Not fired, it seems. But the evidence suggests, rather strongly, Someone had a little chat with him.

Two nights at 11:59 PM or so he went radio-silent. Bizarrely, one of his last posts was a post proclaiming how overjoyed he was that Sarah Palin had chosen to "bring up" Trig. Suddenly he was president of the Trig Fan Club, all warm and fuzzy about the little boy he had previously been suggesting was the MacGuffin in a baroque Northern Gothic tale of faked pregnancies and Loves that Dare Not Speak Their Name.

He only posted one post -- a picture of flowers -- all day yesterday.

Today he is posting another picture (another "view from your window") and a cutesy video.

He also said everything's fine, he just took the day off yesterday to enjoy one of the last days of summer.

And that's it.

Except for this cryptic -- but not really cryptic -- post.

Quote For The Day

09 Sep 2008 05:58 pm

""Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen" - Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Steve translates for me:

""What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence."

What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence. Let me translate from English to Moronese: I have been told in no uncertain terms to chill out from my savaging of the Palin family, and posting every single unvetted leftwing conspiracy that I get fed, or possibly lose this gig altogether.

So, is it true Sullivan just took the day off yesterday to enjoy one of the last days of summer, as a post today claimed?

Um-- it appears that's unlikely.

Bear in mind, I obviously have no inside information, but come on, this seems awfully clear to me. That "Quote of the Day" seems like a Sullivanesque passive-aggressive poor-me.

Hmmm... that video is a bit cryptic too:

1, it's about a son apologizing and promising from now on "to be good neighbors."

2, it's from Desperate Housewives, which featured, coincidentally I'm sure, a plotline involving a mother faking a pregnancy to spare her pregnant daughter the shame of being an unwed young mother. In fact, the plotine involved "Bree" and her daughter -- and that is the red-headed woman most prominent in that video.

A plotline, I should say, I only know about because it was widely cited when the Sarah Palin fake-pregnancy-changeling-baby theory was pushed into the MSM by Andrew Sullivan.

The two are not just accidentally linked. Google Sarah Palin Desperate Housewives and you get an awful lot of hits linking the two "plotlines."

This seems like more passive-aggression to me.

When Sullivan and his publisher had their little talk, did the publisher imagine that Sullivan would begin baiting him with these cutesy references?

Correction: I said he'd said he was taking off one of the last "Summer Sundays." The error is mine, not his. I forgot what day it was.

Mystery Tipster: A tipster, or just a guesser like me?

I don't know. I have no idea.

I'm just "airing questions" here, guys.

Anon

Sullivan is not taking a few days off. He was asked to lay off the Palin stuff and he has responded by refusing to post to his site. Staff are meeting now to decided what to do.

I work at The Atlantic.

Once again, the big caveat: Anyone on the internet could be a dog. We have no evidence whatsoever this person knows what he claims to know or works where he claims to work.

Actually, I really probably shouldn't even bother noting it.

But by giving this caveat, I'm displaying buckloads more skepticism and fairness than Sullivan usually does.

Quote... UNQUOTE: I was wrong, the commenter didn't put quotes around The Atlantic at all. My tipster put quotes around the entire quote, and I just saw the last quote after the Atlantic and imagined the other one.

Posted by: Ace at 02:29 PM | Comments (127)
Post contains 669 words, total size 5 kb.

Conservatives have long complained that polls often oversample Democrats. They get angry when a poll fails to "properly" weight the numbers according to assumed party identification -- reducing the proportions of Dems and increasing the proportions of Reps to the guestimated partisan breakdown.

I used to say this myself. I believe I was wrong, and that those who urge this are wrong now.

Here's the thing: Party identification is not inelastic. It does not remain fixed at 38 Dem/32 Rep/30 Independent (or whatever ratio you might guess at). It changes all the time. Many people are right on the edge of being Democrats or Independents -- when the Democrats please them, they say they're Democrats. When the Democrats piss them off, bang, they're Independents.

Same deal on the Republican side. People kept complaining that 2006 polls didn't include enough Republicans, because the fraction of Republicans was 5% or so lower than longterm historical averages, or what recent (2004) numbers would suggest. But most polls, including Gallup, nailed the 2006 results.

Republicans were not undersampled, mostly. What was going on was that a lot of people who were formerly self-identifying Republicans were disgusted by the Mark Foley scandal, Katrina, and the worsening situation in Iraq and told the pollsters they were Independents. Because, actually, they were. The affinity they once had with the GOP had too much abused of late.

I'm told by someone I trust a great deal that one of the most dangerous things to weight on is Party ID. This is a pollster saying this. Yes, some demographics can be weighted on (age gets weighted a lot, almost always, because there are always too many older people being called and too few young people) and sometimes other demographic designators whose proportional representation in the population we know for a certain fact out to the thirtieth decimal place -- sex, race, economic bracket, education level.

These things do not change. We always know how many Asian people there are in the country. (And thank god for that -- gotta keep tabs. They know karate and ninja skillz.)

