#i did say no fight club 2.0 era

[maydaydiaz]

eddie diaz illegal street racing arc??? oh i’m seated

[sage-nebula]

I’ve been thinking about what I would have liked a sequel to InuYasha to be like, since the official sequel has been such a disappointment (to say the least), so I figured I’d go ahead and post my thoughts. 

To start with, we’re keeping Moroha, and she would be the actual main character. She’s the daughter of the previous two main protagonists, her personality steals the show on the regular anyway, and the fact that she’s part demon while also having sacred priestess powers makes her far more interesting than simply doing half-demons 2.0. I’m not sorry.

So, the story. I imagine that hundreds and hundreds of years back, like well before Inuyasha was ever sealed to the Tree of Ages and all that drama with Kikyou and Naraku happened, there was a prophecy made by some kind of deity (or deity-like) figure. The prophecy was something like, when a demon had a child with a powerful priestess, that child would then end the warring period between demons and mortals—and would, in fact, put an end to demons altogether. In other words, the child of the demon and shrine maiden would lead to the modern era, where mortals still roam freely but demons are (typically) nowhere to be seen. Not many knew about this prophecy, but very powerful and high-ranking demons did (e.g. Kirinmaru, possibly Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru’s father), and because they didn’t want demons to disappear from the earth for very obvious reasons (even though the prophecy wasn’t clear on how that would happen), they made it a point to try to stop the birth of such a child from ever happening—or, if it did happen, they made it a point to kill said child as an infant before they could ever grow. 

Hundreds of years passed. For a time there was great concern over whether Kikyou would bear the child that would bring about the prophecy, given that she was a powerful priestess (the most powerful priestess) who had several half-demons interested in her. Fears waned a little when Inuyasha decided to become human like Kikyou, forsaking his demon half and therefore rendering the two of them unable to bring the prophecy to pass (and there was some argumentation over whether a half-demon could bring the prophecy to pass anyway, but the danger was too great to risk it in the minds of those who knew), but then all of that drama went down before he could, and Kikyou died before she could have a child with anyone, so it became a moot point.

Regardless, those hundreds of years passed, Kikyou was reborn as Kagome, Kagome and Inuyasha fell in love, and they ended up giving birth to a child, Moroha, who inherited both demonic powers from her father and sacred powers from her mother. And while it’s not as if someone was watching Inuyasha and Kagome on CCTV to stalk their every action, other parts of the prophecy (such as the full moon and sun both being present in the sky at the moment of the birth, which happened just as day broke, or stars falling the night of conception) lined up and made it clear that the prophecied birth had come to pass. Of course, neither Inuyasha nor Kagome knew of the prophecy, nor did anyone else in the village . . . but Kirinmaru, as mentioned before, did.

So Kirinmaru shows up some time after Moroha’s birth, when she’s still a baby, with the intent on killing her and probably her parents as well, for good measure, so they can’t have another one. He’s not alone; I’m unsure of whether Sesshoumaru would be with him or not in this version (because I feel Sesshoumaru would have complicated feelings on the issue; he doesn’t want demons to disappear but also he’s doubtful Inuyasha’s child could make that happen), but Kirinmaru would at least have his top four lackeys and possibly many other demons with him. Enough so that everyone in the village would be at significant risk. Of course Kagome and Inuyasha aren’t going down without a fight, but also a battleground is no place for a baby, so Kagome takes Moroha through the well (which we’ll say was working at this point in time) in order to have her family watch her. This serves two purposes: It gives Moroha a loving family to take care of her, with Kagome herself ensuring that happens, AND it allows us to show Kagome’s family after giving a frick about her potentially dying, which Yashahime failed to show with their non-reaction to her potentially having a child.

Of course, Kagome’s family doesn’t want her to return to the feudal era if there’s some huge battle going down, but Kagome promises that she will survive, and she will come back to get Moroha. She promises. So her family agrees to babysit Moroha, and Kagome returns to the feudal era . . . only to not come back. As a result, Moroha is raised by Souta and his family, and cherished by her grandma and great-grandpa, even though there is also an ever-present sorrow and grief because they believe Kagome must have died in the battle she spoke of. And Moroha does feel the love from her family, but also recognizes that they also see her dead mother whenever they look at her, so there’s that, too.

With that said, Kagome isn’t dead! She returns to the feudal era and things are indeed going badly (in a flashback we get plenty of “INUYASHAAAA” “KAGOMEEEEE” for old time’s sake), but I don’t want to kill either her or Inuyasha off. So instead, we’ll bring the Rainbow Pearls back into it. Like in the actual sequel, Inuyasha and Kagome end up sealed in one of the Rainbow Pearls. But the reason here is because Kirinmaru finds out that Kagome sent Moroha away to a place where he can no longer reach her, and he’s furious about it. But he also feels that, when she grows up, she will seek out her parents. So he figures, he’ll take her parents, seal them in a state where they can’t escape him, and then use them as bait. He’ll lure Moroha to him and kill her then. It’s a perfect plan. (And while I would want to seal Inuyasha and Kagome into the Tree of Ages since that’s their tree, at the same time, Kirinmaru can’t exactly take a whole ass tree with him. I mean, he could, but it’d kill it and probably end the sealing power. So.)

Years pass, Moroha grows. She can pretty much pass for a human girl aside from her fangs and her super senses / abilities, so she doesn’t feel like too much of an outcast in the human world. She's a little older than in Yashahime, maybe around 16, and as such was able to do at least a year or two of high school and has a few years experience in archery and kendo clubs as a result. But though she doesn’t feel like an outcast, Moroha has always been plagued by the feeling that there’s more to her story than she and her family know. She feels like there’s something missing, like the assumption that her mother died just isn’t right. This draws her back to the Bone-Eaters Well time and time again, and the final time (the one we see) Souta follows her there. They talk about Moroha’s feelings and her desire to know, and Souta tells her he think that she can make the trip—and that she should, if she can’t rest. He gives her Inuyasha’s robe of the fire rat (which I forgot to mention Moroha was swaddled in when Kagome took her through), as well as her bow and quiver from archery, and some other provisions. Then Moroha jumps through and returns to the feudal era.

