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As Harris ascends,
Trump stumbles
Now that Joe Biden has bowed out of the race, Democrats have newfound energy. Kamala Harris should get a bump in the polls when she showcases her vice presidential running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and in the aftermath of the Democratic National Convention.
Recent polls show the race is now a toss-up, whereas only a few weeks ago, Donald Trump was significantly ahead. And Trump has made one blunder after another. He recently questioned the fact that Harris was Black, saying if she was Indian, she couldn’t also be Black. Apparently, he never heard of the word “biracial.”
In his recent interview with a group of Black journalists that went viral, he was asked why he keeps repeating obvious lies that neither Nikki Haley nor Barack Obama were born in America. He ducked the question and went on a rant that he was the best president for Blacks since Lincoln.
Arthur Straus
Walnut Creek
Secretive risk process
heats insurance market
Re: “How to cool down California’s heated insurance market” (Page A8, July 28).
As a CSAA policyholder who just received a Notice of Cancellation of Insurance, I avidly read Mike Zukerman’s opinion piece.
The cancellation is due to my property’s wildfire risk score of 4 out of 30 (zero being no risk), but the CSAA notice says that “the risk score is not based solely on the wildfire risk score, but is a combination of factors, which may be weighed differently under certain circumstances unique to an individual property.”
CSAA has refused to provide my risk assessment report or an explanation of the “combination of factors.” CSAA’s obfuscation, refusal to provide critical information and short timeline to get another policy in place is only inflaming the “heated home insurance market,” not cooling it.
Kathleen Lassle
Alamo
Trump puts democracy
on November ballot
Donald Trump is a convicted felon (34 counts), with other cases pending; liable for sexual assault and slander (E. Jean Carroll); impeached twice; a 2020 election-denier; the leader of the Jan. 6 insurrection; cheated on all three wives; paid off Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about their affair; separated thousands of immigrant children from their parents; refers to immigrants as “vermin” and “criminals”; left thousands dead of COVID-19 due to lack of coherent policies; stacked the Supreme Court, resulting in the overturning of Roe v. Wade; a racist, a Project 2025 supporter (as is J.D. Vance); a climate change-denier; and would have the United States quit NATO and cease Ukraine support.
J.D. Vance called Trump “reprehensible,” “an idiot,” and said he may be “America’s Hitler”; favors a nationwide abortion ban, even in cases of rape and incest; opposes divorce and gay marriage; claims he would have done the job that Vice President Mike Pence refused to do, to overthrow the 2020 election results.
Wake up, America. Democracy itself is on the November ballot.
Eric Mills
Oakland
What exactly was
Democrats’ big lie?
Re: “With liars in both parties, let’s write in Nikki Haley” (Page A6, Aug. 6).
I was puzzled reading Dick Patterson’s letter equating Donald Trump’s and the Democrats’ “big lies.”
Trump’s big lie, that he was cheated out of the presidency in 2020, has cost America so much. The tradition of peaceful transfer of presidential power, which for over two centuries has been the hallmark of American democracy and envied by fledgling democracies around the world, is gone. So many American lives have been ruined, or disrupted, with legal woes. The rift it created continues to take a toll on American life every day.
The Democrats’ “big lie” is hard for me to fathom. It’s that they did not announce to the world that President Biden was not healthy, and therefore, not able to function as president. I think that he’s a functioning president who declined to run for reelection because of his age. Where is the big lie in all this?
Jim Peterson
Walnut Creek
Vote against Trump is
a vote against fascism
Re: “Mallard Filmore” (Page B9, Aug. 6).
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J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, helps reveal the character of Trump’s GOP. Vance, along with Donald Trump Jr. and Steve Bannon, recently endorsed a book by a far-right provocateur, called “Unhumans.” The book lauds the tactics of brutal fascists such as Spain’s Franco and Chile’s Pinochet.
Attempting to obscure the truth, the comics page’s Bruce Tinsley jokes about the far-right’s embrace of fascism. What do people like him not understand about the Jan. 6 insurrection and Trump’s support of it? Why do they ignore Trump’s attempts to overturn election results in Georgia and elsewhere?
I try to forgive Trump supporters, assuming that most are just badly informed (as they would be if Fox “News” is a primary source). But they are abetting the attempted destruction of our democracy by a con man.
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s fascism. Vote against it.
Jim Boots
Danville
