Worried Guam may tip over
This is superb. Hank Johnson, a Democratic Congressman (from Georgia) is questioning Admiral Willard about the plans to have a base with 8,000 marines on Guam. Guam is a US territory that is 541 square kms in size with a population of 180,000.
Johnson asks questions about how wide the island is, and how long the island is, and then goes to say “My fear is the whole island will become so overly populated it would tip over and capsize.”
I like the comment on the You Tube page which says:
Everyone knows when an island tips over, the greatest danger is that it floats to the end of the world and falls off!
So true.
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Tags: Guam, United States
April 2nd, 2010 at 6:39 pm
You have got to be joking.
This was said on April 1 wasn’t it, please tell me this was a joke.
April 2nd, 2010 at 6:55 pm
The tipping over thing is, errr, bizarre. But he also takes 76 seconds to discuss the dimensions of the island, and sounds dim for every one of those 76 seconds. The Admiral should win an award for being the world’s most patient man.
But my question is: Is Guam one of Obama’s 57 states?
April 2nd, 2010 at 6:59 pm
Why the surprise, he’s a bloody lefty. I’m more surprised he didn’t quote the dangers of rising sea levels, there’s thick and then there is thick and then there is a lefty to top it off.
April 2nd, 2010 at 7:09 pm
I do believe that somewhere in Georgia there is a village looking for its idiot. It appears that he has now been found.
April 2nd, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Exaggeration for the purposes of making a point (ratio of marines to the population) surely?! One might well say “If Parekura eats another pie, we’ll have to give him his own zip code” without actually believing it to be true.
[DPF: But look at his face, and listen to his tone. I saw or heard nothing to suggest this was a joke, as the Congressman is now claiming]
April 2nd, 2010 at 7:46 pm
No wonder Danyl has been a bit quieter lately. It’s hard to do satire when the real stuff is so off the wall, no one would believe it if you made it up!
April 2nd, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Rex>One might well say “If Parekura eats another pie, we’ll have to give him his own zip code” without actually believing it to be true.
True. But what if you said it after spending more than a minute pondering just what a zip code actually was, sounding like a half wit the whole time and without coming to a conclusion one way or another?
April 2nd, 2010 at 7:57 pm
I understand this fellow is seriously ill and given to lapses of concentration and incoherency. It is actually very very sad and his damn fool political party should gently have him resign from the Senate. It is best not to make fun of him at Easter because like some others in history, he knoweth not what he does.
April 2nd, 2010 at 8:18 pm
Adolf:
This fellow is in the House of Representatives, and if he is so sick as to be losing his mental abilities, he should resign (particularly since I understand that he is in a safe Democratic seat). So you right on that score. He most definitely was not joking–his follow up on environmental issues demonstrates that much.
The Senate equivalent of this intellectual giant is senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the former Klansman (at Exalted Cyclops level!) and oldest serving member of Congress who now is wheeled in for crucial votes but otherwise left to wallow in delerium.
In the interest of fairness it should be noted that the GOP has its share of, uh, intellectually challenged congresspersons. In fact, some would argue that the previous commander-in-chief exhibited levels of comprehension similar to those of good ole Hank, but without the excuse of being ill!
April 2nd, 2010 at 9:34 pm
Woops, sorry about the senate, Paul.
I guess the previous C in C must have been a real dumbarse eh? Only managed an MBA and and a USAF reserve fighter pilot’s wings? Not anywhere near as bright as that Gore fellow? Or that Kerry fake? Or that Edwards flake? Would they be heroes of yours, by any chance?
April 2nd, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Adolf:
Don’t get me started on how Dubya earned his titles. As for the rest, nah, my “heroes” (I do not believe in such but do believe in people to be admired for specific reasons or character traits) tend to be surf lifesavers, anti-authoritarian freedom fighters, and self-sacrificing military personnel and intelligence agents–oh, and a certain staunch female lawyer in NZ who stood up to a powerful PM for an unpopular but worthy cause.
April 2nd, 2010 at 9:50 pm
I think the phrase is “pissed as a fart”.
April 2nd, 2010 at 9:56 pm
So Paul, Abbot is your man in Aussie then?
April 2nd, 2010 at 11:04 pm
Viking2
That only part I like about Abbot is his lifesaving background–oh, and his 13+ hour Ironman was OK, not great, given his job. On that score he has mandarin donut-muncher Rudd beat hands down.
April 3rd, 2010 at 5:50 am
Adolf, I hope you weren’t seriously suggesting the GWB was even slightly smart, or that an MBA is worth more than the paper it is printed on.
As for Hank Johnson, he might be a dear old chap but it’s quite disturbing that he is still in the senate.
Reading and listening to political leaders and elected representatives from around the world I am often astonished at the lack of understanding present. Stupidity, ignorance, hubris, doctrinairism, all there in copious quantities. Even back in little old NZ.
It’s amazing that the society functions as well as it does. I’m not saying that it’s good – just that it could get a lot worse if nutty politicians had unfettered power.
Reminds me: was Chavez serious about that earthquake machine? Too many Bond movies? A media beat-up?
April 3rd, 2010 at 9:22 am
Jim, he is a damned sight smarter than most of the commentators around here. By the way – it IS the Congress, you know. Ask Paul, he’ll tell you.
In case you hadn’t noticed, his policies concerning Iraq, Afghanistan, internal and external surveillance, Gitmo etc remain largely unchanged despite pre-election rhetoric from the only president in history to take a teleprompter with him for an address to six year olds.
Remember this is the president who was so smart he antagonized Britain over the Falkland Island last month, at a time when Britain is the only nation providing substantial military support for the US effort in Afghanistan. That’s not what I’d call particularly smart.
