Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Bark louder, little dog.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Battle won, war still ongoing.

“woke” is the new caravan.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Republicans in disarray!

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2008 / Magic Wand Fail

Magic Wand Fail

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Sarah Palin, yesterday:

If I called all the shots, and if I could wave a magic wand, I would be sitting at a kitchen table with more and more Americans, talking to them about our plan to get the economy back on track and winning the war and not having to rely on the old conventional ways of campaigning that includes those robocalls…

TPM today:

Carol Johnson, a retiree from Spooner, Wisconsin, and a second reader from Nevada, report to us that they received robocalls starring Palin herself.

Palin’s robocall touted both her and McCain as “mavericks” who have a feel for people’s economic suffering, vowed that they would reform Wall Street and Washington, and hit Barack Obama and Joe Biden for not “listening” to the American people.

Reader Interactions

87Comments

  1. 1.

    J.

    So is Palin a good witch or a bad witch?

    (Btw, I am pretty sure those were ruby slippers she was wearing during the VP debate. Can’t wait until that guy from Kansas pries them off her politically dead feet.)

  3. 3.

    Comrade Jake

    My favorite comment from a poster over at TPM:

    Until Palin arrived on the national scene, I never realized the word "maverick" had ten syllables.

  6. 6.

    Unrepentent Dennis - SGMM

    The Palin wave will collapse the first time some goober asks his wife to "wear these special glasses " when they’re having sex.

  7. 7.

    Stuck in the Funhouse

    LOL, I laughed, but hope that Good Fairy Witch or whatever wasn’t hurt in that fall. Palin/McLame and there imminent political fall, me care not so much.

  8. 8.

    The Moar You Know

    The Palin wave will collapse the first time some goober asks his wife to "wear these special glasses " when they’re having sex.

    Nonsense. The "submission" wives love that kind of thing.

  9. 9.

    demimondian

    @D-Chance.: Yeah, ’cause, you know, every electron is sacred, every electron is unique. (Then again, that last part is actually true, by the Fermi Exclusion Principle, so maybe I shouldn’t make the joke.)

  11. 11.

    gbear

    Do you even bother reviewing your boss’s posts before wasting space on his site with these repeat threads?

    But this one goes to eleven.

  12. 12.

    JL

    Lifelong conservative Republican Ken Adelman to vote for Obama, blasts McCain and Palin
    Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.

    When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.

    Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate

    From Americablog and the New Yorker. lol what will Rush say now?

  13. 13.

    jake 4 that 1

    I’m trying to imagine the trauma of picking up the phone only to have your ear violated by that Minnefauxta clogged-nostril braying that comes out of Palin’s mouth.

    The horror! The horror!

  14. 14.

    Svensker

    Lifelong conservative Republican Ken Adelman to vote for Obama, blasts McCain and Palin
    Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.

    Conservative Republican is not what I’d call Adelman, more like fascist neo-con warmonger prick bastard scum douchenozzle. Ahem. The fact that he is endorsing Obama makes me uneasy.

  15. 15.

    Cris v.3.1

    Do you even bother reviewing your boss’s posts before wasting space on his site with these repeat threads?

    "Your boss!" That phrase makes me think of Officer Marvin Nash begging Mr. Blonde for mercy.

  17. 17.

    Zifnab

    One of the reasons I’m happy I don’t live in a swing state. If I was from Ohio, I’d be about eight seconds from strangling the entire GOP campaign aperatus.

  18. 18.

    JL

    @Svensker: Although I agree with your analysis, if Adelman thinks McCain’s temperment and judgment is shaky, then McCain is crazier than a rabid fox.

  20. 20.

    Stuck in the Funhouse

    Conservative Republican is not what I’d call Adelman, more like fascist neo-con warmonger prick bastard scum douchenozzle. Ahem. The fact that he is endorsing Obama makes me uneasy.

    He has been one of the worst of the bunch of shithead warmongers. My own guess, he trying to undo his "cakewalk" support for the Iraq War. Imagine that, a neocon with a conscious. Or maybe he’s trying to pre-empt the verdict at his own possible war crimes trial. You know, go all Vichy Wingnut before the reckoning comes.

