Fungus of the Day.

"Jill Biden, lacking the detachment of a Melania and enjoying the role of first lady more, has been pushing — and shielding — her husband..."

"... beyond a reasonable point. After Thursday’s embarrassing debate performance, she exhorted the crowd and played teacher to a prized student: 'You did a great job! You answered every question! You knew all the facts!' This, to the guy who controls the nuclear codes.... The Democratic strategist Paul Begala... explained on CNN: 'The first Democratic politician to call on Biden to step down, it’s going to end their career... None of them are going to say, 'Hey, let me step forward and knife Julius Caesar.' Biden is a beloved man in the Democratic Party.'... James Carville... told me Biden should call former Presidents Clinton and Obama to the White House and decide on five Democratic stars to address their convention in August.... Carville said the president should give a July 4 speech announcing he will let the next generation of Democratic leaders bloom.... And what if Joe and Jill cling on? In reply, Carville quoted... That which can’t continue, won’t."

Writes Maureen Dowd, in "The Ghastly vs. the Ghostly" (NYT)(boldface added).

I don't get to use my "Julius Caesar" tag too often. I can't believe Dowd planted that in the text and then ended with "That which can’t continue, won’t." 

The adage is attributed to Herb Stein. See "Is Stein’s Law real?" (Robert J. Samuelson, WaPo, May 30, 2013):

Why not a coordinated double-coup?

What's brewing here?

"No conversations about that whatsoever. The Democratic voters elected, nominated, Joe Biden. Joe Biden’s the nominee."

Said Michael Tyler, director of communications for the Biden campaign, quoted in "There Are 'No Conversations' About Replacing Biden, Campaign Official Says/The official also said President Biden was committed to attending the next presidential debate in September" (NYT).

This immediately called to mind a tag I don't know why I don't use more often: "things not believed."

But even though I don't believe there have been "no conversations... whatsoever," I do believe "The Democratic voters elected, nominated, Joe Biden." That's the thing they like to excoriate Donald Trump for supposedly not believing. And when it's Donald Trump failing to say he believes it, he's denounced as an enemy of democracy, a man who wants to be a dictator. 

These people who want to oust Joe Biden — we don't even know who they are. They seemed to think they could stage a coup in 5 minutes, using CNN commentators in the immediate aftermath of the debate. Are these people not enemies of democracy? Do they not deserve the epithet "dictator"? And if they are the same people who have worked together to hide Joe Biden's incapacity from us, who exercise power through or instead of him, then the answer to those questions is even more emphatically yes.

Biden taunted Trump about his weight.

The debate has given us so much to talk about that something that ordinarily would have attracted a lot of attention has slipped by unnoticed: Biden brought up Trump's weight. He actually talked about the number of pounds.

Here's the transcript. The question, addressed to Trump, had been, "What do you say to voters who have concerns about your capabilities to serve?" 

TRUMP: Well, I took two tests, cognitive tests.... He took none. I’d like to see him take one, just one, a real easy one. Like go through the first five questions, he couldn’t do it... I took physical exams every year.... I just won two club championships, not even senior, two regular club championships... He can’t hit a ball 50 yards.... I think I’m a very good shape. I feel that I’m in as good a shape as I was 25, 30 years ago. Actually, I’m probably a little bit lighter....

In fact, Trump does look as though he's lost a lot of weight, so he brought up weight, but he was very low key about it, in the modest way that fits ordinary etiquette.

BASH: Thank you. President Biden? 

At the Prairie Café...

... you can talk all night.

Photos all taken today at the UW Biocore.

Enjoying it.

I just asked Governor Gavin Newsome: are you going to be the next democratic nominee? That’s his answer, while he’s glowing 👇🏽 pic.twitter.com/W3JjsNtS0h

— נריה קראוס Neria Kraus (@NeriaKraus) June 28, 2024

"Biden lacked oomph, but the transcript tells a different tale."

Headline at The Hill.

Could it be that this is like the old Kennedy/Nixon debate, where Kennedy famously dominated when you watched him on TV?

That article says: "His soft voice and bumbling manner played right into the MAGA narrative that he is past his use-by date. The chattering class said it was a disaster for Biden. He even alarmed many Democrats. But, reading the cold transcript, we get a very different picture of Biden. Substantively, he ably and forcefully made the case that that Trump should not be allowed back in the Oval Office."

