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John McCain told NBC's David Gregory that his pick for vice president in the 2008 election wouldn't necessarily be his pick for president in 2012. McCain wants to see who the other candidates are before expressing support for Gov. Sarah Palin. "I would have to see who the candidates are and what the situation is at the time but have no doubt of my respect, administration and love for Sarah and her family," he said.

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Bill Kristol is asked by a caller on Washington Journal whether himself, Fox News, The Weekly Standard or the any of the neo-con think tanks owe the American public an apology for hyping the WMD lies on Iraq. Of course Kristol doesn't think so, but then that would require some degree of introspection that I highly doubt the man is capable of for him to have answered differently. It also would require having something called a conscience, but I don't think Kristol has one of those either.

In his response he attempts to diminish the role these conservative think tanks and publications have had in pushing our government into going to war. Does anyone think that we would not have invaded Iraq had it not been for the influence PNAC, AEI and the rest of them had over our elected offials? He also does not address at all the role the "news" networks played in getting us into that debacle.

From the White House blog:

In his weekly address, President Barack Obama stated his continued support for the people of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota and praised the volunteers who have come together to help one another. Earlier this week, he signed emergency and disaster declarations, these declarations provide Federal aid to supplement State and local response efforts. The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency continue to coordinate the federal response and are working closely with State and Local officials. But it is the people who have filled sandbags, built levees, and contributed other ways in these communities that stand out as a reminder of what Americans can achieve when we serve others.

Transcript below the fold.

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Chris Matthews is apparently perplexed as to why President might want to bypass the national press corps with his online town hall meeting today.

Matthews: Well what's the President up to? Is he doing what he does well? Is he simply sticking to his strengths or is he trying to bypass what he sees as a problem area, meaning the national press corps?

....

Well being from the Politico you must be very proud Roger because you were the only news organization that writes as part of its work that got called on at the press conference the other night. He skipped the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal. He didn't call on any of those people but he called on you guys.

First of all, The Politico is a "news organization"?? Wow. They look more like a Matt Drudge gossip rag to me. Says a lot about what Matthews' idea of "news" is.

I can't imagine why the President wouldn't want to be calling on the likes of Chuck Todd or Ed Henry. Matthews also apparently thinks that only "real" reporters ask tough questions. Yeah, "real reporters" like the fellow Villagers he names.

I've got a list of people I consider actual journalists and none of the people Matthews named are on it. The people he named are more worried about raising their own profiles with who they have access to than anything that could pass for journalism. Frankly, I hope the President continues to irk the likes of Matthews and talk directly to the public as often as possible.

After eight years of Bush refusing to talk before anything but hand-picked audiences who had to sign loyalty pledges before they'd let anyone near him or our military, which he loved to use as props, this entire debate on how President Obama is managing his audience from Matthews and the rest of the press is pretty rich.

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Leave it to Matt Taibbi to tear into Michelle Bachmann in a way only he can. Matthews had to know what type of response he was going to get here and Taibbi didn't disappoint. His reply when asked about some of Michelle Bachmann's latest hackery.

Taibbi: You know it's funny this morning outside of Penn Station I saw a guy huffing glue out of a paper bag, and he was making more sense than Michelle Bachmann was making. I can't believe it. You need to pass a written test to drive a car in this country but I bet this woman can't even write her name in the ground with a stick. I mean it's just unbelievable to me that this person is in the Congress.

Political Base asks the obvious "elephant in the room" question: At what point should we start calling Bachmann "treasonous"?

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David Shuster takes Karl Rove to task for daring to accuse President Obama of misleading people. Rove seems to have forgotten about all that "catapulting of the propaganda" they did during the Bush years. Project much Karl?

John Amato:

The DNC released an ad called Pot. Kettle. Black about Rove after he, the one and only called President Obama " an arrogant guy' with Bill O'Reilly.

