According to a readout of the meeting from the Speaker’s office, Boehner asked Obama if he was proposing that Congress increase the debt limit without corresponding spending cuts. The president replied, “Yes,” the Boehner aide said. At that point, Boehner told Obama, “As long as I’m around here, I’m not going to allow a debt-ceiling increase without doing something serious about the debt.”

Shortly after the meeting, White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that the president warned the leadership that he would not allow a repeat of last August’s debt-ceiling “debacle,” which led to a downgrade in the U.S. credit rating. (Read More)

Whose fault was the debt-ceiling “debacle?” The Democrats refused to cut spending and kicked the can down the road. Now we’re down the road, and they still don’t want to cut spending. These  people are insane!

The derivative exposure of these three banks [JP Morgan Chase, Citibank and Bank of America] is staggering as it exceeds 11 times the American economy and 2.7 times the economies of all the nations on earth.  On December 30, 2011 the derivatives leverage ratio of these three banks stood at 37 times.  Menacingly, the bank’s leverage ratio exceeds the average leverage ratio of 32 times assets for Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch shortly before their 2008 collapse launched the Great Recession.

After five years of miserable unemployment and virtually no growth, it seems clear the Federal Reserve’s $2 trillion increase in bank lending at zero interest rates has been better at expanding the international derivatives markets than expanding the American economy.  The Federal Reserve owns much of the blame for this phenomenon by keeping interest rates so low that banks were unable to make a rate of return above their cost of capital on traditional lending.

Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Hoenig in a recent interview warned that an extended period of ultra-low interest rates invites speculative behavior: “When you have zero rates that go on indefinitely, you are inviting future problems.”  The recent J.P. Morgan derivatives fiasco has demonstrated that the Federal Reserve’s zero interest rate policy has encouraged risky financial speculation that is highly dangerous and potentially destructive.  It’s time for the Federal Reserve to let interest rates rise and banks to get back to the business of financing the growth of America’s real-economy.

I don’t trust anything in this economy anymore. I’m with Stacy, nothing makes sense these days. “Too big to fail” comes to mind, and how Dodd Frank didn’t do anything about that problem.

H/T to reader Physics Nut

According to public records, a Jason Clausen with his birthdate was found guilty of “assault on peace officers and others” on Feb. 28, 2005. He was sentenced to 120 days in jail, with 110 of those days suspended. He was given 730 days of probation and paid $845 in fines, records show. Iowa Department of Corrections records show he was on probation for “a serious misdemeanor” until April 3, 2006.

The records show Clausen had nearly 20 busts, tickets or fines, a number of them traffic infractions related to things like driving while intoxicated, or with a suspended license. Some were related to accidents, others to driving without seat belts.

Well, at least he didn’t lie about being unemployed! The guy who did that appeared in an Obama ad, but nobody went digging up his criminal record, they only took a glance at his facebook page. His name is Brian Slagle, and a search at Politico brings up zero stories about Slagle. So I guess Politico is only interested in researching people who appear in Republican ads.

Ace of Spades wonders if Haberman had a source.

The bigger issues is Haberman appears to have taken it upon herself to do background checks on people appearing in Romney videos. There are no links or sources in her piece so it’s either original reporting or she’s just running opposition research dumps for the Obama campaign.

The Other McCain took it further.

Permit me to say, from long experience, that political reporters get tips from all kinds of sources all the time. The identity and motives of the tipsters are often not known, just a voice on the phone or a pseudonymous email account. The facts are the facts, without regard to who reports them or why. But if this isn’t an oppo-dump, what is it?

The question is whether Maggie Haberman would protect the confidentiality of a Republican source who gave her such a cheap little piece of dirt about a Democrat, or whether her Opposition Research Stenography Service is only available to Team Obama.

Haberman has reported things that I have gladly linked in the past, and I’m sure I’ll link her again in the future.

She is a good reporter. But if, as I suspect, she’s pushed this tawdry cheap shot at the behest of PROFESSIONAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY POLITICAL OPERATIVES, perhaps next time they ship her a load of dirt, she would DO HER READERS THE FAVOR OF BEING HONEST ABOUT WHERE SHE GOT IT.

I won’t hold my breath.

There’s more at Twitchy, including the new Politico logo, via Jon G.

College students are being played for suckers by the Democratic Party again. Barack Obama’s 2013 budget indicates that the interest rate on federally backed student loans student loan willjump from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent in the summer of 2013.  This comes as Obama is preaching his love for college students on campuses by virtue of his agreeing with the Republicans to limit the rate to 3.4 percent. The doubling of the rate will only occur eight months after Obama’s reelection can be attained.

