Clover is so beneficial that pre-WW2, grass seed mixes almost always explicitly advertised clover content. If you look up 19th or early 20th century catalogs, etc, listings for grass seed will nearly always not only mention that they contain a clover mix, but tout its benefits.

As you note, it was only post-war with the creation of modern herbicides that clover stopped being the norm. There was more or less a DeBeers-style PR campaign to convince people that clover is a “weed” since it can’t survive weed killers.

The spots that our dogs have destroyed clover, they had destroyed the grass anyway. And that’s under an old magnolia tree where everything struggles anyway. The rest of the back yard is fine.

She leads in every demo but 51-64, where she’s slightly behind. Interestingly enough, she’s got the 64+ demo by a good margin.

So the very last of the boomers and early Gen X. Definitely interesting.

The Fairness Doctrine is a red herring in the conversation either way. Even if it hadn’t been rescinded, it would have eventually become irrelevant.

The Fairness Doctrine only ever applied to radio and TV broadcasters, i.e., broadcasters operating using the limited, publicly owned radio spectrum. It was only Constitutionally enforceable because it was intended to ensure equal access to what was essentially a public space.

Cable TV and the Internet turned that completely on its head. Attempting to regulate speech over a privately owned medium is a very, very different legal hill to climb. The most problematic sources of misinformation and bias today tend not to be AM radio but things like NewsMax or Libsoftiktok.

It’s a huge problem, but it’s not one the Fairness Doctrine would solve.

why is that move considered political?

Political lobbying is kind of inherently political, no? They weren’t passive observers or commentators; they hired lobbyists to influence the legislative outcome.

Actively working to shape the legal structure of the country to better suit their company is politics. It’s different from culture war politics, but it’s still politics.

If anything, economic politics are what traditionally drove a lot of the political divide in this country. That’s taken a back seat to a degree, but it hasn’t made it not political.

they didn’t want their non-political national brand associated with extremely politically decisive right wing media

Worth noting: Dunkin is owned by Inspire Brands, who went out of their way to toot their own horn about how they were successful in lobbying to kill inclusion of a minimum wage hike as part of COVID relief:

https://www.newsweek.com/this-fast-food-giant-bragged-about-killing-15-minimum-wage-1579273

So they’re perfectly happy to take political positions; they just recognize these platforms are even more radioactive than bragging about opposing living wages for their workers.

Further, Inspire is owned by Roark Capital – a company literally named after an Ayn Rand character. That’s how far out in the loonie bin these folks are. And the MAGAs are too far over the line even for them, lol.

The BSG reboot really suffered from being a product of its era.

It’s when shows were first really dipping their toes into telling an overarching narrative, but writer’s rooms were still very much geared toward producing stories of the week. The result was that a lot of shows at the time would start incredibly strongly, set up a lot of really interesting premises, and then just meander along because the writers were literally making things up along the way and because there was no coherent plan.

Know how Game Of Thrones fell apart in the last couple of seasons when they outran the preplanned narrative of the books? That’s how a lot of TV ended up in the early 2000s. BSG and Lost are probably the two most prominent examples from around that time, but it was a pretty common problem as the format of TV shows was starting to change.

dork enlightenment

I have no idea how I’ve never seen this up to now, but good god that’s the perfect encapsulation of that particular sect of morons.

The entire system is deeply corrupt beyond false positives.

We know for a fact that Russia was systematically cheating testing and the grand sum of the punishment they faced for it was having to compete as “Olympic Athletes from Russia” for two years.

So Kamala was also invited to speak, but she had to be at a funeral and couldn’t come. She offered to do it on Zoom, but the NABJ declined. To me this is more an indictment of them

I’m willing to give them a pass on this because Trump complained that he had wanted to do the interview remotely and they had also declined for him.

It sounds like the ground rules for both included “it has to be in person” and the NABJ stuck to their guns on that.

This is really the point to open a second front and start openly, explocitly calling him a coward.

Weird is effective at highlighting how far outside the mainstream these people are.

Coward directly pokes holes in and deflates his strongman image. It hits enthusiasm within the cult.

It also helps that their attempts to redirect back mostly serve to highlight their weird preoccupations.

Things are happening like a former Trump speechwriter posting “Emmett Till was weird” on Twitter because they can’t comprehend just how unhinged and generally weird saying something like that is to a normal person.