FOX uses him because he's a sleazy---propaganda machine--who would probably smear his own family members just out of habit, (I have no proof of that) but does the FOX audience actually respect Karl Rove as an analyst after what he's done to our country? OK, I'll rephrase....but does the FOX audience actually respect Karl Rove as an analyst after what he's done to the GOP? Fitzgerald chickened out indicting him. He's lucky he didn't have to get a pardon from Bush.

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From 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. March 26, 2009.

Shuster: The outrage over AIG's bonuses has been justifiable but the $165 million dollars pales in comparison to another abuse which has been going on for much longer and involves a whole lot more money. We're talking about offshore tax havens. Many of the same companies that have received tax payer bailout money have also done business in these so called tax havens for years.

.....

And Joe what kind of money are we talking about with all of this?

Conason: Well David the last time this, anybody made a serious estimate of these numbers it came to something like $12 trillion sheltered in offshore tax havens world wide and an estimate of about $100 billion in lost revenues to the IRS. People avoiding taxes illegally in those same tax havens. And as you mentioned it's in fact all of the companies that have received tax payer bailouts, have some sort of tax haven subsidiaries, many of them with lot of them.

I mean you could imagine there's some reason to have I guess a branch in the Cayman Islands because people might want to do some banking there but why you would need ninety subsidiaries there is really an interesting question.

Considerably more than those bonuses indeed that have everyone's tail feathers in an uproar in the Congress. Joe Conason has more in his article at Salon AIG is chump change -- let's find corporate America's hidden billions. From the article.

But what reason other than evasion could there be for Goldman Sachs Group to set up three subsidiaries in Bermuda, five in Mauritius, and 15 in the Cayman Islands? Why did Countrywide Financial need two subsidiaries in Guernsey? Why did Wachovia need 18 subsidiaries in Bermuda, three in the British Virgin Islands, and 16 in the Caymans? Why did Lehman Brothers need 31 subsidiaries in the Caymans? What do Bank of America's 59 subsidiaries in the Caymans actually do? Why does Citigroup need 427 separate subsidiaries in tax havens, including 12 in the Channel Islands, 21 in Jersey, 91 in Luxembourg, 19 in Bermuda and 90 in the Caymans? What exactly is going on at Morgan Stanley's 19 subs in Jersey, 29 subs in Luxembourg, 14 subs in the Marshall Islands, and its amazing 158 subs in the Caymans? And speaking of AIG, why does it have 18 subs in tax-haven countries? (Don't expect to find out from Fox News Channel or the New York Post, because News Corp. has its own constellation of strange subsidiaries, including 33 in the Caymans alone.)

When the cost of these shenanigans was last estimated two years ago, the U.S. government's annual loss in revenue due to tax avoidance by major corporations and super-rich individuals was pegged at about $100 billion -- considerably more than a rounding error, even today. But of course that is only a rough assessment, as is the estimate of $12 trillion in untaxed assets hidden around the world. Nobody will know for certain until the books are opened and transparency is established.

So I assume that means it could be even higher. The Obama administration is looking into closing these loopholes but they've got a huge fight on their hands with this one. Conason is right though and these companies should not be allowed to be taking tax payer dollars and then potentially illegally avoiding paying their own taxes in the United States.

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Eugene Robinson interjects some stellar critical analysis of Ed Henry (CNN White House correspondent).

"Dude you just got owned. He just made you his ... companion."

Priceless.

Mr Henry, intrepid reporter (in his mind, apparently), had a different take on the events:

The pressure was on now because the president had called on me. Someone handed me a microphone, millions were watching, and it's scary to think about changing topic in a split second because you might get flustered and screw up.

But it's fun to gamble and like any good quarterback (though I was never athletic enough to actually play the position), I decided to call an audible. [...]

So I waited patiently and then decided to pounce with a sharp follow-up. From just a few feet away, I could see in his body language that the normally calm and cool president was perturbed.

See Heather's diary about this yesterday, here.

