Shakedown?

Rep Barton (TX-R) seems to think that an escrow account for BP damages amounts to a shakedown by ... President Obama. He didn't do more than apologize to BP for it, no ideas presented in contrast or such - he's just sorry. Maybe he figures the results from the Exxon Valdez spill are fine - you know two decades of wait. What is it about Texas; something in the water or what? It didn't take Rep Orangeman ... er Rep Boehner (OH-R) to start backing up, but there is the Republican Study Group in the House calling it a "Chicago-style shakedown" and Rep Michelle Bachman (MN-R) naming it a redistribution-of-wealth fund."

Rep Boehner knows political poison when he hears it (sometimes) but these folks wear that (R) and have put themselves on record, however much they try to put it in reverse. It isn't as though people haven't started parsing BP words in statements to fling poo at them and while that's silly it isn't a Congressman. Getting in an uproar because their Chairman, with enough accent to make English something other than his first language, used the phrase "small people" is just piling on. The meaning is clear if not artful and a bit different than saying "peons."

Republicans have made Democrats a gift, running against Barton, et al, or not. In fact, over the young Obama Administration's life they've handed all kinds of ammunition to Democrats and I'll be rather disappointed if they don't drag the whole bunch through their self-generated mud.