Progress Report: Hinckley Carpetbags RI; How Does Climate Change Affect RI; Did Gina Divvy Out Favors for Suporters

Barry Hinckley might just win the not-so-coveted carpetbagger of the year award as it seems the first time he even voted here was in 2010. So, when wondering who understands the Rhode Island better, consider that Sheldon Whitehouse has been serving the state in the US Senate for four more years than Hinckley has been even voting here.

The Associated Press reports that July has been the hottest month ever recorded in the United States, “breaking a record set during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s” and the Northeast Regional Climate Center says 2012 has been the warmest month ever in the area. While we’ve escaped much of the increased heat here in Rhode Island, how is climate change affecting the Ocean State? Here’s how.

By the way, are there still climate change deniers out there or did they all just switch over to become birthers or 9-11 truthers? Either way, these seemingly disparate groups may want to consider forming their own political party. Oh wait, I forgot; they already have one…

And equally as surprising as the fact that the planet is warming – as in not all that surprising at all – some food from big box store Target in Rhode Island may have been tainted with food poisoning. BJ’s, however, seems to have a strategy to avoid tainted food: get it from local farmers.

GoLocal reports that Gina Raimondo might be divvying out state contacts to her political supporters. We’ve been pretty tough on Gina but not because we suspect her of being corrupt, we’ve done so because she has parsed herself as a progressive Democrat but has governed as a more like a moderate Republican.

Speaking of GoLocal, this is the most ridiculous sentence I’ve read in quite some time: “Rhode Island is leading the nation in the advancement of a larger entitlement culture thanks to its expansion of social services through its health benefits exchange, according to the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity.” A commenter on the site clears up the confusion for Mike Stenhouse, a former Red Sox who now heads up Rhode Island’s most Orwellian-speaking political group: “Mike, this program helps poor people. It doesn’t make them poor. Republican economic policies and globalization has done that. Please go coach a baseball team.. You’d be great at that and we would all still like you.”

Media friends: here’s a quick and interesting quiz to see if you’ve been co-opted by the political system or, as they say, swinging on the tire.

If you needed any additional proof that Republicans want to block Obama for political rather than policy purposes, an Iowa congressman wants to pass a bill that would “repeal everything Obama has signed into law.” Why do they do this? Well, for one Obama called trickle down economics “fairy dust” yesterday and, of course, Republicans will do whatever they can to smear those who try to pull back the curtain on this Ozian statement.

On this day in 1945, the United States drops the Little Boy atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, perhaps the most destructive act in the history of human beings.

UPDATE: Astute reader Jo Ann Fonseca points out that I didn’t get this item on the second hydrogen bomb to be dropped on Japan quite right. Here’s what she wrote:

On August 9, 1945, another American B-29 bomber, Bock’s Car, left Tinian carrying Fat Man, a plutonium implosion-type bomb. The primary target was the Kokura Arsenal, but upon reaching the target, they found that it was covered by a heavy ground haze and smoke and were unable drop the bomb. The pilot, Major Charles Sweeney, turned to the secondary target of the Mitsubishi Torpedo Plant at Nagasaki. The bomb exploded at 11:02 a.m. over the narrow Urakami Valley northwest of downtown Nagasaki. Of the 286,000 people living in Nagasaki at the time of the blast, 74,000 people were killed and another 75,000 sustained severe injuries.