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Bernie Sanders weighs in on what the differences are between President Obama's budget, what the Conservadems are going to agree to, and what the Republicans are going to try to block. Sanders feels that if the Democrats are forced to get sixty votes for anything they'd like through the Congress it will be watered down and likely not be worth passing. Always one to fight the good fight, Sanders tells us what most of us here anyway already know. It's going to take a strong grass roots movement to combat all the special interest dollars flowing into the campaign coffers of members of Congress.

Olbermann: There's a quote in The Atlantic magazine from an unnamed White official who says these pro-budget ads won't hurt, won't help. What do you think on this? Should the President's supporters be calling their Congressman's and their Senator's offices and saying look this is what I voted for. Don't screw this up.

Sanders: I think so. I think what we need to never forget Keith is that here in Washington we have enormously powerful special interests. You know the financial institutions in the last ten years spent five billion dollars so that we can deregulate Wall Street and that got us to where we are today.

The insurance companies and the drug companies make huge amounts of money keeping us the only nation in the industrialized world without a national health care program. So what we need to combat that enormous power of the big money interests is a strong grass roots movement.

Senator Sanders apparently had a busy day preceeding this interview. He took time to come on the set of Democracy Now: Sen. Sanders Blocking Vote to Confirm Obama Nominee Who Worked to Deregulate Credit Default Swaps.

He also shot down Senator Judd Gregg over his priorities for Americans during a committee meeting on the budget: Senator Sanders "You'll Give Billionaires Tax Cuts But No Health Care For The Middle Class!

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From Hardball March 25, 2009. Evan Bayh talking about why it's going to be so hard for President Obama to get his agenda through Congress. It would be nice if Evan Bayh would like to be part of the solution instead of the problem.

MATTHEWS: Can the president succeed in his agenda of big health care reform, universal health coverage, big climate change legislation and a lot more effort on education from K to 12 -- can he do that if he doesn‘t do it through the budget?

BAYH: I think he can. But some of that will be hard and it will vary issue by issue. On the budget and the investments, and you know, real increases in the investment in education, health care, energy independence, I think he can get that. Reforming, you know, 17 percent of the national economy on health care, probably going to need more bipartisan cooperation on that.

And the problem with cap and trade and global warming, Chris, is we can do that, but if you don‘t do it in right kind of way, you run the risk of sending jobs from our country, places like your home state of Pennsylvania or mine of Indiana, to other countries that have lower emissions standards. So the irony would be we‘d lose jobs and not help with global warming.

So you can do that, but you‘ve got to do it in the right way, and you‘re probably going to, you know, need, you know, Democrats from states that are going to be adversely affected if it‘s not done in the right way. So a little less likely on that one, although I think we can still get it done.

MATTHEWS: Well, let‘s imagine, besides being a moderate Democrat representing Indiana in the U.S. Senate, that you are his adviser. How would you advise the president to get through the big things he‘s promised health, education, energy—in time to get them done before his popularity erodes? How would you recommend him do it?

BAYH: You know, Chris, I think at heart, the president is a pragmatist. As you pointed out, he is, you know, advocating for his budget. He‘s staked out an aggressive agenda. But at the end of the day, I think he‘s going to want what works. And he told us today in our caucus that he very graciously came and attended, he said, Look, I‘m going to insist on my core principles. And that is, you know, reforming health care, energy independence and security and making college and education more affordable for middle class families. We‘ve got to do that within the context of being fiscally responsible.

And then he said to us, Chris, he said, Look, I understand this is a cooperative process. You guys aren‘t potted plants. You‘re going to have your own ideas. I respect that. But we got to do it in a way that preserves those core principles.

So in some ways, Chris, I‘d advise him do what he‘s doing. And I, you know, see some groups who seem to think that members of the Congress or the Senate shouldn‘t have ideas or suggest better ways of doing things. The president is wise enough and smart enough to know that it needs to be cooperative. And if he continues in that spirit, I think we can get a whole lot of what he wants done in a way that middle America will embrace and it will work in a practical way.

I don't think middle America is who Bayh is worried about embracing his Conservadems' obstruction.