.."Megan Barnett, a spokeswoman for the Department of Energy, described the halt to filling the reserve as a 180-day pause that will be re-evaluated next year. Since taking office, Bush has increased the reserve from 540 million barrels to 703 million, enough to offset 58 days of lost oil imports should there be a supply disruption."

ed.z.: Short sighted and electioneering feel goodism. Filling the reserve is one of the few good accomplishments of this administration, and they should have filled it way back when it was 20 bucks a barrel. Now what, wait until it hits $200? Say you save a nickle, on a 20 gallon tank that is one buck, whoopedy zing. You get better savings by just keeping your tires inflated correctly and let go of lead-foot-itis and random cruising to go get something dumb you forgot on the way home from work.

We don't have an energy crisis so much as we have a lack of brains crisis. I also will partly blame a disconnect with TV news. People go numb and zombie out in front of the tube, they blend fiction and non fiction, even if they can see year after year steady price increases and see and hear the headlines it just doesn't sink in, it's TV land, it's all fiction. Anyone paying attention could see gas was going up and up and up, years ago, it was obvious it was going to, more or less every year radically this century, but did people go and switch to better mileage cars or alter driving habits much on any huge mass scale? Nope, they wait until it hits 4 bucks panic time here, soon to be 5 or 6 or into the "21st century depression era" range (which I think is bound to happen), then they might change, because they will have no choice then, be driving Nikes more than anything else. Ya, they are selling more hybrids and such, *some* people are smart and adapted in advance, but most didn't, look at the resurgence of the big horsepower wars in the car ads lately. Basically, you can't save money or be comfortable with fast changes if you are behind the curve all the time. You have to be able to see the trends and extrapolate a little and act accordingly ahead of time. You can be logically proactive, or reactive, two choices.