Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

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Reader Interactions

66Comments

  1. 1.

    Zifnab

    Whatever. July will roll around, temperatures will shoot up into the 100s somewhere in Maine, and suddenly the weather won’t mean anything to anybody.

    Meanwhile, Congress won’t do a fucking thing about carbon caps no matter which way the wind blows. Because that would be unfair to corporate profits consumers dontchaknow.

  2. 2.

    mantooth

    As a resident of the Charlotte Metro area I can assure you that we not only eat BBQ, people never shut up about it. MMM. Think I’ll grab some at lunch.

  4. 4.

    Suffern ACE

    @mantooth: Yes, but you don’t have the best barbeque there, so no one must eat it or know how to make it at all. BURN!!!!…or something like that.

  5. 5.

    martha

    Just another example of why the Chinese own our asses. They understand the fundamentals of science (warmer atmosphere, more moisture, bigger storms, etc. etc.) and we just whine that we aren’t getting our ponies in the exact color we wanted at the exact moment we want it.

  6. 6.

    Buck

    Not a BBQ fan, but I sure love Charlotte! Have a friend who lives in Mooresville (just north of Charlotte). The whole area is beautiful.

    EDIT: And some of the friendliest people live there too.

  7. 7.

    mikefromArlington

    It ticks me off Politico is given so much credibility by C-SPAN.

    I used to think C-SPAN did a good thing but when their radio programming has Heritage Foundation giving the response to President Obama’s Cairo statements they are allowing for propagandists being funded by wealthy individuals and special interests without challenging anything.

    The legitimacy of these faux information spreading organizations is a disservice to this country imho.

  11. 11.

    Walker

    I am an Eastern Carolina snob. I don’t like the red sauce as much as I like the traditional vinegar. I have to pull my own now that I live in CNY, but I still get my sauce from the Oink Express.

  12. 12.

    Console

    It’s north carolina. You could be in the middle of nowhere and still find a BBQ shack on some dirt road.

  13. 13.

    Martin

    I thought one of the consequences of global warming was rising food prices that might lead to global political instability.

    The index rose by 3.4% in January — the seventh monthly increase in a row — to its highest level since records began in 1990.
    Rising commodities costs are one of the major factors behind a growing wave of civil unrest across the Middle East and North Africa.

    So, when does Al Gore get credit for bringing regime change to the Middle East and Africa? Or will they just blame him for eating all the food, driving up prices?

    Yeah, I already know the answer to that one.

  14. 14.

    Face

    Politico is to politics what USWeekly is to Hollywood. Everything’s a game, everyone’s a soundbite, and the more controversy they can drum up, the better.

  15. 15.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @mikefromArlington: IIRC Brian Lamb’s roots were/are old school conservative, kinda like Broder or Gergen. the BookTV schedule leans right– the proverbial aliens judging US politics by just that source would think Ann Coulter and Frank Gaffney were considered serious thinkers.

  16. 16.

    cleek

    @Walker:
    Kings rules. and it’s perfectly situated halfway between my house and the beach.

    Wilber’s in Goldsboro has better ambiance (being directly on the approach to one of Seymor Johnson AFB’s runways, there’s a good chance you’ll see a bunch of military jets zipping around), but King’s BBQ is awesome.

    for CNY, PJ’s in Saratoga has good BBQ. tho i guess that’s more eastern NY.

  21. 21.

    BGinCHI

    Obviously they ridicule Al Gore because of the sagacity of their own pundits. Just see if you can find a Gore quote that soars with this scientific, philosophical gem:

    “Okay, how did the Moon get there? How’d the Moon get there? Look, you pinheads who attacked me for this, you guys are just desperate. How’d the Moon get there? How’d the Sun get there? How’d it get there? Can you explain that to me? How come we have that and Mars doesn’t have it? Venus doesn’t have it. How come? Why not? How’d it get here?”

    He’s like an Irish-American Einstein.

  22. 22.

    matoko_chan

    @Martin: yup.
    its a perfect storm.