  21. 21.

    Shygetz

    @Stuck in the Funhouse:

    My own guess, he trying to undo his "cakewalk" support for the Iraq War. Imagine that, a neocon with a conscious. Or maybe he’s trying to pre-empt the verdict at his own possible war crimes trial. You know, go all Vichy Wingnut before the reckoning comes.

    Or maybe he’s an egocentric douche who can’t stand losing anything, so at this late hour is looking for any excuse to leave the sinking ship ahead of the other rats.

    Just a thought…

  22. 22.

    Tsulagi

    …and hit Barack Obama and Joe Biden for not “listening” to the American people.

    Unlike The Mav and Mavette during their one-way robocalls.

  23. 23.

    MikeL

    D-Chance: Mocking Sarah Palin’s ineptitude is never a waste. Had Tim not posted, he would have wasted the opportunity.
    But, if John has a problem with this post, he’ll take it up with Tim himself.

  24. 24.

    Adam

    if I could wave a magic wand, I would be sitting at a kitchen table with more and more Americans

    Seven kitchen tables = seven times as many Americans!

  26. 26.

    JGabriel

    Unrepentent Dennis – SGMM:

    The Palin wave will collapse the first time some goober asks his wife to "wear these special glasses " when they’re having sex.

    And I’m suddenly reminded of Wesley telling Lilah to leave on the glasses on "Angel".

    Mmm, Lilah.

    .

  29. 29.

    JGabriel

    Then again, that last part is actually true, by the Fermi Exclusion Principle…

    Er, I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that’s the Pauli Exclusion Principle.

    .

  30. 30.

    Socraticsilence

    Palin wouldn’t want to be at teh kitchen table with the average American, they’d tool on her dumb ass.

  33. 33.

    Rommie

    Personally, I took this entry as a response to Fearless Leader’s original, so the sacred Electrons weren’t wasted to begin with.

    Getting tackled hard by your opponent is one thing. This is the equivalent of running clueless out the back of your own end zone.

  34. 34.

    Jon H

    Obama’s campaign should put together an ad showing Bush’s frequent use of "if I had a magic wand"-type statements, with Palin’s, and any of McCain if he’s used it.

  35. 35.

    Jon H

    "The Palin wave will collapse the first time some goober asks his wife to "wear these special glasses " when they’re having sex."

    Or until someone finds Palin glasses tacked up over a glory hole.

  36. 36.

    SamFromUtah

    Carol Johnson, a retiree from Spooner, Wisconsin…

    Hey, I’ve been there! Only I keep screwing up and calling it Wooner, Spisconsin.

  37. 37.

    JGabriel

    Jon H:

    Obama’s campaign should put together an ad showing Bush’s frequent use of "if I had a magic wand"-type statements, with Palin’s, and any of McCain if he’s used it.

    Or The Daily Show.

    .

  40. 40.

    dmsilev

    @demimondian:

    Yeah, ‘cause, you know, every electron is sacred, every electron is unique. (Then again, that last part is actually true, by the Fermi Exclusion Principle, so maybe I shouldn’t make the joke.)

    (a) As pointed out above, it’s the Pauli Exclusion Principle, and (b), it’s wrong anyway. Electrons are quantum-mechanically indistinguishable. The exclusion principle says that if you have two electrons (or, more generally, two particles with half-integer spin), they can’t occupy the same state. You cannot, however, determine *which* electron is in which state; all you can do is say which states have electrons in them and which don’t.

    -dms

  42. 42.

    JGabriel

    HuffPo:

    John McCain’s campaign manager [Rick Davis] says he is reconsidering using Barack Obama’s relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright as a campaign issue during the election’s closing weeks.

    I think it’s time for the Rev. Wright to come out and endorse John McCain.

    .

