DL Open Thread: Sat., June 29, 2024

Josh Marshall:  Only Alternative To Biden Is Harris.  Makes sense to me:

• The one thing that seems clear to me is that there’s only one Plan B and that’s Kamala Harris. I do not know any universe in which a party whose bedrocks are women and African-Americans does not split into open revolt if the Black woman vice president is passed over for someone else if the President is not up to the job. Wanting something else doesn’t matter. I don’t know any other Plan B that doesn’t involve magical thinking.
• The only question in my mind is, what has the best shot of preventing a Trump presidency? I’m going to keep my eyes open. The only poll data so far suggests little impact from the debate at all. But you’ll need to wait three or four days to know anything. My sense is that the best shot at preventing a Trump presidency remains Joe Biden. If new information says otherwise, I’m open to it. If those six decide it should be Kamala Harris I’m totally ready to get behind that. But I don’t want to run around like a chicken with his head cut off. It’s not a good way to be. It’s not a dignified way to be in the world. None of this is a prescription. It’s just my best understanding of the situation.

From his members’ newsletter, which is why I couldn’t link the article.  Well worth subscribing, though.

Supreme Court Destroys Environmental Protections.  It’s been decades in the making.  It’s here:

Roberts completed the takeover with very little humility. The thinking underlying Chevron deference is that agencies are staffed by experts who understand the technicalities of their subject matter, and are best equipped to mold often broad statutes into day-to-day regulations. Judges, on the other hand, have no special insight into, say, the Environmental Protection Agency’s calculations to find permissible amounts of air pollution, or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s experience with how factories should be laid out.

“Delegating ultimate interpretive authority to agencies is simply not necessary to ensure that the resolution of statutory ambiguities is well informed by subject matter expertise,” Roberts hand-waved.

(A dissenting Kagan quipped in reply to this section of Roberts’ opinion: “Score one for self-confidence; maybe not so high for self-reflection or -knowledge.”)

In fulfilling his right-wing mission, Roberts also pretended that letting judges, rather than agencies, fill in statutory specifics won’t result in a whipsawing based on the judges’ partisan leanings — since, per Roberts, judges don’t act on them. That’ll come as a surprise to the Biden administration, which has seen everything from power plant regulations to student debt relief summarily shot down by the conservative supermajority. 

The Dopers’ Olympics.  AKA ‘The Enhanced Games’.  Something I wish I’d cooked up–preferably in a lab:

“It promises to be one of the most compelling television events of all time,” says Aron D’Souza, the man behind the Enhanced Games. His idea is an alternative to the Olympics where performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), and even technological enhancements, are not banned but actively encouraged. It will be a battle of the biohacked.

It may sound like a crazy idea that will never get off the ground, but D’Souza has signed a deal with (director Ridley) Scott to make a 10-part series about the first Enhanced Games. He has the full backing of billionaire investors Peter Thiel and Christian Angermayer. He has former world champion swimmer James Magnussen signed up and, he assures me, interest from at least six world record holders. “The Enhanced Games are inevitable,” he says.

You oughtta read this–if, for no other reason, his line of bullshit.  No wonder Peter Thiel is involved.

RIP, Martin Mull:

What do you want to talk about?