Witness Walks Back Claim Obama Called Foes “Teabag” And “Extremists”
The right has been going nuts over the allegation that President Obama called the anti-health care reform brigade teabaggers and “extremists” in his private pep-rally with House Dems on Saturday.
But the source for the quote from Obama — Dem Rep. Earl Blumenauer — is now walking back the claim. His spokesperson tells me he had only meant to paraphrase the president and wasn’t quoting him directly.
Blumenauer told The New York Times that the President asked: “Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care?” He added that Obama said a loss “will encourage the extremists.”
“Teabag” is taken in those ranks as an insult, and conservatives grabbed onto the quote, arguing that it was at odds with Obama’s brand, his vow to bring people together and to be a leader for all Americans.
But Blumenauer spokesperson Erin Allweiss emails that Obama never said that:
“Congressman Blumenauer was simply summarizing in his own words the President’s remarks following the caucus meeting.”
Surely folks on the right will be very relieved to hear that the witness they were citing is now saying Obama may not have disparaged them, after all.
This blog’s homepage is here. RSS feed here. Twitter feed here. Email me here.
Imagine that;
They name it the Teabag movement, and show up to rallies wearing teabags, but those teabag wearers get very upset if someone refers to them as teabaggers!
Fair enough. I respect the the wishes of all those douchebaggers.
They got to him. They probably have his family in a FEMA/concentration camp. Or better yet they probably paid him off with all that abortion mill money. And besides he probably prays to a picture of Obama anyway at night.
I bet you any amount of money that by the end of the day I can go around to some of these right wing blogs and actually find people saying these things. Seriously
sg! you aren’t around enough. I’m gonna keep saying that.
One, you are misinformed. They name it the Tea Party movement.
Disagree all you want. Argue on the merits. Resorting to namecalling and innuendo like the Obama Administration and his allies in the mainstream media only tells us you don’t HAVE an arguement.
As for Blumenauer, I think he got a breathless call from the WH demanding he take the hit. Which he’s now trying to do.
@Liam – Only THEY are allowed to call themselves teabaggers. It’s an insult coming from anyone else.
@ChristinaKB – Riiigghhhhtttt……Like the Republicans aren’t capable of over the top rhetoric and HYPER-BOWL! And they never, never lie.
Now Now People.
Play nice. If people who wear teabags in public do not want to be referred to as teabaggers, then we should all respect the wishes of those teabag wearing douchebaggers.
It’a just really hard to take someone serious when they have 20 teabags hanging off the sides of their cowboy hat while carrying a sign that says “keep the government out of my medicare”.
I’m still floored they call themselves The Teabagger Movement.
I enjoy the Urban Dictionary Definition of Teabagger.
A misinformed, right-wing corporate media consumer who often fails to understand that BOTH major parties represent a corrupt plutocracy that steals from the middle class by taxing labor and profiting from corporate tax subsidies.
A teabagger also often fails to acknowledge that George W. Bush and his neo-conservative minions perpetrated one of the boldest and most egregious executive power grabs in the history of the United States. Furthermore, teabaggers mistakenly continue to blame a newly elected President Obama for all that ails the United States of America, based on a grossly flawed perception of reality (including latent racial prejudice) and despite the fact the U.S. economy collapsed on the previous administration’s watch.
Teabaggers are also known to base their misguided, right-wing-media-inspired beliefs about President Obama on stupid conspiracy theories about totalitarian takeovers, FEMA camps, etc., despite the fact these very same theories have been circulating around on the Internet for years, and were originally ascribed to neo-conservative cabalists at a time when Barack Obama had not even entered national politics. Teabaggers also are known to be particularly paranoid, xenophobic and intolerant, especially with regard to immigrants and anyone who isn’t white.
Additionally, teabaggers generally echo stupid myths about entitlement spending (it actually only accounts for about 1% of federal budget spending), have no idea that most poor people in America are not lazy, actually do work and don’t want to be on welfare, and have no idea what socialism actually means or that socialist reform in this country is actually what allowed a middle class to flourish and ultimately make the U.S. one of the most prosperous nations in human history.
