Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Atlantis) doubles down: "You wingnuts are too dumb to get what I meant"

When last we heard from Rep. Hank "The Man from Atlantis" Johnson, he was gravely warning us about his "fear" that the Island of Guam was going to "tip over and capsize" from 8,000 new military personnel being stationed on it.

Remember, Johnson's Scientific Theory of Island Stabalization posits that the stability of an island is inversely proportional to the population that gathers upon it at its "least widest" point.

He doesn't like that his theory is being scoffed out all over talk radio and the blogosphere, though. So he has defended it the only way he can: not on the scientific merits of his claim (which, I am told, has the potential of radically reshaping the way man views the sciences of Geology and Vulcanology) but by insinuating that critics are simply too stupid to get the gist of what he was saying.

So speaketh Rep. Johnson (D-I'mSuperSerial!):

“I wasn’t suggesting that the island of Guam would literally tip over I was using a metaphor to say that with the addition of 8,000 Marines and their dependents – an additional 80,000 people during peak construction on the tiny island with a population of 180,000 – could be a tipping point which could adversely affect the island’s fragile ecosystem and could overburden its stressed infrastructure. Having traveled to Guam last year, I saw firsthand how this beautiful – but vulnerable island – could easily become overburdened, and I was simply voicing my concerns that the addition of that many people could tip the delicate balance and do permanent harm to Guam.”

Ahh...he was using a metaphor, you see. He was speaking so gosh-darn figuratively that y'all just couldn't comprehend it.

Like reading Swift to kindergardners. Most of them will go home and ask their Parents how Irish children taste. Stupid kindergardners.

But I'm not letting Johnson off the hook. Hep-C or not.

Lets go to the transcript of his remarks, shall we?

Johnson: This is an island that at its....widest level,,is what...12 miles from shore to shore and at its smallest level is....uh....smallest location is..uh...7 miles between one shore and the other. Is that correct?

Admiral: I don't have the exact dimensions. But to your point, Guam is a small island...

Johnson: Very small island and about 24 miles long and 7 miles wide at its least widest place on the island and about 20..about 12 miles wide..at the widest part of the island. And I don't know how many square miles that is. Do you happen to know?

Admiral:I don't have that figure with me, sir. I can certainly supply it to you if you would like.

Johnson: My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.

Admiral: We don't anticipate that. The guam population, currently about 175,000, and, again, with 8,000 marines and their families, is an addition of about 25,000 more into their population.

Johnson: And also, things like the environment...the sensitive areas of the environment..coral reefs and those kind of things...and I know that..I know..lots of people don't like to think about that. But we didn't think about global warming either and now we do have to think about it. And so, I'm concerned from an environmental standpoint whether Guam is the best place to do this relocation, but its actually the only place, is that correct?

There are clues here that illustrate exactly what Johnson meant. And that illustrate that he was not speaking figuratively, but, in fact, quite literally about his concern about the island flipping over.

1) Notice the phrase "And also"...this indicates that a second concern was iin the Congressman's mind. It was only after the Admiral seemed to assuage his concern about Guam sinking ("we don't anticipate that happening") that Johnson moved on to the next concern he had: that of the environmental impact of relocating our Marines there.

2) Second, look at the point the Admiral responded to. As a direct participant in the conversation, he certainly had a pretty strong inkling as to what question was that he was being asked to answer. Did his answer have anything to do with the later conjecture of "environmental impact" nope. The Admiral clearly shot down the idea that Guam would some how "capsize".

Why do I care so much about this?

Because we live in an age where Conservatives/Republicans/Libertaritards get crucified even over things they never said. And that is somehow viewed as fair by many on the left.

People still believe that Gov. Palin said "I can see Russia from my house." Tina Fey's contribution to the national discourse became a fictitious slander used to demonize a Republican's fitness for office.

People still believe, despite any evidence, that Tea Party Protestors shouted the "n-word" at John Lewis et al. Don't you know that all you tea-party racists would have fit in well at Selma, '65?

And what do we have here? A clearly ridiculous statement by a liberal Democrat in which we are asked not to trust our lying eyes ears but to accept that we didn't hear what the man behind the curtain certainly said. Because we didn't get that the question was a heavily nuanced we are slandering our wise, beneficient congressional overlord. The fault, you see is ours. The (liberal) Congressman is necessarily infallible.

Well, tough. I'm not playing that game. If liberals insist on slandering decent people for things they never said, I'm certainly not going to forgive them for the ridiculous things that they regularly say. And neither should you.

I will do a sick guy a solid though. Since he claims himself to be a man dedicated to expressing himself in an artistically abstract way, I'm going to nominate Rep. Johnson for the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature.

He'll be a worthy recipient. His award will have as much intrinsic merit as Al Gore's and Barack Obama's.

posted by Jack M. at 02:27 PM

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