Notices by Chuck Darwin (cdarwin@c.im), page 11

For now, at least, we should appreciate that the vice president’s emergence as the candidate of change is just another way in which this campaign is like watching a Steph Curry half-court shot or a Willie Mays over-the-shoulder catch:

“I see it, but I don’t believe it.”

https://c.im/@cdarwin/112944117440932415#.

Surprise Ukraine offensive pokes Russia’s soft underbelly

Kyiv just made a move that military analysts, and Moscow, apparently, didn’t think was possible.


As the war in Ukraine settled into a stalemate, two assumptions became prevalent among analysts:

First, that it is nearly impossible to achieve any #surprise on a battlefield blanketed by drones.

Second, that it is nearly impossible to mount #fast-moving #offensive operations, given the extensive defenses erected by both sides.

🔥Ukraine has challenged both assumptions over the past few days with its surprise, lightning-fast thrust into Russia’s #Kursk region
— ♦️an area familiar to military historians as the site, during World War II, of the biggest tank battle in history.

The Ukrainian military shocked the entire world
— and the Russian defenders
— when it sent an armored column on Tuesday across the border from Ukraine’s Sumy region.

There had been cross-border raids by Ukraine before,
but those were much smaller operations conducted by Russian volunteers.

This was something much more ambitious:
a combined-arms offensive utilizing armored vehicles (some of them German- and U.S.-made),
infantry,
artillery
and electronic-warfare equipment.

Ukraine reportedly committed elements of four elite brigades to the operation.

This was, in fact, the kind of well-planned, well-executed assault that the Ukrainians had hoped to pull off last year, on a much grander scale,
when their objective was to slice through Russian lines in southern Ukraine and break the land bridge between Crimea and Russia.

That offensive failed against well-prepared Russian defenses full of mines and trenches, all covered by heavy artillery fire and large numbers of drones.

⭐️By contrast, the Ukrainians have practically waltzed into the Kursk region, because the Russians weren’t expecting an attack there.

This reinforces the lesson of the June 2023 rebellion by Wagner Group mercenaries,
who found a practically open road to Moscow before turning back at the last moment.

⚠️The interior of Russia is lightly defended, and the lumbering Russian military cannot react quickly to new threats.

It makes you wonder why the Ukrainians mounted a costly and futile frontal assault on Russian lines last summer
instead of staging a “left hook” through Russian territory to attack the Russian defenders from the rear
— similar to the maneuver that the United States employed against Iraqi forces in Kuwait during the Gulf War in 1991

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/10/ukraine-offensive-kursk-russia/

When a New York judge appointed Yvonne Murphy to take over the care of Martin Chorost in late 2011,

the 63-year-old had diabetes, dementia and a constellation of other maladies.

⭐️He also had #assets worth more than $800,000, which were put at his #guardian’s disposal.

Murphy immediately tapped them
to hire Beacon Eldercare,
which billed itself as “the leading health care assistance firm in Queens,” to provide him with round-the-clock aides.

💥As it turned out, it was also Murphy’s own private business.

🔥Over the ensuing years, Murphy transferred between $80,000 and $100,000 annually
from Chorost’s accounts to Beacon while, separately,
she collected tens of thousands of dollars from him in guardianship fees.

Before long, the arrangement sparked a complaint from the court examiner charged with reviewing Murphy’s work.

“I believe that the dual roles of guardian and CEO of the agency creates the possibility and potential for a #conflict #of #interest to exist,”
the court examiner wrote in June 2015.

A court clerk underlined the words “conflict of interest” and drew a star in the margin next to them.

In response to questions about the company’s finances,
the Sheehy campaign released a statement saying,
“Tim is proud of the successful company he created, the jobs he created, and he is proud to be an active firefighting pilot protecting our communities and our public lands.”

Bridger, in a statement, noted steady revenue growth at the “fast-growing, ambitious company” over the past five years,
adding that it “has materially enhanced the composition and capabilities of its board of directors to lead the company in its next stage of growth.”

The company’s struggles have received little national attention even as
⭐️Sheehy competes in a closely watched contest that could determine which party controls the Senate. ⭐️

Voters in the deep-red state of Montana heavily back former president Donald Trump
— who endorsed Sheehy earlier this year
— but have elected 👍Democratic incumbent #Jon #Tester three times.

https://jontester.com/

“Montana will always come first for me
– and I will take on anyone,
from any party,
to defend our state,”
Tester said in a statement.

