Thursday, October 31, 2024

Puerto Rican Artist Nicky Jam Withdraws Trump Endorsement

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/puerto-rican-artist-nicky-jam-u-turns-on-donald-trump-support/

On Wednesday, however, Jam announced he no longer supported Trump in an Instagram video.

“Never in my life did I think that a month later a comedian would come to criticize my country and speak badly about my country,” he told his 43 million followers on the app. “And therefore, I withdraw any support for Donald Trump and step aside from any political situation. Puerto Rico deserves respect.”

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

That photo of people wearing ‘Nebraska Walz’s for Trump’ shirts? They’re distant cousins

 https://apnews.com/article/walz-family-nebraska-trump-elelction-2f2e29586b0e9ebe094ff2cf546e1ae4

A sister of Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz says she doesn’t recognize the people wearing “Nebraska Walz’s for Trump” T-shirts in a photo that is making the rounds on social media. It turns out they are distant cousins.

Dershowitz says he could ‘enthusiastically’ vote for Biden over Trump

 https://thehill.com/homenews/media/448480-dershowitz-says-he-could-enthusiastically-vote-for-biden-over-trump/

“I’m a strong supporter of Joe Biden. I like Joe Biden. I’ve liked him for a long time, and I could enthusiastically support Joe Biden,” Dershowitz said during a radio interview with Dan Abrams on his Sirius XM radio show.

“Over Donald Trump?” Abrams asked.

“Over Donald Trump, yeah,” Dershowitz replied. 

Will Alan Dershowitz Vote For Trump?

Trump Rage-Posts Through Night After Harris’ Massive D.C. Rally

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-rage-posted-on-truth-social-in-the-middle-of-the-night-after-massive-kamala-harris-rally/

Trump has a tendency to lash out on Truth Social when he’s upset, and although he claims nobody draws crowds like he does, the size of Harris’ rallies has been a sore spot throughout the campaign. A Harvard analysis found that Harris rallies draw, on average, twice as many attendees as Trump’s. The D.C. Metropolitan Police Department expected about 20,000 people to show up to Harris’s D.C. rally—roughly the same number that packed Madison Square Garden for Trump on Sunday. In fact, the vice president’s event ballooned to more than 52,000 people, causing overflow on the Washington Mall, before ultimately reach 75,000, a campaign official said.

RFK Jr. and Aaron Rodgers: How con artists exploit male insecurity for political gain

 https://www.salon.com/2024/03/15/rfk-jr-and-aaron-rodgers-how-con-artists-exploit-male-insecurity/

But the sad truth is that just because Rodgers and Kennedy are villains doesn't make their victims innocent. Like most con artists, these two manipulate not the good intentions of their marks, but their ugliest instincts. Certainly, there's no shame in having feelings of insecurity, which most people feel at times. But young men are being told to combat that feeling with narcissism, laziness, and entitlement. To play the victim of poorly defined "elites" — a word that Kennedy loves to use — while worshipping actual elites like Kennedy or Rodgers. And to align themselves with these elites, whose main gripe is that their privileged existence doesn't stop others from criticizing the terrible and false things they say. 

In this, these two resemble Donald Trump, who still gets the lion's share of male voters who are largely mad that other people aren't kissing their asses hard enough. The Kennedy crowd does seem to veer younger, suggesting part of it is they don't want to be associated with the embarrassing fanny pack Boomer crowds that fill up Trump rallies. They also swoon at Kennedy's rhetoric about how he "defies the left-right division." That sort of empty rhetoric flatters the egos of people who want to feel like rebels without actually doing the hard work of resisting real injustice — especially if doing so means confronting your own prejudices. 

Arnold Schwarzenegger Says He Is Voting for Harris and Walz

 https://www.newsweek.com/election-2024-live-updates-kamala-harris-donald-trump-10-30-24-1977137


I guess he is not a real man

Former Republican governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger announced in a lengthy X post that he will vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz this Election Day. The Terminator actor admitted that he does not "like either party right now" and said that Trump's comments about America being "like a garbage can for the world" are "so unpatriotic, it makes me furious." He added that he "will always be an American before I am a Republican," and that this is the reason why he will be voting for Harris and Walz. Schwarzenegger has openly criticized Trump in recent years. Following the January 6, 2021 rebellion, Schwarzenegger said that Trump would be recognized as the worst President in U.S. history.

