Call It A Comeback
When the former Governor is a paid lobbyist, headlining an article Ex-governor urges cap on appeal bonds really misses the point. Thompson was a good governor, but let’s not forget where his interests are now. I believe Phil Kadner pointed this out when he was appointed to Blagojevich’s transition team.
I guess I never held UN Approval as the only measure of success, but as a strategy to bring along allies with concerns. We didn’t necessarily have to get UN Approval, but seeking approval should have enabled us to bring along allies who had populations worried about the war.
Pissing on the leg of a great deal of our allies I figured could be avoided, and the administration has done a fine job of drinking extra water to ensure every chance to do so wasn’t wasted. Pissing off the French isn’t exactly the worst thing in the world and an effective strategy, as Drezner points out, would have done accomplished that far better than the current outcome. Instead, we made it harder for our traditional allies to side with us. Dan makes some of these points, but it seems to excuse much of the ineptitude and petty sniping that has characterized the diplomatic effort.
Instead of using this as an opportunity to build a working coalition and show up French intransigence, we made them look reasonable and didn’t build much of a functioning coalition. Such a move would have strengthened our hand for future crises instead of weakening it. While Iraq is important, our allies, alliances, and, yes, even the UN are essential for projecting our values and interests in the international order.
I don’t think Drezner and I are that far apart, except that I started with incredibly low expectations of this administration and even those couldn’t be met.
In the Bush Amen corner:
I think it was a mistake to go the Security Council route. But I think that France’s backstabbing surprised almost everyone, not just the Bush Administration. In retrospect, we probably should have recognized that self-aggrandizing yet self-defeating diplomacy is a French hallmark, and that we shouldn’t have believed French promises.
But you have to give Bush credit — though few will — in that he’s bent over backward to try to let the international system demonstrate relevance and competence. And by doing so he has made abundantly plain that the United Nations is a joke, and that France and Germany are not our friends, but (France, especially) our would-be rivals. And there’s value in that.
That said, I wouldn’t have gone to the Security Council at all. And you can bet that neither the United States, nor any other power, is likely to do so ever again.
Bush bent over backwards? No. Bending over backwards was actual active diplomacy that built upon relationships as Bush’s father did in 1991 and sending out your top people to talk and cajole and offer. Powell didn’t do that and Rumsfeld did a rather amazing job of taking delight in pissing off our allies. This was an exercise in tearing down relationships and it shows. The big deal isn’t the effect on Iraq, it is the effect on the future when we need strong allies.
Maybe there won’t be much permanent damage to our long term allies and alliances. I hope that is the case. But the way this is going the only thing that could go worse is if Tony Blair loses the Prime Minister’s position over this war. Imagine the signal that would send to future British politicians about strongly backing American allies.
For the Lott Post below let me fix up some of the stats. Using the Wilson Method (I used both that and the traditional method below), if one takes the number of Defensive Gun Uses (DGUs)–13– and compares that to the number of reported incidents in which the gun is fired–1, the 95 percent confidence interval is 1.4 percent to 33.3 percent. This means, assuming that his survey was adequate in all other ways, in looking at the number of incidents of DGUs alone, the only reasonable conclusion one could draw is that the number of DGUs in which one fires a gun falls somewhere between those numbers.
If one takes the number of individuals who fire given any number of DGUs, the confidence interval would be between 2.6 percent and 51.3 percent (I believe this is what Tim Lambert reports). This is with 7 people reporting a DGU and one person reporting they fired a weapon.
Even if one took the results from his first survey (which he doesn’t have anymore), there would be a total of 38 DGUs, with 3 incidents of the guns being fired. His 95 percent confidience interval in that case is 2.7 percent and 20.8 percent.
In his first survey which was eaten by his dog or some other series of explanations one can examine at Tim Lambert’s page, he claims there were 25 DGUs and people have assumed there were 2 episodes of weapons being fired. In that case, the confidence interval was 2.2 percent and 25.0 percent.
This is all done without any weightings, Lott weights the responses which makes the confidence intervals even larger.
