Day: November 28, 2011

Bad News About Your 2011 Tax Return

Trish

TaxCalc

The White House is providing this handy little calculator you can use to figure out how much you’ll save on taxes if Congress passes the American Jobs Act (not likely), and how much you’ll owe if they don’t (way more likely). Start planning now how much more you’ll need to have saved in April by using the widget. Then go lobby your Republican senator or representative to Pass! This! Bill!

Duo Couldn’t Sell ‘Adios Mofo’ After Perry Stumbled

Buck Banks

It’s hard to remember when there was once a bidding war for “Adios, Mofo” in New York. Six publishers made our agent promise to give them a chance to bid on the proposal once Perry announced for president. When he rocketed to the top of the Republican field and looked like a tea-vangelical Ronald Reagan from the red states, a heartthrob for the angry mob, Moore and I ended up with a book deal that made national news. … And then Perry opened his mouth. Bless his heart.

— Jason Stanford, writing about how he and co-author James Moore lost their publisher for a book on Rick Perry once his campaign imploded.

Obama Should Embrace Simpson-Bowles

Buck Banks

President Obama should admit “that he made a mistake in spurning his own deficit reduction commission, chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, and is now adopting Simpson-Bowles — which already has Republican and Democratic support — as his long-term fiscal plan to be phased in after a near-term stimulus. If he did that, he would win politically and create a national consensus that would trump his opponents, right and left…. My gut says that if the president lays out such a plan — one that begins with him taking all the political risks on himself and then demanding the G.O.P. and his own party follow — he will be both defining himself and the future in a way that would earn him so much centrist support and respect that it would leave every possible Republican opponent in the dust, no matter how obstructionist they are or want to be.

— Tom Friedman, writing in the New York Times op-ed pages.

Top New Hampshire GOP Newspaper Endorses Gingrich Despite Flip-Flops and Historic Ethics Reprimand As Speaker

Jon Ponder

Speaker Gingrich
Speaker Gingrich
The campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination was roiled over the weekend when the New Hampshire Union Leader, the GOP’s house organ in the first primary state, endorsed former House Speaker Newt Gingrich instead of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who leads among Republican voters in the state in most polls:

Truth be known, many in the liberal media are belittling the Republican candidates because they don’t want any of them to be taken as a serious challenger to their man, Obama.

Readers of the Union Leader and Sunday News know that we don’t back candidates based on popularity polls or big-shot backers. We look for conservatives of courage and conviction who are independent-minded, grounded in their core beliefs about this nation and its people, and best equipped for the job.

We don’t have to agree with them on every issue. We would rather back someone with whom we may sometimes disagree than one who tells us what he thinks we want to hear.

Newt Gingrich is by no means the perfect candidate. But Republican primary voters too often make the mistake of preferring an unattainable ideal to the best candidate who is actually running. In this incredibly important election, that candidate is Newt Gingrich. He has the experience, the leadership qualities and the vision to lead this country in these trying times. He is worthy of your support on January 10.

The Union Leader’s readers and New Hampshire voters can decide whether Gingrich is the sort of consistent conservative the newspaper’s editorial writers have portrayed him to be. […]