The online journal, notebook and playground of HFM

Exxon has record profit again on soaring oil prices

From Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Exxon Mobil Corp said on Thursday soaring oil prices pushed its second-quarter earnings up 14 percent, again breaking its own record for the highest-ever profit by a U.S. company.

Net income in the quarter rose to $11.68 billion, or $2.22 a share, from $10.26 billion, or $1.83 a share, last year.
Exxon — the world’s largest publicly traded company — previously set the high-water mark for quarterly earnings in the fourth quarter of last year, when it brought in $11.66 billion.

But how dare anyone say their speculation in the market! Don’t you know it’s the supply?! Even though OPEC says there’s nothing wrong with the supply and that it’s the oil companies manipulating prices — why should you believe them? The are Arabs, after all. /snark

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PayPal Fuck-Ups

So I’ve had a PayPal account for something like 8 or 9 years. All of the sudden, they have decided that I set up my account as a Not-for-Profit organization, and that I need to “prove” to them that I am indeed such an entity. My account is locked until I do.

Yeah, I thought it was a phishing email, too. Until I logged into my account directly and discovered the same error messages. I believe the error is on your part, not mine, PayPal. Point those messages at yourself, please.

I don’t recall what the account settings were like back when I set it up, but I wouldn’t have had any reason whatsoever to claim I was a not-for-profit. They only thing I can think of is that my account is so old that they didn’t have such a thing when I created it, and somehow in their database, they toggled an “on” switch for that field because I didn’t have anything associated with my account.

The trouble is, nothing on the account allows me to say “What? I’m not.” The only option on their site is “faxing them my papers” to prove that I am. I had to call customer service to get any information, and I got the SNOTTIEST woman on the phone. It turns out, you have to send an email to their “compliance” department, because (I swear to Maude she fucking said this to me) THEY DON’T HAVE PHONES IN THEIR DEPARTMENT. Riiiiiiight. I totally believe that. But, you know, they don’t provide the email on their fucking site on the “compliance” page where they give you all the haughty “you’ve fucked up! Please fix it!” messages. So they only solution you have is dazed wonder, followed by customer service phone calls, followed by an email into the ether. That’s a rather fucking dumb way to support your internet product.

So, right now, PayPal is on my shit list. We’ll see what the fuck happens going further.

UPDATE: I got a very polite email in response to mine from PayPal, in which they restored my account. Apparently back in 2004, there was a field that you could check describing your website if you were taking PayPal donations, and in the field description, “not-for-profit” was lumped in with several other categories, including the appropriate descriptions for my site. At the time, this didn’t mean anything except how you were categorizing your own site. Later, they started using that field to actually test for “not-for-profit” status — catching not just “not-for-profits” but other folks as well. And now you have to actually apply for that status, so they changed the way the input for that field works. So I was a victim of someone’s bad business rule changes, apparently.

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Knoxville Terrorist was a fan of O’Reilly, Hannity, Savage

According to the Knoxville News:

Police found right-wing political books, brass knuckles, empty shotgun shell boxes and a handgun in the Powell home of a man who said he attacked a church in order to kill liberals “who are ruining the country,” court records show.

Knoxville police Sunday evening searched the Levy Drive home of Jim David Adkisson after he allegedly entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and killed two people and wounded six others during the presentation of a children’s musical.

Knoxville Police Department Officer Steve Still requested the search warrant after interviewing Adkisson. who was subdued by several church members after firing three rounds from a 12-gauge shotgun into the congregation.

Adkisson targeted the church, Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, “because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets.”

Adkisson told Still that “he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office.”
Adkisson told officers he left the house unlocked for them because “he expected to be killed during the assault.”

Inside the house, officers found “Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder” by radio talk show host Michael Savage, “Let Freedom Ring” by talk show host Sean Hannity, and “The O’Reilly Factor,” by television talk show host Bill O’Reilly. For mental health rehab centers and options, people can check WhiteSands iop rehab and take their services.

The shotgun-wielding suspect in Sunday’s mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was motivated by a hatred of “the liberal movement,” and he planned to shoot until police shot him, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV said this morning.

Adkisson, 58, of Powell wrote a four-page letter in which he stated his “hatred of the liberal movement,” Owen said. “Liberals in general, as well as gays.”

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Eliminationist Quotes from Conservative Voices

What, really, is eliminationism?

It’s a fairly self-explanatory term: it describes a kind of politics and culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas for the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through complete suppression, exile and ejection, or extermination.

Liberal Hunting Permit
Liberal Hunting Permit

Source: Eliminationism in America: Appendix

“I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus — living fossils — so we will never forget what these people stood for.” — Rush Limbaugh

“I would have no problem with [New York Times editor Bill Keller] being sent to the gas chamber.” — Melanie Morgan

“”[T]he day will come when unpleasant things are going to happen to a bunch of stupid liberals and it’s going to be very amusing to watch.” — Lee Rogers

“And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.” — Bill O’Reilly

“Howard Dean should be arrested and hung for treason or put in a hole until the end of the Iraq war!”– Michael Reagan

“Let’s start with the following New York Times reporters and editors: Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr. , Bill Keller, Eric Lichtblau, and James Risen. Do you have an idea where they live? Go hunt them down and do America a favor. Get their photo, street address, where their kids go to school, anything you can dig up, and send it to the link above. This is your chance to be famous — grab for the golden ring.” — “The Political Insight”

Ann Coulter

“Some liberals have become even too crazy for Texas to execute, which is a damn shame. They’re always saying — we’re oppressed, we’re oppressed so let’s do it. Let’s oppress them.” — Ann Coulter

“We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens’ creme brulee. … That’s just a joke, for you in the media.” — Ann Coulter

LINDA VESTER (host): You say you’d rather not talk to liberals at all?

COULTER: I think a baseball bat is the most effective way these days.

“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.”

“We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too.”

“They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America’s self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant. Fifty years of treason hasn’t slowed them down.”

“I have to say I’m all for public flogging.”

“I think [women] should be armed but should not [be allowed to] vote.”

“Liberals hate America, they hate flag-wavers, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam, post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don’t hate America like liberals do. They don’t have the energy. If they had that much energy, they’d have indoor plumbing by now.”

“My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that’s because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism.”

“In this recurring nightmare of a presidency, we have a national debate about whether he [Clinton] ‘did it,’ even though all sentient people know he did. Otherwise there would be debates only about whether to impeach or assassinate.”

And Many Many more — read the comprehensive post at Orcinus.

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