“I’m honored to have the support of Montana Republicans who have stood with me to fight for our veterans,
protect our freedoms,
and keep the government out of our personal lives.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/tester-campaign-launches-republicans-tester-130118299.html

https://www.propublica.org/article/new-york-guardian-yvonne-murphy-beacon-eldercare-judges

The Harris Campaign Is Brutally Trolling Trump On His Own Social Media Site—And It's Perfect

The Kamala Harris campaign is hitting Donald Trump where it hurts, posting
side-by-side crowd size photos
comparing Trump and Harris rallies
to his own Truth Social site.

https://www.comicsands.com/harris-rally-crowd-truth-social-2668936832.html

Jen Senko produced a movie
—The Brainwashing of My Dad
—about losing her own father to Fox “News”;
Her father—a totally normal Midwestern guy—began watching Fox “News” when he retired,
and within a year had become withdrawn, bitter, angry, and filled with hate.
🔹Jen and her family staged an intervention 🔹and locked Fox out of Dad’s TV with the child lock option built into her cable system;
within a few months, back to watching normal TV news like CNN, MSNBC, and the BBC,
👉Dad made a full recovery from the temporary mental illness Murdoch’s infamous hate machine had thrown him into.👈

⭐️Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, is America’s intervention ⭐️against the mind poison that Trump, Fox “News,” and right-wing hate radio have infected our nation with.

🔸He’s a normal guy, who joined the Army National Guard right out of high school at 17, rising to the rank of Commander Sergeant Major and becoming a top advocate for America’s veterans during his decade in Congress.
🔸He used the G.I. bill to go to college, getting his master’s degree and going on to teach high school social studies. He coached his school’s football team, taking it to the state championships for the first time ever.
🔸He smiles. His students love him, as does his family. He’s a normal guy. He’s the father everybody who grew up in a dysfunctional family wishes they had. He’s the grandpa everybody who’s lost one to Fox “News” wishes could sit down with their own and set him straight.
🔸He carved butter at the state fair. He helped start his school’s first gay-straight alliance back in the 1990s when homophobic hate was still widely accepted; he said the coach doing so would be a powerful statement of support. He loves his country, his community, his family, and his nation.
♦️No purchased bone-spur X-rays for Tim Walz; he embodies the very definition of patriotism that I grew up with in the Midwest. He reminds me of my own dad, who joined the Army at 17 to go fight Nazis in World War II, an echo of the past that most Americans recognize.
🔥His contrast with Trump’s infidelities, con jobs, and constant angry bitterness is a sunlight-like disinfectant for our body politic. He shows up J.D. Vance—with his creepy obsessions with women’s genitals and birth rates and fealty to his billionaire patrons—for the weird guy that he is. He even highlights jokes about Vance, saying: “I can’t wait to debate the guy. That is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/184654/tim-walz-perfect-antidote-brainwashed-fox-news-dads

Tim Walz told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Trump "talks about this wall — I always say, let me know how high it is. If it’s 25 feet, then I’ll invest in the 30-foot-ladder factory. That’s not how you stop this."
Trump’s supporters tried hard to turn that into fake news:
"Tim Walz wants to invest in a ‘ladder factory’ to help illegals scale the border wall"
Walz’s "ladder factory" comment came about 7 minutes and 50 seconds into a nine-minute July 30 interview on "Anderson Cooper 360," during which he discussed reproductive rights, insulin costs, immigration and why he’s called Trump and his allies "weird." 
But the shorter social media video gave a misleading impression of Walz’s fuller comments.
And the posts’ descriptions omitted that Walz advocated other ways for stemming immigration at the southern U.S. border.
His ladder imagery didn’t signal that he wanted to help people over the wall
— he said he did not believe a wall to be a strong solution to the problem
https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/aug/06/in-context-why-did-harris-vp-pick-gov-tim-walz-say/

Justice #Thomas Failed to Reveal ♦️More Private Flights♦️

Senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to the wealthy conservative donor #Harlan #Crow’s lawyer after records showed
undisclosed flights between Hawaii and New Zealand with the Supreme Court justice in 2010.

