When Brandon Burgess, CEO of ION Television, named the producers of the upcoming Republican presidential debate being cosponsored by Newsmax, in Iowa on December 27, he was ebullient in his praise: “ION, Newsmax and Mr. Trump are committed to host a serious presidential forum which will include some of the most reputable journalists and media people in the country.” The debate will be produced by veterans of CNN, CBS, and NBC News.

When Christopher Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax Media, decided to team up with Donald Trump by asking him to moderate Newsmax’s upcoming Republican presidential debate in Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday, December 27, he explained: “Our readers and the grass roots really love Trump. They may not agree with him on everything, but they don’t see him as owned by the Washington establishment [or] the media establishment.”

Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry spelled out the details of his “Cut, Balance, and Grow” flat tax plan on October 25, saying that “the U.S. government spends too much. Taxes are too high, too complex, and too riddled with special-interest loopholes. And our expensive entitlement system is unsustainable in the long run.” Perry’s plan would offer taxpayers a choice between a new flat rate of 20 percent on incomes over $50,000, or their current income tax rate. The plan would allow them to file their taxes on a postcard, eliminating the enormous current compliance costs in filing their Form 1040s. Various deductions and exemptions would be eliminated, he says, thus improving incentives for entrepreneurs to invest, create, and hire.

The debt ceiling is to rise initially by $900 billion under the Revised Budget Control Act of 2011. And then, the debt limit is to rise again by either $1.2 trillion or $1.5 trillion depending upon how successful the 12-member Joint Committee of Congress is in finding sufficient cuts in government spending to avoid a “trigger” that would do the cutting automatically. The committee will be made up of three Republicans and three Democrats from each chamber.

 The Tea Party is upset with at least four House members who rode to victory in November of 2008 on promises of cutting government spending and then changed sides and voted for the Boehner bill last Friday. The four “defectors,” according to Tea Party Express, Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Founding Fathers, and United West, are James Lankford (R-Okla.), Allen West (R-Fla. — pictured), Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), and Bill Flores (R-Texas).

House Speaker John Boehner’s last-minute “pep talk” to his Republican caucus early Thursday morning failed to turn the tide of Tea Partier “nays” to “yeas,” and the vote on his debt-limit bill has been postponed. Calling on them to “get ... in line” because “I can’t do this job unless you’re behind me,” Boehner failed in getting the 216 votes he needed. He claimed, “The Republican proposal includes real spending cuts and reforms that will restrain future spending — and the spending cuts are larger than the debt limit increase.”

 The latest poll by the Washington Post-ABC News, published last week, provided one more indication of President Obama’s increasing difficulties in generating support for his reelection campaign. When 1,001 people were asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as president?” almost half responded negatively, with one-third strongly disapproving, up from 24 percent just two months earlier.

Writers Carl Hulse and Jackie Calmes, in the New York Times, could scarcely contain their delight that House Republicans have decided to put any proposed changes to Medicare on the shelf for the time being. Recognizing that Medicare modifications are a critical component of Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) “Road Map,” the pair ascribed the Republicans’ backing off to “the difficulties and political perils of addressing the nation’s long-term fiscal problems.” Translation: Democrat control of the Senate assures that any attempt to modify Medicare at present will meet certain and ignominious defeat.

The “Cold Case Posse” of Maricopa County, Arizona, has concluded it has “probable cause” that the President’s birth certificate released by the White House last April is “a computer-generated” forgery.

The creditors’ committee representing what’s left of Lehman Brothers asked bankruptcy Judge James Peck last week to force Timothy Geithner (left) — currently Obama’s Treasury Secretary but President of the New York Fed at the time of the Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy — to answer some questions. The original subpoena issued by the committee to Geithner to appear last August was ignored and so the committee appealed to Judge Peck.