I paid $3.89 at the usual Marathon station on SW 168th Street and Old Cutler Road in Palmetto Bay last week. Then when I went to the Keys, I paid $3.77 at the Race Trac station in Florida City, and saw it for $3.73 in Key Largo (which is a tourist spot on an island and you’d think it would be higher. Go figure). On the road trip to Melbourne this weekend, I saw it for $3.75 at several stations up there. Then this morning on the way to work I saw it for anywhere from $3.73 at a Westar in Coconut Grove to $4.09 in Coral Gables; a 36-cent difference in the space of three miles. What’s it like in your town?

The meme is that while gas prices have a thousand reasons to go up even when there’s an abundance of supply and we’re even exporting it, the blame usually falls on the president… except when he’s a Republican. I remember paying $4.15 a gallon in July 2008 and all the Republicans were saying that it wasn’t President Bush’s fault (but then, nothing ever was). Now that it’s President Obama and we’re getting close to averaging $4.00 a gallon, it’s all his fault and Mitt Romney is passing along the whack-job conspiracy theory that the president wants the prices to go up. That was enough to get even the usually-sycophantic Washington Post to call him out on that howler.