    The global food situation has been compounded by the over-dependence of industrial agriculture on fossil fuels, consuming ten calories of fossil fuel energy for every one calorie of food energy produced. The problem is that global conventional oil production has most likely already peaked, having been on an undulating plateau since 2005 – and forecast to steadily and inexorably decline, leading to higher prices. Although oil prices dropped after the 2008 crash due to recession, the resuscitation of economic activity has pushed up demand, leading fuel prices to creep back up to $95 a barrel.
    The fuel price hikes, combining with the predatory activities of financial speculators trying to rake-in profits by investing in the commodity markets, have underpinned worldwide inflation. Just as in 2008, the worst effected have been the poorer populations of the South. Thus, the eruption of political unrest in Egypt and elsewhere cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the context of accelerating ecological, energy and economic crises – inherently interconnected problems which are symptomatic of an Empire in overstretch, a global political economy in breach of the natural limits of its environment.

    lets repeat that.
    consuming ten calories of fossil fuel energy for every one calorie of food energy produced.
    the corn for one suv tank of biofuel can feed a human for a year.

    This year, global food supply chains were again “stretched to the limit” following poor harvests in Canada, Russia and Ukraine; hotter, drier weather in South America cutting soybean production; flooding in Australia, wiping out its wheat crops; not to mention the colder, stormier, snowier winters experienced in the northern hemisphere, damaging harvests.
    __
    So much of the current supply shortages have been inflicted by increasingly erratic weather events and natural disasters, which climate scientists have long warned are symptomatic of anthropogenic global warming. Droughts exacerbated by global warming in key food-basket regions have already led to a 10-20 per cent drop in rice yields over the last decade. By mid-century, world crop yields could fall as much as 20-40 per cent due to climate change alone.
    __
    But climate change is likely to do more than generate droughts in some regions. It is also linked to the prospect of colder weather in the eastern US, east Asia and northern Europe – as the rate of Arctic summer sea-ice is accelerating, leading to intensifying warming, the change in atmospheric pressure pushes cold Arctic air to the south. Similarly, even the floods in Australia could be linked to climate change. Scientists agree they were caused by a particularly strong El-Nino/La-Nina oscillation in the Tropical Pacific ocean-atmospheric system. But Michael McPhaden, co-author of a recent scientific study on the issue, suggests that recently stronger El-Ninos are “plausibly the result of global warming.”

  23. 23.

    KenM (M Laoshi)

    @gnomedad: 他们笨得让我头疼. (Technically, that’s “They’re so stupid it makes my head hurt,” but I’m having trouble thinking of anything better at the moment.)

  24. 24.

    BGinCHI

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Brian Lamb is from my home town, and it’s amazing he’s done so much good. I think C-Span has suffered more from becoming an institution than any direct conservative axe-grinding from its founder.

  26. 26.

    Console

    My people’s are Mccall’s fans if they want to go out for a big family gathering. Wilber’s is great though.
    I’m more versed on Greenville BBQ places though since I went to East Carolina

  28. 28.

    matoko_chan

    my favorite part.

    Yet ultimately, the U.S. administration cannot absolve itself. Successive State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for Egypt, while still conservative, catalogue the litany of routine police-state repression inflicted on the civilian population over the last decade by Mubarak’s security forces. When asked about the shocking findings of the 2009 report, Clinton herself downplayed the implications, describing Mubarak and his wife as “friends of my family.” So it is not that we do not know. It is that we did not care until the terror became so unbearable, that it exploded onto the streets of Cairo.

    we didnt fucking care.
    so dont give me your hypocritical cudlip lowing about human rights and “democracy”.
    if the Egyptians want to elect the fucking Egyption Nazi Party they have every fucking right to do so.

  30. 30.

    BGinCHI

    @Chyron HR: I assume The Learning Channel is going to replace Palin with BillO.

    Or have they already changed their name to The Learnin’ Channel You Betcha?

  32. 32.

    victory

    Didn’t the biggest typhoon EVER just hit Australia, knocking over “typhoon proof” structures?

  34. 34.

    Kryptik

    It’s just amazing how much people’s attitude toward global warming literally hinges on how much they hate Al Gore. It’s just…astonishing how shallow their positioning on it is, where it actually hinges on your attitude toward one advocate of it, to the point of rejecting all data and observation because he’s fat or got separated from his wife or took a plane somewhere.

    It’s just shocking how shallow and broken our political discourse is where this is what passes for our energy debate. Fucknuts.