Now, when I watched, I listened and thought in a "transcript-y" way some of the time. I thought Biden would get credit for producing long sentences containing substantive material, but after the debate, I saw that people were devastated by how awful he looked and sounded. That's why I just went looking for the transcript. 

The Hill picks out many good sentences from the transcript, e.g., on abortion, "The idea that the politicians — that the founders wanted the politicians to be the ones making decisions about women’s health is ridiculous. … No politician should be making that decision."

That's one of the many, many Biden sentences that began "The idea." I tried counting. It's more than 20.

"The Supreme Court sided on Friday with a member of the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, saying that prosecutors had overstepped in using an obstruction law to charge him...."

"Lower courts will now apply that strict standard, and it will presumably lead them to dismiss charges against many defendants. The most prominent defendant charged with obstruction is former President Donald J. Trump as part of the federal case accusing him of plotting to subvert the 2020 election...."

Writes Adam Liptak, in "Live Updates: Supreme Court Rules for Member of Jan 6. Mob in Obstruction Case/The decision concerned the scope of a 2002 law enacted in the wake of the collapse of Enron to address accounting fraud and the destruction of evidence" (NYT).

At issue was part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which was enacted after the collapse of the energy giant Enron and contains a broad catchall provision that makes it a crime to corruptly obstruct, influence or impede any official proceeding. Most Jan. 6 defendants have not been charged under the law, which prosecutors have reserved for the most serious cases, and those who have been charged under it face other counts, as well....

"The chief hasn't announced yet whether its the last day. We'll see if he says anything from the bench today."

From SCOTUSblog, as today's opinions are about to issue.

UPDATE: There are only 2 boxes, we're told, and that means a maximum of 4 opinions.

UPDATE 2: Grants Pass v. Johnson. Gorsuch. 6-3... the usual lineup. "The court holds that the enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating camping on public property does not constitute 'cruel and unusual punishment' barred by the Eighth Amendment."

UPDATE 3: Chevron is overruled! The Chief writes the opinion in Loper Bright Enterprises v Secretary of Commerce. "Chevron, Roberts explains, 'defies the command of' the Administrative Procedure Act, the law governing federal administrative agencies, 'that the reviewing court--not the agency whose action it reviews--is to decide all relevant questions of law and interpret ... statutory provisions. It requires a court to ignore, not follow, the reading the court would have reached had it exercised its independent judgment as required by the APA.'... Roberts notes that today's decision does 'not call into question prior cases that relied on the Chevron framework... including the Clean Air Act holding of Chevron itself...'"  From the Kagan dissent: "Congress knows that it does not--in fact cannot--write perfectly complete regulatory statutes. It knows that those statutes will inevitably contain ambiguities that some other actor will have to resolve, and gaps that some other actor will have to fill. And it would usually prefer that actor to be the responsible agency, not a court."

UPDATE 4: If there are 2 more cases, there are 2 more Roberts-written cases. There's only one more case. The last case today is Fischer. Another 6-3 case written by Roberts. SCOTUSblog writes: "This was a case about whether a federal law that makes it a crime to corruptly obstruct congressional inquiries and investigations can be used to prosecute participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol. The question comes to the court in the case of a former Pennsylvania police officer who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6. ... The court holds that to prove a violation of the law, the government must show that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or other things used in an official proceeding, or attempted to do so."

UPDATE 5: The 6-3 in Fischer is not the usual 6-3. Barrett joins the dissenters and Jackson is in the majority. Jackson's concurrence refers to the "shocking circumstances" of January 6th.

UPDATE 6: Headline at The Washington Post: "Supreme Court says prosecutors improperly charged hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters/Supreme Court’s decision on obstruction charge will impact trials of hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters and, potentially, former president Donald Trump."

UPDATE 5: The Court announced that there will be one more opinion day, Monday.

"The Vanishing Islands That Failed to Vanish/Low-lying tropical island nations were expected to be early victims of rising seas."

"But research tells a surprising story: Many islands are stable. Some have even grown."

The NYT reports. That's a free-access link, my last of the month. There are many details and diagrams — and beautiful photographs — at the link. It's a complicated phenomenon, so please try to understand it (and don't just guess that the seas are not rising!).

Too true: "He's the President you deserve."

