October 5, 2012

"Like a bull to a Matador" was a description of how Romney approached the President

Lawrence O'Donnell did a wonderfully thought out Last Word on who really won the debate: "We have no way of knowing, the jury is out, the voting will be in November..."

He quoted a columnist in a Denver Newspaper who had to go with sports analogies, and chose to compare the encounter of the debate as Romney being in the ring "like a bull to a Matador".

Let's not forget, said Lawrence, just what exactly the Matador does to the bull in the end.

I liked that.

October 5, 2012

Some things should NOT make me smile

Walked in the cemetery a few days ago...

October 2, 2012

The end of my show from the Island "Mainau" - onward and upward to new subjects

http://www.mainau.de/

On the front page of this link you see the island, as I said for reasons one does not know it has tropical climate. Even as a school child I heard about this magical island.
It is in the huge lake of Constance at the German/Swiss/Austrian borders. The building you see on the island is my first shot.



All over Germany the re-cycling is done just like this, and they are adamant about it including in homes



The bridge, the waters and the walkway to the island. I don't know the history of the sculpture, only the subject matter.



Fascinating trees along the path





Welcoming flower scupture



A peacock



Vegetables





And a shot I thought was fun of water going into the lake

October 2, 2012

Offshore Tactics Helped Increase Romneys’ Wealth - New York Times tells us how

Offshore Tactics Helped Increase Romneys’ Wealth
By MICHAEL LUO and MIKE McINTIRE

Buried deep in the tax returns released by Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign are references to dozens of offshore holdings with names like Ursa Funding (Luxembourg) S.à.r.l. and Sankaty Credit Opportunities Investors (Offshore) IV, based in the Cayman Islands.
Mr. Romney, responding to opponents’ barbs about his use of overseas tax havens, has offered a narrow defense, saying only that the investments, many made through the private equity firm he founded, Bain Capital, have yielded him “not one dollar of reduction in taxes.”
A review of thousands of pages of financial documents and interviews with tax lawyers found that in some cases, the offshore arrangements enabled his individual retirement account to avoid taxes on its investments and may well have reduced Mr. Romney’s personal income tax bills.
But perhaps a more significant impact of Mr. Romney’s offshore investments has been on the profit side of the ledger — in the way Bain’s tax-avoidance strategies have enhanced his income.
Some of the offshore entities enabled Bain-owned companies to sidestep certain taxes, increasing returns for Mr. Romney and other investors. Others helped Bain attract foreign investors and nonprofit institutions by insulating them from taxes, again augmenting Mr. Romney’s bottom line, since he shared in management fees based on the size of each Bain fund.
The documents — which include confidential Bain prospectuses and foreign regulatory filings, many previously unreported — illustrate how these tax-avoidance strategies are woven into the fabric of Bain’s deal making. While hardly a novel concept and not unique to Bain, the inevitable result is that elite investors like Mr. Romney are able to increase their fortunes in ways unavailable to most taxpayers.


Source and lots more are here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/us/politics/bains-offshore-strategies-grew-romneys-wealth.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121002&pagewanted=print

October 2, 2012

Dahlias - Color - a second post about the Island of "Mainau"

Posting flower photos here is like carrying coal to Newcastle, I know.
Yet I can't help it. The Island was ablaze in Dahlias. There was a contest to vote for your favorite one.
The prize was a substantial amount of Euros and I put down my Moms name and address.
On five entries.

October 1, 2012

There is an island in the Lake of Constance called "Die Mainau" - meet some inhabitants

For reasons nobody really knows the climate on this island is quite tropical and the family that owns it has turned it into a garden paradise.


I will show more of the island, but first some German butterflies and a bee