President Obama Needs to Deny Olympia Snowe:
"Olympia Snowe knows how to suck a dick," Max Baucus must have told President Barack Obama at some point during a meeting in September as Sheldon Whitehouse nodded knowingly. "She'll do down on you like a Hoover set on deep pile."

"And she does not neglect the balls," Kent Conrad probably offered in support of Baucus's assertion.

Ben Nelson must have slowly suggested to the President, "She'll totally blow you. She said so. But, you know, you have to give her what she wants."

Armed with this information about Senator Snowe's prowess at fellatio and the promise of its use on his penis, Obama surely made a decision on how to approach the health care debate: stay committed to the process of reform, but behind the scenes make sure that Snowe gets what she wants. Indeed, whenever it seemed like the path might stray from Snowe's trigger to an actual public option on health insurance, one could assume that Snowe called Obama to say something like, "I just bought knee pads and mint Chapstick," which would more than likely send chills down to Obama's loins in anticipation of the mythical mouth-mounting of Olympia.

Really, and, c'mon, the promise of a blow job is as good a reason as any for the Obama White House's continuing attempts to keep the Maine Republican on the health care reform train in order to please the chimeric beast of bipartisanship. Because if you were the President with insurmountable majorities in both houses of Congress, wouldn't you just say, "Here's what I want"?

Instead, in reaction to rumors that Obama was discouraging any public option approach that is not the Snowe trigger, we get this punk ass statement of shit-that-changes-nothing from the White House. "President Obama made clear that he supports the public option," says Deputy Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer. "That continues to be the President's position."

However, the very next paragraph seems to be from some different piece. Because the logical thing for the White House to say is something like "The President wants the final bill to contain a robust public option." But, no. Instead, it's this bullshit that could be about any bill being hammered out in the Senate: "Senator Reid and his leadership team are now working to get the most effective bill possible approved by the Senate. President Obama completely supports their efforts and has full confidence they will succeed and continue the unprecedented progress that is being made in both the House and Senate."

What the fuck does that even mean? It says nothing. What's the measure of effectiveness? What is success? There is absolutely no connection between that paragraph and the one preceding it that says Obama is all about the public option. What prevents the White House from saying he wants it?

Sure, you can make the argument that having Snowe on board gives conservative Democrats a way to cover their asses in supporting health care reform. But that's worthless with the news that the idea of allowing states to opt out of participating in a federal government-run health insurance program is what the Seante bill will contain.

Remember: 60 votes in the Senate is about cloture on debate. It is avoiding a filibuster. A Senator can vote to end debate but vote against the actual bill (as Democrats did all the time during the Republican majority in the Bush administration).

Which gets us back to Olympia Snowe's skills as a cockgobbler. If Obama doesn't explicitly support the Senate or House bills, each with some version of a real public option and not the worthless trigger, then you'll know he values political face-fucking over promises.