So the main plot, or at least the one that Moroha is aware of at first, would be Moroha trying to figure out what happened to her parents, where they are, et cetera (and people like Miroku, Sango, and Shippou bursting out crying when they see that Inuyasha and Kagome’s daughter did survive and is all grown up and looks so much like her parents). Then in the background of that is the prophecy and whether Moroha actually will carry it out or not. My thought is that she would, but it’s not that she kills all demons, because that’s pretty grim. Rather, it’s that the Rainbow Pearls would ultimately be used to seal or suppress demonic powers, with the implication that demons or people with demonic powers are very much still actually in the modern era, but they’re just sleeping, and could come back at any time. And perhaps this would be done at the end of her life rather than at the end of the series, I don’t know. But basically it would be written to explain the discrepancy of why there were demons and magic in the feudal era, but no longer in the modern era. It would make Kagome going back to the feudal era, meeting Inuyasha and building a family with him, something that actually needed to happen for her era to exist as it did at all. (So, a stable time loop, sort of.)

As for Sesshoumaru having daughters, I honestly really don’t think it’s necessary, but if he did they should be side characters (as in they can be part of the main group, but their story shouldn’t be the primary focus), and Kagura should be their mother. Since Kagura died, if we do still want them to be half-demons, then perhaps it could be that Sesshoumaru traveled to the modern era himself somehow to look for Moroha after Kagome sent her there (I don’t think the well would work for him, but this is a show about magic, he could find a way). He didn’t find Moroha, but he found Kagura’s modern reincarnation, a human woman who looked startlingly like her. He followed her around to figure out what was up with her, she thought he was a creep (albeit a very pretty creep), he eventually decides to leave her because she’s her own person and not Kagura, she follows him because she wants to know where he’s going, she ends up going back to the feudal era with him on accident, they travel together for a while, fall in love, have babies, etc. So I guess in that sense the mother of Sesshoumaru’s daughters wouldn’t actually be Kagura, just like Kagome is not Kikyou, but regardless, she’d be as close to Kagura as he could actually get and that’s better than the alternative that the fifteenth episode of Yashahime suggested, so I’d take it. (Granted I would have taken just about anything over that, but still.) With this scenario, Towa and Setsuna (if we kept those names) would be younger than Moroha, and would have been raised together in the feudal era. If they end up traveling with Moroha, perhaps it’s because Sesshoumaru sent them to do it by suggestion. The twins think they’re just ~bonding~ with their cousin, or at least helping her survive in an era she’s not familiar with, but also their father is using them to spy on her to see if there’s any chance she could bring about the prophecy.

So yeah, that’s what I got. If I’d been asked to come up with a sequel to Inuyasha, that’s what I would have written. Of course there are more details that would need to be ironed out, but nonetheless, we’d have a clear goal from the jump, the correct character would be the main character, and there wouldn’t be any child grooming or pedophilia. Win-win-win, honestly. We could have had it all.

[stephaniejuhnay]

Prince On Every Tour: Purple Rain

After the We Can F**k leak and the spiral of simultaneous listening and sobbing, frustrated sighs and “It’s too funky” head bobs, I’ve decided that tonight would be a good night for this. I was gonna wait til my deluxe set got here, but it’s not coming til the 28th and I have a flight to catch the next morning. And I do not recommend scurrying around LAX as a zombie. Plus, @the-beautiful-1 and I will be attending The Revolution concert out here in sunny (sweltering) CA, the same day that the deluxe set will be officially released. The timing just seems right.

PURPLE RAIN. SYRACUSE. MARCH 30, 1985. LET’S GET INTO IT.

Overview: 

He is here yall. Prince. PRINCE. The megastar, the legend, the icon. Seven years and five albums in, he has finally, FULLY arrived, and fiercely so. He has arrived and has, if I may borrow from @just-prince-things, snatched our “proverbial wigs” (maybe even some real ones). 

He opens by telling us he’s come to play with us. And play, he did. Played with my entire life in a 2 hour show. He rises from beneath the stage amidst a cloud of smoke and a sick wind machine, wearing the most glorious white boa we’ve ever seen atop the moto jacket/fitted pants combo 2.0: paisley, paisley, and more paisley. We love it. 

He  immediately launches into Let’s Go Crazy while we are still collecting ourselves from him simply rising from the depths of the stage. Insane guitar playing ensues as he and Wendy verify that they, in fact, created the stanky leg. History, ladies and gentleman. Six minutes and twenty-two seconds in, jacket and boa have disappeared in a literal flash of light and we’re basically shirtless as a very funky Delirious plays. Thank you Prince.

His stage presence is that of 1999 but amplified times 100. As stated, I am firmly of the belief that he had “it” during the 1999 tour we just weren’t really that aware of how IT his it was. Here, he knows it, and we for doggone sure know it now. Who was that friend of friend playing that small club in Paris in a bikini? Because this is an entirely different man. This whole era is an “I told ya’ll so” from Prince to the rest of us. He is 100% in his element, he has mastered all aspects of Prince the artist, and everything that happens after this is literally him doing whatever he wanted to. Because he’d earned it. 

Dancing, while still very extra, is on POINT. He has perfected his mic tricks, his splits are here and not going away for the next decade+, he still is a ball of energy, even smoother and more graceful than 1999. That energy is infectious watching 30 years later, so I can’t even imagine what that room felt like. A room that is full of 50,000 people. 50,000 people that this 5'2 man in more paisley, lace, and makeup than I as a woman will probably ever see in my lifetime has, by a mere 26, completely and utterly entranced with every song, movement, look, you name it. Everything he was able to elicit from these huge crowds of people, night after night at such a young age reconfirms how truly magnetic he was. He is just as much the audience’s leader as he is the group of metallic, Victorian Prince look-alikes playing on stage with him. 

