic.  To do something about it, go here.

AFF is on Reid’s case again, this time via the radio airwaves in Nevada.  Here’s part of the transcript:

How’s Harry Reid using his position as Majority Leader to help lower gas prices?  Reid and Congress just took a five week vacation – instead of working to lower gas prices. Congress found time to pass National Apple Month, but Reid continues to block votes to explore for energy in America.

America has huge energy reserves, but Congress has placed up to 85 percent of them off-limits. Reid repeatedly blocks efforts to lift the moratorium on safe exploration off our coasts. Reid opposes exploring a tiny portion of Alaska – less land than the Las Vegas airport – and he’s against developing our massive oil shale reserves.

Call Harry Reid: 702-388-5020. Tell him his vacation should end and the Senate should vote on S. 3202.”

Hat Tip:  PolitickerNV

Each summer the ancient Greeks would sacrifice a brown dog to appease Sirius, the Dog Star, believing it to be the source of the hot, oppressive weather.  Known as caniculares dies or “days of the dogs,” high summer was thought to be a time of evil when the “seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies” (Brady’s Clavis Calendarium, 1813). 

Though animal sacrifices to imaginary gods are no longer in vogue, it seems we are still prone to blaming far-away stars for our troubles.  The pains of the current energy shortage have been attributed to OPEC, international futures traders who conspired to drive up oil prices, and foreign forces driving down the U.S. dollar.

The true cause of our decline can be found much closer to home:  in the stagnating halls of Congress.  Our Legislators have failed to open domestic lands and seas to energy exploration, drilling, and new refineries and so billions of barrels of domestic oil are being kept off the market.  As a result, gas has now reached $5 a gallon in some parts of the country.

Arguments that it would take ten years to bring new supplies online sound hauntingly familiar.  Hm…  Oh yes:  it’s exactly what was said ten years ago when the nation last debated this issue.  The short-term thinkers won the last round; will they do so again now?

Critics also argue that we should be focusing on renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and bio-fuels.  Fine, yes, good.  But solar power and windmills can’t take the place of oil in the U.S. economy, and the ”encouragement” (mandates and massive subsides) of bio-fuels has driven up food prices so that we are now paying more at the grocery store as well as the gas station.

Increased domestic oil production is part of the answer.  Our technology enables us to drill with very little impact on the environment (and certainly in more ecologically friendly ways than many of the nations from whom we’re currently buying oil).  Let’s do it, then, while also developing techonologies that might one day enable us to power our nation without oil.

As for the cap-and-trade and windfall profits tax bills the Democrats tried to push through the Senate, we can thank our lucky stars they didn’t pass.  What worries me is what may happen when the dog days of summer are gone and the cool winds of November come a blowin’. 

If the GOP loses contested Senate seats and we elect a president who favors the artificial rationing of energy despite current shortages and high prices, we may well find ourselves wishing on a star for the good ol’ days of $5 a gallon gas.