Here’s a video that sounds like an April Fools prank, but it happened a couple of days ago, so it must be serious.  Besides, we know politicians typically don’t have a sense of humor.

Henry Hank Johnson, a Congressman from Georgia, is featured in the video below, “debating” the idea of adding more soldiers to the U.S. military base in Guam.  That may not sound humorous, but it gets random.  Not only is he obviously filibusting (delaying an answer / vote), but he has some logic issues while rambling.

Hank is concerned that if they add 8,000 soldiers and their families to Guam, the island might “tip over and capsize”.  I mean, Guam is a small island, so you have to consider these things.  Or, um, NOT!   Unless I totally missed something during geography classes, islands aren’t known for tipping over if you put too many people on them.   In case you didn’t watch it, he said, “My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.”

Perhaps Hank was just rambling in hopes that the discussion would run out of time or the moderator would just give up.  Or perhaps he was trying to make a “facetious metaphor” (as a spokesman later claimed), but if so, he failed… epicly.  Maybe he should work on saying intelligent things, instead of just making stuff up.  It is kinda funny to hear, until you realize that this man gets a vote in legislation that governs our country.

Should we cut him some slack?  Everybody says stupid things from time to time, right?  Probably, but not things that stupid.   And the average person isn’t in Congress, where the bar of intelligence should be considerably higher.  Even if he was just rambling (and he was), how do you say something like that?  I know rambling can get random — this I am familiar with — but when you’re sitting in front of government officials, you should be able to refrain from saying one of the stupidest things of the year…

And he doesn’t know when to stop!  Surely he realized how ignorant his statement was about the island tipping over (along with visual simulations), but then he rambles on about the soldiers interfering with the coral reef, that we don’t like to think about it, that it might become like global warming.  (Notice how he keeps adjusting his tie around the 2-minute mark.)   And he talks so slow… does he think that will make him sound more intelligent and/or thoughtful?

I just keep thinking this is a prank video, that there’s no way an elected official to Congress is this obtuse.