♦️By law, justices are required to fill out a financial disclosure form each year,
including, among other things,
outside sources of income and gifts.

♦️But Justice Thomas’s form for 2010 does not list any flights on Mr. Crow’s jet.

Mr. Wyden singled out the discrepancy in his letter,
noting that the justice had revised past records to reveal travel provided by Mr. Crow.

♦️“To date, Justice Thomas has never disclosed this private jet travel on any financial disclosure forms,
even though Justice Thomas has amended disclosures to reflect other international travel on Mr. Crow’s private jet,” he wrote.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/05/us/politics/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-private-jet.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Trump said at a rally on Saturday that he supports electric vehicles because Elon Musk endorsed him.

However, he also criticized EV infrastructure and Biden's EV mandates.

Musk has publicly backed Trump recently but denied a rumored $45 million donation.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-electric-vehicles-elon-musk-endorsement-2024-8

Hey, Friend.

It’s U.S. Senator #Mark #Kelly.

I am humbly asking if you can rush a donation to help us hold the line in Arizona.

We are hoping we can get a LOT of donations today,
because Arizona is on the frontline of the fight to defend Democracy.

A HUGE sixty (60) minutes FRONTLINE❗️

That's what we need to build an operation that can WIN in Arizona
and defeat Trump once and for all.

Everything we got, everyone chipping in together.

PLS - use this link to donate:
https://act.markkelly.com/go/2697

Evangelicals who oppose "Trump worship" try to build a new movement

Christian ethicist David Gushee
— who calls himself “post-evangelical”
— has been touring the country since the fall with his new book,
“Defending Democracy From Its Christian Enemies.”

Gushee says it was motivated by the “anti-democratic tactics” Trump used to hold on to power after he lost reelection,
the U.S. Capitol insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021,
and the strong support many Christians gave Trump throughout.


Public Religion Research Institute found in October that White evangelicals were the most likely among faith groups to challenge some democratic norms.

Thirty-one percent said they agreed that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save our country.”


To Gushee, Christian ethics call in 2024 for specificity:
excluding from public office candidates who don’t have a commitment to democratic norms and the rule of law
— including Trump.

Gushee said the U.S. democracy crisis is in good part the result of traditional evangelicals and other Christians reacting ferociously to a perception of cultural change and lost power.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/08/03/trump-evangelicals-movement/

Most recently, and perhaps impressively, ♦️Bloomberg/Morning Consult has released a new batch of seven #battleground state polls taken from July 24-28.

Overall, they showed Harris #leading Trump by one percent (48 to 47 percent), as compared to a two-point Trump lead over Biden in early July.

The individual state gains by Harris were also striking:

she led by two percent (49 to 47 percent) in #Arizona, a real problem state for Biden;

by two percent (47 to 45 percent) in #Nevada;

by two percent (49 to 47 percent) in #Wisconsin;

and by an astonishing 11 percent (53 to 42 percent) in #Michigan.

Harris was tied with Trump in #Georgia at 47 percent,

and trailed him by two percent (46 to 48 percent) in #North #Carolina

and by four percent (46 to 50 percent) in #Pennsylvania.

Three battleground states have enough post-Biden-Harris-switch polling now for ♦️FiveThirtyEight to compile averages,
and all of them show very close races.

In #Georgia, Trump leads by 1.1 percent (45.9 to 44.8 percent),

but Harris leads in #Michigan by 1.8 percent (44.8 to 43.1 percent)

and most surprisingly, in #Pennsylvania by 0.4 percent (45.1 to 44.6 percent).

There is also significant evidence that Harris is doing better than Biden among the
#young, #Black, and #Latino voting categories on which Biden’s 2020 win depended.

In the most recent ♦️Times-Siena poll, she leads Trump among under-30 #likely voters by 59 percent to 38 percent,

among #Black likely voters by 72 percent to 19 percent,

and among #Latino likely voters by 60 percent to 36 percent.

A new Axios–Generation Lab poll of 🔸18 to 34-year-old voters showed
Harris expanding a six-point Biden lead (53 percent to 47 percent) to 🔥20 points (60 percent to 40 percent).

