I know you guys are having a fine time over there deciding whether Mitt Romney's religion should/does matter, and that is awesome.

But when there's a break in the action, I'd love it if some of you more economic-smart folks would be interested in figuring out the following:

(Or if you've seen anyone else share these numbers it would be great.)

1. How much would Romney have paid in taxes if the "Cayman Capitalist" loophole were closed? (i.e. no offshore accounts)

We are being priveleged to witness, once again, the down-in-flames destruction of a creepy New York Police Commissioner. (ed note: the last non-creepy one wasTeddy Roosevelt...)

The article about referees "blowing the whistle" on oil companies was quite energizing.  (Heh heh.) So I'm recycling this comment from 2010.

Important parts bolded--the rest included for context. Main point is that Progressives, "True" Conservatives and Economic Tea Partiers have reason to agree on the issue of big money in politics.

I saw this movie the other morning on Showtimes Movie Channel. It is the perfect movie to see this political season, it not only brings on the big belly laughs but the story has a edge of the "real"  and as a viewer I became pretty convinced this could easily happen to any politician.

Why is Romney having so much trouble talking about his taxes and his wealth?  It isn't so that he is uncomfortable with talking about it (which he is); it is (in my opinion) that he is literally not used to talking about it. 

In the thread on Articleman’s latest blog, he responded to one of my comments with comment about Mitt:

You can't offload muscularity to your superPAC.  Mitt has a glass jaw…. Mitt lacks that gear, which works if you lack any plausible alternative who does. The problem is, Newt is back to plausible and cannot be eradicated with superPAC drones.

I was just musing that we might want to replace muscularity to rage.  And the difference between Newt and lot of other politicians is that he doesn’t have to work to get into that rage (muscularity) gear.  He is already there.  His rage isn’t an act that other politicians put on to appease the base.

We are left with only a few hours within which to exercise unrestrained speculation as to "the (tax) horror which dare not speak its name".

Level of income, of course, has been bruited as cause for embarassment.

Obvious high roller lifestyle deductions will cause the odd blush.

But, quaere:

Might the annual act of self-denial represented by parting with many millions of dollars be regarded as so extreme as to make you potentially seen to be a cult-addled and superstition-ridden nutjob?

MILLER'S GRIZZLED LANGUARS

I recently came upon some strange strange lines on the internet; from Huffpo to National Geographic to Alternet to...!

There is no reason; no logic in this presentation.

Ann Pendleton-Jullian in Design Education and Innovation Ecotones writes [emphasis mine]:

Ecotones are typologically unique ecosystems connecting two distinctly different plant and animal communities and the physical characteristics that support those communities.

But these zones are more than just zones of transition. They are areas of disturbance, catalyzed by the differences in the two ecosystems, and they are often zones of conflict as well. The word’s etymology derives from a combination of two Greek words: eco(logy) and—tone, from tonos or tension; ecologies in tension. Ecotones are not merely the blending of two habitats and their characteristics, but actually a third thing. “Although ecotones share some characteristics and species with the habitats on either side of them, ecotones also have their own distinct characteristics and species.”

Newt Gingrich, like Tide and Coke is new and  improved.

We learn, inter alia, from this evening's debate that he has raised his performance as a health care policy analyst.

Viz:

When jacked up by Santorum over his decade of support for an individual mandate to buy insurance, Newt credited (and tacitly solicited credit for) the onset of new wisdom.