President Obama: GOP Opposition to Stimulus 'Helped to Create the Teabaggers'

ABC News ^ | Tuesday, May 4, 2010 | Jake Tapper

[kristinn]

Three days after he decried the lack of civility in American politics, President Obama is quoted in a new book about his presidency referring to the Tea Party movement using a derogatory term with sexual connotations.

In Jonathan Alter’s “The Promise: President Obama, Year One,” President Obama is quoted in an interview saying that the unanimous vote of House Republicans vote against the stimulus bills “set the tenor for the whole year ... That helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the Republicans.”

Tea Party activists loath the term “tea baggers,” which has emerged in liberal media outlets and elsewhere as a method of mocking the activists and their concerns.

On Saturday, the president delivered a commencement address at the University of Michigan where he said one way “to keep our democracy healthy is to maintain a basic level of civility in our public debate … But we can’t expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down.”

[Fred Hayek]

“They only wanted to see Americans dead in war to oust President Bush.”

And that was evident early during the Bush administration. The media talking heads were all tingly about how all these body bags were going to come back and make the evil Bush look bad.

[Fred Hayek]

“Unfortunately, “language” and “words” are often picked and used to sway feelings and opinions, and that comes about by certain words and phrases having negative or positive connotations. This sort of practice seems to be getting worse these days and a lot of people have their political persuasions affected by mere words and not too much “thought” on the subject. And that’s unfortunate. “

Somewhat OT (maybe not so much). I was in a management course recently. One of the off-the-wall lines of the instructor was that communication is 90% related to emotion, only 10% related to fact. This is communication in a BUSINESS setting! We have become a nation of emos!

[Sgt_Schultze]

I've done it. At every instance of the utterance of the word teabagger, I respond that the speaker should stop the feltching. I've expanded the definition to include those people angered by tea-partiers. By my definition, Chris Matthews is a feltcher, Ohlbermann is a feltcher and most assuredly, Obama Jr is a feltcher.

[a fool in paradise]

Time had a reporter embedded with Al Qaeda and some news agency had footage of a sniper killing US troops from the sniper’s perspective. In another age that would have been cold treason.