A judicious writer avoids adjectives like "mind-blowing," especially when covering political or economic issues. But no other word seems to describe the stunning reality of corporate taxation in modern America, which cries out for the italics-heavy, exclamation-point-driven format made famous by "Ripley's Believe It or Not."

Stylistic overkill? Read these 13 facts and you may change your mind.

1. We're told we can't "afford" full Social Security benefits, even though closing corporate tax-haven loopholes would pay for Obama's "chained CPI" benefit cut more than 10 times over!

Abusive offshore tax havens cost the U.S. $150 billion in lost tax revenue every year (via FACT Coalition). That's $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

The "chained CPI" cut, proposed by President Obama and supported by Republicans, is projected to "save" a total of $122 billion to $130 billion over the same time period by denying benefits to seniors and disabled people.

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From Sam Stein at the Huffington Post, who obtained an early copy of the book:

Over the Christmas break of 2010, Mitt Romney and his family took an internal poll on whether he should run for president once more. Twelve family members cast ballots. Ten said no. One of the 10 was Mitt Romney himself.

The doubts that the former Massachusetts governor harbored before ultimately launching his second unsuccessful bid for the presidency are one of several attention-grabbing details in "Collision 2012," the newest book on the 2012 campaign.

In an interview with Balz, Romney said that he changed his mind when he realized how weak the other candidates were in the Republican primary field. "I didn't think that any one of them had a good chance of defeating the president," Romney said, "and in some cases I thought that they lacked the experience and perspective necessary to do what was essential to get the country on track."

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Sure, the cable network covered the DOMA decision as it broke mid-morning, giving the essential details to viewers. But then it swiftly moved onto what it apparently deemed more urgent stories, like an IRS credit card spending spree on porn and wine, a Keystone Pipeline corruption scandal featuring a billionaire supporter of the president, and President Obama's allegedly lavish trip to Africa.

As someone who worked at Fox News for two and half years, I can tell you this coverage decision wasn’t surprising -- it fits right into the network's strategy.

I was employed by Fox for two and half years, beginning in 2008 and ending in 2011. Unlike other former Fox producers who’ve caused a stir, I’m not here to dish juicy tidbits about secret meetings or specific anchors. I have no gripes to share about the No. 1 rated cable news channel. But my time there -- beginning on the cusp of the Obama age in 2008 as a guest booker for Foxnews.com’s “Strategy Room,” and ending in 2011 working on “Freedom Watch” with Judge Andrew Napolitano -- did give me valuable insight into the network.

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From the study:

[I]n 2011 and 2012, Koch Industries Public Sector LLC, the lobbying arm of Koch Industries, advocated for the Energy Tax Prevention Act, which would have rolled back the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could regulate greenhouse gases. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., and co-signed by 92 Republicans (and three Democrats), 61 of whom signed an anti-climate tax “pledge.” An economist with the American Council for Capital Formation — a nonprofit group that receives Koch money — testified about that same bill before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Margo Thorning told members of the House in February 2011 that regulation of greenhouse gas emissions “makes little economic or environmental sense,” according to her testimony.

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Clapper, you may recall, unequivocally said "no, sir" in response to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asking him: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Clapper's response was shown to be a lie by Snowden's disclosures, as well as by reports from the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Associated Press and Bloomberg News (among others). This is particularly significant, considering lying before Congress prevents the legislative branch from performing oversight and is therefore a felony.

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The Democratic president was to fly Monday into Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the last stop on a weeklong tour of Africa that wraps up Tuesday. His Republican predecessor coincidentally also plans to be there for a conference on African women organized by the George W. Bush Institute.

Their wives plan to team up at the conference Tuesday for a joint discussion on promoting women's education, health and economic empowerment. President Bush plans to be in attendance, before delivering his own speech there the following day, after the Obamas will have left.

Initially aides said the men had no plans to meet, but Obama foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes indicated Sunday that could change. "There may be something," Rhodes said.

Having both presidents in town "sends a very positive message that both political parties in the United States share a commitment to this continent," Rhodes said.

During his African visit, Obama has credited Bush with helping save millions of lives by creating the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

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But, for all the optimism and nostalgia for an America that once was, it’s worth asking whether factory jobs are more likely to help workers rise to the middle class today -- or leave them stranded among the working poor.

Elena Suarez was on her lunch break, taking a walk on the side of the road in the industrial park where she works, and eating a sandwich as she walked, when I stopped her to ask about her job. She’s a machine operator at Resonetics, a manufacturing company in Nashua, New Hampshire that specializes in precision laser micromachining for the medical device industry.

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"We as leaders occupy these spaces temporarily and we don't get so deluded that we think the fate of our country doesn't depend on how long we stay in office," Obama said.

Obama spoke at a news conference with South African President Jacob Zuma in the midst of a weeklong tour of the continent that also included stops in Senegal and Tanzania. But many other African nations are embroiled in religious, sectarian and other conflicts.

Obama decided to avoid stopping in his father's home nation of Kenya because of international disputes there. The International Criminal Court is prosecuting Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta for crimes against humanity, including murder, deportation, rape, persecution and inhumane acts allegedly committed by his supporters in the violent aftermath of Kenya's 2007 elections.

