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.
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.