#j.d. king

[squibbles-gubwee]

You say you dont like me? Thats fine.

You're just bitter that you can't be mine.

[krispyweiss]

J.D. Souther Dies at 78

- Singer/songwriter co-founded Souther-Hillman-Furay Band; collaborated with Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Bob Weir and others

J.D. Souther, the singer/singwriter who co-founded the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band and collaborated with Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Bob Weir and others, has died at 78.

“On behalf of Team J.D., we are sad to share this news with all of you,” read a post on Souther’s social media pages that linked to a Los Angeles Times story that did not specify a date or cause of his death.

“J.D. Souther was a friend, and so talented,” Carole King said in a statement. “We’ll miss him.”

The co-writer of such songs as the Eagles’ “New Kid in Town” and “Heartache Tonight” and Ronstadt’s “Faithless Love,” Souther also contributed songs to Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, George Strait and the Dixie Chicks.

“I knew J.D. for 54 years and we were best of friends all that time,” fellow songwriter Jack Tempchin said. “It really hurts to lose him.”

In 1973, Souther teamed with former Byrd/Flying Burrito Brother Chris Hillman and Buffalo Springfield co-founder Richie Furay to form their self-titled trio.

“J.D. was one of contemporary music’s most-gifted songwriters,” Furay said in a statement. “I am very thankful for the time we had together on this part of life's journey.”

Souther kept working through the decades, recently co-writing and appearing on stage with Weir and preparing a solo tour for later this year and another with Karla Bonoff in 2025.

“JD was a remarkable talent, and his contributions to music are immeasurable,” Stephen Bishop said. “He will be sorely missed, but his legacy will live on in the hearts of those who knew and loved him.”

9/18/24

[musicmags]

[miafoxbooks]

No Pressure Writing; Create a Plan of Happiness

image by lookstudio Writers often have a myriad of thoughts come New Year’s Eve. To set a resolution or not? Should you start a new novel? Maybe even start two or three to see which one flows from you best. Or, do you spend more marketing time and dollars to promote a former project? What about social media and public appearances? Should making yourself more visible become a goal? I believe that…

[rederiswrites]

Full text of Heather Cox Richardson's latest essay:

February 1, 2025 (Saturday)

Throughout now-president Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, it was clear that his support was coming from three very different factions whose only shared ideology was a determination to destroy the federal government. Now we are watching them do it.

The group that serves President Donald Trump is gutting the government both to get revenge against those who tried to hold him accountable before the law and to make sure he and his cronies will never again have to worry about legality.

Last night, officials in the Trump administration purged the Federal Bureau of Investigation of all six of its top executives and, according to NBC’s Ken Dilanian, more than 20 heads of FBI field offices, including those in Washington, D.C., and Miami, where officials pursued cases against now-president Trump. Acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove, who represented Trump in a number of his criminal cases, asked acting FBI director Brian J. Driscoll Jr. for a list of FBI agents who had worked on January 6 cases to “determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.”

Clarissa-Jan Lim of MSNBC reported that Trump denied knowing about the dismissals but said the firings were “a good thing” because “[t]hey were very corrupt people, very corrupt, and they hurt our country very badly with the weaponization.”

Officials also fired 25 to 30 federal prosecutors who had worked on cases involving the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and reassigned others. Bove ordered the firings. Career civil servants can’t be fired without cause, and these purges come on top of the apparently illegal firing of 18 inspectors general across federal agencies and a purge of the Department of Justice of those who had worked on cases involving Trump.

Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 in Nashville, Tennessee, reported on Friday that federal prosecutors were withdrawn from a criminal investigation of Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN) for election fraud; Ogles recently filed a House resolution to enable Trump to run for a third term and another supporting Trump’s designs on Greenland. On Wednesday, federal prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss an election fraud case against former representative Jeffrey Fortenberry (R-NE). Trump called Fortenberry’s case an illustration of “the illegal Weaponization of our Justice System by the Radical Left Democrats.”