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Most reports on the news have focused on Cartwright’s seniority, though Cartwright is not the only high-ranking retired general under such investigation. (As recently as April, an investigation into retired CIA Director and four star General David Petraeus’ handling of classified information remained active.) Few, however, have considered how odd this particular leak investigation is. This investigation presumably is not about Stuxnet itself, nor about U.S. and Israeli involvement in it. So what is the secret Cartwright allegedly revealed?

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Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone extensively detailed this week's NSA media counteroffensive against Snowden, as officials have tried to explain — anonymously and without real proof — that Snowden's leaks have hurt national security. On Wednesday, intelligence officials described to ABC News, Washington Post, Reuters and AP how terrorists are allegedly “changing their tactics” now that they've been tipped off that the U.S. is monitoring the Internet.

Essentially, the government leaked a bunch of classified information in an attempt to prove leaking classified information is dangerous.

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Immediately, I heard newscasters referring to her prior testimony, which I had watched on video, as combative and aggressive. And I felt my pressure start to rise.

These kinds of terms – combat, aggression, anger – stalk black women, especially black women who are dark-skinned and plus-sized like Rachel, at every turn seeking to discredit the validity of our experiences and render invisible our traumas. By painting Rachel Jeantel as the aggressor, as the one prone to telling lies and spreading untruths, it became easy for the white male defense attorney to treat this 19-year-old, working-class black girl, a witness to the murder of her friend, as hostile, as a threat, as the one who needed to be regulated and contained and put in her place.

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Shaye is the Yemeni journalist who in 2009 exposed his government's coverup of a U.S. missile strike that, according to McClatchy's newswire, ended up killing "dozens of civilians, including 14 women and 21 children." McClatchy notes that for the supposed crime of committing journalism, Shaye was sentenced to five years in prison following a trial that "was widely condemned as a sham" by watchdog groups and experts who noted that the prosecution did not "offer any substantive evidence to support (its) charges."

What, you might ask, does this have to do with the American government's attitude toward press freedom? That's where Scahill's movie comes in. As the film shows, when international pressure moved the Yemeni government to finally consider pardoning Shaye, President Obama personally intervened, using a phone call with Yemen's leader to halt the journalist's release.

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Obama opened his weeklong trip to Africa one day after the U.S. Supreme Court expanded federal benefits for married gay couples. In his first in-person comments on the ruling, Obama said the court's decision marked a "proud day for America." He pressed for similar recognition for gays in Africa, wading into a sensitive area in a region where dozens of countries outlaw homosexuality and a few punish violations with death.

"When it comes to how the state treats people, how the law treats people, I believe that everybody has to be treated equally," Obama said during a news conference with Senegalese President Macky Sall at the grand presidential palace in Dakar.

But Sall gave no ground. Senegal is "very tolerant," he assured Obama, but is "still not ready to decriminalize homosexuality." Sall said countries make decisions on complex issues in their own time, noting that Senegal has outlawed capital punishment while other countries have not — a pointed jab at the U.S., where the death penalty is legal in many states.

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The reason that's my guess is because unlike other movies and TV shows about politics, "Veep" -- whose season finale just aired -- portrays politicians, staffers, lobbyists and reporters not as the heroic idealists and brilliant Machiavellis that politicos desperately want to see looking back at them from the mirror. Instead, "Veep" shows Washington for what it is: not merely Hollywood for trolls, but a place where painfully average and often untalented drones follow their star-fucking ambitions only to be caught in a soul-sapping system that devours whatever last remaining shreds of humanity they still possessed.

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In a major speech at Georgetown University, Obama warned Americans of the deep and disastrous effects of climate change, urging them to take action before it's too late.

"As a president, as a father and as an American, I'm here to say we need to act," Obama said.

Obama announced he was directing his administration to launch the first-ever federal regulations on heat-trapping gases emitted by new and existing power plants — "to put an end to the limitless dumping of carbon pollution."

Other aspects of the plan will boost renewable energy production on federal lands, increase efficiency standards and prepare communities to deal with higher temperatures.

Even before Obama unveiled his plan Tuesday, Republican critics in Congress were lambasting it as a job-killer that would threaten the economic recovery. Obama dismissed those critics, noting the same arguments have been used in the past when the U.S. has taken other steps to protect the environment.

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"We don't have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society," Obama said. "Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it's not going to protect you from the coming storm."

As it turns out, there is a real Flat Earth Society and its president thinks that anthropogenic climate change is real. In an email to Salon, president Daniel Shenton said that while he "can't speak for the Society as a whole regarding climate change," he personally thinks the evidence suggests fossil fuel usage is contributing to global warming.

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So is this the end of Keystone? Stein says the "policy somewhat splits the difference -- not killing the project outright, but ensuring that it meets a basic environmental standard."

Environmentalists are thrilled, but reserving a healthy skepticism because there's still a big "if" here.

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Split along ideological and partisan lines, the justices voted 5-4 to strip the government of its most potent tool to stop voting bias — the requirement in the Voting Rights Act that all or parts of 15 states with a history of discrimination in voting, mainly in the South, get Washington's approval before changing the way they hold elections.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a majority of conservative, Republican-appointed justices, said the law's provision that determines which states are covered is unconstitutional because it relies on 40-year-old data and does not account for racial progress and other changes in U.S. society.

The decision effectively puts an end to the advance approval requirement that has been used to open up polling places to minority voters in the nearly half century since it was first enacted in 1965, unless Congress can come up with a new formula that Roberts said meets "current conditions" in the United States. That seems unlikely to happen any time soon.

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