  36. 36.

    Barb (formerly Gex)

    @BGinCHI: My snark example show from science/history/learning channel “educational”programming is “Secrets of Hitler’s Bible on UFOs as Predicted by Nostradamus.”

  37. 37.

    Blue Neponset

    So, according to the mayor of Charlotte, if I’m in Charlotte and I see a BBQ place I should just keep driving until I am well out of the city? I’m sure the local BBQ places will appreciate that vote of confidence.

  38. 38.

    Culture of Truth

    “Senator Burr, Politico says it is not possible to get good BBQ in Charlotte. Is that true?”

  39. 39.

    Violet

    @Culture of Truth:
    I think reporters should be asking that of Charlotte’s mayor. Let him or her deal with the wrath of the local restaurant community if the answer is, “No.”

  40. 40.

    Davis X. Machina

    @Zifnab:

    July will roll around, temperatures will shoot up into the 100s somewhere in Maine,

    Portland just had its first colder-than-average month in over a year, this January past….

  41. 41.

    Culture of Truth

    So now Obama Derangement Syndrome has gotten to the point that if President Obama says your hometown is nice, snide outraged conservatives will respond “LOL that stupid Marxist Barry! EVERYONE KNOWS this town sucks!! Ha ha”

  44. 44.

    Alex S.

    Yesterday, there was that story about Sen. Mark Kirk who said that he changed his position on climate change because of Al Gore’s alleged affair.

    http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/82665/mark-kirk-al-gores-personal-life-disproves-global-warming

    @martha:
    Much of the chinese leadership consists of scientists and engineers. That’s gotta be worth something.

    And the Snowpocalypse doesn’t even refute global warming. Global warming in fact predicts that the frequency of incidents of extreme weather will rise.

  46. 46.

    Sly

    @BGinCHI:

    “Okay, how did the Moon get there? How’d the Moon get there? Look, you pinheads who attacked me for this, you guys are just desperate. How’d the Moon get there? How’d the Sun get there? How’d it get there? Can you explain that to me? How come we have that and Mars doesn’t have it? Venus doesn’t have it. How come? Why not? How’d it get here?”

    In order:

    1) The Moon formed through a collision between the Earth and another body, roughly the size of Mars. The debris from that collision accreted into a single mass that became the Moon.

    2) The Sun formed from a vast and dense cloud of hydrogen molecules that accreted under the force of its own gravity.

    3) How come we have what and Mars doesn’t have what? A moon? Mars actually has two: Phobos and Deimos. There is no absolute consensus on why either formed. They’re either like the Moon, were objects captured by Mars’ gravitational pull, or the remnants of a large number of objects that orbited Mars but have since either crashed into the planet or flew off into space. Phobos is likely the last of those, since its orbit is such that it is estimated that it will crash into the surface of Mars in roughly 10 million years.

    4) Venus has no moon because it was hit by another object, about 10 million years ago, with such force that it reversed the direction of Venus’ spin. Such an impact would have caused orbiting objects to either fly away from Venus or crash into it.

    Science is fun because it gives you answers to questions instead of letting you take the easy way out, throw up your hands, and attribute unfamiliar phenomena to something you’ll never understand.

  47. 47.

    Citizen_X

    The barbeque thing’s a gaffe because Charlotte, NC ain’t anywhere near Texas. And the last time I was in NC, I saw a newspaper note sniffing about “the Texas brisket heresy.” BLASPHEMERS! BRISKET JIHAD OR DEATH!

  54. 54.

    ed drone

    @gnomedad:

    “The stupid, it burns!” in Mandarin is:

    “Becko rie ly-pei lin”

    — and in Cantonese:

    “Tee-Par-Tee”

    Glad to help.

    Ed

  55. 55.

    Benjamin Cisco

    @mantooth: Another resident of the Queen City here. Yes we eat (and talk about) BBQ incessantly, even within families (I dig red, Mrs. Cisco likes the vinegar). And you can find it anywhere, including on the side of many roads (although exactly WHAT they BBQ’d may be in question).

  56. 56.

    asiangrrlMN

    @ed drone: Bwahahahahaha! That’s beautiful.

    Xin ni kuai le, bitchez!

