Tag Archives: Max Baucus

November 17, 2012 · 2:59 PM

John McCain’s temper tantrums: A video history

A disgruntled-looking John McCain talks with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on November 15, 2011.

Perhaps it’s time for the good Senator to hang up his hat and call it a day…

The Week

The Arizona Senator got snippy with reporters twice in one week, reminding us all that it doesn’t take much to make the Maverick lose his cool

A disgruntled-looking John McCain talks with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on November 15, 2011. 

This was a rough week for John McCain. On Thursday, the Arizona senator and former GOP presidential nominee missed a classified briefing on the Benghazi consulate attack because he was busy holding a press conference about the lack of information about that very consulate attack.  Pressed to comment on the mix-up by a CNN reporter, McCain snapped. ”I have no comment about my schedule and I’m not going to comment on how I spend my time to the media,” he told CNN‘s Ted Barrett. “I have the right as a senator to have no comment and who the hell are you to tell me I can or not?“

Watch…

On Wednesday, a reporter asked McCain if the David Petraeus sex scandal posed a greater threat to national security than the Benghazi attack. A perturbed McCain responded: ”With great respect, that’s one of the dumbest questions I’ve ever heard.“

Watch…

Of course, McCain has a long history of losing his cool in public. Let’s take a walk down memory lane and reflect on four of the Maverick’s sassiest moments:

1. McCain vs. the “little jerk” (2007): During a question-and-answer session at campaign stop in New Hampshire, one young audience member asked McCain if his age might impact his ability to lead the country, and wondered allowed whether the Republican worried about dying in office. McCain: “Thanks for the question, you little jerk.”

2. McCain vs. The New York Times (2008): On a plane ride in 2008, McCain got grumpy with New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller after she questioned him about a 2004 meeting he had with John Kerry, during which Kerry hinted at a VP slot for McCain. “You know it,” McCain insisted. “You know it. So I don’t even know why you asked.”

3. McCain vs. Sen. Max Baucus (2009): During a Senate debate on health care costs, McCain became ”visibly peeved at Sen. Max Baucus,” and even stepped out from behind his podium to angrily point his finger around the room. When Baucus relentlessly interjected, McCain snapped,“If the senator keeps interrupting he is violating the rules of the Senate. I thought he would have learned them by now.”

4. McCain vs. hecklers (2012): While stumping for Republican Senate candidate Jeff Flake in Arizona, McCain took on a group of hecklers in the crowd, calling them jerks and telling them to shut up. He also stuck his tongue out at them. “I’m getting too old to put up with jerks like you,” he said.

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December 4, 2010 · 3:33 PM

SENATE REPUBLICANS KILL ECONOMIC AID FOR MIDDLE CLASS

Now it’s on the record, the GOP are only concerned about the top 2% of this country and the rest be damned…

Huffington Post

Senate Republicans and a handful of Democrats Saturday defeated a bill to reauthorize unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless and a plethora of tax provisions for the middle class not because of the bill’s trillion-dollar deficit impact, but because it did not include tax cuts for the rich.

“In economic times like these, 9.8 percent unemployment, you should not raise taxes on anyone,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told HuffPost.

Two bills were defeated. By a vote of 53-36, the Senate rejected a measure by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) that would have preserved Bush era tax cuts for lower- and middle-income taxpayers, but would have allowed cuts for people earning more than $200,000 a year to expire. Democrats Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), Jim Webb (Va.), Russ Feingold (Wisc.) and Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman (Conn.) joined Republicans in voting nay. The Senate also rejected a bill by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that would have extended all the cuts, but not for anybody making more than $1 million.

The Baucus bill would have preserved Emergency Unemployment Compensation and Extended Benefits Programs created in 2008 as a customary response to rising unemployment. The programs provide up to 73 weeks of federally-funded benefits for when layoff victims exhaust the standard 26 weeks of state-funded aid. The programs lapsed last week, threatening a holiday cutoff for two million unemployed.

After Saturday’s vote, it seems the only way Democrats will be able to overcome Republican opposition to the benefits will be by attaching them to a reauthorization of tax cuts for the rich.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said after the vote that he expected a tax cut deal to be reached by Thursday.

Sen. Schumer said at a press conference that some Democrats would be willing to drag the tax debate on into January. “There are lots of people in our caucus who do have that appetite, there are some who don’t. We’ll have to see what happens.”

Corker declined to say whether he thought unemployment would be included in the deal, as did Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Continue reading here…

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November 24, 2010 · 6:53 PM

Jon Kyl Reaps $200 MILLION In Pork Just Days After Senate Republicans Voted To Ban Earmarks

Jon Kyl

Image via Wikipedia

So much for Sen. Kyl (R-AZ) “renouncing earmarks”…

Senate Republicans’ ban on earmarks – money included in a bill by a lawmaker to benefit a home-state project or interest – was short-lived.

Only three days after GOP senators and senators-elect renounced earmarks, Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, the No. 2 Senate Republican, got himself a whopping $200 million to settle an Arizona Indian tribe’s water rights claim against the government.