Now, we can argue about that description, but all those things are true. Be honest. It’s okay. We love them too, the final and most well-known iteration of The Revolution. We’ve seen yet another personnel change (hey Dez, don’t you like his band? …sorry couldn’t resist), yet the sound is even tighter. Demanding the stop on the 2 and then wanting 25 during the Possessed jam and them delivering it flawlessly is a testament to how much they’ve all grown as a unit. And if you’ve watched that rehearsal footage an unhealthy number of times like I have, you can attest to all the work they put into it. The addition of the horns (HEY SITH LEEDS ) really gives their sound a new depth that continues to evolve over the years (which I love - horns are phenomenal). Wendy fit like a glove and her comfort on stage being as young and new as she was is pretty incredible. She’s a ball of energy herself here, and her guitar skills are straight SICK. Plus Wendy got that funk.

The band’s dancing has mimicked P’s in it’s progression as well. The coordinated steps between Wendy, Prince, and Brownmark are nice to see and adds another fun little element to the show that we haven’t seen executed at this capacity yet. Even something as simple as the side to side from the entire band during the Possessed jam just makes you wanna groove a little harder. And umm…hello Baby I’m A Star steps? I meeannnnnn…

If 1999 was the emergence of daddy, Purple Rain was the 100 exclamation points after that statement that really drove home the idea. I typically don’t spend a whole lot of time with PR because, haven’t we all spent SO MUCH time here? But every time I revisit, I’m reminded why I love PR Prince oh so much. 

Favorite Number: 

This show was chock-full of hits and jams and grooves ya’ll. I’ll have to narrow this down. Just…hang with me through this.

First of all, Let’s Go Crazy was so good, it truly could’ve been a closer. To start a show off on that note is bold, because it left me thinking “well where else can he possibly go after THIS?” the first time I watched this concert. So many places Stephanie. So many.

Take Me With You was a fun time, and then it got to a place of incredible funk at the end and it deserved to be mentioned.

How Come was ALMOST my favorite number based upon the gif above, and that gif alone. I’m. Still. Growing.

God always holds a special place in my heart because it’s a beautiful song and his vocals ALWAYS stun me. Live versions are just….transcendant.

Clearly classics from this show: Computer Blue (such a life giving guitar solo, honestly), Darling Nikki (come through shirtless body roll, come THROUGH), Purple Rain (by far amongst the greatest guitar playing I’ve ever heard/seen in my life here), and of course the marathon that is Baby I’m A Star. So much funk ya’ll. There’s just so much funk. And he is relentless about it. It’s why I love him. Yes, tell me when I’ve had enough. And I’ll end that train of thought there. Bye.

When Doves Cry gets a mention for - you guessed it - the insane jam at the end. Almost every song on this show is tagged with a sick groove afterwards, making this show go on for much longer than necessary. But I welcome it all. Everyone jammed on this song. Everyone. And I Would Die 4 U is such an elating ditty as is, but live…fantastic. However, my favorite live performance of this song will forever be from the Landover show. I was on my FEET ya’ll.

The Beautiful Ones. RUNNER UP. Easily my favorite song off of the original PR album and THE BEST PEFORMANCE FROM THE MOVIE PLEASE FIGHT WITH ME ABOUT IT. But this performance was just, magical. First of all, we get graced with another boa, pink this time. And he comes out looking like a glorious, headbanded angel in another sparkly, paisley suit and the combination of all those things takes my breath away okay?!

But if I have to choose a number that edges out the rest of these, for me, it’s Irresistible B***h/Possessed. There are few things that bring me more joy than the live version of Irresistible B***h. It’s already one of my go-to’s, but the dancing paired with it during this show takes the cake. Then we have Possessed and the undeniable groove with the band that ensues added to it? Yeah. This is the winner.

(originally posted by @onlyprincegifs)

Favorite Outfit: So many outfits in this one. So many moto jacket/matching pants combos in different lace and paisley iterations. I loved them all tbh. 

Honorable mention to the Computer Blue poncho/headband/lace fingerless gloves combo. The mess is brilliant. Also the glittery hooded cape/headband combo from Purple Rain. 

I really enjoyed TBO’s outfit because he looked magical and beautiful and maybe it brought a tear to my eye because I love him so much. BUT. I am going with the black, sparkly, lace-back-of-the-pants suit during Possessed as runner up. Winner is the all white lace number also with matching poncho and train during I Would Die 4 U. Again, headbanded angel made of pure light. He’s BEAUTIFUL ya’ll. And I wanna know who caught that shirt and if they still have it!

Still Would Rating: 

So like…I know lookswise not much changed between 1999 and PR. The hair got a bit bigger and the suits got a lot more lace and paisley. However I can always tell the difference. And for some reason 1999 Prince has an edge over PR Prince and I can’t quite place my finger on why. Anyway, he still gets a five. I just wanted to share that.

Overall Rating: 

Good GRIEF ya’ll. This show left me so tired. I am spent. I feel like I swam laps in an Olympic sized pool. And I watched this from my bed. How did ya’ll manage at these actual concerts? I mean, really. This show….was phenomenal. This is the height of his success (and I don’t say that to take away from any other era, this is just fact) and we clearly see why. What a showman. What an artist. What a musician. What a leader. WHAT. A. PRINCE.

