Because it usually excites ...

... passions rather than dispassionate observation and reasoning, I tend to avoid politics here. But I link to this Post Hoc Criticism of Obama’s Copenhagen Trip for rather an odd reason. I linked to it via Instapundit, and gave it a glance that happened on this:

He placed the prestige of his presidency directly on the line and failed. That’s the bottom line. He gambled with the one thing no president should ever gamble with unless the stakes are much higher than his hometown getting the Olympic games.

Now what is odd is what arrested my attention. It had nothing to do with politics. What grabbed me is what that paragraph says about risk-taking, and how any good gambler deals with it. I used to hang with gamblers. They would understand this perfectly and talk about it all night ... while betting away.