I think this is great example of where we have to draw the line. While I don't believe that consentual incest should be legal (even though it revolts me), it would not trouble me if it remained illegal. On most issues we are on a slippery slope. I think the analogies with abortion and the rights of disabled parents are apt. We cannot ignore them because we don't agree with what those analogies would have us conclude. Sometimes a line in the sand has to be drawn, and we have to accept that's what is a line in the sand, and at different times in history often dictated by the technology of the day that line will be different.

I think the fact that everyone is interconnected is a good thing. The more people feel their own fortunes are tied to the fortunes of others, the more responsible the behavior I hope. As for the CDOs and the subprime being spread all over the world I believe is the reason we see more resilence in the markets. Basically we're in one big insurance pot, and we're all going take a hit on premiums in the next couple years because of the American Housing meltdown but it also means someone basically got insurance to cover the house that burned down.

As one of the defenders of the market as it comes to the subprime mess, I think much of disagreement I have with others when it comes the going "crisis" is what it means to have a "shock" to system. There is a good way to be interconnected, and a bad way. The good way is way when you've spread out the financial risk widely and diversley which I believe is the case with the mortgage market. Sure a few lenders may go down, and many banks may take a financial hit, but no one "institution" fails. When I say institution I mean something like the secondary market for mortgages. A bad interconnection is when let's say all subprime lenders sell their mortgages primarily to one bank that dominates the secondary market for mortgages, and then that one bank uses those mortgages as their asset base to lend money to consumers. The collapse of the subprime mortgages is then domino that runs though the system and swallows the dominant bank in the secondary market which then in turn collapses the secondary market which then in turn makes it hard for consumers to borrow which leads to more difficulty borrowing which further depresses the housing market and so on. However as I see it right now, it does look like a hot potato that's getting passed around. Eventually the potato cools and everyone's hand is burned a little, but nobody's suffered a 3rd degree burn. I'm not sayin it's impossible to have the former, but the fact that I'm hearing about how many different banks are being affected gives me greater faith that the system is working not that there's a imminent doom.

I find these distinctions over ancient national borders patently obsurd. The people in Kogoruyu certainly never heard of Korea or China in their lifetimes - how they can be classified under a construct that did not exist when they lived? The fact of the matter is that no land inherently belongs to one country or another. Sure there might be an argument made for the people who settled a land first, but other than individual property rights I don't believe there's some racial or ethnic property right to land. That goes for the Native Americans, Palestinians, and Basque. It's disgrace as a country how we've treated and continued to treat Native Ameicans in this country, but I find no fault with the idea of Government extending it's form of governance over the territory. That's what Government do - instutionalize their practices across a land. Protest and rebel against bad governments, but the idea of "racial/ethnic" ownership over land is something we need to get over.

I am another glad to read most of the responses are smart enough to read into McCain's words for what they are rather than something else. When Anne Coulter calls someone a faggot (or even does so in a round about way) take her to task for it, but when McCain refers to sticky situation as tar baby, please let's not give the the right a good reason for thinking that left is full of bunch over sensitive nutcases.

My old roommate was a engineering doctoral student. He finished last year and has moved onto wearing tweed and a bowtie. While he was "American" through through, born here, probably had some distant relatives serving on opposite sides of the civil war, most of his colleague were foreign born, predominantly Chinese and Indian. The fact of the matter is that most American's are unwilling to toil at low wages for unclear financial rewards. Smart undergraduate engineers can easily go on to make a lot more money by not pursuing further academics. They mostly end up in business school in a couple years. Why pursue at least 4 years of grueling graduate studies for doctoral when you can do two years of wining and dining at top a business school and make a lot more money? The students who truly do finish their doctoral work like my old roommate do it for academic passion not financial reward. The problem is not the low pay or cost of study, but the easy money in more lucrative fields such as banking, hedge funds, private equity, and consulting. Once we stop valuing that kind of work, maybe we can start valuing other types of work.