Or they think they’re being clever flipping the script and ranting about “boys saying they’re girls is weird.” “Why do you spend so much time obsessing over what children have in their pants? That’s really weird.”

It all puts them in a bind. If they try to defend what they’re saying as normal, it’s very clear that it isn’t. If they try to deflect with what they think is weird, it just shows how detached they are from normal reality. It’s a surprisingly effective line of attack that largely neutralizes their normal gish galloping.

Also worth noting: Wray’s statements were made in response to questions asked by Jim Jordan.

This isn’t something Democrats went looking to dig up. It got stirred up by one of Trump’s frothiest allies.

I’d be in favor of more. 26 is just because I think there’s a very easy argument to make for “every circuit gets direct representation on SCOTUS” and it’s not a huge leap to go to two per circuit from there.

Increasing throughput is definitely one of the reasons I’d support doing this as well. Thanks for highlighting that since I didn’t.

The problem is that the process for amending the Constitution is heavily, structurally biased in favor of the Republicans now. The GOP would absolutely rally around this issue because it’s one of the primary things allowing them to hang on to power right now.

I don’t believe in engaging in theatrics with a zero percent chance of success when there are real, feasible steps that could be taken to make things better.

Article III only lays out there there will be a supreme court and a Chief justice and makes Congress responsible for establishing them. It does not lay out the makeup or structure of that court. The current body of 9 justices is set by federal statute and could be changed by a simple act of Congress.

Article III also explicitly states that whatever Justices are appointed hold their office as long as they maintain good behavior (I e., as long as they haven’t been impeached) and that Congress cannot reduce their pay.

Term limits are explicitly unconstitutional.

Setting the number of judges is explicitly within Congress’ constitutional powers.

Randomized panels would probably be challenged just because it’s never been tested, but the language in the Constitution re: Congress establishing the Supreme Court is vague. That said, Congress has already established inferior Federal courts that operate in this manner, so there’s precedent.

Beyond physical injury, Trump’s description of the event – along with Wray saying the FBI is unsure – really makes me lean toward it not being a direct wound.

Trump said he heard bullets “whizzing” by. A supersonic bullet directly next to your ear isn’t going to make a whizzing sound like on TV; there’s going to be a loud, distinct crack from the sonic boom as it passes by.

I fully believe Trump would be leaning into that hard if that’s what he’d heard. “It was like thunder next to my head. The loudest thunder. The greatest thunder you’ve ever heard. HUEG thunder.” It’s exactly the kind of thing he loves to play up.

I think you’re missing the point.

As things stand now, you get cases that are tailor made to the whims of specific people because there’s a 100% chance it ends up in front of those specific people. That’s an absolutely massive problem.

The point is that you’re less likely to have cases that are specifically aimed at stroking any given individual’s brand of crazy when there’s only a ~1 in 3 chance they’ll even hear it. A panel of 9 from a pool of 26 means that you go from a 100% chance that, say, Alito and Thomas, hear a case together to around 12%. That’s a huge gamble when it takes years and a massive amount of money to get a case in front of SCOTUS.

No, it doesn’t solve all conceivable problems with the court. But it’d help address the fact that SCOTUS justices are entirely too powerful as individuals and it can be done via simple act of Congress.

Appointees should just be subject to term limits and yearly affirmation votes by members of the BAR association to renew or revoke their qualifications

Not going to happen. SCOTUS terms are life appointments constitutionally. That means you’ve gotten into amendment territory which just plain is not realistic right now.

This matches the broad strokes of the approach I favor as well.

There are 13 Federal circuits. Expand to one justice per circuit, then double that.

But the core of the approach, regardless of the exact number, is to shift to having cases heard by randomized panels of judges. The amount of power wielded by individual justices right now is just insane. Dilute it down so that the power rests with the body rather than individuals.

Further, randomizing who hears any given case would help curtail the current environment where test cases get tailored to the idiosyncracies and pet theories of individual judges.

SCOTUS should be deciding cases based on rational reading of the law, not entertaining wing nut theories that Thomas or Alito hinted at in previous decisions. That sort of nonsense becomes a lot less feasible if there’s no guarantee a case will actually end up in front of Thomas or Alito.

Almost anywhere that you can find a Panda Express, you can find a mom and pop Chinese takeout restaurant that offers basically the same dishes (and more), but will be tastier, cheaper, and give you a ton of food for the money.

I don’t care that Panda Express exists because there’s no need for it to.