More generally, Harris is becoming more popular than Biden. FiveThirtyEight’s favorability averages for Harris currently show her at 42.4 percent favorable/49.1 percent unfavorable, up from a 36/54 ratio a month ago, and distinctly better than Biden’s 38/54 margin when he dropped out of the race.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/harris-vs-trump-polls-kamalas-gains-are-now-a-trend.html

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders
began his trip to Minnesota this weekend with a town hall in Mankato, focusing on working class voters.

He spoke with MPR News host Tom Crann before his scheduled events, sharing that he spoke with
Gov. Tim Walz a few days earlier
and said he is “very impressed” and that Walz “understands the needs of working families.”

Sanders added that he hopes Vice President Kamala Harris “selects a running mate who will speak up and take on powerful corporate interest
— and I think Tim Walz is somebody who could do that.”

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2024/08/02/sen-bernie-sanders-in-minnesota

Trump doesn’t think he needs to debate Harris because he’s already beating her,

but it’s not actually clear that that’s the case.

Several national polls released this week found that Harris was polling ahead of Trump.

A poll conducted by #RMG Research between July 29 and 31 and published Friday found that 🔸Harris was leading by a whopping five points at 47 percent, compared to Trump’s 42 percent.

A #YouGov/The #Economist poll, which surveyed people between July 27 and 30, found that 🔸Harris was beating Trump by two points, 46 percent to 44 percent.

A #Leger survey published Wednesday, which was conducted between July 26 and 28, found that
🔸Harris was beating Trump 49 percent to 46 percent.

A #Civiqs poll published Wednesday for the Daily Kos found that
🔸Harris was ahead by four points, with her sitting at 49 percent to his 45 percent.

These are just a few of the polls that have placed Harris ahead of Trump.

Project 538, which aggregates national poll results, including some of those listed above, found that
🔸Harris was squarely ahead, polling at 45 percent to Trump’s 43 percent.

Over the course of the week, Harris has successfully widened the gap between her and Trump.

Donald Trump’s newest excuse for why he won’t debate Vice President Kamala Harris just doesn’t have the numbers to back it up.

During an interview on Fox Business Friday morning, host Maria Bartiromo asked Trump if he would consider going head-to-head with Harris.

“Well, I want to. And we’re leading in the polls, it seems, by quite a bit, still.
She’s better than he is, but ultimately I think she’ll be worse than him,” Trump said, referring to President Joe Biden.
“I mean, right now I say, why should I do a debate?” Trump said.
“I’m leading in the polls. And, everybody knows her, everybody knows me.”

https://newrepublic.com/post/184523/donald-trump-polls-debate-kamala-harris

The previously disciplined Donald Trump campaign is showing increasingly public
signs of unraveling
as questions are raised about
attack lines on Vice President Kamala Harris,
Sen. J.D. Vance's stumbling introduction to the public
and Project 2025 getting tossed under the bus by the former president himself.

That is the opinion of MSNBC analyst Zeeshan Aleem
who noted that disagreements within Trump's tightly-knit inner circle
rarely are scrutinized in real-time
but now are bubbling up in reports about campaign chaos.
https://www.rawstory.com/news/trump-campaign-reeling/

While Trump has long spoken of expanding his base
by appealing to working class Hispanic and Black Americans
— and pundits have touted the prospect of such a “realignment” of non-white voters
— that goal has never been easy to reconcile with the fundamentally xenophobic and racist nature of Trump’s “movement.”

And in his short tenure as Trump’s running mate, Vance
— whose purported working class Appalachian roots the GOP endlessly touts
— has demonstrated just how fully Trump’s politics of resentment and division are at odds with the idea of broadening the GOP.

Indeed, Vance’s personal political journey demonstrates that the exploitation of racial and ethnic divisions, along with misogyny, are central to Trumpism

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/jd-vance-what-happened-2014-2024-trumpism

“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago 🔸when she happened to turn Black🔸 and now she wants to be known as Black.
So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Mr. Trump said of Ms. Harris, whose mother was Indian American and whose father is Black.

The moment was shocking, but for those who have followed Mr. Trump’s divisive language,
it was hardly surprising.

