Mitt Romney made a fortune at Bain Capital relying on business analytics.

Now he’s applying similar tactics to his presidential campaign, hiring Alex Gage, the expert used by Karl Rove in George W. Bush’s re-election.

Gage uses data-mining techniques to predict the behavior of voters, clustering them into groups such as “Flag and Family Republicans.” The approach is similar to that used by demographic marketing companies such as Claritas.

Guess who tops Forbes’s list of most expensive celebrity weddings?

Not Tom and Katy. Not Paul and Heather. But Liza Minelli and her ex, David Gest, whose nuptials cost $3.5 million.

Oprah Winfrey and Maya Angelou are the best of friends.

But, as the New York Times notes today, they’re likely to avoid talking politics.

Winfrey endorsed Obama on “Larry King Live” in May, and is planning a fundraiser for him at her California home. Angelou is featured on Clinton’s web site, backing her candidacy and describing the importance of women running for high office.

In business, Warren Buffett likes to invest in industries he understands. That means insurance companies, a candymaker, furniture and jewelry stores, even a daily newspaper. Nothing high tech.

In politics, the Oracle of Omaha is much the same. He is one of the world’s wealthiest people, but remains an outspoken critic of economic inequality. He lives in the same Omaha house today that he bought for $31,500 in 1958 and mainly supports Democrats.

Buffett helped Hillary Clinton raise $1 million at a New York fundraiser in June and says he will do the same later for Barack Obama.

“If you’re the luckiest 1 percent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 percent,” Buffett says. Of course, just as in business, he would be hard pressed to ignore a dream deal. For him, that would be a presidential ticket of New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, who recently became an independent, and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican with populist views.

Dedicated trackers of Muckety will delight in Richistan, by Robert Frank, who writes the Wealth Report column for The Wall Street Journal.

Frank’s premise - and he provides a great deal of evidence to back it up - is that the wealthy have become a separate country within a country. They share a common language and common economy, and they fraternize in places where hoi polloi aren’t allowed to step foot.

One of our favorite examples, described at length in Frank’s book, is the Yellowstone Club, which bills itself as “the world’s only private ski and golf community.” Members include Bill Gates, Peter Chernin and Dan Quayle.

Among the muckety-mucks gathered for the media summit in Sun Valley this week are Daniel Och, a partner in the soon-to-go-public Och-Ziff Capital Management Group, and Dirk Ziff, an investor in the company.

Och established the hedge fund and private equity company 14 years ago, with funds from the Ziff family. Och-Ziff filed notice with the SEC earlier this month of its intention to raise $2 billion through an IPO.

Och and Ziff are hardly the only money men at the conference. Other attendees include Richard Perry of hedge-fund firm Perry Capital and Wesley Edens of Fortress Investment Group.

So, now we know how at least one corporate CEO got his kicks. For years, he posted on financial bulletin boards, under an alias, sometimes criticizing the competition.

“I posted on Yahoo! under a pseudonym because I had fun doing it,”
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey acknowledged on his company’s Web site last night. “I never intended any of those postings to be identified with me.”

With less than $2 million in the bank and the departure yesterday of two top campaign aides, the future of the John McCain presidential bid appears cloudy.

Campaign manager Terry Nelson and senior adviser John Weaver announced yesterday that they had left the campaign. The Washington Post reported that the size of McCain’s staff had dwindled from 120 to 50.

McCain insisted that despite the staff changes and the money shortfalls, he would stay in the race.

There’s no doubt that Ron Burkle loves newspapers.

In the past year or so, he has explored buying the Tribune Co. and several former Knight Ridder papers. Today, the California billionaire
is scheduled to meet with directors of Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

None of Burkle’s previous media flirtations has led to anything and some analysts don’t give him much of a chance with Dow Jones. Some members of the company’s controlling Bancroft family, though, are desperately seeking an alternative to a takeover by Rupert Murdoch. Burkle is a Democrat with strong ties to the Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Environmentalists standards are finding unexpected support from the military and corporate America.

An organization called Securing America’s Future Energy, or SAFE, is headed by P. X. Kelley, a former Marine Corps commandant, and FedEx CEO Frederick Smith.

The goal of the high-powered nonprofit is to reduce the country’s dependence on oil, and to enlist other business and military leaders in the effort. Among its recommendations are increasing fuel-efficiency standards for passenger cars and light trucks, and expanding tax credits for efficient vehicles.