Oct
29
Posted at 22:05 by Sadly, No!
Through Trying to Grok we find out about this post from Marginal Revolution. One Tyler Cowen argues that although the US ranked dead last in foreign aid per capita in 2002 it is in fact the most generous country in the world. Why? Because of the large amount of remittances sent by Mexicans living in the US back to Mexico. No, I am not making this argument up — go read it, for such logic must be read to be believed. Professor Cowen (yes!) argues:
My take: There is altogether too much talk about the United States being ungenerous with foreign aid. We show up as 21st in the rankings, in per capita terms, according to one estimate.
He links to an article which (of course!) doesn’t actually make the point he thinks it’s making. The article doesn’t simply rank the dollar amount of foreign aid, but is a more comprehensive index that:
The Commitment to Development Index, created by the Center for Global Development and Foreign Policy magazine, ranks some of the world's richest nations according to how much a wide range of their policies help or hinder the economic and social development of poor countries.
If you are interested in foreign aid per capita, you should try the UN Human Development Report:
But when you look at countries' foreign aid relative to the size of their economies, the United States is devoting 0.1 per cent of its gross national product (GNP) to help the world's poorest countries, less than any other industrialized nation.
Still — last is last. But even if you go along Professor Cowen’s experimental logic, he’s only “right” because he resorts to measuring foreign aid in absolute terms. While this helps the argument, he didn’t even need to look at remittances since in dollar terms the US is already the “most generous” [sic] country in the world. (Although this is due in part to the decline in the value of the yen, as Japan was the most generous in 2000 and 1999.)
Taking US foreign aid in 2002 ($12.9bn or 0.12% of its GDP) and adding remittances $28bn (0.26% of GDP) we get: $40.9bn, or 0.38% of GDP. Where would that place the US?
Even without adding other countries’ remittances, the US would do no better narrowly pass France as the 8th most generous country relative to the size of its economy.
And if we were to adjust for remittances? Our highly trained monkeys are crunching the numbers as we type — results to follow. But let’s just say that the only direction for the US from #8 is down.
Updates:
Rankings used by us above are not per capita but as a share of GDP, the measure used by countries to set their targets for foreign aid. We apologize for our poor attention to the wording. The monkeys distracted us.
Speaking of which, adding remittances by residents of the top 20 countries as compiled by the IMF, the US slips back to #12 for foreign aid as a percentage of GDP. So much for that particular spin point.
Just one more update:
We couldn’t find a table with a per capita ranking of foreign aid, and compiled our own using population size from the CIA World Factbook, $ foreign aid from the link above, and remittance amounts from the IMF. Using only foreign aid, the US ranks 16th out of 22. Using foreign aid and remittances, its ranking improves to 9th — right after France. Those traitor Frenchies!
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Oct
29
Posted at 20:51 by Sadly, No!
Last night we’d decided to blog on the Luskin Challenge this morning, but then saw that one Jonathan S. Gradowski beat us to it:
DID PAUL KRUGMAN call George W. Bush a drunk?
Donald Luskin says he did, Krugman says he didn’t. But who’s telling the truth? Let’s take Luskin up on his challenge …
We’d say, go read the whole thing and find out. We’ll just add that it’s surprising that Luskin didn’t let Fox viewers know one can find out that he (Luskin) is lying by visiting the Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive, rather than pay $2.50 to the New York Times.
And since we’re on the topic, and just in case you’re not quite entirely convinced that Luskin is in need of professional mental help, consider this: why does Luskin stalk, act as the most persistent critic of Krugman? Because Krugman:
masquerades as an economic scientist
Let the record show that Krugman has a B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D. from MIT. He has been a professor (unlike, say, John Lott or Mary Rosh) at Yale, MIT, Stanford, and Princeton. We often disagree with Krugman, but he seems to be somewhat qualified to write on economics, and no less qualified than Thomas Sowell to write on politics.
Bonus Random Trivia Fact: Luskin and Krugman were both students at Yale in 1973-1974.