Furthermore, teabaggers incorrectly equate socialism with Stalinism, think a system that rewards greed (capitalism) is the divine preference (despite Gospel evidence to the contrary), and are shameless champions of a misguided belief in American exceptionalism. Teabaggers also fail to recognize the inherently unpatriotic nature of their failed every-man-for-himself ideology that ultimately vilifies anyone who supports public policy aimed at reaching out to fellow Americans in need. They celebrate an exploitative corporatocracy (holy creator of jobs, blah blah blah) while denigrating the little guy for being “weak.”
Interestingly, teabaggers uphold an immoral, morbidly obese, twice divorced, draft-dodging, college dropout and known drug addict as their de facto leader, and are even known to advocate burning books. Of course, teabaggers fail to recognize the blatant hypocrisy within the GOP and tend to oversimplify all political debate and social issues, much like their pseudo-intellectual, fat-*** leader.
Finally, incredibly, teabaggers fail to recognize the hysterical double entendre associated with their proudly adopted teabag moniker.
Every village has its idiots, of course, but it’s sad when citizens of any nation allow themselves to be whipped into a frenzy en masse by a state-run propaganda machine masquerading as a legitimate, fair, balanced and independent news organization. Teabaggers are right to believe the future of the U.S.A. is in jeopardy, but sadly they have not yet correctly identified the real enemy. Perhaps when teabaggers finally grow up and mature into thinking adults, they will see the right-leaning power establishment for the oppressive and cunning beast that it is.
Teabagger: We don’t care that George Bush tripled the deficit and lied us into a war. The new administration only cut taxes for 90% of the population… fascists. Let’s go throw some Lipton tea bags into a fountain!”
lol
When I see those videos of people with teabags hanging off them, the following Abe Simpson Soliloquy always comes to mind:
”
We can’t bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell ‘em stories that don’t go anywhere – like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ‘em. “Give me five bees for a quarter,” you’d say.
Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones…”
Christina, I’ll give you an argument, how about America is sick of terrorists like yourself.
If you want to talk about substance, fine, let’s talk substance. For example, why does the Neo-Confederate House bill allowed insurance corporations to profit off people dying from pre-existing conditions? Why does the Neo-Confederate House bill allow insurance corporations to drop individuals from coverage when they get sick even though they’ve been paying the premiums that have been rising at 2-3 times inflation? Why does the Tea Party crowd insist on terrorizing normal Americans with poster-sized images of Holocaust victims?
In other words, Christina. STFU and climb back in your American Taliban cave.
Here’s another great urban dictionary def of a teabagger.
5. teabagger
get this on a mug
A conservative republican who protests against income taxes by rubbing their nutsacks in each other’s faces.
I lol’ed on the last one. God I’m such a juvenile.
I spit out my tea on that last one, MFA.
Here is a picture of a sign from a tea bagger protest: http://is.gd/4Rb53
It says: “Teabag Obama”
You can find many more signs, t-shirts, coffee cups, etc. if you do a Google Image search for teabag + Obama
I think it is reasonable to call anyone who is declaring that they would “teabag” the president a “teabagger”.
If you would prefer to not be called a “teabagger”, please stop making signs about how you are going to teabag people.
The people who are upset by the use of the term teabag are probably the same people who love to call the Democratic Party the “Democrat Party.”
Teabaggers are Dyslexic Patriots.
They are demanding Representation Without Taxation.
I hope that the Public Option will cover treatments for their affliction.
“As for Blumenauer, I think he got a breathless call from the WH demanding he take the hit. Which he’s now trying to do.”
And, see, that’s pretty much the problem we have with you people in, you should pardon the expression, a nutshell. Confronted by a real fact, you and your friends invariably respond by making up a libel out of thin air, sticking the words “I think” in front of it and then, presto!, another made-up “fact” gets woven into the larger mass of delusion and misinformation that drive your movement.
It’s official in Florida, a third party.