    P.S. There’s some DAMN good bar-bee-q in Charlotte. I had some, so I don’t have to rely on a story from a cabbie.

  57. 57.

    thelonius

    Charlotte = Atlanta without any of the fun or interesting stuff, as far as I can tell. It’s probably a nice place to inter yourself in the suburbs and raise a family, I guess.

  58. 58.

    jl

    ‘Al Gore’s Snowpocalypse’ is Politico at its most rancid, trivial and feckless.

    What the ************* ######### ! is that thing?

    Did they consider getting some actually qualified scientists to contribute? There are a few qualified scientists who doubt the consensus view.

    Did they invite those two opposing teams of PR hacks, think tank hired guns, and political science people babbling meta babble?

    Or did they just throw the discussion open, and thought that would be worth reading with no input at all from people, who, like, know something about climate.

    If the ignorant asses at Politico looked at a couple of climate blogs (by real scientists) and followed up with an internet search, they would find plenty of literature going back for years on regional effects of global warming.

    Me, being a CA chauvinist, read about regional predictions for California several years ago, and everything that is happening is consistent with those predictions. Including stable or lower degree-days from north coast to Sierra crest. There is a whole literature on the effects of global warming on the ocean currents off California that will produce locally cooler weather.

    I hope David Brooks writes a column about how Politico is debauching our culture, and it is very sad, so that I have official cultural permission to rue the day.

  59. 59.

    trollhattan

    @jl:

    Me, being a CA chauvinist, read about regional predictions for California several years ago, and everything that is happening is consistent with those predictions. Including stable or lower degree-days from north coast to Sierra crest. There is a whole literature on the effects of global warming on the ocean currents off California that will produce locally cooler weather.

    Yep. Future’s so bright we’ll all be wearing shades. And moving to higher ground. While the other 49 lurve to poke fun of California it gets interesting if our ag output plunges, since we’re such a large portion of the nation’s food supply. (“But, but, but…CO2 is ‘plant food.'”)

    http://www.water.ca.gov/climatechange/docs/DWR_CCCStudy_FinalReport_Dec23.pdf

  60. 60.

    jl

    @trollhattan: Thanks for that report. I was looking for new stuff on effects on California, a few days ago, but came up empty.

    Most regional precipitation forecasts I have seen show a considerable range of uncertainty in future annual water availability around a forecast mean that is close to current value.

    But, with longer droughts in between wet years. And those wet years will have to be a lot wetter to maintain something close to current long run average rain and snow.

    So, that will be interesting. More drought, and more overly wet years. Will make for interesting news footage, I guess.

  61. 61.

    Walker

    @Citizen_X:

    The barbeque thing’s a gaffe because Charlotte, NC ain’t anywhere near Texas.

    Texans do not know anything about cooking pork, and even they will admit that. They do mighty fine stuff with beef, but you need to keep Texans away from the pig.

  62. 62.

    trollhattan

    @jl:

    Happy to share–we need to keep the word going out regardless of the tenor of the day’s politics. An especially damning outcome is getting far more of our precipitation as rain rather than snow, coupled with much earlier snowpack runoff. There’s no way to physically capture and store significantly more than we can with today’s reservoirs (although some new offstream storage has been proposed). The trend eventually stymies late-summer and fall water deliveries.

    Oops.

  63. 63.

    jl

    @trollhattan: The snow pack forecasts are scary. Even lowest end mild forecasts are for at least 10 to 20 percent reduction in snowpack, rising to over 50 per cent reduction in severe scenarios.

    Better get yer winter sports in now, if you live in California.

  64. 64.

    No One of Consequence

    OK, here is some Mandarin: (translated to Western mouths)

    Sheen yen kwai luh.

    Happy New Year, I think.

  65. 65.

    Sarcastro

    To actually get the best barbecue you have to triangulate between that vinegar-based swill coastal Carolinians call sauce and the utter heresy of the Texans’ daft belief that beef is barbecue.

    And once you do the math you’ll be at Pa’s in Gruetli-Laager, Tennessee. Damn fine barbecue and – get this shit – you can go fishing while you eat off the deck/dock over the stocked lake out back.

    Honestly, if they’d let me smoke pot I wouldn’t fish anywhere else… I probably ought to ask about that.

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