And since we remain on the topic of Luskin, consider his latest outrage:
On nationwide television last Friday night, Paul Krugman falsely accused me of committing the felony of stalking. On the popular Hannity & Colmes show, Krugman said of me: “That’s a guy, that’s a guy who actually stalks me on the web, and once stalked me personally.”
Felony? Did Krugman allege that a felony was committed? Did he actually use that word? No, of course not. Curious as to how the word “stalk” is defined? Here you go: “To follow or observe (a person) persistently, especially out of obsession or derangement.” That sounds just about right to us. Luskin had asked:
I am not now nor have I ever been a stalker. What I am is Krugman’s most persistent critic. I criticize him in my regular “Krugman Truth Squad” column for National Review Online, and on the blog of my forthcoming book, The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid. Is that stalking on the web?
[Emphasis added.]
Is that a trick question?
Thanks to CalPundit for the link to Jon Gradowski.
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Oct
15
Posted at 20:44 by Sadly, No!
From Steve over at the neighborhood No More Mister Nice Blog we get the ‘chance’ to read the partial transcript of Fox’s Hannity & Colmes. This is seriously scary shit. Ann Coulter was in fine form last night:
COLMES: He did say the IAEA reported that Iraq was six months away from a nuclear capability, which turned out not to be true. It's a scare tactic.
COULTER: He got the name of the institute wrong.
But did Bush really only (and simply) get the name of the institute wrong? Sadly, No! He actually got everything wrong. Let’s go to the transcript:
Q Mr. President, can you tell us what conclusive evidence of any nuclear -- new evidence you have of nuclear weapons capabilities of Saddam Hussein?
THE PRESIDENT: We just heard the Prime Minister talk about the new report. I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied — finally denied access, a report came out of the Atomic — the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need.
The press conference was held on September 7, 2002. The International Institute for Strategic Studies released its report on September 9, 2002. Allowing for the possibility that Bush used his famous time travel machine to read the report, what would he have learned?
The Gulf War heavily damaged Iraq?s nuclear facilities. By the end of inspections in 1998, the IAEA was confident that Iraq?s indigenous nuclear weapons programme had not produced more than a few grammes of weapons useable nuclear material. [...]
Our net assessment of the current situation is that:
Iraq does not possess facilities to produce fissile material in sufficient amounts for nuclear weapons.
It would require several years and extensive foreign assistance to build such fissile material production facilities. [Emphasis in the original.]
News reports about the IISS’ work had begun to surface by the time the press conference was held however, and is said to have been seen by Blair (who was first responsible for misspeaking as to the source.) But what did we know of the report at the time?
"If (Hussein) has revived his program, it would probably take Iraq a number of years to complete a production scale facility for producing fissile material and they would probably require a considerable amount of foreign equipment and expertise," said Gary Samore, a staff member on President Clinton's National Security Council who has overseen a new study of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction for the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. [St. Petersburg Times (Florida) September 8, 2002]
But wait — let’s go back to what Bush said (which remains unsupported even by the IISS’ report:)
We just heard the Prime Minister talk about the new report. I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied — finally denied access, a report came out of the Atomic — the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need.
Bush isn’t talking about the recent report at all — he is “reminding” us of an IAEA report. The IISS does not have weapons inspector who were denied, and then granted, access. Bush’s statement is all IAEA, all the time. And the IAEA had reported in 1998 that prior to the Gulf War Iraq had made significant progress in its efforts to develop nuclear weapons, having been six months to two years away from successful completion. And in the period since the Gulf War? Well, according to the British dossier released two weeks after the press conference quoted above:
The IAEA also destroyed the
infrastructure for Iraq's nuclear weapons programme and removed key nuclear
materials.
Asked about new evidence Bush had none, and chose to offer old evidence that was no longer consistent with reality instead. If this is what passes for honor and integrity these days, we’ll have to say no thanks.
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Oct
14
Posted at 21:30 by Sadly, No!
John Lott emails and comments that we “probably should correct” this post where we wrote:
In the first section of his article, Lott claims to be examining news coverage of quarterbacks, and it was overall bias that Rush had alleged. But what subset of his data did Lott use when presenting his simple comparison of averages? The one that showed articles about black QBs to be 67% positive, compared to 61% for whites? Lott only used weeks in which these QBs played. Should that matter? Big time.
