First we have Romney and his hatred of the Second Amendment, along with the NRA's duplicity.  For those who are unaware, Mitt(ens) Romney appeared Friday at the NRA's annual meeting and committed the pilferage, er, pilgrimage that is expected of Republican candidates, claiming to be (of course) a strong supporter of the Second Amendment.

The NRA was oddly silent about Mittens' record in this regard, cementing their record as an organization that lies through its teeth and unfortunately has destroyed its own legacy:

Dateline July 8th, 2004:

Governor Mitt Romney has signed into law a permanent assault weapons ban that he says will make it harder for criminals to get their hands on these guns. "

"Deadly assault weapons have no place in Massachusetts,"¯ Romney said, at a bill signing ceremony on July 1 with legislators, sportsmen's groups and gun safety advocates.  "These guns are not made for recreation or self-defense.  They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people."

The NRA endorses this crap and embraces Romney?!

President Obama has done less, in point of fact, to harm 2nd Amendment Rights than Mittens!

But Mittens hasn't stopped there.  Oh no, he has embraced Mankiw as one of his chief economic advisers -- a man who literally had students walk out of one of his lectures in disgust at his embrace of economic frauds!

I have often emphasized the importance of George Akerlof and Paul Romer’s 1993 article (“Looting: the Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit”) to understand the economics of why we suffer epidemics of accounting control fraud and recurrent, intensifying financial crises.  Mankiw was the “discussant” when they formally presented their paper.  I was also present at their invitation.  Mankiw was unconcerned about looting.  It was my first introduction to Mankiw morality:  “it would be irrational for savings and loans [CEOs] not to loot.”  I was appalled, but my outrage at Mankiw paled when I observed that the members of the audience, professional economists, were not even made visibly uncomfortable by such a depraved response to elite fraud.  CEOs owe fiduciary duties to the shareholders.  Mankiw’s response to the findings that CEOs were looting their shareholders was to praise the rationality of the fraudulent CEOs (if you don’t loot you aren’t moral – you’re insane).  One cannot compete with theoclassical economists’ unintentional self-parody. -- Bill Black

There are plenty of people who disagree with Bill Black's politics but this is not about politics.  It is about crime, specifically financial crime, and the explicit support and cover that this crime finds among certain members of the political class.

Looting by financial elites is destroying this nation.  It will, if not stopped, eventually result in the collapse of both our government and economy.  It must be stopped because fraud feeds on fraud and as time goes on the magnitude of the frauds imposed on society must increase in order to cover the previous frauds and insure that the loss-making that is inherent in that process does not come back to haunt the people engaged in it.

Romney, in too many ways to count, is either indistinguishable from Obama or actually worse.  And this, my friends, is coming from the perspective of a fiscal conservative and constitutional absolutist.

That the Republican party is choosing to run this member of the "steal anything that isn't nailed down" crowd tells you everything you need to know about the depravity of our current political system and two "mainstream" political parties.