That impulse to protect Trump showed yesterday in what a local water manager said was an “extremely unprecedented” release of water from two dams in California apparently to provide evidence of his social media post that the U.S. military had gone into California and “TURNED ON THE WATER.” In fact, water was released from two reservoirs that hold water to supply farmland in the summer. They are about 500 miles (800 km) from Los Angeles, where the fires were earlier this year, and the water did not go to Southern California. “This is going to hurt farmers,” a water manager said, “This takes water out of the summer irrigation portfolio.” But Trump posted that if California officials had listened to him six years ago, there would have been no fires. Shashank Joshi of The Economist called it “real ‘mad king’ stuff.”

Trump’s loyalists overlap with the MAGA crew that embraces Project 2025, a plan that mirrors the one used by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán to overthrow democracy in Hungary. Operating from the position that modern democracy destroys a country by treating everyone equally before the law and welcoming immigrants, it calls for discrimination against women and gender, racial, and religious minorities; rejection of immigrants; and the imposition of religious laws to restore a white Christian patriarchy.

Former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson has been a vocal proponent of Orbán’s ideology, and J.D. Vance this week hired Carlson’s son, 28-year-old Buckley, as his deputy press secretary. Although Trump claimed during the campaign he didn't know anything about Project 2025, Steve Contorno and Casey Tolan of CNN estimate that more than two thirds of Trump’s executive orders mirror Project 2025.

You can see the influence of this faction in the indiscriminate immigration sweeps the administration has launched, Trump’s announcement that he is opening a 30,000-bed migrant detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and officials’ revocation of protection for more than 600,000 Venezuelans legally in the U.S. and possibly also for Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans. You can see it in the administration’s attempt to end the birthright citizenship written into the U.S. Constitution in 1868.

It shows in the new administration's persecution of transgender Americans, including Trump’s executive order purging trans service members from the military, another limiting access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth, and yet another ordering trans federal prisoners to be medically detransitioned and then moved to facilities that correspond to their sex at birth, an outcome that a trans woman suing the administration calls “humiliating, terrifying, and dangerous.”

The administration has ordered that federal employees must remove all pronouns from their email signatures and, as Jeremy Faust reported in Inside Medicine, that researchers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must scrub from their work any references to “[g]ender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female.” Faust notes that the requirements are vague and that because “most manuscripts include demographic information about the populations or patients studied,” the order potentially affects “just about any major study…including studies on Covid-19, cancer, heart disease, or anything else.”

Those embracing this ideology are also isolationist. As soon as he took office, Trump imposed a freeze on foreign aid except for military aid to Israel and Egypt, abruptly cutting off about $60 billion in funding—less than 1% of the U.S. budget—to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides humanitarian assistance to fight starvation and provide basic medical care for the globe’s most vulnerable and desperate populations. The outcry, both from those appalled that the U.S. would renege on its promises to provide food for children in war-torn countries and from those who recognize that the U.S. withdrawal from these popular programs would create a vacuum China is eager to fill, made Trump’s new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, say that “humanitarian programs” would be exempted from the freeze, but that appears either untrue or so complicated to negotiate that programs are shutting down anyway.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) appears to be beside himself over this destruction. “Let me explain why the total destruction of USAID…matters so much,” he posted on social media. “China—where Musk makes his money—wants USAID destroyed. So does Russia. Trump and Musk are doing the bidding of Beijing and Moscow. Why?” “The U.S. is in full retreat from the world,” he wrote, and there is “[n]o good reason for it. The immediate consequences of this are cataclysmic. Malnourished babies who depend on U.S. aid will die. Anti-terrorism programs will shut down and our most deadly enemies will get stronger. Diseases that threaten the U.S. will go unabated and reach our shores faster. And China will fill the void. As developing countries will now ONLY be able to rely on China for help, they will cut more deals with Beijing to give them control of ports, critical mineral deposits, etc. U.S. power will shrink. U.S. jobs will be lost.” Murphy speculated that “billionaires like Musk who make $ in China” or “someone buying all that secret Trump meme coin” would benefit from deliberately sabotaging eighty years of U.S. goodwill on the international stage.