Lott’s total dataset includes 1346 articles, 1013 about white QBs, 333* about black QBs. The “simplest measure” shows that white QBs receive positive comments in 57% of all articles, while black QBs’ positive articles only amount to 53%. Though again a small difference, the result is exactly the opposite of what Lott (and Limbaugh) claimed. [Lott’s selection excludes 50 articles about white QBs that are 70% positive, and 41 articles about black QBs, 30 of which are negative. What a convenient feature of the data this turned out to be.]
Lott included results of the “average” for news coverage when QBs did not play. Lott comments (on his web site:)
During the weeks when quarterbacks played about 67 percent of the news coverage for black quarterbacks was positive and about 61 percent of the coverage for whites was positive.
Progress has been achieved at last — now that we know how Lott calculated his average (how we came to ours should be pretty clear from the quote above.)
When running his regression analysis, Lott argued that one had to take into account “differences in media coverage.” But when looking at averages, such considerations are apparently irrelevant. What Lott did was take the average of positive stories about each QB every week, and averaged these weekly ratios. The problem, we think, is quite simple. Let’s take Donovan McNabb: in week 4, there were 11 positive stories, and 5 negative ones, i.e. 69% of stories were positive. In week 2, there were 3 positive stories, and 29 negative ones, i.e. 9% of the stories were positive.
Lott’s average would say that 39 % [69 + 9 /2] of the news coverage for Donovan McNabb was positive. We would say that 29% of said coverage was positive [11 + 3 / 16 + 32.]
Lott should at least have made the method behind the calculation of his “average” clear — as it is when he writes:
During the weeks when quarterbacks played about 67 percent of the news coverage for black quarterbacks was positive and about 61 percent of the coverage for whites was positive.
We think he is (deliberately or not) giving a very misleading picture of what ‘average’ news coverage is. We assumed, and think it reasonable to have done so, that Lott looked at aggregate numbers. As it is, we think most people would be surprised to learn that for weeks 1 and 4, Kurt Warner’s coverage was, according to “Lott-average,” 22% positive: 0 out of 2 one week (0%) and 16 out of 36 the other week (44%.) The Sadly, No! Average? would find that Warner’s coverage was 42% positive.
Roger Ailes has additional comments here, as does Tim Lambert there.
* Typo corrected, read 303 rather than 333.
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Oct
10
Posted at 21:37 by Sadly, No!
Update: More comments here.
John “Data Crashes ‘R Us” Lott and his ten research assistants try to come to Limbaugh’s defense:
Whether Rush Limbaugh’s comments on Donovan McNabb were “racist,” there is a general agreement that he was factually wrong, that Limbaugh did not know what he is talking about. Yet, what is the evidence? [snip]
The evidence suggests that Rush is right, though the simplest measures indicate that the difference is not huge. Looking at just the averages, without trying to account for anything else, reveals a ten-percent difference in coverage (with 67 percent of stories on blacks being positive, 61 percent for whites).
The evidence suggests Rush is right? Sadly, No! Actually, the evidence suggests that if you do a good enough job of picking a subset of your data, you can find pretty much any result you want.
In the first section of his article, Lott claims to be examining news coverage of quarterbacks, and it was overall bias that Rush had alleged. But what subset of his data did Lott use when presenting his simple comparison of averages? The one that showed articles about black QBs to be 67% positive, compared to 61% for whites? Lott only used weeks in which these QBs played. Should that matter? Big time.
Lott’s total dataset includes 1346 articles, 1013 about white QBs, 333 [was originally listed as 303, then accidentally for about 20 minutes as 343!*] about black QBs. The “simplest measure” shows that white QBs receive positive comments in 57% of all articles, while black QBs’ positive articles only amount to 53%. Though again a small difference, the result is exactly the opposite of what Lott (and Limbaugh) claimed. [Lott’s selection excludes 50 articles about white QBs that are 70% positive, and 41 articles about black QBs, 30 of which are negative. What a convenient feature of the data this turned out to be.]
