Very grumpy Maine senator and recent quitter Olympia Snowe is not gone yet, sadly. First she must say that the reason why she is quitting politics is because President Obama made her feel rejected and ignored. In an interview with ABC, she scolds the President for being aloof, which he, duh, is, and which everyone else has long gotten over, and say that in her centuries-long reign in legislative land, Obama is the president who spoke with her the least. ABC News claims that “If there were ever a Republican for President Obama to work with, it was Maine Senator Olympia Snowe,” but uh, it turns out that Obama tried a zillion times to get the woman to listen to him, and her response was to act like some kind of perfect moderate Queen of America!
Snowe was obsessed with centrism to the point that she would vote for something, only to turn around and vote against it a day later because it had been changed slightly, as if left, right and center could actually be measured down to 1/16 of an inch, and she just had to follow what the ruler said. Case in point, as the Huffington Post points out, is the healthcare bill. Obama apparently “wooed” Snowe for weeks over the bill. When she objected to the public option clause of the bill, “Democrats removed it.” She then “voted for the bill in the Finance Committee, only to turn against it when it reached the decisive vote on the Senate floor.” Why? Because things were “moving too fast.” Government decisions moving TOO FAST? This is a problem because…? Anyway, now, somehow this kind of behavior is now being translated into, “Obama never talked to me.”
Snowe says she gives Obama a “close to failing” grade on his “ability to work with Republicans.” And we give Snowe an F on her ability to understand what the words “work with” mean! Now get out of here! [Huffington Post/ABC News]
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"Snowe White and the seven republican dwarfs"?
Dopey
Grifty
Angry
Sleazy
Easy
Greasy
Joe Lieberman
This is what a Senatorial Sarah Palin would be like.
What? Palin can read?
Only her paychecks from Fox.
Damn you for raising that possibility.
As much as I dislike Snowe, that's a little harsh.
This is what a Senatorial Sarah Palin would be like.
Trig is too young to run and Sarah is too stupid to pull the bait and switch stupidity that Snowe specialized in.
You just make me sick to my stomach. Palin is not qualified to take out the white house trash.
Nah, the TundraTwat would be more like Inhofe (for whom I cannot create a clever name, because "inhofe" will live forever as meaning utter, cretinous, vile malice).
She's just mad cause she never got invited to sit at the popular politicians table in the lunch room. But have you seen her? NERD! Add some thick rimmed glasses and even I want to give her a wedgie.
Envy much?
She's been like this ever since that time she wandered into Sen. Susan Collin's office and overheard the end of her phone conversation with Obama:
"Love you Barry… yeah me too … oh, I can't wait … oooooh, that'll be wonderful … OK, 'bye now … no, you hang up … no, you hang up first …"
Did he make her sit in the back of Air Force One with orally flatulent Newt Gingrich? I'd be pissed off, too.
AF1 better have multiple toilets back there
You're done, Oly [spit!]. Now is not the time to mention that thang you have for the nigra who spurned you. And why do you always have that "I need some anal" look on your face?
She's Greek, what did you expect?
Let me consult my copy of The Conservative Teen… here it is…
("work with" – complain about all the time.)
Welp that explains it!
Like I said yesterday, Sharkey, I don't get the "Teen" part.
I think if they offered her a Chairmanship of the Young Republicans, she might stick around.
yup, blame the black guy- America's answer to everything.
"I wanted to be a mean girl, but Boehner and Miss Lindsey wouldn't let me".
–Olympia Snowe
"Boehner and Miss Lindsey" priceless — sounds like the title to a TV mini series.
Maybe if her approval rating was higher than 11%.
Olympia, Olympia, Olympia, someone obviously gave you a Snowe job. Actually someone who flips like that might be viewed as a waffler…or a flip-flopper, or a Kerryesque Romney. I guess if you don't kiss someones ass enough then you are not easy to work with. Go home Olympia – please.
AAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!
Obama refuse to eat the yellow Snowe, get over it.
Needs more Frank Zappa.
I think in her case I wouldn't eat any snow.
Snowe says she gives Obama a “close to failing” grade on his “ability to work with Republicans.”
Similar to FDR’s inability to work with Hitler, not that I’m making a direct comparison you understand.
"That uppity nigger wouldn't give me the time of day after I kicked him in the nuts, hard"
Obviously, Snowe was not part of Ayer's Muslin Socialist plan.
I bet it was a five year plan. He better get reelected or it's all for naught!
Dear Diary,
Barack STILL hasn't call me. It's been 2 whole days since I let him woo me with flowers and chocolates. But then he wanted what he called the 'pubic option' and I said no because I wasn't ready for that big of a step. It was TOO SOON and everything was moving sooooo quickly I got scared. And now he won't call!!
Why are boys so mean??? I hate them!!
Toodles!
Olympia
Maybe Clarence Thomas will give her his 'pubic option'.
The "velvet-covered sack of gravel and lye"?
Slut
Dear Olympia,
Just remember: The Snowe in Maine falls mainly on the plain.
Diary
And they told her the boys always like the girls who vote both ways.
Ooooh, she's bipartisan! Bow chicka wow wow!
Republican politicians really are such delicate flowers. Remember when the Republicans in the House said they had been absolutely 100% ready to join the Democrats to save the world economy and the President they had just spent 7 years fellating but then when Nancy Pelosi said some things that hurt their poor little feelings they decided they'd rather sulk.
This was brilliant.
You know, you do that a little bit too well.
Obama should know that as President he's supposed to spend all his time massaging the massive, easily wounded egos of every last narcissist in the Senate.
And that would be all of them, Katie.
Sorry, Olympia, but he's just not that into you.
It's not him, it's you.
(With apologies to George Costanza.)
Loved you as The One Armed Man in The Fugitive, Olympia! http://www.andreaskatsulas.com/auto/pics/andr45.j…
Separated at spawn.
I've always seen her as the old woman from the "Old woman or young woman?" optical illusion picture: http://www.qualitytrading.com/illusions/girlwoman…
Barry can shake the little glass ball any time he wants to see it Snowe.
You try to cram your legislative agenda down the throats of the moderately conservative Maine Senators you have; not the moderately conservative Maine Senators you want.
The problem here, apparently, is that no one really wanted Ms. Snowe.
Right. She couldn't possibly have quit because her party's so fucked up they make a right-wing hack like her look like Fightin' Bob LaFollette and she'd get bounced in a primary by some dipshit Down-East Christine O'Donnell.
"Because things were “moving too fast.”
Meanwhile, back in the streets 1,200 poor people have died due to lack of health care this week.
Not related at all to the President's close-to-failing ability to – wait for it – "work with Republicans."
Vlad the Impaler couldn't get those GOP sellouts to work in the best interest of their constituents. Why, they have a bigger goal of making sure this "aloof" President is a single-termer. So saith the Koch Kabal.
Yeah, but I bet a lot of them made "unhealthy lifestyle choices," like choosing to be poor or choosing to get cancer.
Or choosing to vote for Olympia Snowe. And, hey, why should the rest of us pay for their mistakes?
Yeah. I like the morans that are claiming that Obamacare deserves to be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court because it was crammed down our throats by a Democratic House and Senate that refused to take the time to negotiate with the Republiklans.
Remember those good old days of the summer of 2009 when Tea Baggers were demanding the negotiating of the Affordable Health Care Act at local town hall meetings?
Yeah, me neither.
Fortunately when encountering images and stories concerning the esteemed soon-to-be-former Senator there are a few things that may never be accused of moving too fast: my heartbeat and my hand on my johnson.
It's not for nothing she has such a pronounced widow's peak.
I can only wait for Lieberman to cry about the same thing after he is gone.
Well! I guess she didn't want to keep her Snowe white, now did she?
Poor Ms Snowe. No man has ever been able to unlock her "jade gate." Very constrictive.
