Texans had similar ideas about Oklahoma, but somebody pointed out that if we sawed it off, it wouldn’t actually go anywhere.
I finally got around to watching the video this morning, and Johnson really does struggle for his words for the whole clip. I can believe his medical treatments were affecting his thinking. I don’t see any reason to think he was either joking or speaking metaphorically, though. Maybe if I watched a longer clip I’d be able to judge, but in the 2:48 I saw, there was no evidence of that.
Hrm… I feel compelled to explain, for anyone not following the link, that the story linked to explicitly states that it itself is not true–that there never was such a worry.
OK - Let’s try this. Let’s pick a D at random. How about . . . . . Al Gore. National politician, Nobel prize winner, kinda famous, used to be Veep, most people might have sorta heard of him. But he’s a D - so presumably treated with respect and deference by the national media. Right?
Well - maybe not so much. Surely you’ve heard about his claim to having invented the internet, right? Must be true - it was covered in the national media. And we just know for a fact that the media is all liberal and biased and stuff, so they surely wouldn’t have made up anything. Clearly this guy is a dolt, a simpleton - thinking he invented the internet, it is to laugh.
Obviously - the media made a big deal out of this, even though he’s a Democrat - lambasting the guy for making such a stupid claim. Here was a national D getting ridiculed in the press for saying something stupid.
Or didhe . . . . . . .
No, they weren’t. Although this notion has shown up in several books on hoaxes and at least one history of New york city, there is a conspicuous absence of reports and articles about the supposed con to saw off part of Manhattan. Certainly no one ever seriously entertained notions of doing this, but it appears that even the idea that someone tried to con people into think it was going to happen was itself a story concocted long after the supposed events.
In fact, that page you link to says as much at the bottom of the page.
I don’t understand the OP’s point. Hank Johnson has been roundly ridiculed just like Quayle. The treatment by the media is exactly the same for Dems and Pubs (well, at least in the legitimate media. It’s not the same for Fox News).
Clearly Rep. Johnson needs to spend some time in the islands to further his knowledge of their capacity. You know, somebody has to do it. Surely it’s worth a few tax dollars to send him to the Virgin Islands, maybe Puerto Rico or Fiji, something like that. One or two months of “education” should do the trick. I expect to hear about his fact-finding junket any day.
He either said outright or strongly implied that he has visited Guam, which is a very reasonable thing for a congressman to do when he sits on the Armed Services Committee and the movement of troops from Japan to Guam is one of the most important (and overlooked) issues out there right now. In fact, this has been one of the top news stories in Japan over the last few months, even though you may have never have heard about it before.
Again, I see no evidence of humor or hyperbole. I’m still inclined to believe it is a medical issue of some sort.
Surely you can’t believe that was an accident.
He has been there before:
I’m not sure that matters, though; I mean, I didn’t have to see an island to understand that they were actually attached to something and not floating (although I did grow up on one).
This reminds me of when I was working in the yarn store. One of our nicer salespeople was dealing with a customer who wanted to convert 90 meters to yards. The salesperson said it was about 99 yards. The customer insisted that was wrong because yards are longer than meters. The salesperson politely said “no, meters are about 10% longer than a yard” but the customer continued to disagree, getting more and more insistent. The salesperson was about to give up and agree with the customer so as not to embarrass them, but she also wanted to make sure the customer got the correct information. Finally she said in a very polite way “well, in the yarn world a meter is longer than a yard”. The customer accepted this and left happy.
How about Al Gore? The man spouts the most amazing fiction-yet he wond a Nobel Prize! You cannot challenge him, because he refuses to brook any dissent.
Of course, because he is a Nobel prizewinner, he MUST be correct!:eek:
“Yes, that’s right, Officer, he drove up and peppered us with Nerf balls, and sped away!”
Yeah, that crazy Al Gore, he says whatever he wants, and nobody calls him on it, ever. Did you know that he actually didn’t personally invent the internet? Of course, nobody ever called him on that lie, which is why everybody believes that Al Gore invented the internet.
He never said he invented the internet.
It was a whoosh, the point being that some silly people go around claiming that liberals like Gore never get called out on anything, yet Gore has been been the butt of jokes in the media for more than a decade because of a statement that was poorly worded yet essentially true and honest. In other words it’s another instance of the same fallacy that kicked off this thread.
I read it as a metaphor.
However Mr. Johnson’s health seems so seriously compromised that I wonder if he’s competent at present. Before I learned that he was suffering from Hep C my first thought was bizarre. “What’s that crack addict doing in Congress?”
Makes me wonder if anyone is watching out for his wellness. He’s emaciated, disheveled and very slow in his thought processes.
This frequently happens when people rise to positions of power and no one wants to ask them to step down for their health’s sake. IIRC, Nixon’s last days in the White House were spent babbling to the pictures on the wall.
We need healthy people leading us, please.
Like, for instance, Mormons? Count yer blessings.
Unless you are going to discriminate based on religion, Mormons who are functional should be able to serve.
Indeed, the way he was speaking, even before he said anything about the island tipping over, it sounded like someone mentally handicapped trying to speak. His words were very drawn out and he was having to fumble for them as well as having to repeat the same thing many times over. That he was a professional judge and lawyer for many years makes it seem unlikely that is truly handicapped, but a drug misdosage would explain a temporary state.