This is my new spot for blogging…

Last Friday was my last day at my last job.

I read all the way to the end of that article.

Still, there’s probably no better illustration of the Obama camp’s Hamiltonian sensibility than the debate over the war. Former Clinton officials like Lake, Rice, and Danzig all opposed the idea from the get-go (as did Hamilton himself). In doing so, they faced down pleas from within the Democrats’ permanent State-Department-in-waiting that opposition would be politically disastrous.

This certainly matches my prejudice about why the Dems have been so lame for the last 8 years, why so many of them voted to authorize the war and why they have put up such a poor opposition during the Bush/Delay era - they were afraid that doing the right thing would be unpopular.

It’s a fantastic article, you really should go read it.

A nice antidote, in The National Review, to the Obama is all speech and no policies people.

Despite Obama’s reputation for grandiose rhetoric and utopian hope-mongering, the Obamanauts aren’t radicals–far from it. They’re pragmatists–people who, when an existing paradigm clashes with reality, opt to tweak that paradigm rather than replace it wholesale. As Thaler puts it, “Physics with friction is not as beautiful. But you need it to get rockets off the ground.” It might as well be the motto for Obama’s entire policy shop.

There’s a nice contrast with The Clintons too.

Sociologically, the Obamanauts have a lot in common with the last gang of Democratic outsiders to make a credible run at the White House. Like Bill Clinton in 1992, Obama’s campaign boasts a cadre of credentialed achievers. Intellectually, however, the Obamanauts couldn’t be more different. Clinton delighted in surrounding himself with big-think public intellectuals–like economics commentator Robert Reich and political philosopher Bill Galston. You’d be hard-pressed to find a political philosopher in Obama’s inner wonk-dom. His is dominated by a group of first-rate economists

[out of sequence due to negative reality inversions]

Was gonna stop for the night but since it was such a beautiful day, I decided I just needed an hour’s kip at the Weed Rest Area (there was a rest area for stronger people a bit further on)

in the foreground of a comforting mountain.

With just enough blue sky to make a pair of sailor’s trousers.

   People often condemn others on partial information. Indeed, necessity
sometimes demands hasty judgment. We frequently don’t have enough time
to know the whole story. A short story called “The Last Judgment” by the
Czech author Karel Capek best captures the issue. A deceased criminal con-
fronts a divine tribunal to determine whether he will be sent to heaven or hell.
The tribunal consists of human judges. God, instead of his usual role as
judge, is the witness. God testifies about the defendant’s crimes but explains
the causes of the defendant’s behavior and declares that, under different cir-
cumstances, the defendant would have been an upstanding citizen. Neverthe-
less, the judges condemn the defendant to hell. Before facing his fate, the de-
fendant asks why God has not decided his fate: “Because I know everything.
If judges knew everything, absolutely everything, they couldn’t judge either:
they would understand everything and their hearts would ache. How could I
possibly judge you? Judges know only about your crimes but I know every-
thing about you. . . . And that’s why I cannot judge you.”

From The Future of Reputation

(thanks, Bob!)