It's like a Chinese finger puzzle: when you try to yank your finger out, it just clamps down
A love song from Olympia to Barack
It's a crazy situation
I always leaves you waiting
Bipartisanship's make believe
But I would come a-dotin' to give you all my votin'
If one day you would cave to me~
My checks are close to bouncin'
And I can't go on flouncin'
The fantasy I'm moderate
I'm dreaming~
That you will work with me
Like I won't work with you
But dreaming's all I do
Cuz I am such a tool
I wish you would lobby
Lobby lobby lobby
I wish you would lobby me (ooooh~)
I wish you would lobby
Lobby lobby lobby
Lobby me with more money~
Snowe job.
"Barack, I WILL NOT be ignored!"
Snowe's ending to this story: "Driving Miss Olympia" would be her getting everything she wanted and saying, "You are my best friend, Hope"
The woman is named after a cheap typewriter from the 50s and she wants some respect????
If her name was "Remington" he would have called her ,more often.
Olympia Underwood (R, Maine)
Translation: Obama tried to follow the "wait two days before calling back" rule, and Snow got pissed, because she's needy, and then when he did call her, she was worried that things were moving too fast, and then Obama decided it wasn't worth dealing with the crazy to have sexy bipartisanship adventures.
Less loathsome is still loathsome. Good riddance. Stop crying, just go home and disappear, you contemptible, public-option-killing hack.
Snowe says she gives Obama a “close to failing” grade on his “ability to work with Republicans.”
Pfffft. Republicans lost their ever-lovin' minds the day Obama was sworn in. There was no "working with them". Not when they made it perfectly clear to anyone who would listen that their only goal was to make the president fail.
You can't "work with" people like that. I didn't expect Obama to even try.
I don't care how many unanimous 'No' votes the Republicans give him. Obama hates bipartisanship! Ask David Broder.
I know he's dead. Any column after Jan 23, 2008 will do.
What this country clearly needs right now are more loofs.
I thought it was lerts.
Maybe that was just the 60's
I read this as "Obama apparently “wooed” Snowe for weeks over the bill." The she decided "things were 'moving too fast.'”
Oh Barry, you're such a heartbreaker.
Can't Olympia be a little more sporting about it?
Yeah, and the horse you rode in on!
She is the horse she rode in on.
Snowe says she gives Obama a “close to failing” grade on his “ability to work with Republicans.”
The ability to work with republicans looks a little to much like GOATSE for my taste.
Just the once? Noob.
"Hello Barack? This is Oly. I have a new Unlimited Minutes Plan on my cell phone, and I'm calling you to let you know I'm giving you the silent treatment."
"Um, Sen. Snowe, I'm not sure you understand how the silent treatment is supposed to work."
"…."
"Sen. Snowe?"
"…."
This is why true neutral was always a bullshit alignment in 3rd edition.
Flute? Call me back when you learn the french horn.
♫ Bein' chased around
By the neighbor's cat
Well it's so lonely in the state of Maine! ♪
It's tough being irrelevant, isn't it?
Snowe joke.
Olympia Snowe strikes me as one of those folks who used to be smart, but whose brain now resets every twelve minutes….. If you look close you can see the bios messages scrolling behind her pupils. The only reason she is still talking is that her mouth has an 8 Meg buffer.
In all those Oly and Lena jokes, I thought Lena was the female?
So, the person who complained about HCR because things were “moving too fast” is upset because Obama took a while to return her phone calls?
Chillax, Goldilocks…
OT – I took a peek at some info about the health care act before the SCOTUS. It's going to get hosed, isn't it?
Dunno. Last night, some people were talking about Roberts seeming to be leaning toward upholding.
Only because he fears the label "Koch Whore First Class." They know it's constitutional, but they can't bear to give Hopey a "win," such as it is.
From the court's point of view, it's all supposed to boil down to the limits of the commerce clause, but really, it's about keeping the insurance companies rolling in dough, so it's going to be upheld 6-3 or 7-2.