PREVIOUSLY , 1999                                                   NEXT UP, PARADE

[burnlist]

THE TOP SEVEN REASONS WE ARE DOOMED AS A NATION AND A DEMOCRACY BECAUSE OF THE PRESIDENCY OF DONALD J. TRUMP

1.   There is reasonable and credible evidence that Trump and his campaign were either passively aided or acted in collusion with Russian intelligence agencies and leadership during the 2016 presidential election. Trump may be beholden to Putin and Russian state actors due to blackmail or massive financial obligation. “The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”

           Joint Intelligence Statement

 “American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, current and former senior American officials said.

 The continuing counterintelligence investigation means that Mr. Trump will take the oath of office on Friday with his associates under investigation and after the intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian government had worked to help elect him. As president, Mr. Trump will oversee those agencies and have the authority to redirect or stop at least some of these efforts”

          NY Times

 2.  Trump is a liar

He has lied, exaggerated, misinformed, mislead, and just plain bullshitted more than any other POTUS in history.

 “Never in modern presidential politics has a major candidate made false statements as routinely as Trump has. Over and over, independent researchers have examined what the Republican nominee says and concluded it was not the truth — but “pants on fire” (PolitiFact) or “four Pinocchios” (Washington Post Fact Checker).”

LA TIMES

  3.  Trump is a bully

He has demonstrated over and over his willingness to use his power, wealth and influence to lob personal attacks to get what he wants, often at the expense of people who are powerless to respond.

-He attacked a disabled reporter, mocking his illness

-He attacked an iconic civil rights leader for speaking out against him

-He has routinely used the practice of not paying or underpaying vendors and contractors on his projects, knowing that they don’t have the legal resources to fight back.

-He is using Twitter and his position as a club to attack his perceived enemies.

-He attacks people as opposed to policy

  4.   Trump will attack and severely restrict our free press

His assault has already begun on longstanding, well respected media outlets, calling them fake news and what he has referred to as the dishonest media because he does not like fact-based and generally unbiased stories written about him.

Without an unrestricted, free and fair press the country will fall, unchecked towards authoritarianism.

This is an intentional and premeditated attack on the Constitution and the First Amendment.

 “While Jefferson brilliantly argued that a free press is a vital guarantor of all other freedoms, Trump like Putin treats the free press with scorn, derision and contempt. Jefferson was right and Trump is wrong. The free press is not an enemy of the state that should be delegitimized and destroyed. It is the essential ingredient to inform the citizens of free nations.”

The Hill

 5.  Trump is a denier of climate change

Climate change is an existential threat to the U.S. and the world. There is almost universal scientific consensus that the use of carbon based fossil fuels is the main contributor to global warming.

2016 was the warmest year in recorded history.

Trump will end US leadership in the global effort to reduce CO2 output.

He has promised to end publicly funded scientific research for climate science at a time when American leadership is crucial.

 “Less than an hour after President Trump took the oath of office on Friday, the White House’s webpage on climate change disappeared, the latest sign that the new administration will divert resources – and attention – from the issue.”

The Hill

 6.  Trump will be the most corrupt President ever elected

Within days of his election Trump settled a lawsuit accusing him of running a fraudulent “university” for 25 million dollars.

He promised, but did not, to release his tax returns.

Trumps financial holdings and interests are massive, global, and almost entirely unknown to the American people.

He is already violating the terms of his lease of his Washington D.C. hotel.

NBC

His attempt at distancing himself from his business is laughable and unacceptable.

 Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of Exxon, will be negotiating sanctions with Russia while Exxon is partnered with Russian energy interests and both of those parties will benefit from the removal of sanctions.

 Betsy Devos, who is an active and vocal advocate for privatizing public schools will be Secretary of Education.

 “She has ardently supported the unlimited, unregulated growth of charter schools in Michigan, elevating for-profit schools with no consideration of the severe harm done to traditional public schools. She’s done this despite overwhelming evidence that proves that charters do no better at educating children than traditional public schools and serve only to exacerbate funding problems for cash-strapped public districts. We believe that all children have a right to a quality public education, and we fear that Betsy DeVos’ relentless advocacy of charter schools and vouchers betrays these principles.”

WaPo

 Trump has appointed FIVE former Goldman Sachs employees after loudly and repeatedly attacked Hillary Clinton for her ties to Wall Street and Goldman Sachs.

Bloomberg  

 7.   Donald Trump is unfit for the Presidency.

This is a piece from Dan Rather which I believe sums up the feelings, frustrations, and fears of the majority of Americans on this dark day.

 And so it begins.

 Of the nearly 20 inaugurations I can remember, there has never been one that felt like today. Not even close. Never mind the question of the small size of the crowds, or the boycott by dozens of lawmakers, or even the protest marches slated for tomorrow across the country. Those are plays upon the stage. What is truly unprecedented in my mind is the sheer magnitude of quickening heartbeats in millions of Americans, a majority of our country if the polls are to be believed, that face today buffeted within and without by the simmering ache of dread.

I have never seen my country on an inauguration day so divided, so anxious, so fearful, so uncertain of its course.

I have never seen a transition so divisive with cabinet picks so encumbered by serious questions of qualifications and ethics.

I have never seen the specter of a foreign foe cast such a dark shadow over the workings of our democracy.

I have never seen an incoming president so preoccupied with responding to the understandable vagaries of dissent and seemingly unwilling to contend with the full weight and responsibilities of the most powerful job in the world.

I have never seen such a tangled web of conflicting interests.

 Despite the pageantry of unity on display at the Capitol today, there is a piercing sense that we are entering a chapter in our nation's evolving story unlike one ever yet written. To be sure, there are millions of Donald Trump supporters who are euphoric with their candidate's rise. Other Trump voters have expressed reservations, having preferred his bluster to his rival's perceived shortcomings in the last election, but admitting more and more that they are not sure what kind of man they bestowed the keys to the presidency. The rest of America - the majority of voters - would not be - and indeed is not - hesitant in sharing its conclusions on the character and fitness of Donald Trump for the office he now holds.