This is not a new ploy for the Democrats and Obama. In 2007, when the Democrats reacquired control of Congress, they pushed through the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, which gradually reduced the interest rates which had been fixed at 6.8 percent during the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 academic years to the current 3.4 percent.

The ploy worked in 2008; Obama trounced John McCain in the youth vote by 34 percent.

Read the whole thing, including the exact language used in the Obama budget.

Hey kids – President Obama lies. A lot. About everything.

Comparing today’s economic and political ratings with those from previous years when presidents sought re-election reveals that today’s climate is more similar to years when incumbents lost than when they won.

Perhaps the broadest indicator of the public’s mood comes from Gallup’s satisfaction measure, which asks Americans if they are satisfied or dissatisfied with “the way things are going in the United States at this time.” The 24% of Americans currently satisfied is most similar to the 20% recorded in May 1992 during George H.W. Bush’s first and only term. Bush was also the only sitting president of the last four to lose his re-election bid.

By contrast, satisfaction was above 35% in May of 1996 and 2004, in advance of Bill Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s re-elections. And it was 48% in September 1984, the closest time period Gallup has to May of Ronald Reagan’s re-election year.

The extent of Americans’ concern about the economy — as evident in their top-of-mind mentions of it as the nation’s “most important problem” — is greater today than for any president seeking re-election since Jimmy Carter in 1980. The current 66% mentioning one or more economic concerns is substantially higher than it was in May 2004 or May 1996, and moderately higher than at the same point in 1992 and 1984. Americans’ mentions of the economy did surge in August 1984 to 65% — comparable to where they are today — but fell to 51% by September. (Read More)

No wonder Democrats are in panic mode, and trying to distract us from the real issues.

President Obama sure has broken a lot of promises. CrossRoads GPS put out a new ad reminding voters just how many promises he’s broken. He promised that if we liked our health insurance we could keep it. Turns out that’s not true. He promised to cut the deficit in half in his first term. Well, we all know how that turned out. So many broken promises.

Here’s the press release:

WASHINGTON – Today, Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (Crossroads GPS) announced a new $25 million issue advocacy initiative over the next four weeks to frame the national debate on jobs, the economy, ObamaCare and government debt.

The first phase of the initiative launches Thursday with the airing of a new Crossroads GPS TV ad, “Obama’s Promise,” which details the Obama Administration’s poor results on fixing the troubled economy, cutting the debt, keeping taxes low and other key issues.

The initial television buy includes network affiliates in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

The new spot will start airing Thursday, May 17 and run through May 31 in an $8m initial buy. The spot can be viewed here, and is available for high resolution download upon request.

“President Obama made commitments on core issues to the American people, and this ad holds him to account,” said Steven Law, president of Crossroads GPS. “Our country faces serious economic and fiscal problems which require practical solutions and not just promises. If we don’t hold Washington politicians accountable, we won’t fix these problems that are holding our country back.”

The ad urges citizens to support the “New Majority Agenda.” For more information about the six major policy initiatives detailed in the plan, visit www.newmajorityagenda.org

Since President Obama took office in January 2009, the national debt has increased by more than $5 trillion, 45% more people are on food stamps, gas prices have doubled, and job growth is anemic, leaving record numbers of Americans to simply give up looking for work and leave the workforce. Obama and his advisors promised that the stimulus bill would prevent the unemployment rate from rising above 8%, but it has been above 8% for every month of Obama’s presidency since February 2009, and the real unemployment rate is considered much higher by economists.

Crossroads GPS is a policy and grassroots advocacy organization that is committed to educating, equipping and mobilizing millions of American citizens to take action on the critical economic and legislative issues that will shape our nation’s future in the years ahead.

Sen. John McCain is talking with Democrats about a joint effort to require outside groups that have spent millions of dollars on this year’s elections to disclose their donors.

McCain (R-Ariz.), once Congress’s leading champion of campaign finance reform, has kept a low profile on the issue in recent years.

He raised the ire of many Republicans a decade ago for pushing comprehensive reform, and many Republicans still held it against him during his 2008 presidential campaign.

Good-government advocates who worked with McCain in the 1990s and early 2000s had begun to think he’d given up on the issue. But McCain said Tuesday he could join Democrats once again to form a bipartisan coalition, even though it would annoy the Republican leadership.