And that brings us to the third faction: that of the tech bros, led by billionaire Elon Musk, who according to year-end Federal Election Commission filings spent more than $290 million supporting Trump and the Republicans in 2024. Musk appears to consider colonizing space imperative for the survival of humanity, and part of that goal requires slashing government regulations, as well as receiving government contracts that help to fund his space program.

Before he took office, Trump named Musk and another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy, to an extra-governmental group called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but Musk has assumed full control of the group, whose mission is to cut the federal budget by as much as $2 trillion.

Musk is interested in the government for future contracts, although a report from January 30, when Musk’s Tesla company filed its annual financial report, showed that the company, which is valued at more than $1 trillion and which made $2.3 billion in 2024, paid $0 in federal income tax. Today, Musk’s X social media company became a form of state media when the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it would no longer email updates about this week’s two plane crashes—one in Washington, D.C., and one in Philadelphia—and that reporters would have to get their information through X.

Musk’s goal might well be the crux of the drastic cuts to federal aid, as well as the attempt last week from the Office of Management and Budget to “pause” federal funding and grants to make sure funding reflected Trump’s goals. After a public outcry over the loss of payments to local law enforcement, Meals on Wheels for shut-ins, supplemental nutrition programs, and so on, the OMB rescinded its first memo, but then White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately contradicted the new memo, saying the cuts were still in effect.

The chaos surrounding the cuts could have been designed to make it difficult for opponents to sue over them. This method of changing government priorities through “impoundment” is illegal. Congress—which is the body that represents the American people—appropriates the money for programs, and the president takes an oath to execute the laws. After President Richard M. Nixon tried it, Congress passed a 1974 law making impoundment expressly illegal. But the on-again-off-again confusion appeared at first to stand a chance of stopping lawsuits. It didn’t work: a federal judge halted the funding freeze, suggesting it was a blatant violation of the Constitution.

But then, yesterday, Elon Musk forced the resignation of David A. Lebryk, the highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department. Lebryk had been at Treasury since 1989 and had risen to become the person in charge of the U.S. government payment system that disburses about $6 trillion a year through Social Security benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, contracts, grants, salaries for federal government workers, tax refunds, and so on, essentially managing the nation’s checkbook.

According to Jeff Stein, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post, Musk’s team wanted access to the payment system. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) demanded answers from Trump’s new Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, warning that “these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically-motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy. I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”

Now, though, with Musk’s people at the computers that control the nation’s payment system, they can simply stop whatever payments they want to.

Wyden continued by reminding Bessent that the press has reported that Musk has previously been “denied a high-level clearance to access the government’s most sensitive secrets. I am concerned that Musk’s enormous business operation in China—a country whose intelligence agencies have stolen vast amounts of sensitive data about Americans, including U.S. government employee data by hacking U.S. government systems—endangers U.S. cybersecurity and creates conflicts of interest that make his access to these systems a national security risk.”

This afternoon, Wyden posted that he has been told that Bessent has given the Department of Government Efficiency full access to the system. “Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it.”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo posted: “This is more or less like taking the gold from Fort Knox and putting it in Elons basement. Anyone who gets a check from soc sec or anything else[,] he can cut it off or see all y[ou]r personal and financial data.” Pundit Stuart Stevens called it “the most significant data leak in cyber history.”

All three of these factions are focused on destroying the federal government, which, after all, represents the American people through their elected representatives and spends their taxpayer money. Musk, who is an unelected adjunct to Trump, this evening gleefully referred to the civil servants in the government who work for the American people as “the opposing team.”

But something jumps out from the chaos of the past two weeks. Instructions are vague, circumstances are chaotic, and it’s unclear who is making decisions. That confusion makes it hard to enforce laws or sue, although observers note that what’s going on is “illegal and a breach of the constitutional order.”

Our federal government rests on the U.S. Constitution. The three different factions of Trump's MAGA Republicans agree that the government must be destroyed, and they are operating outside the constitutional order, not eager to win legal victories so much as determined to slash and burn down the government without them.