Sure, they love to hate the black guy, but they love the insurance companies more.
Wow, you’re really cynical!
Every time Obama asked her to compromise, she told him "Ya can't get there from here"
As a Mainer, I say nicely done.
If you're a genial centrist until a few months before your political retirement, whereupon you turn into a rampaging prick/cunt, then you were probably a rampaging prick/cunt the entire time cf. Chris Dodd.
I read that "genital centrist," which is usually true.
I just picture this as one of many things Obama gets word of, then either gives a Biden-esque chuckle or a Robert Gibbs-type snort or a blankfaced, Geithnerlike shrug, and gets back to the business at hand. No time for whiners.
This is not a big fucking deal.
” She then “voted for the bill in the Finance Committee, only to turn against it when it reached the decisive vote on the Senate floor.” Why? Because things were “moving too fast.”
Good point. We really can't expect Senators to do something as crude and partisan as passing legislation to deal with ongoing policy problems. That would be beneath their wrinkly, grey dignity.
Snowe almost quit in 2000 because she never fucked President Clinton.
Who?
I give President Obama a "close to failing" grade on working with Republicans, too — but then again, I give working with Republicans a close to failing grade.
Women! Right?
Was it that he was "moving too fast", or that he didn't have "the ability to work"? Not that both of them won't ruin the end of a perfectly good date.
Obama, Cantor and Boehner decided to meet on a boat out on the Potomac to be away from the hubbub of the press and party pressures so they could talk candidly about pending legislation. They all got to the boat and started their meeting but about an hour into it a giant storm came up and began tossing the boat around. As the storm increased the boat began to sink; panic set in. Boehner was crying and yelled, "we have to swim for shore!" Cantor snatched a life jacket and screamed, "every man for himself" and was about to jump overboard. Obama grabbed Cantor and threw him over one shoulder, grabbed Boehner and threw him over the other. Then he stepped off the boat and walked across the stormy Potomac carrying the Republicans to safety. That evening Snow went on the TV news and said, "See, Obama won't work with us, he refused to swim with the Republicans." The end.
Maybe it's time for, not a beer summit, but a basketball summit. Snowe is well matched in height and lanky frame to our President after all. How about three-on-three with Barry; Oly; drag Dollar-Bill Bradley out of retirement; that kook who fantasized about dribbling around with The Prez;..
Just need another couple of long-legged legislators and game on!
This never gained much traction in the news. Obama calling for tougher oversight of for-profit diploma mills may have added to her disdain for him. "Obama wouldn't even let me profiteer off federally-subsidized student loans!"
Last August, while Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, was in the midst of an intensive round of fundraising for her 2012 reelection bid, a four-year-old civil lawsuit alleging fraud by an education company in which she and her husband are heavily invested became public.
-Crooks & Liars
When the Snowe recedes in the springtime, nobody is sorry it's gone. The daisies and dandelions will soon spread across the land, and there will be joy in every heart.
Just go back to the deep, dark woods and let us never see your bitter, spiteful face again.
Whose words these are I think I know.
And thank you so much for that!
Ruth Buzzi Lookalike Contest winner!
You want a Walnetto?
So that makes 4 of us old enough to get the reference?
Olympia Snowe, straddling the fine line between being a Republican who pisses off Republicans and a Republican who pisses off Democrats. What a legacy.
I guess he didn't want to git that box down from the chifforobe.
Personally, I give REPUBLICANS a failing grade on working with Republicans. Spoiled brats.
The worst part: it never came out again.
Olympia, goodbye and thanks for all the fish.
Sounds like Senator Snowe needs somebody to shove!
Best take down of Snowe I've seen so far:
Olympia Snowe’s Strange Martyrdom
The retirement of Olympia Snowe, at the young (by senatorial standards) age of 65, has again dramatized the perilous condition of the Senate moderates. They have been scorned, marginalized, and hunted close to extinction. Yet the striking fact about Snowe’s career is that, far from being shunted to the sidelines, she has wielded, or been given the opportunity to wield, enormous power. She has used it, on the whole, quite badly.