“After hard-line conservatives and tea party activists forced moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava to drop out of the race in New York’s 23rd congressional district, they announced that Florida Gov. Charlie Crist would likely be their next target in the GOP civil war. Politico’s Ben Smith reports that some Florida Republicans recently registered an official “Tea Party” to challenge both Republicans and Democrats:”
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/09/florida-tea-party/
So the bullies who run around calling us the “Democrat Party” and “socialists” and “America haters” and “racists” is offended because we call them Teabaggers?
Awesome!
Teabaggers it is!
Steve, exactly. One of the better examples these days is:
Dems dislike health insurance companies profiting off of consumers who are being denied services they have paid for =
Dems hate profits =
Dems hate free market =
Dems hate America.
Of course in the whackjob neoconfederate mind, that process takes about 3 milliseconds, so all we see if the end result:
HCR = Dems hate America.
Actually, probably, most of the Teabaggers are simply TOLD that bottom line in talking points and don’t actually go through the mental gymnastics themselves.
It really is BASE thinking. As in, base mental capacity, or in other words, about the same computational power as occurs in the brain of a lizard.
# Bilgeman | November 9th, 2009 at 08:00 am
Morning, Plumbers!
I think I’m going to be following the Dow Jones pretty closely today to see how the market reacts to the passage of Socialist Utopiacare.
Are you into health care stocks in your 401k?
You might want to watch the DJ too.
—————–
Dow closed today at record high for ‘09 and highest since Oct. ‘08. I guess they really like “Socialist Utopiacare”.
If I can’t get a proper cup of coffee in a proper copper coffee pot I’ll have a cup of tea!
New post-election poll on NJ/VA, key findings:
* The marriage gap–the difference in voter participation and voting behavior between married women and unmarried women–continues to drive electoral outcomes, with unmarried women continuing to represent a huge (26 percent of the voting age population) underdeveloped bloc of voters.
* Voters in the Rising American Electorate played a primary role in Obama’s 2008 victory, but too many stayed home in 2009.
* The elections in New Jersey and Virginia were not a referendum on Obama’s performance or even the pace of change in the country.
http://www.gqrr.com/index.php?ID=2415
Those Teabags have lost their potency. You can only reuse them so many times, before ending up with just cups of urine.
Teabaggers are pisse*d off, and serving up cups of Lipton Pee.
I swear these people will make up an outrage over anything. They’re running around with tea bags hanging off their hats and they get outraged over being called teabaggers? They carry signs with Obama as Hitler and Health Care Reform as the equivalent of Dachau and they’re NOT extremists?
God I wish these people would go away.
I, on the other hand, love those Teabag wearers, and want them never to leave. I hope they keep serving up their cups of Lipton Pee for ever. They are the Progressive movement’s best friend.
Whoo-Hoo! The Teabag Party!
Which will the moderates/indies choose? The GOP, which has an approval rating somewhere not much farther north than Atilla the Hun; the Teabaggers, who by definition almost nowhere resemble “moderate”; or the Democrats?
arrgghh- should be a comma after ‘almost’. Apologies…
If you have stoopid tea bags hanging around your stoopid head, you’ll be called stoopid tea-baggers. Live with it.
OT from TPM:
“If your friends told you they were staying in to watch Saturday Night Live this weekend, chances are they weren’t talking about that show on NBC.
According to an internal C-Span email obtained by TPMDC, the network’s website served up 201,741 live streams of the House debate of the health care reform bill Saturday, the highest online viewership C-Span has seen since President Obama was inaugurated in January. (A C-Span employee told us the network doesn’t track how many people watch its three cable channels on TV.)
In D.C., watching the day-long debate unfold became something of a social event for nerds. Twitter was alive with snarky comments about the Representatives speaking at any given moment and at least a few bars tuned TVs to the debate, running it alongside college football.”
Andy, you beat me to it on that dow index. (not that I believe in that index). bilge sure lives up to his name.
OT but important
“Pushchair-maker Maclaren USA has announced a recall of 1m pushchairs after a dozen children had their fingertips amputated in the hinge.
The amputations happened when children placed their finger in the hinge while the pushchair, or stroller, was being unfolded.
The recall involves all Maclaren single and double umbrella pushchairs.
