VIDEO- Debtor's Revolt over "Financial Rape": Woman Refuses To Pay Off B of A Credit Card

By GottaLaff



She made a few factual errors during the rant, but, hey, she's livid:

Minch announced that she'd be dumping Bank of America, refusing to pay off her credit card debt unless she was offered a lower rate. She explained that she'd been a reliable customer even though she'd lost her job as a mental health case manager. She said bank reps refused to negotiate her interest rate when she called them to complain a few weeks ago.

"You are evil, thieving bastards," she said in her video. "Stick that in your bailout pipe and smoke it."

The video made a splash online, getting links from all kinds of venues and garnering over 96,000 views as of Monday morning.

Minch told the Huffington Post she fulfilled part of her threat on Saturday, when she went to her local BofA branch and closed out her checking and savings accounts. She took her money (around $5,000, she said) and put in a local community bank. She brought printouts of web pages that had linked to her video, but a manager wasn't interested in looking at them.

More here. Much more.

It's getting more and more difficult to read news stories these days. Americans are at their breaking point, as is apparent nearly everywhere.

H/t: Gr8RDH

Health Care Watch: Revolution, American Style

By GottaLaff

A wonderful Twitter pal of mine (actually, we go back even further, from comments she's left here at TPC), Karoli, wrote the following:

[...] It’s hardly a surprise that so many would be captivated by events in Iran, particularly when viewed through the prism of our own election process and leftover baggage from the 2000 election outcomes. [...]

However, Americans are allowing themselves to become distracted and embroiled in the Iranian dream at the expense of their American dream.

We have our own totalitarian mullahs here in the US. They rule in the form of bankers and insurance company executives, the shadow actors who broker our health at a profit to serve Wall Street and investors while robbing us of the ability to run businesses, get health care at a reasonable cost, and force us to ignore very real health issues for fear of having them become ‘pre-existing conditions’ or causing us to be uninsurable. [...]

Without a public option, there is no reform. Repeat that after me: Without a public option there is no reform. The public option is how we remove the health insurance mullahs’ power. There is no other way. [...]

Here’s the problem: Health insurance mullahs understand that they wield power by making large contributions to friendly politicians like Baucus. They then use the mainstream media as an amplifier to play the “it’s too expensive to have a public option” tune, and pretty soon, real reform dies. [...]

When they own the message, they own the outcome.

They don’t have to own the message. We don’t have to let them. [...] [W]e’re not watching what’s going on here because we’re focused on what’s happening there, where we have absolutely no power to change what has been set in motion.

Here are some facts. Consider them as powerful as Neda’s death broadcast from Iran on YouTube and now on all the major media outlets. Consider the stories of people dying every single day for lack of access to or ability to pay for health care to be as powerful as the story of one beautiful Iranian woman who was killed for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Consider the suppression of these stories to be how they control the message. [...]

Here are some ways to take control:

1. Get the message out. Next Saturday, June 27 has been designated as a National Health Care Day of Service. Click that link. Find a local way to participate and raise awareness.
2. Use the hashtags #hcan #hcr on Twitter, Friendfeed and other social networks. (Yes, I still hate hashtags but understand the value they bring for this moment.)
3. Write the editor of your local paper. Most newspaper websites have an online form you can use to compose your email. Write it. Do it. Don’t self-edit, tell your story.
4. Make signs. Handwritten signs. Put them in your window, write the message on t-shirts. Just like we did with the 2008 election, this is an opportunity to raise awareness by simply wearing, saying, displaying the message. Signs telling neighbors and passers-by to pay attention, to investigate the facts, understand all of the issues, get involved.
5. Call your representatives. Do not underestimate the power of your voice. They may not respond. They may not even listen personally. But your voice is heard, nevertheless. Midterm election campaigns are gearing up. Incumbents who shy away from real health care reform should not be confident of re-election. Hold them to the fire, make them accountable.

Yes, we can. We can depose the insurance mullahs, but not if our heads are turned away from the urgency of now. Now is more urgent than ever.

Please go read the whole thing here.

H/t: Shoq

Governments across Europe tremble as angry people take to the streets

By GottaLaff

One of my alumni, Matt, who I have known for 13 years, is an activist. He is also the most intelligent, well-read, and informed former student I've ever had the pleasure to know. He is soft-spoken, but direct, and when Matt tells me something, I listen. He is not one to exaggerate.