When George W. Bush proposed a huge, regressive tax cut in 2001, Snowe, sitting at the heart of a decisive block of centrists, used her leverage to support the passage of a modestly smaller and less regressive version. When Barack Obama proposed a large fiscal stimulus in 2009, Snowe (citing fears of deficits that she had helped create) decided to shave a nice round $100 billion off his figure and call it a day. If a Gingrich administration proposed spending a trillion dollars to erect a 100- foot-tall solid-gold Winston Churchill statue on Mars, Snowe would no doubt decide, after careful deliberation, that the wise course was to trim the height down to 90 feet and perhaps use a cheaper bronze alloy in the base.
The characteristic Snowe episode came during the health care fight. The Obama administration, desperate to win her vote, wooed her with endless meetings and pleas, affording her a once-in-a-generation chance to not only help pass health care reform but make it smarter, more efficient, and more compassionate. Instead, Snowe tormented the administration by dangling an elusive and ever-changing criteria before their noses. She at first centered her objections around the inclusion of a public option. Democrats removed it, and she voted for the bill in the Finance Committee, only to turn against it when it reached the decisive vote on the Senate floor. Snowe complained that the process was happening too fast, and that it was too partisan, which seemed to be her way of saying she wouldn’t vote for it unless other Republicans joined her.
This may sound sensible, even admirable, if you subscribe to the notion that securing bipartisan support for major bills is inherently valuable. But it’s worth noting that moderates like Snowe and their fans worship bipartisanship for reasons that have nothing to do with good government. A Republican representing a blue state, or a Democrat representing a red state, faces an inherently precarious situation. Often she will find the demands of her party’s national base pitted against those of her home state electorate. Olympia Snowe’s worst nightmare is to have to choose between infuriating Republicans in Washington and moderate voters in Maine. Creating legislation that passes by wide margins is not done out of a desire to bring bills closer into alignment with any abstract standard of good government, but to ensure her vote sits comfortably in the middle of a wide swath of support from both sides. In a farewell op-ed in the Washington Post, Snowe complains that centrism offers no electoral rewards. For her, though, such careful positioning was a matter of political self-preservation.
The New York Times report on her departure cast the central tension of her career as pitting “her own views as a Republican centrist against pressure from fellow Republicans to support the party position.” This is a common way people think about it – there are two poles, one representing the moderate’s principled convictions, and the other representing party loyalty. The negation of one implies the presence of the other. Snowe’s career proved that it’s entirely possible to steer clear of the party line without upholding any particular notion of the public good.
Shorter version: "Obama is aloof because he eventually stopped going out of his way for me to my gleefully screwing him over yet again".
ROTFLMAO!
That's about as brilliant and accurate an example as one can give.
What a snowe job. First she admits she's not running again because she can't work with her OWN PARTY, then she blames the big O. Good riddance.
I guess it's true, then. All Republicans are big ol' cry babies, even the moderate ones.
Politicians don't take a dump without a plan. Yea I stole that from that movie with that guy and the submarines.
She is saying this to sell some book or get that high paying gig with the lobbying firm or something. There is always a reason and it usually involves money, power, prestige etc. There always seems to be more upside to critisizing the prez than saying nothing or praising.
Methinks she doth protest too much…..Looks like somebody's got a serious case of Jungle Fever.
Olympia is the reason that the president's health care plan is in court, right now, so fuck her. And for what? So that she could feel important?
Honestly, this media fawning is disgusting. On the things that really mattered, she's played politics with the best of them. She's as soiled as the rest of them, if not more so because of how disingenuous she often is in her dealings.
Snowe is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps…
Let's turn that into a Santorum-esque meme…
Just a typical Wonketteer Emeritus. Been here since 2004.
Me too. Remember when you had to pass the Funny Test?
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