“I’ve been having discussions with Sen. [Sheldon] Whitehouse [D-R.I.] and a couple others on the issue,” McCain told The Hill. (Read More)

McCain is working to make it easier for President Obama to add to his enemies list. He says he’s doing it to make sure the unions are treated the same as corporations. But everyone knows who the unions donate to, so what difference will that really make? We won’t hear from the media that big labor is a special interest group influencing Democrats, but we’ll hear all about the evil rich people and corporations who dare to contribute to Republican PACs.

John Wolfe

John Wolfe is on the ballot in the Arkansas Democratic primary against President Obama. Wolfe’s tag line is “Peace and Prosperity, Not War and Austerity.” It’s not as pithy as “Hope and Change,” or “Forward,” but Arkansas primary voters don’t seem to mind. Obama’s barely beating Wolfe in the polls there.

According to White House Dossier, this could get interesting.

The poll of likely voters has Obama leading Tennessee attorney John Wolfe by 45-38 percent. Wolfe is also running against Obama in the May 29 Texas primary, according to the Weekly Standard.

Wolfe’s apparently credible challenge comes just a week after Keith Judd, an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Texarkana, Texas, picked up 40 percent of the vote against Obama in the West Virginia primary.

If I were the RNC, I’d be pouring money into the Wolfe campaign. A Wolfe victory would actually be A SERIOUS MATTER for the Obama campaign.

Why? Because the president would begin to look a little ridiculous. Wolfe will start appearing on talk shows, gain momentum in Texas, and arrive at the Democratic convention parading around with his delegates and generally creating a spectacle that will attract reporters bored to tears by the Obama coronation.

They’ll do the roll call and someone will say, “The great state of Arkansas casts its votes for John Wolfe.” (Read More)

Wouldn’t that be a hoot?

“Nothing’s getting done.”

Well, that’s not entirely true. Plenty is getting done. More people are getting left behind.

He is a wealthy man, with assets of as much as $10 million.

He has a hefty stake in JPMorgan Chase, the megabank that just made a bad $2 billion bet. Obama has an account worth between $500,000 and $1 million.

Despite the nation’s $15.6 trillion debt, he is a believer in government paper. More than half of his assets are in Treasury bills and notes.

The disclosure statement lists assets and liabilities in dollar ranges, so pinpointing the president’s net worth is difficult. His assets appear to tally between $2.6 million and $9.9 million. He holds a mortgage on his Chicago home of $500,000 to $1 million.

But just think, what would they be worth if not for Michelle’s spending habits? I know, we the taxpayers foot the bills for their fancy parties and a good portion of their lavish vacations, but imagine what they would be worth if they were frugal! What do those vacation rentals cost them? It’s like they’re running their own personal finances the same way he’s running the country – spend, spend, spend. Ann Romney was hammered by the press for wearing an expensive blouse, when Michelle Obama’s wardrobe appears to be far more expensive, with her collection of $2,500 sweaters and $500 sneakers, not to mention all of the designer gowns. These things add up fast. I’d hate to see their Visa bill. Yikes!

No wonder the president is so angry at rich folks, he’s living with one who refuses to make any sacrifices for the greater good. That’s his kids’ inheritance she’s spending. Who knows, maybe he thinks he can make up for it when he hits the lecture circuit after he’s booted out of office. In the mean time, the president continues to push for more government spending that will make it nearly impossible for our children to ever have a “fair shot” at being anywhere near as wealthy as the Obama’s.

Addendum:  I have no problem with the president being wealthy, or the spending habits of his wife. What I do have a problem with is the class warfare and the hypocrisy of it all. It’s almost as disgusting as what he’s doing to our kids.

Thanks to Smitty for the short lesson in having fun with memes.

Mitt Romney delivered a speech in Iowa today that was spot-on. This is a speech President Obama probably doesn’t want you to hear. Romney called the national debt crisis a “prairie fire of debt” and said that President Obama has been feeding the fire.

You can watch the entire speech on CSPAN, and read the full text at the Romney campaign website, but here are a few of my favorite quotes. I like the fact that he wasn’t at all afraid to go after the disastrous policies of President Obama.

We can’t spend another four years talking about solving a problem that we know we are making worse every single day.

When the men and women who settled the Iowa prairie saw a fire in the distance, they didn’t look around for someone else to save them or go back to sleep hoping the wind might blow another direction. They knew that their survival was up to them.

A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation and every day we fail to act that fire gets closer to the homes and children we love.

This is not solely a Democrat or a Republican problem. The issue isn’t who deserves the most blame, it’s who is going to do what it takes to put out the fire.

