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Rest of Title: in Interview With Newsweek Editor White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said he did not know and could not imagine asking President Barack Obama whether he used the vulgar sexual term “tea baggers” to describe Americans active in the Tea Party movement. “I can’t imagine I would ask the president that,” Gibbs said at Thursday’s White House press briefing. According to Newsweek senior editor and columnist Jonathan Alter in his new book, The Promise: President Obama, Year One, the president used the slur to describe the largely conservative activists of the Tea Party movement, which has been...

Last Saturday, Americans were again instructed on their political manners by their Moralizer in Chief. While delivering a commencement address to the University of Michigan's graduating students, President Barack Obama's comments were really meant for the nation's political class. His speech dealt with the importance of "a basic level of civility in our public debate." "We cannot expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down," Mr. Obama said. He spoke against "demonizing" political opponents or "questioning their motives or their patriotism." It is "not the hurt feelings or the bruised egos" such rhetoric causes...

The term "tea-bagger" is like uttering the "n" word, some say. Though he aspires to promote civility, evidence has surfaced that President Obama has added "tea-bagger" to his public lexicon, though it's considered a cheap and tawdry insult by "tea party" activists. Watchdogs at Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) barked when they saw the proof, tucked in a sneak peak of Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter's new book, "The Promise: President Obama, Year One," to be released May 18. Indeed, it appears the president joined certain partisan critics and the liberal media, and took the tea-bag plunge.

Unbelievable! Obama tells the truth!… From Aaron Wiener at The Washington Independent… I’m just starting to dig through an advance copy of “The Promise,” Jonathan Alter’s new book on President Obama’s first year in office, set for publication on May 18. But there are some great nuggets right at the start. Alter describes the chaotic scene at a Sept. 25, 2008, meeting on the impending Wall Street bailout at the White House with Obama, John McCain, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, President Bush and congressional leaders from both parties — a meeting at which Obama decisively took the upper hand in...

Doubtless the defense here will be that The One wasn’t aware of the sexual connotation and therefore had no idea that the term offends tea partiers. Funny thing, though: Offhand, I can’t recall a single instance of him saying “teabaggers” publicly. Not in speeches, not in interviews, not at town halls, not even at that fundraiser a few weeks ago when he goofed on protesters by saying they should be thanking him for cutting their taxes, i.e. for running up gigantic deficits. If he doesn’t know the term’s impolitic, how come he hasn’t innocently used it on camera yet? He...

The term "tea-bagger" is like uttering the "n" word, some say. Though he aspires to promote civility, evidence has surfaced that President Obama has added "tea-bagger" to his public lexicon, though it's considered a cheap and tawdry insult by "tea party" activists. Watchdogs at Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) barked when they saw the proof, tucked in a sneak peak of Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter's new book, "The Promise: President Obama, Year One," to be released May 18. "This remark is the equivalent of using the 'n' word. It shows contempt for middle America, expressed knowingly, contemptuously, on purpose, and...

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 November 30, 2009, 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...

As if allowing Jay-Z into the Situation Room wasn’t enough, now our esteemed, class act, President is dropping the term “tea-bagger” to describe members of the Tea Party, via Jake Tapper: 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...

NEW YORK (AP) -- President Barack Obama reprimanded top Pentagon officials last year for pressing publicly for a troop increase in Afghanistan. That's according to "The Promise," a book on Obama's first year in office by Newsweek writer Jonathan Alter.

In his new book on President Obama's first year in office, "The Promise," Jonathan Alter includes a quote from the president's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, illustrating just how opposed Emanuel was to the president's push for comprehensive health care reform. "I begged him not to do this," Emanuel told Alter, as detailed by the Washington Post's Greg Sargent, writing off advanced excerpts put out ahead of the book's release Tuesday. (Hotsheet just got its copy of the book and is planning to dig into it this weekend.) The president overruled Emanuel, telling him, according to the book, that he...

