Peruse NT & Digest the World. Knowledge and Understanding for the Progressive Mind. “Comments” are turned off. NT is for the reader who craves more then what the “mainstream media” offers.
side note: Yeah, these guys really need a tax cut!
Pittsburgh Business Times
Exxon Mobil shattered its previous profit records by posting its biggest quarterly profit ever for the recently ended third quarter.
Exxon earned $14.83 billion for the quarter, or $2.86 a share, up a whopping 58 percent from the third quarter of 2007.
Revenue was up $137.7 billion, up from $102.34 billion in the year-ago period.
The Irving, Texas-based oil giant was buoyed in the last two quarters by record-high gasoline prices, which have been in a free fall over recent weeks. Light sweet crude was trading at $66 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange Thursday morning. But crude oil in the third quarter was trading as high as $147.
Exxon Mobil posted strong earnings at its exploration and production division where net income was $9.35 billion, up 48 percent over the year-ago period.
The company said its third-quarter income included an after-tax special gain of $1.62 biillion from the sale of a natural gas transportation business in Germany, and an after-tax charge of $170 million related to an interest provision on the Valdez punitive damages award.
Leah McElrath Renna
via huffingtonpost.com
Let’s be honest: the Obama infomercial was about comforting white Americans — especially middle and working class white Americans. That said, it was arguably necessary and — for what it was — very effective.
Although only time will tell, it appears that the Obama infomercial accomplished exactly what it needed to do: soothing skittish white undecided voters without alienating current supporters.
1. With a set evocative of the Oval Office, Obama’s presence in the piece served as a preview to what it would look like if he were to be elected as President. By providing a chance for the still uneasy undecideds to envision this future, it will likely work to move some of those voters out of their reluctance. Despite the McCain campaign’s increasingly strident assertions to the contrary, Obama gave every appearance of being more than “ready” to step into the role of a world leader. (more…)
side note: My brother made a great point last night….Obama didn’t mention McCain once! It’s nice to finally have a politician who can run on his ideas….and not on just attacking his opponent!
EN FELLER | AP
via huffingtonpost.com
Democrat Barack Obama is sharpening his tone against John McCain, accusing his Republican rival of sinking low by accusing him of being a socialist based on his tax plan.
Rallying a crowd Wednesday in North Carolina, the Democratic presidential contender said McCain will soon “be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten.” (more…)
by: Martin Kady II and John Bresnahan,
The Politico
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is calling for the resignation of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens – a day after the Senate’s longest-serving Republican was convicted on seven federal felony counts.
McConnell, locked in a tough reelection fight in Kentucky, did not call for Stevens’ resignation in his initial statement on the Alaskan’s conviction.
But Republican Sens. John McCain, Norm Coleman, Jim DeMint, John Sununu and Gordon Smith and Democrat Barack Obama all called on Stevens to resign Tuesday.
And by the time a reporter from the Lexington Herald-Leader put the question to him at a campaign stop Elizabethtown, Ky., Tuesday night, McConnell was ready to say that he thought Stevens “should resign.”
McConnell’s call for Stevens to step down is a serious blow to the senator’s political standing, both for next week’s election and beyond if Stevens somehow defeats his Democratic opponent, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. With McConnell, a former chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee, publicly calling for him to leave office, Stevens cannot make the argument that GOP leaders back him or are willing to wait for his likely appeal to go forward. (more…)
More than twelve million voters have already cast ballots in the presidential contest, according to one estimate, and new data from the Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll shows these voters breaking Democratic by a wide margin.
Among those who said they have already voted at an early voting location or sent in an absentee ballot, Barack Obama picked up 60 percent of the vote in the new poll to John McCain’s 39 percent.
These voters make up 9 percent of “likely” voters in the track.
The senator from Illinois has a similar lead, 58 to 39 percent, among those who plan to vote early but have not yet. (Those who plan to vote on Election Day also go for Obama, but by a narrower, 51 to 45 percent.)
From Gallup:
The voter preferences of the group of 1,430 individuals who have already voted and who were interviewed by Gallup between Oct. 17 and Oct. 27 show a 53% to 43% Obama over McCain tilt.
Among the group of those who say they have not yet voted, but will before Election Day, the skew towards Obama is more pronounced, at 54% to 40%. By comparison, those who are going to wait to vote on Nov. 4 manifest a narrower 50% to 44% Obama over McCain candidate preference. (Across all registered voters over this time period, Obama leads McCain by a 51% to 43% margin). (more…)
side note: That’s a number that difficult to register!
The Guardian
Larry Elliott, Phillip Inman and Nicholas Watt
A worker walks past a screen displaying stock market movements at a window of the London Stock Exchange in the City of London, October 27, 2008. Photograph: Alessia Pierdomenico/Reuters
Autumn’s market mayhem has left the world’s financial institutions nursing losses of $2.8tn, the Bank of England said today, as it called for fundamental reform of the global banking system to prevent a repeat of turmoil “arguably” unprecedented since the outbreak of the first world war.
In its half-yearly health check of the City, the Bank said tougher regulation and constraints on lending would be needed as policymakers sought to learn lessons from the mistakes that have led to a systemic crisis unfolding over the past 15 months.
The Bank’s Financial Stability Report, which will be sent to every bank director in Britain, more than doubled the previous estimate of the potential losses faced by all financial institutions since the spring, but said that given time the actual losses could be pared by between a third and a half.
The £50bn pledged by the government had helped underpin the system, the Bank said, and would provide a breathing space for UK banks so that they did not have to sell assets at cut-price values immediately. The report also expressed cautious optimism about the effectiveness of the recent global bail-out plan.
The Bank’s estimate exceeds that made by the International Monetary Fund recently. The IMF concentrated on US institutions and did not include losses from the turmoil of recent weeks. Estimated paper losses from UK banks on mortgage-backed securities and corporate bonds are currently £122.6bn, the Bank report said. (more…)
side note: Even more incentive to push for an Obama Administration. This has been an historical power grab by this administration……kind of scary!
by: Thom Shanker
The New York Times
Washington – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Tuesday that the United States would hold “fully accountable” any country or group that helped terrorists to acquire or use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
The statement was the Bush administration’s most expansive yet in attempting to articulate a vision of deterrence for the post-Sept. 11 world. It went beyond the cold war notion that a president could respond with overwhelming force against a country that directly attacked the United States or its allies with unconventional weapons.
“Today we also make clear that the United States will hold any state, terrorist group or other nonstate actor or individual fully accountable for supporting or enabling terrorist efforts to obtain or use weapons of mass destruction – whether by facilitating, financing or providing expertise or safe haven for such efforts,” Mr. Gates said.
The comments came in an address in which he said it was important to modernize the nation’s nuclear arsenal as a hedge against what he described as “rising and resurgent powers” like Russia or China, as well as “rogue nations” like Iran or North Korea and international terrorists.
By declaring that those who facilitated a terrorist attack would be held “fully accountable,” Mr. Gates left the door open to diplomatic and economic responses as well as military ones. And, to be sure, the United States has acted forcefully before against those who sheltered terrorists, with the invasion of Afghanistan to oust Al Qaeda and its Taliban government supporters after the attacks of Sept. 11. (more…)
A worker walks past a screen displaying stock market movements at a window of the London Stock Exchange in the City of London, October 27, 2008. Photograph: Alessia Pierdomenico/Reuters
Washington – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Tuesday that the United States would hold “fully accountable” any country or group that helped terrorists to acquire or use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.