Rational Review » LAND Commentary

Trapped in Bank of America hell

Steve Trinward — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 05:06:45 +0000

“George Mahoney worked and saved and built his cozy, colonial-style home in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, in 1981. … For many years, the Mahoneys paid down their relatively small mortgage with their local bank — a division of Bank of America (BofA). In 2007, they took out a second mortgage to help a daughter start a small business…. About a year after getting the second mortgage, BofA started notifying George that his payments were late. Soon they jacked his credit card interest rates from 7 percent to 28 percent. Next, they ruined his credit record…. Then one day in the fall of 2009, BofA initiated foreclosure on the house he had built and owned for 28 years. The only problem? The Mahoneys had never missed a single payment on either their first or second mortgage.” (12/16/10)

Terrorism by association

Mary Lou Seymour — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 02:30:07 +0000

“‘I don’t think there’s anything fair about a grand jury,’ says Tom Burke, a central organizer of the committee who was subpoenaed in Grand Rapids, Mich., after the FBI followed him to a coffee shop. ‘There’s no judge, you aren’t allowed to have your lawyer with you. … It’s a totally undemocratic and biased system, and it would be foolish to cooperate.’” (12/13/10)

Coda to a killing

Mary Lou Seymour — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 02:27:59 +0000

“The practice of police ‘accountability’ generally consists of using money stolen at gunpoint to buy off victims and survivors of officially sanctioned criminal violence. Few better examples can be found than the $975,000 settlement paid by the City of Wilmington, Delaware, to Elaine Hale, whose husband Derek was murdered by Wilmington Police on November 6, 2006.” (12/15/10)

WikiLeaks as this century’s Upton Sinclair

Mary Lou Seymour — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 02:23:47 +0000

“Commenting on the good that can come from openness and transparency, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said that ’sunlight is the best disinfectant.’ Well, today we find ourselves in a foul, germ-ridden place, where official misconduct is allowed to breed, infect the body politic and fester. Things are done in the name of the American people that would outrage them if they really knew the truth. And some past generations had the benefit of brave individuals to shine the light and clear up the stench, and they were all the better for it.” (12/15/10)

Why Bill of Rights Day should be Anti-Politician Day

Mary Lou Seymour — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 02:01:14 +0000

“Today is the 219th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights — the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Bill of Rights Day should be the preeminent Anti-Politician Day on the American calendar. Instead, it has become simply another pretext for rulers to delude the ruled. ” (12/15/10)

Make sure to celebrate Bill of Rights Day

Mary Lou Seymour — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 07:23:29 +0000

“It’s the holiday that got away. Wednesday is the 219th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights, a critical turning point in the history of this country and one that transformed this nation forever. Still, you won’t find any Bill of Rights greeting cards in local stores. It’s not that Americans are short on patriotism. In fact, we celebrate Veterans Day, Constitution Day, Flag Day, Memorial Day, Washington’s Birthday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Independence Day.” (12/14/10)

“V” for Vigilante

Mary Lou Seymour — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 02:24:50 +0000

“For months, Ada County Sheriff David Updyke had been investigating a secretive group of armed extremists living at the periphery of his southwest Idaho jurisdiction. When an informant provided him with a membership list of the armed band, Updyke wasted no time. He obtained arrest warrants, organized a large, heavily armed strike force, and made a beeline for the Payette River Valley. The warrants were a ruse. Updyke wasn’t planning a mass arrest; he was plotting a massacre.” (12/10/10)

The assault on Assange is an assault on liberty

Mary Lou Seymour — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 02:22:27 +0000

“Julian Assange is not Wikileaks; in other words, whether you regard him as a hero, villain, victim or egotistical malcontent, Wikileaks itself remains difficult to characterize. If it can be blamed for deterring diplomacy, derided for titillating us with diplomatic gossip, or dispensed with faint praise (by activist and writer Todd Gitlin) as the ‘Facebook of whistleblowing’, it can also be heralded for providing additional proof (if any were needed) of the gross hypocrisies and moral cowardice of the post-9/11 American security state.” (12/14/10)

My first cavity search

Mary Lou Seymour — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 02:25:03 +0000

“Helping your child understand why he may be a threat to national security.” [cartoon] (undated)

The blog of war

Mary Lou Seymour — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 02:11:26 +0000

“In an ideal world, the WikiLeaks revelations would have ended two wars. Documenting patterns of cavalier abuse and untold brutality in Iraq and Afghanistan might have sparked public outrage sufficient to undermine the capacity to continue these campaigns. Instead we’ve seen the war machine dig in even deeper, extending drawdown deadlines and expanding fronts to adjacent locales.” (12/13/10)

