Republican Mitt Romney informed the United States today that, if he swears an oath of fidelity to it a year from now, he will still want it to be an "open relationship" when it comes to basic needs like the primal urge to seek tax shelters.
"I'm a businessman, I have needs," Romney explained. "No one country's banking system can be expected to satisfy me completely. That's old-fashioned thinking."
Romney, it has been revealed, has had a long-time financial relationship with the Cayman Islands. He has claimed that he has no control over where he puts his money. "Sometimes I just can't help myself," he admitted. He said that his extra-national affairs amount to "not very much," only an amount equivalent to roughly ten times that of the average American every year.
Friends have presumed that he would discreetly end this relationship as he moved towards seeking a formal commitment to the U.S. Presidency. "People start to notice after a while," commented one friend. "You can see it in how his eyes get wide when he talks about foreign interest." He surprised them today, however, by pledging that he would continue to mess around with the Caymans and other foreign tax shelters any time that he wanted.
"It's my prerogative as an adult man, for Pete's sake!" he explained. "I'm paying only a 15% effective tax rate! Dear Lord, that's so good! Mammon! Oh, Mammon!"