  43. 43.

    demimondian

    Electrons are quantum-mechanically indistinguishable. The exclusion principle says that if you have two electrons (or, more generally, two particles with half-integer spin), they can’t occupy the same state. You cannot, however, determine which electron is in which state; all you can do is say which states have electrons in them and which don’t.

    Oh, for heaven’s sake. I know that.

    In fact, you can’t even say *that*, since the electrons in the cloud of a given atom don’t actually have any "independent existence" in the quantum sense, and they aren’t "in" any given state at any given time. What Pauli says is that each orbital for each atom is occupied at most once, no less — and no more. It says nothing universally, and I made a universal claim.

    [grmbl. can’t even make a joke around here.]

  48. 48.

    Tsulagi

    Balloon Juice: come for the snark – stay for the Quantum Physics.

    Maybe could convince the really smart serious adults still in power to build a wingnut collider. To test the theory some intelligent particles do exist in them, no matter how transitory. Wingnuts would happily volunteer; Country First. If those particles found, it’d be a breakthrough on the order of Brownback’s talking snowflake zygotes.

  49. 49.

    Stuck in the Funhouse

    In fact, you can’t even say that, since the electrons in the cloud of a given atom don’t actually have any "independent existence" in the quantum sense, and they aren’t "in" any given state at any given time. What Pauli says is that each orbital for each atom is occupied at most once, no less—and no more. It says nothing universally, and I made a universal claim.

    I knew all that too, but was just to modest to say it. :)

  50. 50.

    SGEW

    Balloon Juice: come for the snark – stay for the Quantum Physics. And return for the pie.

    Where’s my god damned pie?!

  51. 51.

    Unrepentent Dennis - SGMM

    Maybe could convince the really smart serious adults still in power to build a wingnut collider.

    Not sure about the science but the idea of accelerating wingnuts to some nice fraction of C and then smacking them into each other does have its appeal.
    – And make mine pecan [ie.

  52. 52.

    Comrade Jake

    So I assume Rush Limbaugh & Co are frantically searching for that black mistress/love child Ken Adelman has? I mean, what else could explain the switch to Obama? Surely it’s not LOGIC!

  54. 54.

    Martin

    Speaking with reporters in Colorado yesterday, Palin said she does not agree with Rep. Michele Bachmann’s recent comments suggesting that some congressmen hold “anti-American views,” NBC/NJ’s Matthew E. Berger reports. “Well that’s quite subjective,” she said of Bachmann’s comments. “I would think that anybody running and wanting to serve in Congress is quite pro-American because that’s what the mission is, to better this country, so I would question the intent of that."

    So Obama, simply on account of running for office and presumably for already being in Congress, is by-definition pro-American now according to Gov. Palin. Good to know. How about you run an ad with those words, Obama?

  56. 56.

    Comrade Jake

    “Well that’s quite subjective,” she said of Bachmann’s comments. “I would think that anybody running and wanting to serve in Congress is quite pro-American because that’s what the mission is, to better this country, so I would question the intent of that."

    You read that and can’t help but think that if someone would just walk her through the logic of the whole thing, she’d realize she should vote for Obama.

  57. 57.

    JL

    Now this is an endorsement that I can agree with, from Washington Note. Google’s Eric Schmidt is backing Obama.

    Apparently, Schmidt is going to hit the trail for Obama despite his company’s relationship with the McCain campaign and a host of other Republican campaigns across the country. According to a well-placed source, the McCain folks are absolutely livid. Since Google’s pretty much the game in Internet search, it’s highly unlikely they’ll pull ads or substantially redirect ad money over some hurt feelings — but my guess is they’d like to very badly.

  58. 58.

    Punchy

    orbitals occupied at most once? this reads odd…..since each orbital can have 2 electrons, I took this as imcorrect. but as u may be invoking Hiesenberg’s (sp?) uncertainty princ., and its been too long since I’ve dug into quantum mechs, i’ll take yo wurd on dat. shaould we go Huns Rule next, or Aufbau?

  59. 59.

    JL

    How long will it take for Rush to say that Google’s exec is selecting Obama because he’s black?