Trump declares himself ‘father of IVF’ at town hall with all-female audience

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/16/politics/ivf-donald-trump-abortion/index.html 

 Donald Trump on Tuesday declared himself the “father of IVF,” a fertility treatment that has come under threat following the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

It’s unclear what precisely the former president meant when he made the comment at a Fox News town hall in battleground Georgia that was billed as focusing on women’s issues and had an all-female audience. But he has repeatedly returned to the issue – talking up his support for IVF – on the campaign trail, where he has given a long series of confusing or contradictory answers about his stance on abortion.

How Trump’s toxic masculinity threatens men’s health

 https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/trump-masculinity-gun-violence-suicide-prevention-rcna173360

Trump has only leaned in to his hypermasculine anti-science agenda by promoting his “Make America Healthy Again” slogan with anti-vax conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an archetype for toxic masculinity in his own right, who has reportedly been promised a role in Trump’s administration if Trump wins the election and has promoted the idea of banning U.S. agencies from studying infectious diseases. 

Protean Masculinity, Hegemonic Masculinity

 https://www.jstor.org/stable/26567846#:~:text=Hegemonic%20masculinity%20in%20Nazi%20Germany,body%2C%20mind%2C%20and%20psyche.

Hegemonic masculinity in Nazi Germany, as well as in many militarized societies around the globe, meant physical, emotional, and moral “hardness.” The ideal man, embodied by the soldier, was tough and aggressive, in control of his body, mind, and psyche. He did not hesitate to sacrifice life and limb on behalf of the Fatherland, or to subordinate his individuality under the command of a conformist group of comrades. Whereas many scholars have already stressed these features of hegemonic masculinity, this article argues that the act of soldiering provided men with a male identity that was ultimately not defined by the repudiation, but rather integration, of what was (and is) often coded as feminine. In the social practice of male interaction, diversity and flexibility were needed, thus allowing for the display of femininely coded behavior like affection, tenderness, empathy, caring, and tolerance toward emotional breakdowns and moments of weakness in their midst. Thanks to its inclusive nature, such “protean” masculinity enabled different types of soldier-men to establish male identities; it also allowed them to switch among different emotional and moral states without losing their manliness. Yet, this was true only if the predominance of hardness was respected. Eventually, protean masculinity integrated diverse men and diverse emotional and moral conditions into a fighting unit, and, in the case of the Third Reich, into a genocidal society

Trump told Netanyahu he wants Gaza war over by time he enters office - Israel's friend?

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-told-netanyahu-he-wants-gaza-war-over-by-time-he-enters-office-sources/

The message was first conveyed when the Republican presidential nominee hosted the Israeli premier at his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort in July, according to a former Trump administration official and an Israeli official.

While Trump has publicly confirmed having told Netanyahu that he wants Israel to win the war quickly, the sources speaking to The Times of Israel are the first to reveal that a timeline was attached to that request.

The former US official stressed that Trump wasn’t specific in his appeal to Netanyahu and could well back “residual” IDF activity in Gaza, so long as Jerusalem has officially ended the war.

Freud Did Not Discover the Unconscious

 https://scholars-stage.org/freud-did-not-discover-the-unconscious/

The discovery that a dramatic amount of mental processing occurs outside our awareness is generally credited to Sigmund Freud (1856– 1939). However, this is a myth, crafted in large part by Freud himself. As noted by the historian and philosopher Marcel Gauchet, “When Freud declares, in substance, that prior to psychoanalysis the mind was systematically identified with consciousness, we have to declare this statement rigorously false.” 


Crude talk and the NFL: Trump doubles down on his lead with male voters

 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/10/21/trump-macho-man-appeal/75776773007/

Young men are particularly unreliable voters. In the 2020 election, 55% of women age 18-29 voted compared to 44% of men, according to an analysis by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.

Getting them to cast ballots in high enough numbers could be a challenge, and Trump's campaign is facing questions from political observers about the strength of its get-out-the-vote operation, much of which has been outsourced to third-party groups. A super PAC financed by entrepreneur Elon Musk is leading part of the effort.

US presidential election updates: Polls show historic gender split between Trump and Harris voters

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/25/us-presidential-election-trump-harris-updates

Donald Trump has been working tirelessly to win over male voters and by some measures his efforts appear effective, but it may have come at the cost of female support. According to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll, Trump is besting Kamala Harris among men by 53% to 37%, while the Democratic candidate is winning among women 53% to 36%.