The people of Iowa and America have watched President Obama for nearly four years, much of that time with Congress controlled by his own party. And rather than put out the spending fire, he has fed the fire. He has spent more and borrowed more.

On abandoning principles of more centrist Democrats.

President Obama tucked away the Clinton doctrine in his large drawer of discarded ideas, along with transparency and bipartisanship. It’s enough to make you wonder if maybe it was a personal beef with the Clintons….but really it runs much deeper.

President Obama is an old school liberal whose first instinct is to see free enterprise as the villain and government as the hero. America counted on President Obama to rescue the economy, tame the deficit and help create jobs. Instead, he bailed out the public-sector, gave billions of dollars to the companies of his friends, and added almost as much debt as all the prior presidents combined.

The consequence is that we are enduring the most tepid recovery in modern history.

The consequence is that half of the kids graduating from college can’t find a job that uses their skills. Half.

The consequence is that retirees can no longer get by on savings and Social Security.

The consequence is that the length of time it takes an unemployed worker to find a job is the longest on record.

This is why even those who voted for Barack Obama are disappointed in him.

Disappointment is the key in which the President’s re-election is being played. Americans will not settle for four more years of the same melancholy song. We can and we must do better.

Romney then talked about Obamacare and the stimulus.

When you add up his policies, this President has increased the national debt by five trillion dollars.

Let me put that in a way we can understand. Your household’s share of government debt and unfunded liabilities has reached more than $520,000 under this president. Think about what that means. Your household will be taxed year after year with the interest cost of that debt and with the principal payments for those liabilities. Of course, it won’t be paid off by the adults in your household. It will be passed along to your children. They will struggle throughout their lives with the interest on our debts–and President Obama is adding to them every single day.

And that’s the best case scenario. The interest rate on that debt is bound to go up, like an adjustable mortgage. And there’s a good chance this debt could cause us to hit a Greece-like wall.

Subprime mortgages came close to bringing the economy to its knees. This debt is America’s Nightmare Mortgage. It is adjustable, no-money down, and assigned to our children. Politicians have been trying to hide the truth about this Nightmare Mortgage for years–just like liar-loans.

This is not just bad economics; it is immoral.

During my time in business and in state government, I came to see the economy as having three big players – the private sector, the states and localities, and the federal government.

Of these three, the private sector is by far the most efficient and cost effective.

He then talked about how competition spurs innovation and brings down costs. We don’t get competition from the federal government.

Government doesn’t begin to compare when it comes to change and improvements that provide better and less expensive services and products. But among governments, the states and localities are more responsive than the federal government, probably because there is a degree of competition between them.

The slowest, least responsive sector is the federal government. Nobody hears “Washington, D.C.” and thinks “efficiency.”

Imagine if the federal government was the sole legal supplier of cell phones. First, they’d still be under review, with hearings in Congress. When finally approved, the contract to make them would go to an Obama donor. They’d be the size of a shoe, with a collapsible solar panel. And campaign donors would be competing to become the all-powerful App Czar.

My point is this: as President Obama and old-school liberals absorb more and more of our economy into government, they make what we do more expensive, less efficient, and less useful. They make America less competitive. They make government more expensive.

What President Obama is doing is not bold; it’s old.

He also promised to repeal Obamacare, and addressed Social Security and Medicare.

I have proposed a Medicare plan that improves the program, keeps it solvent, and slows the rate of growth in health care costs.

Both of these reforms are relatively simple, compared to the far more difficult choices we’ll face if we do nothing. Of course, Medicare and Social Security are also easy to demagogue, and I expect the President to continue doing that in this campaign. But Americans are on to that game, and I’m not going to insult voters by pretending that we can just keep putting off entitlement reform. I will continue to speak honestly, and, if elected, I will do what is right for the people of America.

The President has made little effort to rein in redundancy and waste.

If he really means what he said, and we can elect conservatives to the House and the Senate, I do believe there may be some hope for us.

Read the whole thing, or watch the video.

Aw. Poor Chris Matthews. The MSNBC host who likes to mock Sarah Palin’s intelligence by saying she’d be terrible at Jeopardy! appeared on Jeopardy! and failed miserably. Maybe he’ll choose a different line of attack the next time. In all fairness, perhaps he had other things on his mind – like the First Gay President – and the tingles going up his leg distracted him. Surely he can’t be this dumb! Watch:

What’s even funnier is that it appears that Robert Gibbs won by mostly keeping his mouth shut. I kind of liked him for a change. But then, I didn’t see the whole show.