Tuesday Open Thread

Filed in National by on May 18, 2010

Welcome to your Tuesday open thread. Today is a really busy election day, with primaries for PA-Sen and KY-Sen and special elections in Hawai’i (HI-01 Abercrombie left to run for governor) and Pennsylvania (PA-12 Murtha’s district). I sent my brother back to Tennessee but I’m going to busy with a conference for work. Hopefully you’ll place nice (hint: you don’t always have to respond). Let’s get started!

Orrin Hatch, who has been a Senator since 1976 has an unusual definition of Washington insider.

My colleague Matt Corley flagged this remarkable exchange between longtime Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and talk radio host Laura Ingraham, during which the guy who’s been a Senator longer than I’ve been alive tries to somehow deny being part of Washington:

HATCH: Yeah, I do. And I’ll tell you why because I listen to these folks, I don’t disagree with them. They’re angry for good reasons. I mean, my gosh, these people in Washington are running this country right into the ground. And I think people are dog-gone angry about it.

INGRAHAM: But aren’t you part of Washington?

HATCH: Hell no. I’ve never been. I’ve never considered this a job. I’ve had, people have asked me, they said, “say Senator Hatch, don’t you just love being a U.S. senator?” My constant answer is this. No, I don’t love it at all, but I’m good at it. And I’m here for a reason. And all I can say is I’ve never changed my reason. Now, I am fair. I’ve got a reputation for being fair and honest and decent. But the fact of the matter is, if you get Orrin Hatch on your side and he really gets, he really gets his back up, watch out. It’s just that simple and I’ve done it time after time after time.

It snowed in February!

So, via Joe Romm, the NASA-GISS data show that the past 12 months were the hottest 12-month period on record. Here’s my plot of the temperature anomaly — the difference, in hundredths of a degree centigrade, from the average over 1951-80:

I’m sure they’re already trying to explain this away. Only record low temperatures really count. It doesn’t matter that they had to import snow for the winter Olympics.

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Opinionated chemist, troublemaker, blogger on national and Delaware politics.

Comments (7)

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  1. AQC says:

    Jeremiah Wright thinks Obama “threw him under the bus”. That is priceless hypocrisy!

  2. anon says:

    If this Delaware guy had put this much effort into his studies, he probably could have got into Harvard the regular way.

  3. fightingbluehen says:

    AQC said,”Jeremiah Wright thinks Obama “threw him under the bus”. That is priceless hypocrisy!”

    I don’t believe any of it. I’ve got a pocket full of wingnuts that says this whole Jerimiah Wright, Obama feud is a charade.

    First of all, I don’t think Obama threw Jeremiah Wright under the bus. It’s more like they threw him in the “brier patch”. Jeremiah wright whining about Obama not treating him nicely, is just a smoke screen.
    The Obamas spent twenty years at this guys church. Wright married them and baptised both of their children. The title of Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope” is directly related to the speakings of Wright. Do they expect us to believe Wright is all of a sudden a pariah to them.

    Obama and Wright are comrades. My guess is that Wright visits with the Obamas on a regular basis probably right in the White House or Camp David.

  4. P.Schwartz says:

    At a signing ceremony for the Freedom of Press Act, it is ironic and shameful that Obama could not bring himself to identify the killers who beheaded the man (Daniel Pearl) who fearlessly reported on the jihadist terrorists.

    must have been to blood thirsty amish.

  5. Maybe he could even hold a press conference and show them how it is done.

    Sadly P. Schwartz, silence allows these guys to multiply like roaches in the dark. We can’t fear them. We must confront them at every turn.

  6. delacrat says:

    http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/05/18-2

    Published on Tuesday, May 18, 2010 by Rethink Afghanistan/Brave New Films

    1,000 Dead Americans in Afghanistan

    As of today, 1,000 American troops have been killed in Afghanistan.

    Please take a moment to voice your opposition to this costly, inhumane war that’s not making us safer.

    1. Copy the following text:

    “With this flower, I commemorate the 1,000 American lives lost in the Afghanistan war. http://bit.ly/dtQQ3F

    2. Paste this text onto the wall at the White House Facebook page. (You have to become a fan of The White House to post on their wall.)