  61. 61.

    Stuck in the Funhouse

    Maybe could convince the really smart serious adults still in power to build a wingnut collider.

    Head, meet wall.

  62. 62.

    Unrepentent Dennis - SGMM

    Google’s Eric Schmidt is backing Obama.

    Google Search: "John McCain"
    Returns:
    How Badly Does John McCain Suck?
    John McCain: Allegations of barnyard sex "totally untrue."
    John McCain: A History of Angry Outbursts
    John McCain yells at self…

    etc.

  63. 63.

    Comrade Jake

    @JL:

    If you search on Google, the results show up in a blue font. This shows that the company is biased towards Democrats.

    Plus, the ‘G’ in Google is in blue font. QED, sayz Rush Limbaugh.

  64. 64.

    Unrepentent Dennis - SGMM

    Head, meet wall.

    Maybe a giant hand whose palm strikes their foreheads at ten thousand miles an hour.

  65. 65.

    Comrade Tax Analyst

    Wow! Snark & Quantum Physics & Pie & FoxHiresJudithMiller-Fail & Make Mine Pecan & Half-Integers & David Duke sends roses & Occupied Orbitals & and Atilla + Huns~!~

    This beats "Lions & Tigers & Bears & Shit, Oh, My", all to Hell, at least IMHO.

  67. 67.

    demimondian

    @JL: Eric does not speak for the company when he speaks as Eric Schmidt, private citizen, any more than I do when I speak either under my own name or as demi . (Yes, I work for big G.) What Dr. Schmidt chooses to do during the next two weeks doesn’t reflect Google’s corporate position on the election.

  68. 68.

    Shaggy

    Put it together and what have you got? Bibbity Bobbity Boo!!

    Why doesn’t Palin just use her bevy of public appearances/rallies to talk about the economy and provide details regarding how McCain wants to help us Average Americans in these times of great financial woe?

    Oh, that must be because these appearances are for fightin’ the demons ah librlizm.

    Sarah, please just smack them ruby reds together and repeat after me:
    "There’s no place like Wasilla…there’s no place like Wasilla…there’s no place like Wasilla…"

  71. 71.

    Martin

    Heh, Joe Klein is excommunicated from the straight crash express.

    UPDATE: Campaign spokesperson Michael Goldfarb responded that "we don’t allow Daily Kos diarists on board either."

    Guess McCain isn’t planning on staying in the Senate after all. Klein won’t let that one go without reminding him of the relative reach of Time vs. random GOS blogger.

  73. 73.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    Considering how well things are working out for the McCain campaign, shouldn’t the title of this post be:
    Magic Fail Wand

  74. 74.

    Comrade Jake

    @Martin:

    The best part of that Politico article?

    Similarly, other Time magazine staffers, including Washington bureau chief Jay Carney, " reporter Michael Scherer, and Mark Halperin (The Page), have not had a problem with access.

    Halperin hasn’t had a problem with access? That, my friends, is shocking! Shocking I say!

  75. 75.

    kay

    I’m now getting robocalls in Ohio begging me to attend Palin rallies that are in a blood-red County 90 miles from my home.

    I’m a registered Democrat, and I voted weeks ago for Obama, as did my husband.

    The number at the end is the RNC in DC. I called and left a message.

    I think those rallies may not be as popular as we have been led to believe.

    Perhaps.

  76. 76.

    demimondian

    orbitals occupied at most once? this reads odd

    ‘Cause it’s wrong — this time for my own stupid real fault. (The other one was a joke; this was just stupid.)

    Here’s the physics. Fermions (electrons and a number of other particles) have half-integral spin, and Pauli states no two fermions can occupy the same *quantum state*. However, since electrons in a single orbital — which don’t exist if you look for them — are distinguishable by their magnetic spin, there are at most *two* (not one) in any given orbital. So, yes, you’re right about the Schrodinger-relatedness of this.

