The Teabugger Justification, For What It’s Worth

Filed in National by on January 28, 2010

Supposedly, this is what the teabuggers were up to. I don’t believe it, because it doesn’t make any sense.

Mystery solved? NBC is reporting that James O’Keefe and his three companions were carrying out a plan to gauge how the staff of Sen. Mary Landrieu would respond if their office phone system were disabled, following complaints by conservative constituents that anti-health reform calls were not getting through to the New Orleans office.

Three days later, this is what they’re coming up with. Does that make any sense to you?

Here’s the key part of the new NBC report, which at least partly backs up a theory first raised by Marcy Wheeler:

A law enforcement official told NBC News that the four men were not trying to intercept or wiretap the calls.
Instead the men, led by O’Keefe, wanted to see how her staff would respond if the phones were inoperative, the official said.

They were apparently motivated by local criticism of Landrieu — some voters reportedly felt it was too difficult to get through to her office to register their views.

Citing law enforcement officials, Keith Olbermann said on the air last night that O’Keefe wanted to see whether Landrieu’s staff responded to a broken phone system by laughing it off, or by expressing concern about the plight of constituents trying to make their views known in vain.

Ummm….wouldn’t the office staff just ask the telephone repair guys that were already in the building to repair the phones? Wouldn’t the staff clue in that phone guys just came and now the phones don’t work? I guess I just don’t buy this explanation – it doesn’t make any sense. It sounds like brain-damaged squirrels thought of it.

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Comments (18)

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  1. anon says:

    No, they wanted to turn off the phones and wait until the staff made some joke or disparaging comment about the teabaggers trying to get through. I bet O’Keefe’s role was to sit in the office and start prompting them; and then edit his prompts out later.

    Next up: an expose of surgeons telling dirty jokes while performing lifesaving surgery.

  2. they wanted to turn off the phones and wait until the staff made some joke or disparaging comment about

    …phone repairmen who f’ed up the phones

    Like I said, brain-damaged squirrels.

    I’m sorry, but this just sounds like a lawyer’s explanation. Interesting the only sources are the group’s lawyers and an unnamed law enforcement official (Flanagan’s dad?).

  3. pandora says:

    If what they say is true (I’m cracking myself up) then what was the fourth guy in the car doing?

  4. anon says:

    Receiving and recording AV from O’Keefe. The cell phone has limited storage, and anyway it’s better to have it offsite in case you get busted. I bet the guy in the car has footage of the bust.

  5. Lizard says:

    so you have progressed from tea bagger to teabugger… it is hillarious how you open minded progressive use homosexual acts as a slur.

  6. xstryker says:

    Sounds like O’Keefe has been watching too many movies. “I know! We’ll disguise ourselves as repairmen to break in!”

    Did he wear a fake mustache?

  7. xstryker says:

    That’s funny, Lizard, considering they were believed to be literally bugging the phone. The way you interpreted the meaning of that once again proves that conservatives always have sex on the brain. It’s a symptom of repression.

    EDIT: OK, “literally bugging” would mean they were literally putting insects on it, so I guess I mean “bugging – ie wiretapping”. I correct myself because misuse of the word “literally” is a pet peeve of mine.

  8. Yes “bugger” here refers to bugging the phones. Teabagger has a sexual meaning already, independent of Democrats, yet conservatives used it anyway.

  9. Someone on Twitter remarked that O’Keefe’s scenarios sound a lot like the premises of porn movies.

  10. V says:

    General rule: when forming a club, urban dictionary the name first.

    My brother and I got into this last night and were crying laughing.

    maybe a group for more regulation of the auto industry to prevent shoddy cars? We’ll call it the “Lemon Party”.
    Female Plumbers of America start a union and call it the “Tubgirl” movement.
    Then my brother said “goatse.cx for lower taxes” and I laughed so hard I snorted and it was all over.

    (note: DO NOT google any of those things at work, or really ever if you want to sleep again)

  11. a.price says:

    lizard, teabagging doesnt HAVE to be gay… ask your inflatable love doll if you can do it tonight.

    UI, John Stewart made that connection too.

    V, you are SICK. very sick. DO NOT google those things AT ALL.

  12. Telling me not to do things, makes me want to. I don’t know the first one, I definitely know the last one is one no one should see ever. I think I know what the 2nd one is but I’m not sure.

  13. a.price says:

    UI, they are things that once you see, you cant un-see. think Rush Limbaugh without a shirt… but more disgusting.

  14. V says:

    haha aprice those were just for you.

  15. a.price says:

    oh, i knew those sites before today… as well as some others (meatspin, mr hands, the 2 girls series…) im just trying to save the good people of DL.

  16. V says:

    haha i knew you did, that’s why i posted.

    I actually left out our meatspin reference. The Industrial Meat Processing Factory Workers of America are angry at the bad rap industiralized foods gets over organic/free range. They are “Anti-Meatspin”

    I will now spend the rest of my afternoon giggling like a 2 year old.

  17. a.price says:

    how about steam-driven device advocates from north eastern Ohio..

  18. Lizard says:

    Yesterday the Washington Post carried this correction:

    >A Jan. 27 Page One article misstated the nature of the charges recently filed against four men including James O’Keefe, the conservative activist who gained notice last year with undercover videos that he and an associate recorded at regional offices of the group ACORN. The men are accused of plotting to tamper with a telephone in the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), not of plotting to wiretap or bug that office. The error was repeated in the article’s headlines and photo caption. The article also incorrectly said that Landrieu in July proposed Stephanie A. Finley as a replacement for William J. Flanagan, acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, who is the father of Robert Flanagan, one of the other men charged. Landrieu proposed that Finley become the U.S. attorney, but William Flanagan was not the acting U.S. attorney at the time. As the article stated, President Obama nominated Finley for the job last week.

    *********
    Other than that, the story was accurate.