When it comes to Lott’s regression, excluding weeks where the QB did not play does make sense, since there is no “objective” measure of player quality that can be used to control for the (alleged) race effect. [In the Eagles’ bye week, Donovan McNabb’s new coverage was 3 positive articles, 23 negative ones.] But we were puzzled by this statement:
In addition, I accounted for average differences in media coverage both in the quarterback’s city and the opponent’s city as well as differences across weeks of the season.
But Lott’s dependent variable, i.e. the one whose variance he wants to explain, is the percentage of articles that are positive about a given QB. Had he used the total number of positive articles, controlling for media coverage would have made sense. Here however we fail to see why. Nor do we see why one would want to control for differences across weeks — the independent variable is size neutral. Moreover, the bias alleged is by the media. Whether a given game is covered by 3 or 8 papers, the bias effect should be found regardless.
So what happens if one runs a regression on Lott’s data without “correcting” for the extent of media coverage? To find out, we put our staff of one to work using EasyReg International, a free econometrics program for regression analysis. We imported Lott’s data, and ran a tobit regression keeping the same dependent variable and using as our independent variables:
week
Monday Night
QB Rating
Win
Points For
Points Against
Team Rank (QB)
Team Rank (Opp)
(These are the variables listed by Lott here.)
Our results? The only variable that is statistically significant (at 95%) in predicting positive coverage is the QB rating for that game. A win comes close (significant at the 90% level.) A QB’s race doesn’t even come close. We wonder what Mary Rosh would make of this?
There is a more fundamental problem in Lott’s crude analysis. He writes:
Depending on whether positive or negative words were used to describe the quarterback, stories were classified as positive, negative, or falling into both categories.
What is the point of this dependent variable? [There isn’t one? We just spent 4 hours writing about it!] Lott’s coding would classify as both positive and negative a story that had 10 positive references and 1 negative one — exactly the same value assigned to an article with 10 negative comments and 1 positive one.
Exploring the possibility of media bias in sports coverage isn’t a pointless endeavor. Lott’s way of going about it however is.
Jesse at pandagon and the increasingly malicious Roger Ailes have more.
Thanks to Tim Lambert for pointing out the typo in 333 v. 303 above.
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Oct
3
Posted at 17:14 by Sadly, No!
South Park Episode 214:
Gerald (Whispering): Dammit. […] He’s using the Chewbacca defense.
Johnny Cochrane: Why would a Wooky, an eight-foot-tall Wooky, want to live on Endor with a bunch of two-foot-tall Ewoks. That does not make sense. […] It does not make sense. Look at me. I’m a lawyer defending a major record company and I’m talkin’ about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and Gentlemen I’m am not making any sense. None of this makes sense. And so you have to remember when you’re in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No. Ladies and Gentlemen of this deposed jury it does not make sense. If Chewbacca lives on Endor you must acquit. The defense rests.
Andrew Sullivan (among many) earlier this week:
Like many others, I’m still baffled by the rationale. […] The only thought that makes any sense to me is if someone in the administration was trying to placate neo-con or conservative reporters or pundits […] Look, I don’t know. I’m just trying to make sense of this.
Remember boys and girls, it does not make sense!
If Joe Wilson contributed to Al Gore’s campaign, you must acquit.
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Oct
1
Posted at 13:51 by Sadly, No!
Terry at Nitpicker has the goods on the William Safire wannabes at the Wall Street Journal’s OpinionJournal.
First, a definition (from Merriam-Webster OnLine):
Main Entry: ker?fuf?fle
Pronunciation: k&r-’f&-f&l
Function: noun
Etymology: alteration of carfuffle, from Scots car- (probably from Scottish Gaelic cearr wrong, awkward) + fuffle to become disheveled
Date: 1946
chiefly British : DISTURBANCE, FUSS
On the other hand, it seems to be the way that the kids over at the Wall Street Journal’s OpinionJournal say “Quit looking at that!” or “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”
He has more, so read the whole thing because I have a football game to watch and won’t be posting for the next two hours.
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