The hope one hears from even some of Donald Trump's critics is that this moment might change him. Perhaps, as he stood there on a grey, drab, January day, reciting the solemn oath of office demanded by our Constitution, as he looked out across what Charles Dickens once called the "city of magnificent intentions", he would somehow grasp the importance of what he was undertaking. Perhaps he would understand that he must be the president of all the United States, in action as well as in word. Perhaps, but there has already been so much past that is prologue.

There is usually much fanfare around inaugural addresses. They are also usually forgotten - with some notable exceptions. I think today will be remembered, not so much for the rhetoric or the turns of phrase but for the man who delivered them and the era they usher us forth.

Mr. Trump's delivery was staccato and there was very little eye contact as he seemed to be reading carefully from a teleprompter. His words and tone were angry and defiant. He is still in campaign mode and nary a whiff of a unifying spirit. There was little or nothing of uplift - the rhetoric of Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy, or Reagan. We heard a cavalcade of slogans and one liners, of huge promises to "bring back" an America - whatever that really means to many who look at our history and see progress in our current society.

The speech started with a message of an establishment in Washington earning riches on the back of struggling families across the country. It was an odd note, considering the background of many of his cabinet picks. President Trump painted a very dark picture of the current state of our nation, beset by gangs and drugs and violence, regardless of what the data shows. His words swelled with his economic populism and the nationalism of "America first." The applause was sparse, and I imagine many more being turned off, even sickened, rather than inspired by what our new President had to say. President Obama looked on with an opaque poker face. One could only imagine what he was thinking.

It bears remembering that one never can predict the arc of a presidency. It is an office that is far too often shaped by circumstance well beyond its occupant's control. Those challenges, wherever and however they may rise, now will fall on the desk of President Trump. We can only see what will happen. We hope, for the security and sanctity of our Republic, that Mr. Trump will respond to the challenges with circumspection and wisdom. Today's rhetoric was not reassuring.

Our democracy demands debate and dissent - fierce, sustained, and unflinching when necessary. I sense that tide is rising amongst an opposition eager to toss aside passivity for action. We are already seeing a more emboldened Democratic party than I have witnessed in ages. It is being fueled by a fervent energy bubbling from the grassroots up, rather than the top down.

These are the swirling currents about our ship of state. We now have a new and untested captain. His power is immense, but it is not bestowed from a divinity on high. It is derived, as the saying goes, from the consent of the governed. That means President Trump now works for us - all of us. And if he forgets that, it will be our duty to remind him.

-Dan Rather

1-20-2017

[nedsecondline]

How the GOP became the party of Putin

By James Kirchick

Would somebody please help me out here: I’m confused,” read the email to me from a conservative Republican activist and donor. “The Russians are alleged to have interfered in the 2016 election by hacking into Dem party servers that were inadequately protected, some being kept in Hillary’s basement and finding emails that were actually written by members of the Clinton campaign and releasing those emails so that they could be read by the American people who what, didn’t have the right to read these emails? And this is bad? Shouldn’t we be thanking the Russians for making the election more transparent?”

Put aside the factual inaccuracies in this missive (it was not Hillary Clinton’s controversial private server the Russians are alleged to have hacked, despite Donald Trump’s explicit pleading with them to do so, but rather those of the Democratic National Committee and her campaign chairman, John Podesta). Here, laid bare, are the impulses of a large swathe of today’s Republican Party. In any other era, our political leaders would be aghast at the rank opportunism, moral flippancy and borderline treasonous instincts on display.

Instead, we get this from the president of the United States, explaining away his son’s encounter with Russian operatives who were advertised as working on behalf of the Kremlin: “Most politicians would have gone to a meeting like the one Don jr attended in order to get info on an opponent. That’s politics!” And from elected Republicans, we get mostly silence—or embarrassing excuses.

Never mind that Trump Jr. initially said the meeting was about adoption, not a Russian offer of “ultra sensitive” dirt on Hillary Clinton. We’ve gone from the Trump team saying they never even met with Russians to the president himself now essentially saying: So what if we did?

None of this should surprise anyone who paid attention during last year’s campaign. Trump Sr., after all, explicitly implored Russia to hack Clinton’s private email server. He ran as the most pro-Russian candidate for president since Henry Wallace helmed the Soviet fellow-traveling Progressive Party ticket in 1948, extolling Vladimir Putin’s manly virtues at every opportunity while bringing Kremlin-style moral relativism to the campaign trail. Worst of all, GOP voters never punished him for it. This is what they voted for.

Nor was Trump Jr. the only Republican to seek Russian assistance against Clinton. In May, the Wall Street Journal reported that a Florida Republican operative sought and received hacked Democratic Party voter-turnout analyses from “Guccifer 2.0,” a hacker the U.S. government has said is working for Russia’s intelligence services. The Journal has also reported that Republican operative Peter W. Smith, who is now deceased, “mounted an independent campaign to obtain emails he believed were stolen from Hillary Clinton’s private server, likely by Russian hackers.”

Amid a raft of congressional and law enforcement probes into Russian meddling during the 2016 presidential election, it’s still unclear whether members of Trump’s campaign actively colluded with Moscow. But we now know that they had no problem accepting the Kremlin’s help—in fact, Trump Jr. professes disappointment that his Russian interlocutors didn’t deliver the goods. Forty-eight percent of Republicans, meanwhile, think Don Jr. was right to take the meeting. During the campaign, as operatives linked to Russian intelligence dumped hacked emails onto the internet, few Republicans stood on principle, like Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and condemned their provenance. “I will not discuss any issue that has become public solely on the basis of WikiLeaks,” Rubio said at the time. And he issued a stark warning to members of his party who were looking to take advantage of Clinton’s misfortune: “Today it is the Democrats. Tomorrow it could be us.”

