I guess this election is over because this is the quality of critique that is showing up as Letters to the Editor in the Washington Post.

The Post reported that Mr. Romney pops popcorn at home and puts it in his wife’s purse when they go to the movies. A political adviser described watching him walk to a nearby convenience store to bring back Perrier to drink with a meal. He does not want to spend the extra money charged for the same products at the cinema or restaurant.

At the movies this is a clear violation of policy. At the restaurant it is less clear, but it is clearly wrong. Is this what we want from a presidential candidate? Someone who sneaks food into the movies and is unwilling to pay a restaurant its prices?

I expect better of my children and have taught them better.

John N. Ruth, Annapolis

Killer analysis by Mr. John N. Ruth of Annapolis, MD, and fairly typical of the pathetic stupidity one finds among Maryland Democrats, a party that is renowned for its detachment from fiscal sanity.

But when we unpack this a bit there is even less than meets the eye. Right now we are essentially living on a diet of movie theater popcorn and skittles it the guise of the debt we are piling up.

Federal gencies that are first a foremost charged with being good stewards of the public treasury are spending it like a drunken sailor in Olangapo.

The GSA, for instance, dropped over $800,000 for a lavish conference in Las Vegas and $250,000 for another in Crystal City, VA. The VA, which is constantly pissing and moaning about lack of funding tossed away over $5,000,000 on two conferences, including $50K for a video with a Patton impersonator. The Energy Department has played, emphasis on “play”, the role of ersatz venture capitalist dispensing billions in loan guarantees to deadend technologies, foreign corporations, and major Obama donors.

Frugality is one of those historic American, and indeed Christian, virtues that has gone out of fashion in the past decades. Profligate spending, underwritten by equally profligate borrowing, has created a society that is teetering on the edge of fiscal disaster.

I find it refreshing that a man as wealthy as Mitt Romney still watches his budget because that is an indication he will treat the public treasury in the same way.