More Missing Data

From CBC

A computer memory stick containing the mental-health information of 150 children and teenagers has disappeared from the hospital in New Glasgow, N.S.

The Pictou County Health Authority says the device was stolen Tuesday afternoon from an employee's office at Aberdeen Hospital.

The memory stick holds the personal information of young people who have received child and adolescent mental-health services since August.

I am very open about the mental health issues that I have dealt with over the years but I know that many(most) people are not. With a little luck this memory stick is now full of someone's MP3 collection and not being used to inflict more damage on folks that are already vulnerable.

Luc Bourdon - RIP

From the CBC

Vancouver Canucks defenceman Luc Bourdon, who helped Canada win gold medals at the 2006 and 2007 world junior hockey championships, died in a motorcycle accident on Thursday. He was 21.

Police in New Brunswick said Bourdon was driving his motorcycle that collided with a transport truck on a road between Lameque and Shippagan, his hometown.

Phoenix Lander Self Portrait

Just because I am a geek I subscribe the the NASA Image of the day

Support for the space program is one of the few points of view that John McCain and I share. Not that he cares of course.

Liar Loans ... no due diligence?

From Tanta at Calculated Risk

In short, while the Court found that the Hills knowingly made false representations to the lender, the lender's claim that it "reasonably relied" on these representations doesn't hold water, because "stated income guidelines" are not reasonable things to rely on. In essence, the Court found, such lending guidelines boil down to what the regulators call "collateral dependent" loans, where the lender is relying on nothing, at the end of the day, except the value of the collateral, not the borrower's ability or willingness to repay. If you make a "liar loan," the Judge is saying here, then you cannot claim you were harmed by relying on lies. And if you rely on an inflated appraisal, that's your lookout, not the borrower's.

This is going to give a lot of stated income lenders--and investors in "stated income" securities--a really bad rotten no good day. As it should. They have managed to give the rest of us a really bad rotten no good couple of years, with no end in sight.

It seems to me that this is very large news. If stated income HELOCs are dischargeable there are going to be more writedowns .. if i read this right. This story just gets better and better.

I wonder what fmr-Sen Gramm, McCain's economics guru would have to say about this.

Happy Suck On This Day

Via Atrios

Wank Wank Wank.

I guess I just do not understand why this man is considered a serious person ... sigh

Searching For John McCain

From Chris Bowers at OpenLeft comes this wonderful idea.

Searching for John McCain is a massive, online activism campaign designed to make at least ten million non-partisan, poll-tested, on-message voter contacts that reveal the damning truth about John McCain entirely through mainstream news reports and McCain's own words. Through mass blogger participation and the use of embedded hyperlinks, Searching for John McCain will connect millions of curious, low-information swing voters to negative, mainstream news articles about John McCain without 99% of those voters even knowing that Searching for John McCain exists. It is the more sophisticated, and hopefully more effective, 2.0 version of the Googlebomb the Elections campaign which, with only $1,500 and three days of work, reached 6% of the electorate in 47 swing congressional districts during the final two weeks of the 2006 mid-term elections.
You can participate if you have a website of your own, if you make comments on other websites, or even if you are a registered user on a community website. It is quick. It is easy. It is free. And it is very, very effective. If it is done correctly, and if enough people participate, this campaign alone should cost John McCain 1% of the vote in November.

Needless to say, I am participating... Read the entire post over there and tell your friends

Scrubbing John Tower's Wikipedia Entry?

Was just looking at John Tower's Wikipedia entry and noticed that it is undergoing heavy editing the last couple days .. hmmmmm

Wonder if it had anything to do with the NY Times article that hit yesterday touting him as McCain's mentor.

and BTW ... whoever did it managed to delete about half the entry ...(as of 6 am eastern time)... nice job