Jim, you poor sap, maybe your problem is that you read all the wrong papers and watch all the wrong networks. Have you had a look at their ratings and their share prices recently.
April 3rd, 2010 at 11:09 am
Hail the master race, YEAH RIGHT
April 3rd, 2010 at 11:16 am
Paul G. Buchanan you are a pollsters dream, you suck up any old shit ther media feeds you as fact and then recycle it back as your own opinion.
This guy is demonstrably not mentally fuctional. Meanwhile can you land a jet fighter on a carrier?
April 3rd, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Guam is “the tip of the spear” in terms of the US military presence in East Asia. It’s more important in the nuclear blackmail game than even South Korea or Japan. It has Airforce, Navy, and Marine nuclear and conventional capacity. All of this is imposed on the Chamorro people who are “a part” of the USA, but don’t get a vote in US elections. No wonder it’s in danger of tipping over.
New Zealand is, of course, “a dagger aimed at the heart of Antarctica” – a quotable quote from either Henry Kissinger (if you’re a student of history) or David Lange (if you’re a duped Kiwi). No danger of tipping for you, just earthquakes, tsunamis, and sliding arse backwards into the sea.
April 3rd, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Murray:
Sorry to burst your bubble but the only time Dubya landed on a carrier in a jet was the 2003 PR stunt on the USS LIncoln (and he was a passenger, not the pilot). He served in the Texas Air National Guard after his student deferment expired (so as to not be drafted and sent to Vietnam), and his exploits in that unit have been well documented (lets just say that they did not involve flying).
As for my regurgitating media pap–yeah right.
Jim: That Chavez “earthquake weapon/machine” rant is proof that he is destined to fall. One of the axioms of comparative regime transition is that when the dictator starts to talk and act in clearly delusional ways, and no one in his inner circle contradicts him, then the writing is on the wall that the end is approaching. It is called the “dictator wears capes” syndrome–the crazier the dress of the dictator and the more he engages in unquestioned lunatic rants, the less he is dealing with the realities fast closing in on him. Venezuelan realities are such that Chavez is now well down the path of self-destruction. It is only a matter of when, not if before he falls (sorry for going off-thread).
April 3rd, 2010 at 3:33 pm
I worry about something similar happening during the annual migration of Aucklanders to the Coromandel peninsula, that the area will simply break away from the North Island. Other worries i have, are that the population of China will all run in the opposing direction to the Earth’s rotation, causing the planet to spin the ‘wrong’ way, or that the planet tips slightly and the oceans pour out into space.
April 3rd, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Paul B>then the writing is on the wall that the end is approaching
Errr… Kim Jong Il waddles about wearing odd vinalon clothes and an extravagant haircut and has been going strong for years. He took over power from his dad, and will hand over power to his son. Gaddafi wears military uniforms that look as he if designed them himself, doesn’t shave for days at a time, always looks dis-shelved, and has been around for 40 years. And Arafat wore what looked like a WW2 British Army uniform complete with a revolver of that era and hadn’t shaved in years, and he died an old man still in office.
I’m struggling to think of an example where your syndrome has ever applied.
April 3rd, 2010 at 4:13 pm
davidp:
Actually, Arafat, Kim Jong Il and Gaddafi are exceptions to the rule. Trujillo, Batista, Peron (in 1952), Mobuto Sese Seko, Patrice Luamba, Charles Taylor, The Emperor Bokassa, Idi Amin, King Faruk, the Shah (Reza Pavali), Baby Doc Duvalier, Anastasio Somoza–the list of tyrants who dressed extravagantly and fell one way or another (Pinochet, for example, tried to transit from a military dictatorship to being an elected president and was rebuffed at the polls).
But you appear to be missing the larger point of the analogy, which is that when a dictator gets to a certain stage where he is surrounded by yes-men and sycophants, he loses the feed-back mechanisms and “ear to the ground” political sensors that allowed him to achieve and stay in power initially. Chavez is at this stage.
Since you also seem interested in authoritarian regime transition, you might also be interested to know that the question of succession is considered the Achilles Heel of authoritarian regimes, particularly personalist authoritarian or oligarchical regimes. One-party authoritarian regimes use the party hierarchy selection process to overcome this problem, and military authoritarian regimes use services hierarchies for the same purpose (although this tends to lead to factionalisation within the officer corps). But dynastic regimes such as the Kim regime in NK suffer the problem of the universal tendency of genetic decline (which also happened to the Duvaliers), whereby the founding dictator is succeeded by increasingly inept, if not stupid male heirs. If not brought down by external forces, eventually these regimes implode due to their own excess (I reckon that Saddam’s regime in Iraq would have headed that way once his sons took over). Kim Jong Il has a military apparatus to back him up, but it is an open question whether the military will remain loyal to his son. Gaddafi has his son in waiting (now the head the Libyan soccer federation), and i would bet that the knives are already out for him.
This is all very far removed from Guam tipping over, so I shall give it a rest.
April 3rd, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Adolf: “Jim, you poor sap, maybe your problem is that you read all the wrong papers and watch all the wrong networks. Have you had a look at their ratings and their share prices recently.”
About that, and a president’s (Obama’s?) policies you mention – perhaps you have mixed someone else’s remarks with mine. I didn’t praise anyone’s policies. About media ratings and share prices: my take is that they would not be correlated with veracity of the news but with telling people what they want to hear. Possibly inversely related to news quality
In any case I try to avoid watching networks because most TV news seems aimed at ADHD sufferers.
Paul: Hope you’re right about Chavez.
DavidP: Good point, although I’d hope that the presidential elections in Venezuela are a little freer than those held in the DPRK.