“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."
"The subtle humor of this obviously metaphorical reference to a ship capsizing illustrated my concern about the impact of the planned military buildup on this small tropical island."
What a wonderfully well written peace of prose. I think we can be pretty certain that the man who wrote it was not the man in that video. As for whether he actually believed an island could tip over, I give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't, I suppose, although listening to his entire dialog, it's almost enough to discount him to the point of believing that he did believe it. Bottom line, based on this dialog, I think he'd be overpaid if his salary were reduced to a quarter of the salary he's enjoying.
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[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 16.5 ms ] thread“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."
quoted on http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWRlZjY5MDRjYzY3NTB... but without a source.
Also
"The subtle humor of this obviously metaphorical reference to a ship capsizing illustrated my concern about the impact of the planned military buildup on this small tropical island."
http://hankjohnson.house.gov/2010/04/rep-johnsons-statement-...