    Now, the whole Pauli exclusion issue operates at many scale simultaneously. For electrons in an atom, we see orbital exclusion, from which we get effects as diverse as bands in hydrogen atoms and metallic behavior for electrons in continuum orbitals. For white dwarfs, the exclusion principle means that eventually the gravitational collapse of a star of mass less than Chandrasekhar limit, in which the protons and electrons remain separate, is eventually limited by the fact that the electrons in *that star* need to all be in different quantum states, and that means the star can’t collapse any further. For stars of greater mass, but of mass less than about 4 solar masses, there’s enough energy floating around to fuse electrons and protons together to make neutrons, but Pauli exclusion (once more) forbids collapse beyond a certain point, yielding a neutron star.

    Once you get beyond that point, things get kind of weird, though.

  78. 78.

    jcricket

    Fermions (electrons and a number of other particles) have half-integral spin, and Pauli states no two fermions can occupy the same quantum state

    But what about the Neutrinos?!? Won’t someone think of the Neutrinos?

    You’re probably in favor of the Neutrino holocaust. Socialism!

    I want to name the new pocket dimension ("real america") that exists somewhere I can’t see after Sarah Palin.

  79. 79.

    Delia

    Here’s the physics. Fermions (electrons and a number of other particles) have half-integral spin, and Pauli states no two fermions can occupy the same quantum state. However, since electrons in a single orbital—which don’t exist if you look for them—are distinguishable by their magnetic spin, there are at most two (not one) in any given orbital. So, yes, you’re right about the Schrodinger-relatedness of this.

    Whoa, I was, like, out phonebanking for the senatorial candidate of the blue persuasion and I totally missed the physics lecture. Is this going to be on the test?

  82. 82.

    blogreeder

    I’m still kinda undecided. Should I go with Barack "Spread the Wealth" Obama? I’m sure it was just an unintentional slip of the tongue. Nothing scary. My money is still my money under that one. Biden will surely make me feel safer:

    "Remember I said it standing here, if you don’t remember anything else I said," Biden continued. "Watch, we’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.

    "I promise you it will occur. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it’s going happen. I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate."

    OMG!

  84. 84.

    Conservatively Liberal

    Maybe could convince the really smart serious adults still in power to build a wingnut collider. To test the theory some intelligent particles do exist in them, no matter how transitory. Wingnuts would happily volunteer; Country First. If those particles found, it’d be a breakthrough on the order of Brownback’s talking snowflake zygotes.

    If someone builds this, I call shotgun on loading up and launching the wingnuts!

    If we are going to discuss the Pauli Exclusion Principle, then I demand equal time for discussion of the VSEPR (Valance Shell Electron Pair Repulsion) theory, the Octet Rule and the exceptions to the Octet Rule.

    Fair is fair!

  85. 85.

    Tim F.

    Blogreeder, you seem to miss the point. We don’t want you. Democrats don’t need to destroy the GOP when we can narrow it down to Pat Robertson and bitter enders like you. Barring a complete overhaul along the lines proposed by Ross Douthat and Andy Sullivan* the party will be a regional band of theocrats and ideologically pure numbskulls drifting towards third party status. That’s a win.

    (*) also, monkeys could fly out of my butt.

  86. 86.

    blogreeder

    Blogreeder, you seem to miss the point. We don’t want you.

    Where was that point? I don’t think you read my comment. Your post had nothing to do with needing help from the other side either.

    bitter enders like you

    Now that is classic, remember how bitter you guys were at the height of the Iraq war? And using an obvious Rumsfeld reference about the Bathists in Iraq towards the Republicans? Oh, I get it since Obama’s middle name is Hussein it’s just like Iraq, only in reverse. The socialists will win this time around, right?

    Anyway, there is no bitter on my part. I’m just being snarky and you’re taking this way too serious.

    I’m worried your campaign will backfire. There is a thing as over confidence. Why should democrats vote because obviously he’s already won? I’m not even in a battle ground state and Obama commercials are on all the time. Overload.

    Although I think you guys might be giving Palin a boost with all this publicity. Remember there is no such thing as bad publicity.

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