But party ID is never known with a great deal of accuracy, and furthermore can change from week to week, sometimes fairly dramatically.

You want to know why Zogby is sometimes very accurate and sometimes seems like he's making up bizarre numbers randomly? Because he weights on party ID. Sometimes his guess as to the current ratio of partisan ID is accurate and he nails a spot-on poll and embarrasses the competition.

But very often his guess is wrong and the numbers he winds up producing seem to have come in from Mars.

It's not so much a bad practice as a dangerous practice. Well, I guess that makes it a bad practice, actually.

Now, here's the weird thing this cycle: You know how you guys have often urged pollsters to weight on party? And correct for oversized samples of Democrats?

The thing is -- now pollsters are getting, it seems, oversized samples of Republicans. And pollsters who do weight on party will knock those self-identifying Republicans down in numbers to get them closer to the long-term average or best guess as to current representation.

But what if Sarah Palin has made many actual new self-identifying Republicans, just as Mark Foley made many self-identifying Independents and Democrats?

Pollsters that weight on party will have less dramatic swings and show closer contests, as they will be massaging down and diminishing numbers that actually reflect the true state of affairs.

Case in point: Rasmussnen. Rasmussen weights on party.

For a variety of reasons, the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential
Tracking Poll is less volatile than some other polls and always shows a somewhat smaller convention bounce than reported by others. This is primarily because we weight our results by party identification (see methodology). Looking at the data before adjusting for partisan identification, the Republican convention appears to have created a larger surge in party identification than the Democratic convention the week before. If this lasts, it could have a significant impact on Election 2008.

Note: "If it lasts." At the moment they're assuming this is either bad numbers, or some other anomaly. "If it lasts" presumably they'll change how they weight the various party IDs and give Republicans a larger fraction of the population -- but only if the trend continues long enough to convince them it's real.

Anyway, I think it's interesting, that. Rasmussen used to show better-than-usual numbers for Republicans, because they would weight on party ID and boost Republican affiliation while diminishing Democratic affiliation, guessing at the right "real" mix.

And now, with Hurricane Sarah blowing a lot of Independents to the Republican side, they're doing the opposite, now correcting for "too many" Republicans. That's why they're showing the race dead even, while Gallup shows a 5 point lead (or even a 10 point one).

I don't think it's established, clearly, that Zogby and Rasmussen are wrong to do this. But how accurate their weighting depends, ultimately, on their guess as to the "real" partisan breakdown in America -- and sometimes they can just be off, and sometimes they can fail to take into account a real shift in partisan ID.

Or at least not take it into account until weeks after the trend has been detected in other polls.

Something to keep in mind when looking at the much-touted WSJ/NBC poll tonight, too.

PS: Ed Morrissey found a poll a few months ago where not only did the jagoffs doing the poll sample far more Democrats than Republicans, but on top of that they weighted the Democrats into an even higher proportion -- up to something like 43% or thereabouts.

So sometimes the partisan weighting is not merely dangerous, but positively dishonest.

Posted by: Ace at 02:03 PM | Comments (39)
Post contains 973 words, total size 6 kb.

Posted by: Ace at 01:37 PM | Comments (84)
Post contains 24 words, total size 1 kb.

FoxNews Breaking. It's possible he's gravely ill as well.

May be confined to a wheelchair.

UPDATE by lauraw: Sorrowful video under the fold. more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:11 PM | Comments (74)
Post contains 114 words, total size 1 kb.

Look how much the usual suspects are touting it, under the header "Who is really winning?" And declaring that as of 6:30 Eastern, the "world will change."

On MSNBC, an Obama spokesman called the USAToday/Gallup poll an outlier, stating that it disagreed with other polls, "including the one you [MSNBC/NBC] have coming out later."

So, there you go. One poll will show Obama ahead.

Interesting that the Obama campaign knows all about it.

Thanks to the comorons.

Rasmussen: Dead Even. Ah, well, guess we need to get serious again.

15 yard penalty on me for unsportsmanlike conduct, excessive coordinated celebrations, and taunting.

Thanks to cristoph.

A Teaser! This tease makes it sound like the poll is positive for McCain/Palin:

John McCainÂ’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate has given the Republican ticket a boost, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

More than one-third of respondents, 34%, said Palin makes it more likely for them to vote for McCain.

However, 25% of likely voters said the selection of the Alaska governor makes it less likely they will vote for McCain, while 40% said it makes no difference at all.

On the Democratic ticket, the choice of Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as vice president, has less of an impact...

But I don't believe it. This is part of the poll's findings, but obviously not the the Big Number we all care about. Again, the Obama spokesman on MSNBC seemed to have somehow gotten advance news of the poll and thinks it's good news (or relatively so) for his guy.

On the other hand... it would be kind of strange for a tease like this to suggest the opposite of the poll's main findings. I suppose they could justify this, though, on the grounds that they were leaking an important minor finding -- the public's general favor for Palin -- which is news in and of itself, even if this particular finding seems incongruous with a poll showing Obama ahead.