Unfortunately, the vast majority of Rubio’s GOP colleagues completely ignored his counsel. Suddenly, Republican leaders and conservative media figures who not long ago were demanding prison time (or worse) for Julian Assange were praising the Australian anarchist to the skies. Every morsel in the DNC and Podesta emails, no matter how innocuous, was pored over and exaggerated to maximum effect. Republican politicians and their allies in the conservative media behaved exactly as the Kremlin intended. The derivation of the emails (stolen by Russian hackers) and the purpose of their dissemination (to sow dissension among the American body politic) have either been ignored, or, in the case of my conservative interlocutor, ludicrously held up as an example of Russian altruism meant to save American democracy from the perfidious Clinton clan.

Contrast Rubio’s principled stand with that of current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who, while now appropriately calling WikiLeaks a “hostile intelligence service” that “overwhelmingly focuses on the United States while seeking support from antidemocratic countries,” was more than happy to retail its ill-gotten gains during the campaign. Today, just one-third of Republican voters even believe the intelligence community findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, no doubt influenced by the president’s equivocations on the matter.

I was no fan of Barack Obama’s foreign policy. I criticized his Russian “reset,” his Iran nuclear deal, his opening to Cuba, even his handling of political conflict in Honduras. For the past four years, I worked at a think tank, the Foreign Policy Initiative, that was bankrolled by Republican donors and regularly criticized the Obama administration. Anyone who’s followed my writing knows I’ve infuriated liberals and Democrats plenty over the years, and I have the metaphorical scars to prove it.

What I never expected was that the Republican Party—which once stood for a muscular, moralistic approach to the world, and which helped bring down the Soviet Union—would become a willing accomplice of what the previous Republican presidential nominee rightly called our No. 1 geopolitical foe: Vladimir Putin’s Russia. My message for today’s GOP is to paraphrase Barack Obama when he mocked Romney for saying precisely that: 2012 called—it wants its foreign policy back.

***

I should not have been surprised. I’ve been following Russia’s cultivation of the American right for years, long before it became a popular subject, and I have been amazed at just how deep and effective the campaign to shift conservative views on Russia has been. Four years ago, I began writing a series of articles about the growing sympathy for Russia among some American conservatives. Back then, the Putin fan club was limited to seemingly fringe figures like Pat Buchanan (“Is Vladimir Putin a paleoconservative?” he asked, answering in the affirmative), a bunch of cranks organized around the Ron Paul Institute and some anti-gay marriage bitter-enders so resentful at their domestic political loss they would ally themselves with an authoritarian regime that not so long ago they would have condemned for exporting “godless communism.”

Today, these figures are no longer on the fringe of GOP politics. According to a Morning Consult-Politico poll from May, an astonishing 49 percent of Republicans consider Russia an ally. Favorable views of Putin – a career KGB officer who hates America – have nearly tripled among Republicans in the past two years, with 32 percent expressing a positive opinion.

It would be a mistake to attribute this shift solely to Trump and his odd solicitousness toward Moscow. Russia has been targeting the American right since at least 2013, the year Putin enacted a law targeting pro-gay rights organizing and delivered a state-of-the-nation address extolling Russia’s “traditional values” and assailing the West’s “genderless and infertile” liberalism. That same year, a Kremlin-connected think tank released a report entitled, “Putin: World Conservativism’s New Leader.” In 2015, Russia hosted a delegation from the National Rifle Association, one of America’s most influential conservative lobby groups, which included David Keene, then-president of the NRA and now editor of the Washington Times editorial page, which regularly features voices calling for a friendlier relationship with Moscow. (It should be noted here that Russia, a country run by its security services where the leader recently created a 400,000-strong praetorian guard, doesn’t exactly embrace the individual right to bear arms.) A recent investigation by Politico Magazine, meanwhile, revealed how Russian intelligence services have been using the internet and social networks to target another redoubt of American conservativism: the military community.

Today, it’s hard to judge this Russian effort as anything other than a smashing success. Turn on Fox News and you will come across the network’s most popular star, Sean Hannity, citing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as a reliable source of information or retailing Russian disinformation such as the conspiracy theory that murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich—who police say was killed during a robbery attempt—was the source of last summer’s leaks, not Russian hackers. Fox’s rising star Tucker Carlson regularly uses his time slot to ridicule the entire Russian meddling scandal and portray Putin critics as bloodthirsty warmongers. On Monday night, he went so far as to give a platform to fringe leftist Max Blumenthal—author of a book comparing Israel to the Third Reich and a vocal supporter of the Assad regime in Syria—to assail the “bootlicking press” for reporting on Trump’s Russia ties. (When Blumenthal alleged that the entire Russia scandal was really just a militarist pretext for NATO enlargement, Carlson flippantly raised the prospect of his son having to fight a war against Russia, as he did in a contentious exchange earlier this year with Russian dissident Garry Kasparov. At the time, I asked Carlson if his son serves in the military. He didn’t respond).

Meanwhile the Heritage Foundation, one of Washington’s most influential conservative think tanks and a former bastion of Cold War hawkishness, has enlisted itself in the campaign against George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist whose work promoting democracy and good governance in the former Soviet space has made him one of the Kremlin’s main whipping boys.

And it’s not just conservative political operatives and media hacks who have come around on Russia. Pro-Putin feelings are now being elucidated by some conservative intellectuals as well. Echoing Kremlin complaints that Russia is a country which has been “frequently humiliated, robbed, and misled” – a self-pitying justification for Russian aggression throughout history – Weekly Standard senior editor Christopher Caldwell extolls Putin as “the pre-eminent statesman of our time.”

