Boner

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it. --Mark Twain

[...]

So when I read something like this:

“Why should we reward Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with $200 billion in taxpayer dollars without first reforming these housing entities that were at the heart of the economic meltdown?” House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement.

and people ask what on earth Boehner might mean when he talks about taxpayers “rewarding” institutions that are owned by taxpayers, I go for Occam’s Razor: Boehner doesn’t have some complicated notion in mind, he either doesn’t know that the government took over F&F months ago, or he just doesn’t get this “government-owned” concept.

  Paul Krugman

No, I don’t think he has something complicated in mind, either. And I don’t like to give Congressional people credit for being too smart. But I do think it’s possible that Boehner, knowing full well that a great swath of the American public is even more ignorant and foolish than Congressional people, is saying these things to get the public to go along with what would actually amount to undermining the government/themselves by not bailing government-owned institutions. That’d be my guess.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.