In 2009, leftoids Keith Olbermann and Jonathan Alter were shocked by Seymour Hersh’s claims that Dick Cheney ran assassination squads using military personnel to take out enemy targets – you know, just like the current President... “There’s a lot more that happened in that Bush administration, directly out of the vice-president’s office, that we don’t know about yet,” warned Alter, adding that once the full details become known, they “will curl our hair.” That last line would carry greater power if Alter weren’t bald. And also a screaming hypocrite. Now that Barack Obama is running an assassination squad – directly...

Q. How does a liberal describe giving seniors choice over their health care coverage? A. Murder. On Cenk Uygur's MSNBC show this evening, Jonathan Alter claimed that in proposing to issue Medicare vouchers, Republicans want "to throw granny into the snow." For good measure, Cenk came out in favor of the "Robin Hood" approach to taxation--robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. View video here.

Of all the Obama sycophants in the press, could the president possibly have a more abject apologist than Jonathan Alter? The MNSBC analyst gave a groveling demonstration of his devotion in an interview with Willie Geist on The Daily Rundown this morning. Beyond the predictable swipes at W, notable was the essential incoherence of Alter's defense of PBO's foreign policy. At one point, as you'll see, Alter contradicts himself in the very same breath. View video here.

Get it? America's assassins drape themselves in the American flag and are motivated by some misguided sense of patriotism. Maybe that's not how they actually view it. Maybe I should read the articles...but right now I'm judging this book by its cover, and I'm not sure how else this illustration is supposed to be interpreted. The message this cover conveys is, of course, in total contradistinction to the REAL patriots in America. They don't wave the flag, much less wear it like a super-villian costume. They don't want to carry the burden of arrogance to ask for God's blessing...

It’s often darkest just before it’s … pitch black. But other times a dim ray of something resembling light can break through. With the voters sending a strong message that they want action on jobs, our new post-shellacking period could be a bit shinier than expected. Call it Pollyannaish, but Barack Obama, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell might actually get some things done together on the economy—pro-growth Eisenhower Republican initiatives acceptable to both parties and pleasing to voters hungry for signs of cooperation. Whether or not these put many Americans to work, they’re worth a try. There could be a...

The depressed Democratic base needs to ask itself some questions: Do women want more representatives who oppose abortion? Do Hispanics want to see immigration reform postponed? Do young voters want college loans slashed? If they don’t, they’ll set aside whatever valid grievances they may have with Obama and mobilize. If Democrats lose control anyway, maybe nothing too bad will happen. Obama will veto GOP bills, and politics will be paralyzed for two years as the parties jostle for 2012. But a right-wing Republican takeover of Congress and state capitals isn’t something to accept with indifference. Midterms matter, and voters tempted...

Jonathan Alter says that not going to Yale is a dirty political trick. The libs are losing it.

Appearing on Monday’s The Colbert Report on Comedy Central to promote his book, "The Promise," MSNBC political analyst Jonathan Alter – also of Newsweek – asserted that President Barack Obama had "prevented another Great Depression," and declared that Obama had it more difficult than Franklin Delano Roosevelt because he had to "sweep up" like a "shovel brigade" after President Bush, as he used a word that had to be bleeped out for airing. Alter: "He proceeded to make history almost right away, not only because he was the first African-American elected President ... we were all living history. This man...

Glenn Beck has now supplanted Rush Limbaugh as the most influential broadcaster in America. He's the one the tea-party movement looks to. Beck wowed the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) crowd Feb 20 with his attack on progressivism, which he said must be "eradicated." "Progressivism is the cancer in America and it's eating our Constitution," Beck told the crowd. Now that Beck has given his marching orders, expect to hear all the Fox Puppets echoing him. The goal is to discredit "progressivism" as they did "liberalism." Beck fancies himself a historian; his patter is full of historical references that seem...

Election night 2008 went late in Chicago. Many campaign staffers who had spent two years helping Barack Obama get elected celebrated in Grant Park until the wee hours. But if senior aides were under the impression they might get the following day off, they were mistaken. Obama's transition director, John Podesta, scheduled a senior staff meeting for the next morning, Wednesday, Nov. 5, at 10:30 a.m. Podesta, Bill Clinton's former chief of staff, figured it would take a half hour, 45 minutes tops, to bat around some scheduling options and maybe even tell a few war stories from the campaign....