Kyl slipped the measure into a larger bill sought by President Barack Obama and passed by the Senate on Friday to settle claims by black farmers and American Indians against the federal government. Kyl’s office insists the measure is not an earmark, and the House didn’t deem it one when it considered a version earlier this year.

But it meets the know-it-when-you-see-it test, critics say. Under Senate rules, an earmark is a spending item inserted “primarily at the request of a senator” that goes “to an entity, or (is) targeted to a specific state.”

Earmarking allows lawmakers to steer federal spending to pet projects in their states and districts. Earmarks take many forms, including road projects, improvements to home district military bases, sewer projects, economic development projects. A key trait is that they are projects that haven’t been sought by the administration in power.

Continue reading here…

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October 8, 2010 · 4:56 PM

Damage control: Fox defends Rove’s GOP slush fund from potential IRS audit

Media Matters

 

Fox’s Megyn Kelly hosted Dana Perino to portray calls for an IRS audit of a Republican slush fund promoted by Karl Rove as a politically motivated “conspiracy,” ignoring that such calls have been issued by non-partisan organizations that called for similar audits of Democratic-leaning groups in 2004. They also furthered the bogus claim that the White House illegally accessed the tax information of Koch Industries.

Fox calls on Rove’s current and former colleague to defend his group

Perino says call for investigation of Rove-linked group is Democratic “desperate measure,” part of “conspiracy.” On the October 7 edition of Fox News’ America Live, Megyn Kelly raised allegations by Republican senators that Sen. Max Baucus’ (D-MT) call for an Internal Revenue Service audit of 501(c)(4) organizations that may be illegally misusing their tax exempt status, including the Karl Rove-conceived Crossroads GPS, is “politically motivated.” She then hosted Fox News contributor Dana Perino, who defended Rove’s group.

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September 30, 2010 · 12:34 AM

The Plum Line: LinkedIn responds to O’Donnell and Happy Hour Roundup

The Plum Line – Greg Sargent

LinkedIn has now responded to Christine O’Donnell’s claim that she had no role in posting her online bio, which falsely claimed she studied at Oxford. But right now, LinkedIn says, it’s not yet in a position to determine whether or not O’Donnell is telling the truth.

“We have taken the profile down. That’s all we are confirming,” LinkedIn spokesperson Shannon Stubo emailed me. “It was taken down in response to Christine O’Donnell’s request. This is not an acknowledgment that the profile was fake.”

To reiterate: O’Donnell’s campaign spokesperson didn’t indicate that the profile was unauthorized when I contacted her for comment last week, or when I contacted her yesterday before publishing.

* Also: When the O’Donnell campaign was pressed by a skeptical Associated Press reporter to answer why they didn’t challenge the veracity of the profile when I asked about it, the campaign declined to answer directly:

Asked Wednesday to explain why she did not challenge authorship of the profile when talking with Sargent, O’Donnell spokeswoman Diana Banister replied simply, “Ms. O’Donnell has clarified any questions about her education and the LinkedIn page.”

******************************************************************

Happy Hour Roundup:

* Max Baucus throws down the gauntlet with all those outside groups flooding the midterms with cash, calling on the IRS to take a close look at whether they are in compliance with tax codes — and even hinting at a possible Senate probe. Keep an eye on this one.

* Brian Beutler breaks the news that House Dems have made it official: They will postpone the vote on extending the middle class tax cuts until after the election.

My understanding is that Nancy Pelosi wanted this vote, and was pushing for it as late as this morning as a way to make it crystal clear to voters who is on the side of the middle class. Majority Whip James Clyburn wanted the vote, too, I’m told.

But while Steny Hoyer wanted to extend the middle class tax cuts, he was sympathetic to Dems in marginal districts who argued that a vote would interfere with their efforts to localize the election. They claimed they could better push the issue on their own in their districts. In the end, though, all the leaders agreed that there wasn’t enough support in the caucus to hold it.

* And: Chris Van Hollen, addressing the postponed middle class tax cuts vote, vows Dems will “take the fight to the election.”

* Don’t miss Aaron Blake’s overview of the House map and the DCCC’s and NRCC’s ad-buying strategies.

* It’s not just Fox and MSNBC: Ben Smith makes an important point, acknowledging that even self-described nonideological news outlets at times inevitably function as “political actors.”

* Fox News, ever bashful about making itself the story, goes on a jihad against Obama for speaking the truth about Fox News.

* More proof of the “Charlie Crist crunch” I noted below: In a new CNN/Time poll, Marco Rubio has pulled away from Crist, 38-31 — because Crist is losing Republicans to Rubio and Dems to Kendrick Meek.

* AOL News asked the O’Donnell campaign about the Oxford/LinkedIn bio way back on September 15th, so O’Donnell’s people may have known about this for two weeks without claiming it was fake.

* Jane Hamsher defends the “professional left’s” attacks on Obama, claiming liberals haven’t really turned on him and that he’s merely enduring an unprecedented level of “detailed process scrutiny.”.

* And here’s the headline of the day: Dave Weigel has the full rundown on why liberals don’t like Rahm, in a piece called…

So Long, Jerk

What else is happening?

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