Today, senior Washington Post political reporter Aaron Blake noted that while it is traditional for cabinet nominees to pledge that they will refuse to honor illegal presidential orders, at least seven of Trump’s nominees have sidestepped that question. Attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard, now-confirmed defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, small business administrator nominee Kelly Loeffler, Veterans Affairs secretary nominee Douglas A. Collins, and commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick all avoided the question by saying that Trump would never ask them to do anything illegal. FBI director nominee Kash Patel just said he would “always obey the law.”

[junglemindless]

part. 2 of percy's headcanons. bc we all need this. (here is part. 1 btw) - i think that's kinda fem!reader but imagine it in the way you prefer :)

• percy would completely love "the catcher in the rye" by j.d. salinger. doesn't matter if you like it or not or think it's overated, he would see a lot of himself on holden

• he cooks for you. and he's SO hot doing it. he sees this recipe videos on tiktok and wants to try it with you.... he goes all "hey, babe taste it, taste it!!!!" while wearing an apron with "kiss the chef" written on it

• btw, when you're just sitting waiting for him to end up his fun so you two can finally eat, he just stands on your side and points to his apron. he's not getting back to the kitchen until you kiss him.

• all that doesn't matter, bc he's actually a wonderfull cook

• we all know that but let's just reinforce: he will ask you to paint your nails blue. you will show him all the blue shades of nail polish you have, and he will carefully choose his favorite

• he is a huge fan of childish gambino and tyler, the creator. kanye west too but he feels kinda guilty bc he's actually not into the nazi thing soooo

• okay. he likes taylor swift. in a way that just a boyfriend could. in a way that he will sing to it on his car and record it to you so you can be proud of his musical taste

• BIG NOSE RIZZ.

• percy is so babygirl but also such a man. he will let you choose his clothes, do skin care with him, call you cute nicknames but will never NEVER let anything bad heppen with you in his turn. make a longer way home just to be able to accompany you and you don't have to walk alone at night. hold you close on the subway. INSISTS on you to call him when you get home so he can be sure you're safe

• i feel he's kinda of an anime guy. his favorite is probably one piece (yes, he did watched the whole thing)

• percy is very nerdy actually. he loves star wars, harry potter (btw i really can't decide which one of the four houses he is in), avatar (ofc obsessed with the water one) and so many video games. this ones i will not be able to exemplify cause i don't really know any but percy would !!!!

• he will come up with a nickname for your name (even if it seems impossible) that only he uses because he wants to be unique

• eye contact king. like, he's gonna staring at you to death. he knows what he does with you and he absolutely loves it.

• smirk king too. put the eye contact and smirk together and you have a beautiful percy-checking-you-out-scene in any outfit, even the simple ones, just because he wants to see you blush. how i said: he knows.

guys. thinking a LOT about fratboy!percy and all his rizz in action on young adult life. should i write about it? i mean, i will anyways. but would anybody be up for it?

thanks for reading ♡♡

[tabrisofmars]

Enid sighs loudly while doom scrolling on her phone

Goody Addams: I see how you mourn the absence of my kinswoman

Enid spits out her juice: Aaaugh who the fudge are you??

Goody: I am the ancestor of your roommate

Enid: woah. So you are the Ghost of Wednesdays Past?

Goody:

Goody: you spake the King’s English but I do not ken your words

Enid: Okies. How about we watch some movies so you pick up on modern terms?

Goody: what is a movie?

Ten hours later Wednesday encounters Enid passed out on her bed with Goody intensely staring at a laptop

Wednesday: Goody! What have you done to Enid?

Goody frowns over the head of a snoring Enid: Quiet, young Raven. You'll awaken your lady love.

Wednesday: You cannot just occupy my side of the bed!

Goody: I said hush. I shall leave soon. Heathers is not done and I relish the mayhem of J.D.

Wednesday: never an exorcist when you need one

[gothamite-rambler]

Bruce meeting his son Damian pt. 2

Context: After Bruce Wayne has regained his bearings and been dragged to a lounge room at Ra's castle and has been retold that he has a son with Talia, Jason knew and now his in-law is Ra's Al Ghul. (links to the first two parts below).

Bruce, still in his bat suit, rested on the ground in Talia's study trying to remain his usual calm and composed self, but can only repeat a mantra.