He has given me many a heads-up about protests, anarchist demonstrations, impending revolt, you name it. He's witnessed, and video taped, police brutality, the militarization of our cities, and other assaults on our freedoms. When it happens, Matt is there, or knows someone else who is.

Talk about having a finger on the pulse of growing unrest, he's very well-connected and warns me of events months before they happen.

Matt and I met over Christmas break, and he was clearly disquieted by the building anger churning across Europe. His own agitation made me squirm, as he described scenes of violence and impending "revolution". Matt, you called it:

France paralysed by a wave of strike action, the boulevards of Paris resembling a debris-strewn battlefield. The Hungarian currency sinks to its lowest level ever against the euro, as the unemployment figure rises. Greek farmers block the road into Bulgaria in protest at low prices for their produce. New figures from the biggest bank in the Baltic show that the three post-Soviet states there face the biggest recessions in Europe.

It's a snapshot of a single day – yesterday – in a Europe sinking into the bleakest of times. But while the outlook may be dark in the big wealthy democracies of western Europe, it is in the young, poor, vulnerable states of central and eastern Europe that the trauma of crash, slump and meltdown looks graver.

Exactly 20 years ago, in serial revolutionary rejoicing, they ditched communism to put their faith in a capitalism now in crisis and by which they feel betrayed. The result has been the biggest protests across the former communist bloc since the days of people power.

Europe's time of troubles is gathering depth and scale. Governments are trembling. Revolt is in the air.

The article goes on to break it down geographically. I'll let you all know what Matt says the next time I speak to him.

Conservatives boycott Fox

By GottaLaff

"This thread would do really well at Daily Koz. They think this is a great idea. They even have the artwork ready…" Yes, that’s [Mark's] artwork posted by a Freeper.

Via our pal Mark at News Corpse, we find that Bloggers at Free Republic (aka Freepers) are leaving comments, and what comments they are! They're mad and they're not gonna take it any more. Wardrobe Barbie has been betrayed, and the Freepies are standin' up for their gal!

The treatment of Sarah Palin by Fox reporter Carl Cameron and others has incensed them to the point where they are vowing never to watch again. [...]

• I propose that we punish the FOX Network for its hatchet job on Sarah Palin. For one week beginning at 3:00 PM today no one tunes them in. We will demonstrate the power of conservatives when their ratings plummet dramatically. Will you join me? [FYI: their boycott will have no affect whatsoever on the ratings unless a significant number of them are Nielsen families]
• I’m done with Teevee. Let them all go to hell.
• I am with you all the way my friend…i hope FOX goes off the air…hate em now…
• It would be easy. Nearly every show on FNC is unwatchable these days. ….for quite a while, in fact.
• fauxNEWS - We Distort, You Comply
• too late………I wrote them off months ago
• GO TO EVERY RIGHTWING BLOG AND TELL THEM TO TURN OFF FOX.
• Tell him he’s no better than the “smear merchants” and “bombthrowers” he holds in such contempt. Allowing Carl Cameron to spew unmitigated hearsay and garbage without one shred of supporting evidence or fact makes O’Reilly just as bad as the supermarket tabloids.
• Life without FOX is good.
• It’s not a secret that 81% of Fox News reporters and employees donate money to the Democratic party - that’s a crazy high number for an allegedly conservative TV channel. It’s no secret to the gay community that Shepard Smith is “one” of them.
• FOX now SUX bigtime!
• Screw them too. I have watched very little since their recent maniacal swerve left.
• If FOX wants me back they will bring on Glenn Beck and Rush. I have had it with weasels like Hannity and O’Reilly.[Beck is on the way]

And looky here, kiddies! The Freepers have company!

The folks at RedState are weighing in as well with Operation Leper:

We’re tracking down all the people from the McCain campaign now whispering smears against Governor Palin to Carl Cameron and others [...] We intend to constantly remind the base about these people, monitor who they are working for, and, when 2012 rolls around, see which candidates hire them. Naturally then, you’ll see us go to war against those candidates.

This may become a new Democratic spectator sport. Maybe we should build a coliseum.