Every year, one member of the recently criticized White House press corps writes a holiday poem for its annual party.

USA Today reports that SRN News radio correspondent Greg Clugston wrote the poem this year.

The piece made references to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney‘s slight against Big Bird and actor Clint Eastwood‘s infamous conversation with an empty chair. Here’s an excerpt:

“Republicans eyed victory — there was change in the air,
In Tampa, Clint Eastwood conversed with a chair.
Romney rose in the polls and enjoyed his ascent,
But, oh, how he stumbled with “47 percent.”

Journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann will once again be teaming up on a new nonfiction project. Following the success of their 2010 title, Game Change, the writing duo plans to pen Double Down: Game Change 2012.

This book will examine Presidential race between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Penguin Press president and editor-in-chief Ann Godoff negotiated the deal with The Wylie Agency’s Andrew Wylie. According to The New York Times, the publisher has planned a release date for fall 2013.

Here’s more from The Hollywood Reporter: “The book already has been optioned by HBO. The cable network aired Game Change, a Jay Roach-directed and Danny Strong-written movie about the 2008 election that in September won four Emmys, including one for Julianne Moore‘s performance as Sarah Palin. Roach and Strong are likely to return for the sequel.”

Shannon McCormick hopes to raise $5,000 for his art book project, Presidential Losers: The Book.

As Barack Obama stays in office, former Governor Mitt Romney joins an illustrious group that includes President John Adams, Vice President Al Gore and Senator John McCain. This book will feature artistic portraits of all these men and more. We’ve embedded a video about the project above–what do you think?

Here’s more about the project: “Earlier this year, we assembled an amazing roster of 75 contemporary artists and cartoonists, and each submitted a portrait of one of the loosing contenders from each federal election going back to the defeat of incumbent President John Adams in 1800…We’re currently planning on a very sophisticated 100 page softcover book, complete with all the portraits along with quick bios of the losing candidates and our artists.”

Welcome to our Kickstarter Publishing Project of the Week, a feature exploring how authors and publishers are using the fundraising site to raise money for book projects. If you want to start your own project, check out How To Use Kickstarter to Fund Your Publishing Project.

The real number to be watching today is Nate Silver’s Amazon book ranking.

— Rex Sorgatz (@fimoculous) November 6, 2012

FiveThirtyEight blogger and author Nate Silver gave Mitt Romney an eight percent chance of winning the election yesterday. Since making his accurate predictions about the election, The Signal and the Noise has shot up from No. 15 at Amazon to No. 2 among all books.

He wrote:  ”I hope you’ll excuse the cliché, but it’s appropriate here: in poker, making an inside straight requires you to catch one of 4 cards out of 48 remaining in the deck, the chances of which are about 8 percent. Those are now about Mr. Romney’s chances of winning the Electoral College, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast. As any poker player knows, those 8 percent chances do come up once in a while.”

In recent weeks, Silver has defended his statistical methods against all sorts of attacks, and his book has spent 50 days in the Amazon Top 100 of all books. Writer Rex Sorgatz made an interesting point yesterday. Silver is staking his reputation as a blogger and an author on this election, and Sorgatz thinks ”the real number to be watching today is Nate Silver’s Amazon book ranking.”

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President Barack Obama‘s memoir The Audacity of Hope has sold more copies than presidential contender Mitt Romney‘s No Apology: The Case for American Greatness in the last 30 days, according to Amazon’s new election heat map.

According to the map, when pitted against each other, Obama’s book holds 64 percent of purchases, where as Romney’s book has only 36 percent. At the same time, “red” books are outselling “blue” books in most states on Amazon’s map.

On the flip side, Republican running mate Paul Ryan‘s book Young Guns, which he co-wrote with Eric Cantor, is much more popular than vice president Joe Biden‘s book Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics. Ryan’s book has garnered 94 percent of sales when put up against Biden’s book.

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Comic book writer Chuck Dixon, whose resume includes co-creating the Batman villain Bane (as well as a whole slew of other characters), refuted conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh‘s conspiracy theory that Bane represents Mitt Romney.

Dixon told ComicBook.com: ”The idea that there’s some kind of liberal agenda behind the use of Bane in the new movie is silly. I refuted this within hours of the article in the Washington Examiner suggesting that Bane would be tied to Bain Capital and Mitt Romney appearing. Bane was created by me and Graham Nolan and we are lifelong conservatives and as far from left-wing mouthpieces as you are likely to find in comics.”

Dixon said that the he did not have politics in mind when he created the character, but said that he would be more of an “Occupy Wall Street type,” if he were to be compared to a modern day political figure.

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In an expletive filled essay at The Daily Beast, novelist Stephen King warned wealthy Americans to pay their “fair share” of taxes before civil unrest deepens in the United States.

Do you agree with King’s bombastic essay? His essay also took aim at Presidential candidate, author and fellow wealthy person Mitt Romney. Check it out:

Mitt Romney has said, in effect, “I’m rich and I don’t apologize for it.” Nobody wants you to, Mitt. What some of us want—those who aren’t blinded by a lot of bullsh** persiflage thrown up to mask the idea that rich folks want to keep their damn money—is for you to acknowledge that you couldn’t have made it in America without America. That you were fortunate enough to be born in a country where upward mobility is possible (a subject upon which Barack Obama can speak with the authority of experience), but where the channels making such upward mobility possible are being increasingly clogged. That it’s not fair to ask the middle class to assume a disproportionate amount of the tax burden. Not fair? It’s un-fu**ing-American is what it is. I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share.

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Forget Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich! Children’s author Nick Bruel has cast the “purrfect” candidate in his latest chapter book: Bad Kitty for President. We’ve embedded the book trailer above.

We caught up with Bruel to ask a few questions about politics, writing and illustrating.

Q: With your latest title, Bad Kitty for President, why did you decide to touch on such a
topical event?
A: I find politics in general to be a very weird, absurd, and sort of wonderful creature in this country. As Americans I think we have a propensity to take politics too seriously (myself included), but at the same time I don’t think many Americans understand our political system as much as they should. It’s a bit like watching a full season of baseball but never really understanding the rules of the game.

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Tonight the whole country will keep an eye on Iowa caucuses as Republican candidates battle to win their party’s presidential nomination at 99 conventions around Iowa.

This year, the five major contenders in Iowa all happen to be writers. Follow the links below to read free book samples by the candidates competing in the Iowa caucuses.

Mitt Romney No Apology: The Case for American Greatness

Ron Paul The Revolution: A Manifesto

Rick Santorum It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good

Newt Gingrich A Nation Like No Other:Why American Exceptionalism Matters

Rick Perry Fed Up!: Our Fight to Save America from Washington

Michele Bachmann Core of Conviction: My Story

Two Boston Globe investigative reporters landed a book deal with HarperCollins to publish the “definitive, unflinching biography” of presidential hopeful Mitt Romney.

Entitled The Real Romney, publication is set for January. Washington bureau deputy chief Michael Kranish and staff writer Scott Helman will use “previously undisclosed memos, e-mails, and interviews with key players” in the biography.

Here’s more about the book: “Based on more than five years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, The Real Romney explores Romney’s personal life, his bond with his wife and how they handled her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis, and his difficult years as a Mormon missionary in France, where a fatal car crash had a profound effect on his path. It also illuminates Romney’s privileged upbringing in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, his rejection of the 1960s protest culture, and his close but complicated relationship with his father.” (Image via)