"A Little Birdy:" Judd says a Koz Kid says a "little birdy" (which Judd guesses is a Round-Bellied Olbermann, lovely plumage) tells him the poll will show Obama 46 JMac/Cuda 45. A one point lead. Wowzers.

Notice how this poll is being hyped and slowly rolled out and teased by the media. I don't remember a similar PR campaign for the USAToday/Gallup poll, which was truly eye-popping.

And yeah, I'm buying into the hype, promoting a single poll as if it really will "change the way we look at the world."

What do you want? I'm a moron.

Posted by: Ace at 12:14 PM | Comments (120)
Post contains 459 words, total size 3 kb.

Pelosi called the Democrats' blockage of this bill vital -- if we don't stop this, she said, we may as well just go home.

It was always bad politics (nevermind awful policy) to oppose this. And yet they thought they could nevertheless afford defying the public on such a key issue.

Suddenly they've decided that maybe they can't afford to take that political hit.

I wonder what's changed.

Hopefully the ball has been sufficiently advanced towards the Drill Here Drill Now endzone that the ridiculous buffoons of the Gang of 10 will just give it up.

But I doubt it.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:50 AM | Comments (30)
Post contains 129 words, total size 1 kb.

Wow.

McCain had been preferred by 40% of independents until the convention.

More at Hot Air. Interestingly, McCain has increased his share of Democratic voters from 9% to 14%.

He also is maintaining his five point lead in the Gallup tracking poll.

Although some speculated the bounce would quickly dissipate, Gallup's numbers now indicate a "high probability of a chronic, as opposed to acute, skull-fucking."

Thanks to patrick.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:10 AM | Comments (64)
Post contains 133 words, total size 2 kb.

They look relatively benign, mostly, except for a couple of overly sexy ones (like Palin as Elvira -- I'm sure you all disapprove) and one goofed-out liberal making Palin into a gun-totin', meat-crazin' vampire. (Or, I guess, someone spoofing the left's view of her.)

But some good ones.

I like "Hot VP."

I'd pay to see that.

Thanks to... arthur, I think. I have a lot of windows open and I've lost track of what came from whom.

Posted by: Ace at 11:04 AM | Comments (20)
Post contains 84 words, total size 1 kb.

Here's a screen capture of CNN's front page as of 2:50 p.m.

Note the last line, which accuses her of cutting programs for people with disabilities. As FactCheck points out, that is simply not true:

Palin did not cut funding for special needs education in Alaska by 62 percent. She didnÂ’t cut it at all. In fact, she tripled per-pupil funding over just three years.

If I were the suspicious type, I would think that some web drone at CNN included that line in the summary knowing that's all people would read and believe about Governor Palin's actions on special education funding. But that can't be right, could it? What sort of news organization would knowingly spread false information about a candidate?

After all, they've got editors and fact checkers and stuff. Multiple layers, I hear.

Posted by: Slublog at 10:58 AM | Comments (40)
Post contains 160 words, total size 1 kb.

Buy soybean options *. Yeah, I know soybean prices are still way up there, but trust me, they're gonna go higher.

My reasoning? Due to the wetter spring we had here this year, the corn crop had a delayed planting. Traditionally, farmers get all their corn in before they switch to beans, so the delay on corn, coupled with the wet weather lasting through June, meant that our bean crop was especially late getting into the ground. A lot of people switched to short season beans (that's the number of days they'll take to fully germinate, some beans are selected genetically to mature faster than others), but many people in our area stuck with their original bean seed. I guess they figured that switching seed would cost extra, plus they typically insure their crop, so an early frost would be covered. Plus, short season seed always has lower per acre yields than full season seed, so that might have been a factor in the gamble. The bottom line is that people in Iowa who watch the bean crop are keeping their fingers crossed for a late frost to max out the growing season for both the corn & beans, but especially the beans.

This new announcement ain't gonna help. "The Al Gore Effect" has been shown to cause catastrophic drops in temperatures, especially when former Vice President Gore gives a speech. I'm not sure if it's too early, since I can remember several times in my lifetime that we've had our first hard frost before October 4, but with the condition of our bean crop, we need every day of growing season we can get this year.

Great, because of one fat politician and his bad karma, we're all gonna be paying an extra 10% for our food in the next year. Damn Al Gore and his hubris. Damn him all to Hell.

* - Dude, this is a definite Caveat Emptor situation. If you want to take investment advice from a guy who typically posts on the Joys of Bacon and how Joe Biden reminds me of Milton Waddams, go ahead. Just dont' come crying to me if a miracle happens and the crop comes in OK.

UPDATE: I probably should have mentioned that I heard on the noon farm show on WHO Radio today that the USDA is still bullish on the soybean crop, despite concerns. I'm just going off what I see locally, plus some speculation from a couple of market people I know.

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 09:29 AM | Comments (60)
Post contains 427 words, total size 2 kb.