How did the party of Ronald Reagan’s moral clarity morph into that of Donald Trump’s moral vacuity? Russia’s intelligence operatives are among the world’s best. I believe they made a keen study of the American political scene and realized that, during the Obama years, the conservative movement had become ripe for manipulation. Long gone was its principled opposition to the “evil empire.” What was left was an intellectually and morally desiccated carcass populated by con artists, opportunists, entertainers and grifters operating massively profitable book publishers, radio empires, websites, and a TV network whose stock-in-trade are not ideas but resentments. If a political officer at the Russian Embassy in Washington visited the zoo that is the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, they’d see a “movement” that embraces a ludicrous performance artist like Milo Yiannopoulos as some sort of intellectual heavyweight. When conservative bloggers are willing to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars from Malaysia’s authoritarian government to launch a smear campaign against a democratic opposition leader they know nothing about, how much of a jump is it to line up and defend what at the very least was attempted collusion on the part of a brain-dead dauphin like Donald Trump Jr.?

Surveying this lamentable scene, why wouldn’t Russia try to “turn” the American right, whose ethical rot necessarily precedes its rank unscrupulousness? It is this ethical rot that allows Dennis Prager, one of the right’s more unctuous professional moralists, to opine with a straight face that “The news media in the West pose a far greater danger to Western civilization than Russia does.” Why wouldn’t a “religious right” that embraced a boastfully immoral charlatan like Donald Trump not turn a blind eye toward—or, in the case of Franklin Graham, embrace—an oppressive regime like that ruling Russia? American conservatism is no better encapsulated today than by the self-satisfied, smirking mug of Carlson, the living embodiment of what Lionel Trilling meant when he wrote that the “conservative impulse” is defined by “irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.”

***

The entire Trump-Russia saga strikes at a deeper issue which most Republicans have shown little care in examining: What is it about Donald Trump that attracted the Kremlin so?

Such an effort would be like staging an intervention for a drunk and abusive family member: painful but necessary. One would have thought a U.S. intelligence community assessment concluding that the Russians preferred their party’s nominee over Hillary Clinton would have introduced a bit of introspection on the right. Moments for such soul-searching had arrived much earlier, however, like when Trump hired a former advisor to the corrupt, pro-Russian president of Ukraine as his campaign manager last summer. Or when he praised Putin on “Morning Joe” in December of 2015. Republicans ought to have considered how an “America First” foreign policy, despite its promises to build up the military and “bomb the shit out of” ISIS, might actually be more attractive to Moscow than the warts-and-all liberal internationalism of the Democratic nominee, who, whatever her faults, has never called into question the very existence of institutions like the European Union and NATO, pillars of the transatlantic democratic alliance. Now that he’s president, Trump’s fitful behavior, alienating close allies like Britain and Germany, ought give Republicans pause about how closely the president’s actions accord with Russian objectives.

But alas there has been no such reckoning within the party of Reagan. Instead, the Russia scandal has incurred a wrathful defensiveness among conservatives, who are reaching for anything – paranoid attacks on the so-called American “deep state,” allegations of conspiracy among Obama administration holdovers – to distract attention from the very grave reality of Russian active measures. To be sure, the Republican Congress, at least on paper, remains hawkish on the Kremlin, as evidenced by the recent 98-2 Senate vote to increase sanctions against Russia for its election meddling and other offenses. But in no way can they be said anymore to represent the GOP party base, which has been led to believe by the president and his allies in the pro-Trump media that “the Russia story” is a giant hoax. It wasn’t long ago that the GOP used to mock Democratic presidential candidates for supposedly winning “endorsements” from foreign adversaries, like when a Hamas official said he “liked” Barack Obama in 2008. Today, most Republicans evince no shame in the fact that their candidate was the clearly expressed preference of a murderous thug like Vladimir Putin.

If Republicans put country before party, they would want to know what the Russians did, why they did it and how to prevent it from happening again. But that, of course, would raise questions implicating Donald Trump and all those who have enabled him, questions that most Republicans prefer to remain unanswered.

[junker-town]

The 2017 NCAA Tournament has revealed a lot about the top NBA Draft prospects

Who’s impressed us through the first weekend, and who has a longer way to go? Plus, a Lonzo Ball argument.

The NCAA Tournament field has been sliced from 68 to 16, and gone are many of the top NBA Draft prospects we wanted to see. In that spirit, this week’s Flanns & Zillz focuses on our thoughts on the draft class after the first weekend of madness.

ZILLER: Just like most NBA writers, we're using the NCAA Tournament to cram on the top prospects for the 2017 draft, which is just three months away. But before we get into what happened over the weekend, let's discuss the two elephants not in the room: Markelle Fultz and Dennis Smith are two elite prospects whose teams didn't make the tournament.

Nothing Fultz did at Washington this season dropped him down the big boards. The Huskies were bad, but Fultz showcased exactly what put him atop mock drafts for a couple of years. In fact, he improved his stock by showing he could shoot the long ball. So many recent hyper-athletic point guards lacked that piece when entering the league. He proved he can shoot.

So Fultz missing the tournament shouldn't hurt his case, just as it didn't for Ben Simmons last year.

But the knock on Smith at N.C. State was that he lacked focus and intensity, and he didn't disprove that when the chips were down for the Wolfpack. He's smaller than Fultz and a worse shooter, and I think not reminding teams who makes him a top prospect here in March could cost him a few spots. Small guards tend to drop in the lottery without massive Marches.

What do you think about the fate of the prospects who missed the Madness?

Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images

FLANNERY: I think Markelle Fultz will be the No. 1 pick even though people will talk way too much about Lonzo Ball over the next few weeks. Fultz is the guy and it wouldn't surprise me if someone -- maybe Duke's Jayson Tatum or Kansas' Josh Jackson -- overtook Ball for the second spot. But let's not get too far ahead of things yet.

Smith is an enigma. He has major physical talent with obvious holes in his game that can be developed with more experience. That's the hope anyway. Talent evaluators would really like to see him spend another year in school and work on his point guard skills, but he's going to be a lottery pick regardless. NC State is also making a coaching change, so there's no reason for him to go back.

I would have liked to have seen more of Jonathan Isaac. I'm still not sure what to make of that guy.

ZILLER: I've moderated somewhat on the NBA age minimum, but Dennis Smith is one of those guys for which one-and-done did absolutely no benefit for anyone (not even Mark Gottfried, his now unemployed college coach). Smith is still will go super high in the lottery without any assurances he'll pan out.

Isaac did help himself -- he considered entering the 2016 NBA Draft through a loophole but went to Florida State instead -- by showing decent three-point range for the tall, skinny prospect. I am concerned about whether he can actually be a combo forward in today's NBA or whether he's a pure center. Small forwards usually aren't this tall, and defense could be a major concern if he's asked to play the wing instead of the pivot. He's also not much of a playmaker. He's intriguing, but he's also going to be compared to the more skilled Tatum and Jackson.

Should we talk about Tatum? I know we both love that dude.

FLANNERY: Tatum is really good. I watched a lot of his work in the ACC Tournament and came away impressed. He's not a great long-range shooter by any means, but he's got nice footwork and he can score in isolation. He just looks like an NBA player and the upside, as they say, is strong. Tatum's almost a year younger than Josh Jackson. That matters when we're talking about draft babies.

Jackson's the other guy who's almost certain to crack the top five. He's a live wire on the court, but he can really pass and he plays so hard. You like what you've seen from him?

ZILLER: He's an exciting player on the court, for sure. I especially enjoy his playmaking ability.

His off-the-court issues of late really can't be ignored, though. He admitted to kicking the car of his teammate's ex and is alleged to have hit it repeatedly in an apparent attempt to intimidate her after a public fight between her and Jackson's teammate. Teams are rightfully sensitive to off-the-court issues and so Jackson's spectacular on-court potential cannot and should not be seen in a vacuum. (Kansas in general is basically impossible for me to watch -- there's too much unspoken context and all of the credit for overcoming "distractions" makes me ill.)

Like you, I think Tatum absolutely looks the part of an NBA player and a modern NBA small forward, more specifically. In that sense he can slide right in. He had some spectacular blocks in Duke's Round 1 win and was the Blue Devils' best player in their Round 2 dismissal, but I do have a few questions about his face-up defense and playmaking.

I have far fewer questions here than I do about, say, Isaac. It seems inconceivable to me that one mediocre team will nab Tatum and one will grab Isaac and they'll both actually be competing in the NBA next year.

Speaking of Duke, do you think Luke Kennard or Grayson Allen are NBA players? And do you agree that Harry Giles would be served extremely well by staying at Duke, provided his family doesn't have financial pressures? (It's really unfortunate that, because the NCAA refuses to pay players, we have to mention that as an important consideration.)

FLANNERY: I like Kennard, am decidedly ehhhh on Allen, and think Giles should go back to school for another year. I long for the day when some kind of workable system can be set up that will allow pro prospects to develop on their own timeframe while enjoying the university life and not being exploited for their services. I actually think this may be attainable in our lifetime, but we'll see.

Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

We should probably talk about Lonzo Ball now. I remain unconvinced that he's worthy of the hype. I think he's good, I just don't believe we're watching Jason Kidd 2.0 here. What do you make of him?

ZILLER: We are relatively young and we're talking about the NCAA maybe paying the athletes that collectively make them billions "in our lifetime." Our expectations are super low and super realistic.

I don't think Grayson Allen is an NBA player despite his shooting stroke. One-trick shooters need the right attitude to survive and thrive in the NBA (see: J.J. Redick) and Allen hasn't shown he has that.

However, we DO NOT agree on Lonzo Ball. I am all the way on this train.

How often do we see this combination of brash self-assurance and wily basketball IQ? It's rare, man. Kidd was a special, special player -- one of a kind despite our inclination to compare big pass-first point guards to him every third year. Ball is different. Ball is going to come into the league trying to score and pass and control the floor. In that way, I see him more like a Deron Williams type, but with more pizzazz and less weight.

I'm not saying Ball will be Curry, Harden or Westbrook. But we're in the golden era of these dual-threat fearless, playmaking point guards. Who better than Ball to carry the torch?

FLANNERY: I am willing to concede that I may be wrong here and that everyone else is correct when they see Ball as a transformative figure. Again, I'm not saying he'll be a bad pro. I think he'll be a good, even All-Star level player. I'm just not seeing greatness.

I know one thing: his father isn't going to make a damn bit of difference in where he goes and I refuse to get all worked about him one way or the other. Let the man have his 15 minutes.

I wrote last week about embracing the Tournament from a player perspective and a lot of those guys are out: Miles Bridges, Juwan Evans, Semi Ojeleye (my personal fav), Monte Morris, John Collins, Donovan Mitchell. Thank god for Kentucky. I need more De'Aaron Fox and Malik Monk in my life. I also want to see Lauri Markkanen against Gonzaga's front line. (That Xavier club looks primed for an upset, though.)

What else do you have your eye on this weekend?

ZILLER: The Kentucky kids and Markkanen are the biggest draws other than Ball, but I'd like to get a better sense of Justin Jackson, even though he's a junior. These UNC upperclassmen so often look better in college than they do in the league, but he'll go in the top 20 with decent expectations. We won't know if he can meet them until he gets to the league, but I need to see more.

Switching to the basketball itself for our final thoughts: any sense of who will win this thing?

FLANNERY: I haven't a clue, to be honest. I will note, as have many college basketball aficionados, that the seedings seem to have been thrown together by a team of circus seals. That said, half of my Final Four is already out (thanks Nova and Louisville) and I'm not feeling great about Arizona or Kentucky either. The most impressive teams I've seen have been Michigan, West Virginia, and Xavier. So, Carolina? Maybe?

You have any better feel for this?

ZILLER: UCLA is winning this. Let the legend of Lonzo begin!