US consumer prices accelerated in September as the cost of gasoline surged, dealing another blow to President Donald Trump and his Republican Party ahead of the November 3 midterm elections and putting an interest rate increase later this month back on the radar.

The Consumer ​Price Index report from the Labor Department on Wednesday showed a broadening of price pressures beyond energy, raising concerns among economists that underlying inflation could be getting sticky....

The report added to surveys this month that showed a further deterioration in consumer sentiment and a plunge in Trump's approval rating, driven by angst over the rising cost of living. A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed about 78% of Americans blamed Trump's policies, including tariffs and the Middle East conflict, for rising prices, which are outpacing wages. ...

The CPI rose 0.6% last ​month after climbing 0.4% in August, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said, in line with economists' expectations. In the 12 months through September, the CPI advanced 3.7% after rising 3.4% ⁠in August.

A 9.1% surge in gasoline prices accounted for more than half of the increase in the CPI over the month. The US-Israeli war with Iran is driving up energy prices. Other motor fuels, which include diesel, soared 11.9% last month and were up ​60.9% on a year-over-year basis. Diesel prices at the pump are at record highs, and there are fears that those costs will soon feed through to higher prices at the supermarket.

Food prices were unchanged after gaining 0.1% in both July and August....

But prices for nonalcoholic beverages surged 0.9%, while fruits and vegetables cost 0.5% more, with banana prices shooting up 1.0%, in what could be early signs of rising trucking costs being passed on to consumers....

Grocery prices rose 1.8% on a year-over-year basis.

Average hourly earnings for all employees declined 0.7% in September from a year ago, after falling 0.3% in August, underscoring the squeeze on consumers in what economists call the ​bottom of a K-shaped economy. ...

Airline fares rose 1.2% amid higher jet fuel prices. Consumers paid more for gardening ​and lawn care services, likely reflecting worker shortages amid a crackdown ​on undocumented immigrants. The costs of recreation and education also rose, as did those of hospital and dental services. Overall services prices increased 0.4%...

Prices for computers and peripherals jumped ​1.3%, reflecting AI-related investment, while the cost of computer software and accessories rebounded 0.4%.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

The Iran War is a structural watershed as seismic as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. We are witnessing the logical end of U.S. overextension in the Middle East and the birth of a post-American West Asia defined by a new regional equilibrium.

The combined effects of the Trump administration's incoherent military objectives, optics-driven approach, and chaotic prosecution of the war find close parallels in the overextension of the Roman Empire....

​President Donald Trump's promises to end foreign conflicts, prevent World War III, and recalibrate America's bloated Cold War alliances played a major role in his 2024 campaign. But instead of making good on these pledges, he launched a new forever war in Iran (despite multiple warnings from officials in his own administration), undermined U.S. military credibility, and proved even more bellicose than the liberal internationalists in DC he claimed to have vanquished. MAGA foreign policy has devolved into a form of "red-pilled globalism," driven by arbitrary executive impulse, economic coercion, and unilateral military interventions. Predictably, it has run into a brick wall: The structural limits of American power in the 21st century are now fully visible to adversaries and friends alike. ...

The shift in the distribution of power is probably irreversible. American bases and clandestine sites have suffered repeated and debilitating attacks from Iranian forces. Given the exorbitant costs and scale of the damage, the Pentagon is considering reducing the U.S. military footprint in the Persian Gulf after the war. The conflict has also consumed massive quantities of sophisticated U.S. munitions, leading to critical shortages in both stand-off offensive weapons (e.g., PrSMs, ATACMS, Tomahawk cruise missiles) and defensive interceptors for air defense systems like THAAD and Patriot....

The end of the Carter Doctrine in West Asia should not be mourned... Extricating the U.S. military from the Middle East would save tens of billions of dollars annually...

Most importantly, any path toward exiting the Iran quagmire also clears the way for an authentic, durable, and disciplined "America First" foreign policy -- one properly understood not as a disguised ideology or an ephemeral political movement tied to a single personality like Trump, but as a tradition of sovereign realism rooted in the American founding and concrete national interests.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.

Since relatively early in the current Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, the IDF has made a priority of destroying Lebanese villages en masse. In late June, Defense Minister Israel Katz said that certain Lebanese villages would have to "disappear," and over the course of the summer, that's exactly what has happened.

The latest analysis of satellite imagery by the New York Times shows that no less than 48 towns and villages within the "Yellow Line" zone established by Israel in the course of the March invasion have been more or less totally destroyed, with further destruction continuing every day.

Katz had been bragging about this for months. Back at the end of July, he estimated 24 municipalities had been destroyed, amounting to some 15,000-20,000 homes. He bragged that Israel was no longer destroying "one house at a time," but rather demolishing villages wholesale. ...

It's not just towns and villages, either, as Israel has notoriously attacked and destroyed an enormous amount of farmland across the south, devastating the mostly agriculture-based economy and raising concerns from the UN that Lebanon could face food insecurity going forward.

It's harvest season for Lebanon's olive groves, and that has put them in Israel's crosshairs as well. Already some people have been killed in IDF attacks on the groves, and while the harvest continues, it continues under ongoing Israeli artillery fire.

This is a summary / preview. Visit the posted link for the full article / post.