I’m so proud of Joe—I hope you heard his heart tonight. Sign up at https://t.co/40xBoLMo0i—together, we can finish the job for the American people. pic.twitter.com/jbOVaOC6kw

— Dr. Jill Biden (@DrBiden) June 28, 2024

"It’s true that the format did Biden no favors. CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash avoided fact-checking..."

"... like it was the plague, which allowed Trump to steamroll an unsteady Biden with his usual stream of lies. Trump served up whoppers about abortion, his bungled covid response, Charlottesville, January 6, and more.... CNN finally ran an on-air fact-check of Trump more than an hour after the debate ended. But considering the relatively minuscule size of the audience at that late hour and the fact Trump was allowed to lie with impunity on the same network at length earlier in the evening, CNN’s belated attempt at basic journalistic accountability was worth very little."

Writes Aaron Rupar, in "Not great, Joe/Biden's debate showing stunk up the joint. But don't give up hope" (PublicNotice).

The format did Biden no favors? The format was engineered to favor Biden! Trump stepped up and did it the way Biden's people wanted. If the format chosen imposed disadvantages on Biden, it's only because his people thought other formats were more disadvantageous... unless the fix was in and the idea was to expose Biden's weaknesses.

Rupar, of course, is ridiculous. The "whopper about... Charlottesville" came from Biden. Who is still bitterly clinging to the notion that Trump said Nazis were fine people? Maybe Biden is so far gone that he actually believes it, but I don't believe Rupar believes it. I'm crediting him with rank cynicism. If the CNN moderators had been fact-checking in real time, they would have had to correct Biden on the "fine people" hoax... and on numerous other things, such as the claim that Trump told people to inject bleach into their arm. But Rupar is free to imagine that the moderators would have fact-checked in a biased way, a la Candy Crowley, and to pine about the debate that might have been.

CORRECTION: When first published, this post had a few stray sentences of Rupar's — at the bottom, after a big space — and I hope no one mistook that as mine! 

I want the names of everyone who is covering their ass by acting surprised that Biden performed the way he did at the debate last night.

Biden beat my expectations.

I expected the CNN panel to spin for Biden, just like his wife did:

Jill Biden: You did a great job! You answered all your questions!

If: ba#^d gsu%*ruvh%@d dh*&@%uhs

Accepted as an answer so she's right pic.twitter.com/Pd883oI5SC

— Israel & USA forever (@israelUSAforeve) June 28, 2024

Those who have had access to Biden over the last 2 years knew what everyone could see last night, and they choose to gaslight America, saying he's just fine — he's very sharp. They kept him away from any serious interviews, anything that would expose his weakness, but they sent him out for this debate. My hypothesis is that the debate was a set up, and the panic response — reported by the CNN commentators immediately after the debate — was not sudden and emotional but a cold sober plan to cover up 2 years of lying about Biden's condition.

In the last few weeks we've been scolded about believing our own eyes, told what we were seeing were "cheap fakes." These were people using Biden for their own concerted purposes, and now they'd like to drop him. They would have Weekend-at-Bernied him over the finish line if they could, but it seems they decided to wheel him out in public on one big occasion, let us watch him for 90 horrible minutes, and then act as if they suddenly realized this man can't do the job.

Meanwhile, he is the President of the United States, and he will be for 7 more months. That's the immediate emergency. Beyond that, I want responsibility. Shine a light on those who covered for him and who faked surprise last night. How did Democratic Party characters communicate with CNN and how did the CNN panel hit the ground running, all on the same page, all with such intensity? I want to know. So untrustworthy!

Let's watch the big presidential debate.

I don't know if I'll comment. It's a bit late for me. Maybe I'll have to comment tomorrow. But I wanted to put up a place for you to talk about the debate.

ADDED: My son John is live-blogging at Facebook, here.

AND: After the debate, the commentators on CNN seem to all be on the same page proclaiming that Biden was dismal and that Democrats are panicking and planning to figure out how to replace Biden. I didn’t think Biden was that bad. I thought it was bad, but not that bad. So it seems to me that the commentators and the Democrats — these panicking Democrats — were ready to go with this attack. This seems completely phony and planned to me.

Sunrise — 5:23.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments EXCEPT the big debate. I'll put up a separate post for that.

You know, yesterday's sunrise was so beautiful that I didn't even use this one, which, right now, looks to me like one of the best I've seen: