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Monday, Oct 1, 2012 12:57 PM UTC

Ryan: No math for you

The VP nominee won't explain Romney's tax plan; Allen West down; Elizabeth Warren up; and other top Monday stories

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Topics: Mitt Romney, Elizabeth Warren, Scott Brown, Paul Ryan, Allen West, Brief,

Ryan: No math for you

Ryan’s non-math: Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan refused to explain the math behind Mitt Romney’s tax plan yesterday on Fox News Sunday, saying, “It would take me too long to go through all of the math.” Host Chris Wallace pressed numerous times for Ryan to explain how Romney and Ryan would pay for huge tax cuts, but Ryan wouldn’t budge. Nor was Ryan even willing to say how much the tax cuts would cost. The Romney campaign has so far not provided details of how the plan would be paid for.

Allen West losing? Florida Tea Party firebrand Rep. Allen West is losing his reelection fight by a 9-point margin to Democrat Patrick Murphy, according to a poll commissioned for a Democratic super PAC. The survey, taken by the firm Garin-Hart-Yang Research for the House Majority PAC and shared with Politico, found Murphy leading West 52 to 43. But polling has been all over the place in the district.  West released an internal poll last week showing him ahead of Murphy by 9 points, while a different GOP poll found Murphy up by 4.

Warren lead holds: Two new polls show Democrat Elizabeth Warren leading Republican Scott Brown, continuing a narrow lead she’s enjoyed for several weeks. A WBUR poll released overnight shows her up 2 points 46 to 44, though that’s firmly within the margin of error of 4.4 percent. Meanwhile, a Boston Globe poll released Sunday shows her leading by 5 percent, 43 to 38. Huffington Post’s Luke Johnson reports that Warren is increasingly making her message about not just Brown per se, but how Republicans might gain control of the Senate if he wins.

To zing or not to zing?: Mitt Romney has been prepping “zingers” for months and practicing them on his staff, according to the New York Times. But don’t expect any from Obama, the campaign says. “If you’re expecting that, that’s probably not what he’s going to deliver,” campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Air Force One. “He’s speaking directly to the American people, and what they want to hear is what his plan is for moving the country forward.” Too bad. The first presidential debate from Denver kicks off at 9 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday.

The justices are back in town: The Supreme Court comes back in session today with a full plate and after a controversial session that ended with the ruling on the Affordable Care Act. The court will likely rule on two key questions relating to marriage equality: DOMA, the federal anti-equality law, and California’s Proposition 8. It will also likely take up a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, along with a few important criminal justice cases.

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Alex Seitz-Wald is Salon's political reporter. Email him at aseitz-wald@salon.com, and follow him on Twitter @aseitzwald. More Alex Seitz-Wald.

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What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012 slide show

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  • 10. "The Guardians" by Sarah Manguso: "Though Sarah Manguso’s 'The Guardians' is specifically about losing a dear friend to suicide, she pries open her intelligent heart to describe our strange, sad modern lives. I think about the small resonating moments of Manguso’s narrative every day." -- M. Rebekah Otto, The Rumpus

  • 9. "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter: "'Beautiful Ruins' leads my list because it's set on the coast of Italy in 1962 and Richard Burton makes an entirely convincing cameo appearance. What more could you want?" -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air"

  • 8. "Arcadia" by Lauren Groff: "'Arcadia' captures our painful nostalgia for an idyllic past we never really had." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post

  • 7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn: "When a young wife disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband becomes the automatic suspect in this compulsively readable thriller, which is as rich with sardonic humor and social satire as it is unexpected plot twists." -- Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor

  • 6. "How Should a Person Be" by Sheila Heti: "There was a reason this book was so talked about, and it’s because Heti has tapped into something great." -- Jason Diamond, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

  • 4. TIE "NW" by Zadie Smith and "Far From the Tree" by Andrew Solomon: "Zadie Smith’s 'NW' is going to enter the canon for the sheer audacity of the book’s project." -- Roxane Gay, New York Times "'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon is, to my mind, a life-changing book, one that's capable of overturning long-standing ideas of identity, family and love." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 3. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain: "'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' says a lot about where we are today," says Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor. "Pretty much the whole point of that novel," adds Time's Lev Grossman.

  • 2. "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel: "Even more accomplished than the preceding novel in this sequence, 'Wolf Hall,' Mantel's new installment in the fictionalized life of Thomas Cromwell -- master secretary and chief fixer to Henry VIII -- is a high-wire act, a feat of novelistic derring-do." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 1. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo: "Like the most remarkable literary nonfiction, it reads with the bite of a novel and opens up a corner of the world that most of us know absolutely nothing about. It stuck with me all year." -- Eric Banks, president of the National Book Critics Circle

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