♦️The former president has a history of using race to pit groups of Americans against one another, amplifying a strain of racial politics that has risen as a generation of Black politicians has ascended♦️

The audacity of Mr. Trump, a white man, questioning how much a Black woman truly belongs to Black America was particularly incendiary.

And it evoked 🔷an ugly history in this country, in which white America has often declared the racial categories that define citizens, and sought to determine who gets to call themselves what.🔷

“Give me a break,” said Fred Sweets, a contributing editor at The St. Louis American who watched the discussion from the third row.
“He seemed to be denigrating her background. She knows who she is.”

Ms. Harris has embraced her dual racial identities.

She has long identified as Black and was shaped by several Black institutions. She graduated from Howard University, a historically Black university in Washington, D.C., and there joined Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation’s oldest Black sorority.

She has spoken extensively about growing up in what she described as a Black community in Berkeley, Calif.

"She had two Black babies, and she raised them to be two Black women,” Harris told The New York Times in a 2016 interview about her mother.

On Wednesday evening, Ms. Harris responded to Mr. Trump’s comment at an event hosted by one of the nation’s most prominent Black sororities, saying they showed “#divisiveness and #disrespect.”

“The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth,” she said, making no direct reference to Mr. Trump’s personal attacks.

“We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us
— they are an essential source of our strength.”

Attacks on Ms. Harris’s racial background have circulated among right-wing figures and Mr. Trump’s close allies for years.

In 2019, Donald Trump Jr. shared a social media post from an alt-right personality that falsely claimed Ms. Harris was
🔥not Black enough 🔥to be discussing the plight of Black Americans during a primary debate.

Though Mr. Trump later deleted the post, it spread widely across conservative social media, prompting a wave of accounts to question her background,
👉which was exactly the point of the effort, according to some far-right activists.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/31/us/politics/trump-harris-race.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Harris’s best response to the ‘too liberal’ attack

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D),
a possible pick for vice president,
gave a pitch-perfect answer on CNN to the charge that he is too “liberal”:


What a monster.
Kids are eating and having full bellies, so they can go learn, and women are making their own health-care decisions.
And we’re a top five business state, and we also rank in the top three of happiness.

Look, they’re going to label whatever they’re going to label.

He’s going to roll it out, mispronounce names to try and make the case.

The fact of the matter is, where you see the policies that Vice President Harris was a part of making,

Democratic governors across the country executed those policies,

and quality of life is higher,
the economies are better,
all of those things.

Educational attainment is better.

So, yes, my kids are going to eat here,
and you’re going to have a chance to go to college,
and you’re going to have an opportunity to live where we’re working on reducing carbon emissions.

Oh, and, by the way, you’re going to have personal incomes that are higher,
and you’re going to have health insurance.

So, if that’s where they want to label me,
I’m more than happy to take the label.


Likewise, Vice President Harris and down-ballot Democrats have the chance to remind voters that

⭐️what the MAGA crowd derides as “liberal,” in practice, means
delivering things Americans want. ⭐️

Harris has the opportunity to point out that supermajorities of voters agree with her on key issues.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/30/harris-liberal-attacks/

good, yes, now just try and guess why a black woman might be descended from a slaveowner,

just stretch your mind to the very limits and try and make an educated fucking guess

https://x.com/dtmooreeditor/status/1815807500395966709?s=12&t=JIzXmAfBKPksn8uWZp4aaA

Realistic school shooter drills banned in New York

The New York State Board of Education approved new regulations on school shooter drills,
banning certain practices and instituting new requirements.

Under the new rules, ✅ schools must inform both students and parents about upcoming drills up to a week in advance.

Additionally, ✅ the use of actors and props designed to mimic real shooting situations will no longer be permitted.

John LaPlaca, who runs a consulting organization that works with schools to organize active shooter drills, voiced his support for the new regulations.

The new regulations are set to take effect in September. One parent, Jerry Ford, expressed relief over the changes.
“I was dropping my high school son off, and there was a drill that took place right in the parking lot of the school. He was petrified,” Ford shared.
“We can still walk through the drills, but we just don’t need all those.
The guns. I mean, even if they’re replicas, even if they’re fake, they resemble a real thing.”

https://www.news10.com/classroom-progress-report/realistic-school-shooter-drills-banned-in-new-york/