Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 63. A beautiful day — Fall is the Best Season™. Sunrise is 7:12 and sunset is 6:07 for 10 hours 55 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 49.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1648, Boston shoemakers form the first American labor organization.
Counting the damage from a war begins with lives lost, injuries inflicted, and — only thereafter — property lost. In the loss of property, however tertiary as a consideration, a sensible proposition would hold that one should not inflict on one’s own nation excessive and chronic property loss during the conflict.
These seven months into the Iran War, America’s octogenarian chief executive has left our own people worse off economically than we were before the war that he claims he’s already won:
More than seven months into the U.S. war with Iran, sharply higher fuel prices are making it more expensive to drive and fly and adding to the cost of some goods, prolonging the strain on American households as the midterm elections approach.
Motorists and airline passengers have borne the clearest consequences as the fighting disrupts Middle East oil shipments. Some companies have raised delivery charges or prices on selected products. Yet the higher cost of making and moving goods has not translated into across-the-board price increases at stores.
Shoppers may not be spared indefinitely, though. Many companies have absorbed at least part of their higher production and transportation costs. A September jump in wholesale prices suggests some businesses may eventually charge more if fuel prices stay elevated.
[…]
WHAT COULD COME NEXT: Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains dangerous and constrained, prolonging uncertainty over oil supplies and fuel prices. The Energy Information Administration said this month that it expected winter heating costs to be 21% higher for the roughly 3% of households that rely on heating oil, most of them in the Northeast, assuming the weather is mild.
See Cathy Bussewitz, Wyatte Grantham-Philips, Rio Yamat, Dee-Ann Durbin, Anne D’Innocenzio, and Mae Anderson, Retail price impacts from the Iran war are uneven but add up for US households before midterm, Associated Press, October 17, 2026.
Now, this libertarian blogger has never pasted a sticker on a gas pump, as MAGA men did a few years ago after the pandemic. I’d not place stickers on pumps now, either. And yet, and yet, here we are: when someone votes for a warmongering billionaire with no grasp of economics, there may be unfortunate consequences for millions of Americans.
Of Whitewater: The local special-interest men — inheritors rather than creators — have backed the national, state, and regional politicians that have brought America a failed war and a failing economy. They’ve dressed their self-interest as sound advice for the community. Their recipe has been a bland concoction for Whitewater and a rancid one for the nation.
Of Fort Atkinson: I had the pleasure yesterday of joining so many residents of Fort Atkinson on the Iron Bridge in that town during the latest No Kings protest. The event was well-attended, and drivers passing by were overwhelmingly supportive. A few times, perhaps four or five out of hundreds of passersby, a motorist would extend his middle finger to the protesters.
Honest to goodness, that’s futile and ludicrous. (The raised middle finger is an authoritarian populist’s fumbling mimicry of modern sign language.) It’s a desperate, aggrieved gesture from a member of a movement that has damaged America by failing to grasp the basics of economics, trade, and domestic and foreign policy.
There are, however, many and hard years to go before America recovers from these repeated losses. Every day one wakes and begins his or her work anew.
Nature waits for none — the Orionid meteor shower peaks in Oct. 2026. Here’s what you need to know: