“Fraud, including unwitting fraud, is always a big risk in finance.”
Under the common law, there’s no such thing as ‘unwitting fraud’ as one of the elements of fraud is the speaker’s knowledge of the falsity of the representation. What you mean by unwitting fraud sounds like just giving your money to idiots or otherwise misallocating it; too bad so sad. We can include our government representatives and their boondoggles within the rubric of idiots and misallocations. It’s our own damn fault.
The risk of denying this is that we may be tempted to impute fraud to whole categories of financial agreements a la the commies. Me, I’d invest with guys like Jim Rogers and Peter Schiff, who called these things years ago.

This is the problem: that the office of the President is now so powerful that it is actually important to examine things a candidate said 7 years ago, in a radio interview… as a novice low-level politician…. That the two major and only two major parties are so alike and in agreement on this point and so many others, that such exegesis is almost necessary.

“The international financial system is in the midst of a Republican-enabled meltdown, and this is what you find to be an important election issue?”

Why is the international financial system melting down? Look up the term “moral hazard” for part of the answer. I agree the Republicans are less than ideal. I posit that the Democrats are also partly to blame. I disagree that Mr. Wright’s failings and his relationship to Mr. Obama are completely meaningless in context but, rather, should rightfully be taken into consideration when evaluating Mr. Obama’s fitness for the office of the presidency. Plus it’s just a blast to hear about the s*** these guys try to pull.

12 out of 107 Stuffs White People Like here. And I’m half-white/half-Filipino, so maybe that’s it.

On a possibly more Steve-ish note, check out Michael Johnson’s commentary after the race. He, Mr. Johnson, an african-american, gets to at least partially allude to, by innuendo, without apparent fear of reprisal or challenge, the common knowledge about dominance in sprinting by West Africans. “This goes back to what I was saying before… that was the best in the world; there’s nobody out there, there’s no, you know what I mean? [unless?] there’s somebody out there, you know [?] in the jungles or somewhere…” http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mo6pHs0-3bQ

To expand on the more-straight-guys-reluctant theme, let us address the punitive aspect. For the sake of argument, let’s agree it’s punitive for a good many men in the ceremony. But it is, or at least must be in the perception, rewarding, for some men in the marriage. What do I mean? The day might be a drag, but lotsa mediocre guys make out ok with a monogamous traditional marriage set of rules. To the extent gay marriage weakens that overall system, then, there’s a marginal increase of high-prospect men who might use that weakening as a way to avoid taking part, with the commensurate knock-on effects of serial monogamy, hypergamy, frustrated betas, used-up women. Basically, in an anything goes system, why would a great catch of a man settle down? Why would a decent woman settle for lifetime commitment to a mediocre man? The old answers were: ’cause if he pissed off one more brother of a sister (course we have only children these days so that’s another thing) there’d be a whole posse after him; ’cause all the good ones are taken and mediocre is better than nothing, ever; and, the whole community supports this too.

Even with the few data point, I am still interested in how pop seems to rule in Canada, too.

I read and hear little that’s in favour of the sort of commission action being discussed in this item. I don’t expect the commissions to last much longer. To portray this sort of thing as somehow representative of views in Canada is well off the mark, in my view.

I don’t think there is enough political will to get them abolished. I think most people (including me) would be happy if they lose their censorship provisions removed. The most appalling part of the whole affair isn’t the hate laws themselves, it the quasi-courts that they are held in.

Well, the GOP has been as unfriendly to the academy as its been friendly with mammon.
As an aside, I also suspect that the geoblogers lean leftward, and are probably disproportionally academics.

Notice that (except for the electrical and software engineers) that engineers lean towards the GOP as well. I think it comes down to two factors.
First, the percentage working in industry. The Republican Party has, throughout its history, been the party of business; thus people working in industry (well, at least the management) would be more GOP-friendly.
But that wouldn’t explain the chemists or the computer experts, who probably work in industry at rate as high (or higher) than geologists and engineers. I think it may have to do with the culture common with geology and engineering. I notice , in my limited experience (undergraduate Earth Sciences), that the geology and engineering undergraduates seem to be more conservative than the student body at large. Also, many of the geology majors start in engineering.

What if we can’t afford those NW Euro or NE Asia garrisons anymore? Does the deterrent still work if our guys are mercenaries, i.e. if the Euro’s and Asia’s pay a tax to support them, or is it one of those only-works-if-we’re-honest-about-it things?

Meanwhile, Hillary: “We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall campaign at the Convention and on TV and radio; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength via the internet and specifically YouTube. We shall defend our reputation and my husband’s reputation whatever the cost may be; we shall protest on streets, airport lounges, book signings and stereotypical middle american fast-food establishments. We shall never surrender and, even if, which I do not for the moment believe, we get kicked out of the convention and ignored by the main stream media, then our contacts beyond the scenes, rich and famous, will carry on the struggle until in good time White Middle Class America with all its remaining power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the me, and Bill, and, er, yeah, America!”

I read the last chapter of Webb’s book in Barnes & Noble yesterday. Yawn. Was it me or did that chapter, entitled something like “What is to be done?” seem like a whitewash; no specifics? Immigration? Nothing. Get out of Iraq? ***crickets*** Did he cover the specifics in other chapters. Someone get him an editor. Better yet, get him Pat Buchanan’s editor; close with bullet points in your last chapter. Give me the executive summary.

Some people are good credit risks and, as a result, can get mortgage (loans). Some ain’t and can’t. So you get your uncle or someone to sign off as the buyer, under a gentleman’s agreement that you’ll pay. The thinking is: as long as the bank gets it’s monthly payments, why would they make a stink?

Even with good intentions, things can go wrong. http://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/pdfs/2008/2008_31054.pdf “Though none of the matters contained in the moving papers are a sufficient defense to the foreclosure this Court does not pass on any financial breach of contract claims [non-legal buyer and resident -c] may wish to assert against Defendant [alleged straw buyer -c] upon proper substantiation of the same in a separate proceeding. Parties should be aware of the risks they take when they try to circumvent existing procedures and statutes enacted for their protection.”

Cash-back refers to immediately taking out a home equity loan so there is cash-back at the closing. Of course, as long as you’re pretending stuff anyway, you might add some other permutations (impersonation, fake ID’s etc.).

Let me get this straight: there’s a tight-knit merchant minority traditional group that, in contrast to contemporary US mores, encourages its young men to seek their fortunes in sole proprietership, partnership, or small business form, and some of those young men, in an early foray, went astray, spectacularly so.

I’m looking at those mugshots and thinking, man, I wasted my 20’s! It’s like that goof on Darth Vader vs. Luke Skywalker:

Darth Vader: Yes, it is true.. and you know what else? You know that brass droid of yours?
Luke: Threepio?
Darth Vader: Yes… Threepio… I built him… when I was 7 years old…
Luke: No…
Darth Vader: Seven years old! And what have you done? Look at yourself, no hand, no job, and couldn’t even levitate your own ship out of the swamp Dagobar…
Luke: I destroyed your precious Death Star!
Darth Vader: When you were 20! When I was 10, I single-handedly destroyed a Trade Federation Droid Control ship!
Luke: Well, it’s not my fault…
Darth Vader: Oh, here we go… “Poor me… my father never gave me what I wanted for my birthday… boo hoo, my daddy’s the Dark Lord of the Sith…waahhh wahhh!”
Luke: Shut up…
Darth Vader: You’re a slacker! By the time I was your age, I had exterminated the Jedi knights!
Luke: I used to race my T-16 through Beggar’s Canyon…
Darth Vader: Oh, for the love of the Emperor… 10 years old, winner of the Boonta Eve Open… Only human to ever fly a Pod Racer… right here baby!

No no no, it’s “it takes two Arabs to get the better of a Jew in a trade [by the way, from context I would guess all of this is a bit untranslatable; it’s not entirely derogatory, but a combination of admiration for, and jealousy of, the stereotypical commercial savvy of the other]; but four Jews to get the better of an Armenian.”

Is there a place that lists all of the races? I’m especially interested in how people in border areas are treated. Ethiopians, Eskimos, etc. It has always seemed odd to me that people from England are considered the same race as people from Serbia. Someone must have broken down people from every region of the world by race. It seems beyond belief that it could be done just by looking at someone’s skin color since that is just one genetic variant.

Dollars to donuts its a maternal effect. I mean, having older brothers makes you more likely to be gay. And female mice who are in between brothers in the womb have masculinized behavior when they’re grown. Isn’t it obvious by now?
This would mean, of course, that it could be a) not genetic but b) still determined by biology.

@gc – thanks for tipping me off to the original research, whose substance but not provenance I recalled in my last comment. 
 
Since we’re (quite happily!) going to the source literature, I’ll quote from the exact same critique that you do, i.e. Sackett et al.: 
 
“Steele and Aronson clearly demonstrated a very interesting phenomenon in a series of persuasive and carefully conducted experiments. They have shown that stereotype threat can affect the performace of some students on some tests, an important finding worthy of careful exploration. What they have not done, and do not purport to do, is to offer stereotype threat as the general explanation for the long-observed pattern of subgroup differences on a broad range of cognitive tests.” 
 
What Sackett said was not that this was bad research, or at all invalid — what Sackett et al. said was that *this research was widely misinterpreted.* 
 
I would agree with Sacket: I would not dream of proposing that stereotype threat is a complete explanation for differneces in test scores between races. 
 
I merely bring it up to inspire a thought experiment which does not require very much imagination, and one which I would argue has about as much evidence to its credit as the genetic-deterministic arguments being slung about here: 
 
Imagine that the stereotype threat effect were not being exercised in a laboratory setting, but that it pervaded everyday life. Imagine that you were told, from birth, even implicitly, not to expect too much from your own abilities on account of your race — what effect would that have on your desire to engage in the activity you were told you would fail at? And how would that effect look when multiplied across generations, and throughout an entire sub-culture? 
 
It seems glib to imagine that discrimination is irrelevant in the context of performance; and that culture, whose advancement we imagine is so all-important to the progress of the human race, isn’t as persistent and as powerful, in many contexts, as its genetic underpinnings. 
 
* Just to throw out another wrinkle: The Flynn effect says that your mean IQ, regardless of race, is significantly higher than that of your great-grandparents. Do you really believe that’s so? And if not, what does that say about the fact that even tests designed to target g can, in essence, across whole generations, be taught?

I’m glad this discussion is happening, because at base the assertion of some here — that if it doesn’t happen, the whole thing will be co-opted by those with an agenda — is, I think, correct. 
 
In the spirit of open debate, I’ll add this: 
 
1. So those studies that show that merely exposing children of one race or another to discriminatory statements can negatively or positively affect their performance on a test are irrelevant? 
 
In a system of coupled gene-environment interactions, we should be weary of self-fulfilling prophecies.

Miles [my imaginary English friend for purposes of explaining football here], what you must understand is how very American football is, both as a game, and, with regard to what we call high school, as a teenage phenomenon.

As a game, first observe the emphasis on taking the other guy’s land, gaining yardage we call it. It’s very warlike in that fundamental. Like rugby only more so. Whether by pushing, running over, jumping over, or via aerial attack (paratroopers perhaps), the idea is to move your team further and further into the enemy’s territory and make it your own. Second, the field itself: a lovely little grid. None of this fake nature roundish Australian rules pitch or cricket pitch or overly wide Football pitch. America’s a big country, but we are going to control it, lay some math down onto it, flatten it where necessary, and play. Again with the math, we like to measure things; we don’t like to word our way to success. Real success has a number: acres, children, head of cattle, barrels of oil, cards, hell, wives where some of us can get away with it! And that number, those numbers, trump all class distinctions. We admire virtue, and so what if someone has a lot of money, he can still be a jerk. But still, we like to face reality. We don’t have a nobility; we don’t grovel before a poorer noble, or even a greater noble. We buy, we sell, we measure out and measure in. No shame in losing if you gave it your all, but don’t stand on your one yard line with your back to the wall and tell me you’re better than me because of style. And another thing. This is a long game. We break up all the plays. We stop and measure all the time. It’s inexorable. It’s constant. Style rarely counts. We make a virtue of grinding things out where necessary. But of course emotion plays a part. Basically we are beating each other up. One of our big coaches said dancing is a contact sport, but football is a hitting sport. So it’s a fight. Don’t expect the faster, smarter, better trained team to win if they can’t give and take pounding. Now, note here for a moment a little American contradiction. Or at least something that make me wonder. The equipment. The Aussies brag about their lack of padding and helmets. My dad still talks about a hurling match he saw where some guys teeth got knocked out –batted out really. And in Rugby there’s not much padding or helmets. We, on the other hand, don’t hesitate to use the latest designs from NASA, the latest in material science from Stanford and MIT, and a whole truckload of money to get the best in helmets and padding. No one seems to notice how the better the protective equipment, the more daring the hitting becomes. Now, I didn’t play, so maybe I’m speaking out of school, but it just seems an odd American blind spot to try to tech-away the injuries and the potential for injury, rather than adjust the rules or try to stay traditional. Alright, so that’s a start on the game as America thing. Shall I go on about it’s importance to teenage culture, or the teenage subculture?

Interesting take on Harris’s thoughts. I admit that I started “The End of Faith” and am only through the first couple chapters, so my own take on Harris’s thoughts may not be as informed as others who have read his two books. That said, I have closely followed the exchange you quote above (between Andrew Sullivan and Sam Harris) and I’ve listened to a handful of talks that he has given in recent months – at the Salk Institute and at Caltech,,for example.
I wonder if this hesitation on Harris’s part to outright deny the worth of understanding religious experience reflects his own stance as a student in neurology (he’s a PhD candidate, right?) Others – from Dennett to Ramachandran – also seem to be very curious about the neurological explanations for religious experience. Reading the above bold sentence (at least the first one), I’m sure that Harris ‘s name is on that list. In one of his earlier letters to Sullivan in the same exchange (the one dated 1/29/07) Harris says that he is very hesitant to draw metaphysical conclusions about the nature of his own spiritual experiences.
I do agree with your point that he cares a great deal about the dangers poised by modern religious belief (both in its fundamental and moderate forms), but I’m struggling to see how he would make the argument that another mystical/supernatural belief system could act as a surrogate for any of the Western religions.