Talia: Bruce, my former love, are you feeling better?

Bruce (monotone and stunned): I have a child with Talia. I have a child with Talia. I have a... child with Talia. I have a child with Talia. I have a child with Talia...

Talia: You are being such a drama king, can you not be happy that that our night of passion produced a child.

Bruce (whimpering): Oh God I'm linked to you through a child!

Bruce buried his face on the floor groaning loudly.

Talia (angry): My father was right, you would hate Damian! If you're going to be like this then you won't be around him!

Bruce (clarifying): I do not hate Damian. I hate you. There's a difference. And you are not depriving me of any further time with him!

Talia shook with rage, but chose to not stab him, taking a long sip from her tea to calm herself.

Bruce: I didn't even get the name of Thomas Jr.! Although Damian isn't a bad name. This is not what I needed though, I can't believe I'm a father again.

Talia: Bruce, while I don't care much for your Robins, you raised three kids already! For Ra's sake, you adopted Dick when he was 8!

Bruce: I wasn't secretly his biological father, unaware he existed because the petty mother and her psychotic father refused to inform me of that!

Talia (honest): Well when you word it like that it makes us look bad.

Bruce (calm, but enraged): Talia, how old is Damian again?

Talia (deadpan): He turned eight a few months ago.

Bruce (panicked): That's what I'm FUCKING saying! I missed another birthday, he's been around- Oh my God it just dawned on me he's been around Ra's Al Ghul. Ra is that precious boy's grandfather. Oh… no.

Talia smiled hearing Bruce call their son precious.

Talia: You're stressed and shocked about having a child that I neglected to tell you about, for your own safety as well, but we can co-parent him since you know about him now.

Bruce (V.O.): That's not the point, he is my son you loony tune!

Bruce (outloud): Thank you so much for giving me that option eight years later. I'm not upset I have a son, that's... fine. You are correct about the fact I've raised three kids, working on things with Jason, but yes I'm not new to parenting. I’m having a lot of racing thoughts because the woman I thought I cut off ties with is now linked to me through said innocent child. Oh and the fact you kept him secret for eight years!

Talia (missing the point): Our relationship wasn't that bad. You have to admit we had good times together.

Bruce sat up, bringing his knee to his head and thinking about the good times... Those bad times entered the narrative quickly.

Talia: Bruce, it was for the best I never informed you of Damian’s existence earlier, father would’ve killed you.

Bruce: You refused to tell ME I had a son, because your father who bathes in the pit when he has a cold might’ve killed me? That’s what you’re trying to tell me… you’re telling me that as if I can’t fight for myself!

Talia (hesitantly): I made… what I assumed was the smartest decision.

Bruce: Yeah Kim thought the same thing with J.D. on Scrubs, at least he found out before the baby was born.

Talia: Okay I did not watch much of that crap show, but don’t compare me to that woman, I’m ten times better than her! Plus our night of passion was far different from what they did.

Bruce: No, it was a one night stand. A fun one, I won’t deny that, but one I had planned to be a ONE NIGHT STAND! I'm supposed to be smart, why did I buy those condoms, why did I put one in my wallet?

Talia: You are pissing me off to no end, but slip-ups like this can happen to the best of us. Neither of us expected a condom with the word 'condom' misspelled on it would break so easily.

Bruce: I can't ignore the fact you had him around that man. You let him talk to Damian, be around Damian, probably teach him how to kill. I am burying so much rage at the moment, but it's a thin thread, Talia. It's a thin thread!

Talia rolled her eyes while drinking from her tea cup.

Talia: I'll have you know, my childhood was only filled with normal discipline, he stabbed me in my ankle three times and then stopped. Mostly because I expected those sneak attacks.

Bruce: Talia, I swear to Christ if he has done that to Damian I will murder him three times.

Talia: No... not that I'm aware of.

Talia took another long sip from her cup while glancing away from Bruce.

Bruce (despondent): I've been deprived of that cute boy's eight years of growing up. He could have had a semi-normal childhood. I saw you with the baby too, but I thought nobody would be STUPID enough to have a kid with you. I'm the stupid one.