The firm has urged consumers to stop using the pushchairs immediately and to contact it for a repair kit.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/americas/8351424.stm
Fvcking murdoch
“Rupert Murdoch has said he will try to block Google from using news content from his companies.
The billionaire told Sky News Australia he will explore ways to remove stories from Google’s search indexes, including Google News.
Mr Murdoch’s News Corp had previously said it would start charging online customers across all its websites.
He believes that search engines cannot legally use headlines and paragraphs of news stories as search results.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/business/8351331.stm
“I, on the other hand, love those Teabag wearers”
Yeah you and Chuck are right = they are our best friends. I just wish they weren’t so loud, but then they might not be so good at what they do for us.
“If you have stoopid tea bags hanging around your stoopid head, you’ll be called stoopid tea-baggers. Live with it.”
LOL!!
They were so proud, too, of those purple bandaids.
FTW:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Teabagger
“Teabaggers”, for the record, named themselves.
Teabaggers are a crowd led by Republicans that don’t know the Constitution, don’t know the Pledge of Allegiance, and think that tax cuts for 90% of American wage earners is a bad thing.
Since when did it become bad to be “anti-government”? Sounds like the right thing to me. So were the founding fathers. Obama wants to be royalty.
tropic-
You lost me at Obama wants to be royalty…
“Teabaggers are Dyslexic Patriots.
They are demanding Representation Without Taxation.”
Classic leftist inversion of reality.
Approximately half of Americans don’t pay any income taxes. The Dem party’s basic operational principle is to create a system of representation without taxation — indeed, tyrannical power without taxation. It is the Dem party that seeks to have 51% vote to tax the 49% for their benefit.
“Teabaggers are a crowd led by Republicans that don’t know the Constitution”
That’s the laugh of the day. You socialists are utterly ignorant of the Constitution and the fact that nothing in it authorizes national health care, let alone invasions like an insurance mandate and fines.
# tropicgirl | November 9th, 2009 at 04:45 pm
Since when did it become bad to be “anti-government”? Sounds like the right thing to me. So were the founding fathers. Obama wants to be royalty
……………………….
And they were all for Owning Slaves, and for not letting Women vote. They would have arrested you, and made an indentured servant out of you, for daring to act like an uppity women. Nice role models you have there, sister!
nickleback was one of the right wingers who supported the Republican’s evisceration of core Constitutional provisions and the shredding of many of the Bill of Rights.
Under nickleback’s Republican Party Habeas Corpus was eliminated (Habeas Corpus is explicitly guaranteed in the core text of the Constitution).
Republican Bush was also illegally spying on Americans, a HUGE expansion of government power, something that right wingers were obscenely supportive of.
And I’ve got to wonder if nickleback’s interpretation of the Constitution is the same as his ally bilgewater, who wants a return to the days of slavery.
As Liam rightly notes, “tropicgirl” is PROTECTED by the government, under our Amended Constitution, so that she can’t be sold for property and even gets to VOTE for who will represent her in our American Democracy.
Why do right wingers hate American Democracy?
“”"Since when did it become bad to be “anti-government”? Sounds like the right thing to me. So were the founding fathers. Obama wants to be royalty.”"”
Oh right. I remember you Neo-Confederates were singing a SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT tune during Bush’s dictatorship.
Scumbag Neocon Taliban. Go back to your cave.
You know what REALLY pisses them off? Just go up to any protesting teabagger, preferably a nice hot cup of tea in your hands (because it’s deathly freezing out there), and simply ask them this simple question:
“If government run health care is so bad, what plans do you have that’d prove so much better for the upper, middle and lower classes?”
They turn all sorts of fantastical shades of red to purple to orange.
They no longer deal in reality, they will not wield power in this country for quite some time, and they will constantly choose to deny this reality time and time again. This is why no one will ever listen to them, not the government, not the world, no one.
Congrats Teabaggers, you’ve hammered the final nail into the coffin of the Republican Party, now we’ll reward all of your hard efforts with full, affordable health care.
Wow, lot of cocksuckers on this site. (Cocksuckers, of course, refers to Obama supporters. You’re the ones who are setting the tone of the discussion, you need to accept your label.)