What is truly fascinating is that he claims this is an improvement on previous studies. But as I explained previously, he still has fewer DGUs even in the one-year period than did Kleck and Gertz (1995). They report 56 respondent DGUs in their one-year time frame, 68 household DGUs. Lott’s Survey Methodology is inadequate compared to their survey, Kleck and Gertz have a larger sample size, and more DGUs within the 1 year time frame. Of course, Lott seems unaware that they did a one year sample as well as a five year and he attempted to differentiate between his survey and theirs because they used a five year sample. He is either unaware of their 1 year sample (which would be strange because they report it in their paper) or he hopes others are ignorant of it.
It was only a matter of time, but the Department of Corrections nominee, Ernesto Velasco, has stepped down due to the Cook County . Don Snyder is still overseeing the system and may well be kept on given his role in cleaning up the system.
As the most powerful and probably popular Democratic Mayor in the country, why doesn’t he take that popularity out for a spin and use it to challenge President Bush?
Oh, the linguistic horrors that would be brought about between a debate by those twos–it would be like armageddon for the English language.
Not that the Illinois Rifle Association ever gets that much done, but whipping your people into a frenzy and then they call legislators with threats is a really friggen bad way to oppose a gun control measure. I mean, if you are getting threatened with guns, you are probably sympathetic to control. My take is that most of the proposals are window dressing except for state gun dealer registration which, I’m not sure I understand how it improves on an FFL.
The threats are reported on the Capitol Fax.
Continues at the Bloviator, click on the map to learn about the uninsured in your state.
John Lott’s book has been published with his new and supposedly improved survey. For those not following the John Lott train wreck concerning a survey he claims to have completed in 1998 check out Tim Lambert’s page in the hyperlink. Lott said he was replicating the survey and had this to say about it:
"let me note the most important bottom line: the survey that was done last fall produced very similar results. The earlier results were replicated."
Now that Lott’s survey has gone to press, Tim Lambert has revealed that the number of DGUs in the new sample is 7. Lott claims that in his previous study, he had 25 DGUs, but cannot provide any documentation for that survey.
Tim Lambert points out the
95% confidence interval is from 3 percent to 50 percent using Wilson’s method. This range would include the results from eight surveys done previously, all of which are better surveys.
Tim calculates using the Wilson method which I believe is the most appropriate method to understand these numbers. Tim or I or anyone with a decent statistical background can provide the technical aspects of the calculation. To put it in more familiar terms, the Margin of Error for the 7 cases of DGUs in the most recent survey is +/- 37.8 % with 95% confidence. Given there is one time the weapon is fired out of 7 DGUs, that means the range of possible results within the 95% confidence interval is 0 (You can’t have negative numbers here) and 52%. This is assuming that the survey’s methodology is adequate, and this is not likely the case.
Even if one were to use the results Lott claims from the first survey (and one shouldn’t since there is no data to analyze) the total number of DGUs would be 32 giving a margin of error of +/- 17.7%. With 1 weapon being fired in the 2002 sample and probably 2 being fired in the 1998 lost sample, that is 9.375% rate of firing the gun used in the DGU meaning up to 27% of cases having a weapon fired would be within the MOE. Using the Wilson method on both samples one observes the 95% confidence interval producing results between 3% and 24% of cases producing a weapon being fired. To insist that 98% of the time the weapon doesn’t have to be fired doesn’t actually fit his own results. Now Lott might try and claim that he uses weighting of the sample that would change this, but if he weights the sample his MOE inflates. All of this assumes unbiased sampling and effective survey methodology which is not likely given Lott’s survey techniques. IOW, all of these calculations are generous.
So Lott claims to have replicated the original survey. Tim Lambert disagrees. I agree with Lott on the point that he has replicated the original survey. Lott is correct, he has replicated a worthless survey with another worthless survey. Congratulations, Dr. Lott, you ought to be proud! The question Lott won’t answer is why he bothered with either survey. Anyone with a minimal grasp of statistics understands how useless the survey(s) he conducted are to answer the questions he wishes to answer. Others have insisted this survey would be much better, but it is another example of wasted time and effort.
I imagine Lott will release his numbers as well and that should provide for all sorts of fun!
ArchPundit