Talia (smirking): You think he's cute?

Bruce whimpered to signify he meant yes.

Talia: Our DNA worked together well.

Talia giggled, but Bruce wasn't in the mood.

Bruce: You're as delusional as I remember.

Talia: Bruce, get up, sit next to me. Have some tea.

Bruce stood up and sat a good distance from Talia. He removed his cowl and sighed accepting he had a son with Talia, but his worry for his child's safety remained.

Bruce: I'm glad I'm not shooting blanks, the issue is- I mean no offense... kind of do- I did not want a child with you after I realized I can't be with someone like you. You and I have clashing ideals and now we have a child. I have to co-parent with a woman who harassed a Kohl's worker to the point the woman got institutionalized ... and that's the tame shit! What am I going to tell Damian about your entire history?

Talia: Okay first of all, that worker was racist, she had it coming and second, I've made decisions you do not agree with, some that I don't look back on fondly, but for most of Damian's childhood I raised him with the love I barely got from my father. I'm doubting the decision to raise him as an assassin.

Bruce: I can make the final decision there, he's not becoming one.

Talia (chuckling dryly): Guess we'll have to compromise with what Damian wants. To be honest, Bruce I'm not that mad with your overall reaction, but I'm glad the issue isn't our son. Because whether you want to be with me or not, I want you to be a part of his life. Eight years later, yes, but I've known you for a long time and I see now you'll be a great father to him.

Bruce (rubbing his forehead): Freaking reassuring after I missed so much of his life... He's leaving today with me and will never return here again. Yeah, yeah that's a good first step as his father.

Talia: Okay, let's test the co-parenting here. How about you take him to Gotham and spend a few weeks with him so that way he can get to know you more. You're rich, not as much as us, but hopefully he'll be used to your lifestyle.

Bruce (serious): You said that as if he's visiting for vacation and then returning to this kingdom of evilness. He's not returning here! Ever!

Talia: Oh come on, I'm raising him incredibly well.

Bruce: Around Ra's Al Ghul?

Talia: Y- Yes. On his birthday we have him fight assassins and punishments aren't that bad, but last birthday he didn't have to do that I was generous.

Bruce (seething): You had him fight assassins?! What punishments- You got me fucked me, Talia! You got me fucked up! You have me talking like I'm from lower Jersey! I get you find me silly for wearing an awesome batsuit to save the city, but let me make this clear: He's living with me, I am taking... custody of him. I'm getting his stuff, he'll get on my jet and Gotham will be his permanent home! That is my son! Not just yours and damn sure not Ra's! I have a say in my son's life!

Talia (impressed): Okay, I like this energy. He'll want to return here for proper raising, I'm confident in that, but he can spend two or three months with you and then we'll humor him and see who he wants to stay with.

Bruce: Me. Me. He's living with me. I might have him visit- What am I saying?! You can visit him, I won't deprive YOU of being around him. Not Ra because if he hurts him any further, I will BEAT that man to an inch of his life and render him comatose!

Talia (pretending to be ignorant): Yeah, he'll stay for a let's say a year. I'm getting what you're putting down.

Bruce: You're seriously not! Talia look into my eyes, Damian WAYNE will be living with me from here on out. Got it?!

Talia stood up, placing her tea cup on the table.

Talia: Mm-hm, Mm-hm, Mm-hm, we'll see what Damian decides. Aren’t you happy I gave him your last name.

Bruce rubbed his forehead, trying not to cuss Talia out. She wasn't always the most stable person especially when it involved allegiance to her father, but he was resolute in his decision.

Damian would not set foot back in that castle for as long as Bruce lived. Although he accepted there was no point in arguing with Talia.

Talia (standing up): I'll go tell him to pack his things, you're going to have to talk to my father and I'm not sure if you remember this, you blacked out at a certain point, but Jason was fully aware I had the child, kept it secret for this long-term revenge, Damian has visited Gotham to be babysat by him, and he helped raise him for 8 years. He was actually the one who told me a few months ago it was time to let you see him so don't be too hard on the kid. Okay, whew got that off my chest. Damian, let's talk!

