BOEHNER'S "ANT" EXPLANATION STILL DOESN'T MAKE SENSE

The headline here is that John Boehner is accused President Obama of "whining," but I'm still trying to get a handle on how, precisely, the financial reform bill is like "killing an ant with a nuclear weapon."

In the linked story, from the Chicago Tribune's Swamp blog, we get this:

Asked to further explain his "ant" comparison today, Boehner said he was no[t] equating the financial crisis to the tiny critter.

"What I was referring to is what it would take to fix the problem. And fixing the problem would have meant doing something about reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," he said. "If you look at the bill that they've created, it's going to kill jobs in America and make the situation worse."

OK, I see he's giving us GOP boilerplate -- the real culprits were Fannie and Freddie! pay no attention to those guys from Countrywide and Goldman exiting the scene with huge sacks of money! -- but I still don't see how the ant/nuke analogy works. It sounds as if he thinks more megatonnage was needed, not less, to hit Fannie and Freddie. (Or differently aimed megatonnage.)

If there's an explanation, I think it may be in the following clip, posted by ABC News yesterday:



ABC's Jonathan Karl asks Boehner about the quote over and over again, and Boehner eventually comes as close as I think he ever will to offering a coherent explanation. At one point he says:

They're punishing the entire financial institutions for the sins of a handful of people on Wall Street.

So he seems to be apologizing, Barton-style, for the fact that this bill regulates banks that may not have done anything wrong. Regulation is bad, you see. Regulation is punishment. There were a few bad apples, but innocent institutions run by modern-day George Baileys are suffering for it.

A bit later he says:

Their bill -- their bill is not about fixing the problems on Wall Street. It's about taking control of our entire financial institutions.

Notice something odd about both of those quotes? He says "the entire financial institutions" and "our entire financial institutions." That's not even normal English.

The only way it makes sense is if he's thinking "financial system" and then correcting himself before speaking. Try the soundbites again:

They're punishing the entire financial [system] for the sins of a handful of people on Wall Street.

Their bill -- their bill is not about fixing the problems on Wall Street. It's about taking control of our entire financial [system].

That way, it makes sense -- but it means he's saying (a) that the whole system is hunky-dory (bad apples aside) and (b) that Obama wants to take over American finance so he can destroy it like the capitalism-hating Marxist he is. If the latter is what he's thinking, it's Beck-level paranoia.

Yeah, I'm trying to mind-read here. But what's his point otherwise?