Copsuckers

Mary Lou Seymour — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 05:14:15 +0000

“In a bizarre and historical twist of fate, conservatives today are finding themselves in a state of open rebellion against established authority, and it is becoming embarrassingly obvious that they don’t have the faintest glimmer of how to handle this conflict between their fundamental nature and what is necessary if the American culture is to survive. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of Manning, Assange, and Wikileaks.” (12/12/10)

Gun Owners Year in Review — 2010

Mary Lou Seymour — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 02:31:20 +0000

“Your attention to and activism with Gun Owners of America has made a world of difference over the past several months. The past couple of years were supposed to be the worst on record, as far as gun rights are concerned. With the election of Barack Hussein Obama, Americans went rushing to gun stores and generated a buying spree that created shortages of firearms and ammunition around the country.” (12/10/10)

Six companies that haven’t wussed out of working with WikiLeaks

Mary Lou Seymour — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 02:19:31 +0000

“Giants like PayPal, Amazon.com, Visa and MasterCard almost instantly crumbled under government (and p.r.) pressure to drop WikiLeaks, depriving the site of vital funding sources and online platforms. But other companies, some of them small, independent start-ups, have decided to risk the wrath of Joe Lieberman, the State Department, and their European counterparts and help keep WikiLeaks afloat by providing funding sources (yeah, you can now donate to WikiLeaks even if you only have Visa or MasterCard) and hosting the site. Here’s a list of companies that have stood by WikiLeaks …” (12/10/10)

DoJ preps for ominous expansion of “anti-terrorism” Law targeting activists

Mary Lou Seymour — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 02:11:28 +0000

“Under the new definition of ‘material support,’ the efforts of President Jimmy Carter to monitor the elections in Lebanon and coordinate with the political parties there, including the designated FTO Hezbollah, could well be prosecuted as a crime.” (12/11/10)

WikiLeaks: What can one person do to help?

Thomas L. Knapp — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 06:01:47 +0000

“[G]etting support money to WikiLeaks has become very awkward for those able to donate only small amounts. PayPal, MasterCard and Visa all appear to be currying favor with the US government, if not actually kowtowing to direct political pressure, by agreeing that WikiLeaks is engaged in ‘illegal’ activities thereby justifying their removal of services. So it appears that either snail mail money orders/drafts or bank wire transfers (electronic funds transfer — EFT) are the only means left to get funding to WikiLeaks.” (12/09/10)

Acid test

Mary Lou Seymour — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 05:57:27 +0000

“The aftermath of the release of the first 1% of the recent second wave of leaks of sensitive government documents is in some ways more fun than reading of the newly uncovered secrets themselves. It has drawn a clear distinction between those who are horrified and those who are delighted; like the acid test for fake gold, this reveals what people really think about government, now that it matters.” (12/90/10)

From Jefferson to Assange

Steve Trinward — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 02:49:01 +0000

“[US Senator Dianne] Feinstein represents precisely the government that Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he said, in defense of unfettered freedom of the press, ‘Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.’” [editor’s note: Once again, Mr. Scheer shows why I continue to look for his writings to include here - SAT] (12/08/10)

Homeland Security “messages” coming to Walmart, hotels, malls

Mary Lou Seymour — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 01:39:19 +0000

“Shoppers at Walmart will soon have something other than glossy magazines and chewing gum to look at when in the checkout line: A ‘video message’ from the Department of Homeland Security asking them to look out for ’suspicious’ activity and report it immediately. It’s part of a new Department of Homeland Security program that could see Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s face on video screens in malls, retail outlets and hotels across the United States.” (12/08/10)

Wikileaks vs. the empire

Mary Lou Seymour — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 01:29:01 +0000

“The sides are lining up, much like Bush predicted in 2001 with his ‘You are with us or against us.’ A brave Aussie, a principled French judge, an American libertarian congressman, a youthful computer nerd — the enemies of empire come in all shapes and sizes.” (12/08/10)

Pushing a right to bear arms: The sharp kind

Mary Lou Seymour — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 03:03:50 +0000

“Arizona used to be a knife carrier’s nightmare, with a patchwork of local laws that forced those inclined to strap Buck knives or other sharp objects to their belts to tread carefully as they moved from Phoenix (no knives except pocketknives) to Tempe (no knives at all) to Tucson (no knives on library grounds). But that changed earlier this year when Arizona made its Legislature the sole arbiter of knife regulations. And because of loose restrictions on weapons here, Arizona is now considered a knife carrier’s dream, a place where everything from a samurai sword to a switchblade can be carried without a quibble.” (12/05/10)