Talia scurried out of the room as Bruce stood there, shocked at this new information. He had blocked out that particular part, remembering it now made his face turn red with rage.

Bruce (whispering in rage): He had his reasons. He had his reasons. He had ... his reasons. He ...had his reasons. He had his... reasons. He had me send him that money for three years after I SAVED him and he sat on his information until a few months ago!

Bruce left the tea room in a huff.

Bruce: Jason, let's talk!

"You knew this entire time?"

Bruce find out about Damian

Jason knew the entire time

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Barbara Rogan

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 1, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Feb 02, 2025

Throughout now-president Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, it was clear that his support was coming from three very different factions whose only shared ideology was a determination to destroy the federal government. Now we are watching them do it.

The group that serves President Donald Trump is gutting the government both to get revenge against those who tried to hold him accountable before the law and to make sure he and his cronies will never again have to worry about legality.

Last night, officials in the Trump administration purged the Federal Bureau of Investigation of all six of its top executives and, according to NBC’s Ken Dilanian, more than 20 heads of FBI field offices, including those in Washington, D.C., and Miami, where officials pursued cases against now-president Trump. Acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove, who represented Trump in a number of his criminal cases, asked acting FBI director Brian J. Driscoll Jr. for a list of FBI agents who had worked on January 6 cases to “determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.”

Clarissa-Jan Lim of MSNBC reported that Trump denied knowing about the dismissals but said the firings were “a good thing” because “[t]hey were very corrupt people, very corrupt, and they hurt our country very badly with the weaponization.”

Officials also fired 25 to 30 federal prosecutors who had worked on cases involving the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and reassigned others. Bove ordered the firings. Career civil servants can’t be fired without cause, and these purges come on top of the apparently illegal firing of 18 inspectors general across federal agencies and a purge of the Department of Justice of those who had worked on cases involving Trump.

Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 in Nashville, Tennessee, reported on Friday that federal prosecutors were withdrawn from a criminal investigation of Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN) for election fraud; Ogles recently filed a House resolution to enable Trump to run for a third term and another supporting Trump’s designs on Greenland. On Wednesday, federal prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss an election fraud case against former representative Jeffrey Fortenberry (R-NE). Trump called Fortenberry’s case an illustration of “the illegal Weaponization of our Justice System by the Radical Left Democrats.”

That impulse to protect Trump showed yesterday in what a local water manager said was an “extremely unprecedented” release of water from two dams in California apparently to provide evidence of his social media post that the U.S. military had gone into California and “TURNED ON THE WATER.” In fact, water was released from two reservoirs that hold water to supply farmland in the summer. They are about 500 miles (800 km) from Los Angeles, where the fires were earlier this year, and the water did not go to Southern California. “This is going to hurt farmers,” a water manager said, “This takes water out of the summer irrigation portfolio.” But Trump posted that if California officials had listened to him six years ago, there would have been no fires. Shashank Joshi of The Economist called it “real ‘mad king’ stuff.”

Trump’s loyalists overlap with the MAGA crew that embraces Project 2025, a plan that mirrors the one used by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán to overthrow democracy in Hungary. Operating from the position that modern democracy destroys a country by treating everyone equally before the law and welcoming immigrants, it calls for discrimination against women and gender, racial, and religious minorities; rejection of immigrants; and the imposition of religious laws to restore a white Christian patriarchy.

Former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson has been a vocal proponent of Orbán’s ideology, and J.D. Vance this week hired Carlson’s son, 28-year-old Buckley, as his deputy press secretary. Although Trump claimed during the campaign he didn't know anything about Project 2025, Steve Contorno and Casey Tolan of CNN estimate that more than two thirds of Trump’s executive orders mirror Project 2025.

You can see the influence of this faction in the indiscriminate immigration sweeps the administration has launched, Trump’s announcement that he is opening a 30,000-bed migrant detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and officials’ revocation of protection for more than 600,000 Venezuelans legally in the U.S. and possibly also for Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans. You can see it in the administration’s attempt to end the birthright citizenship written into the U.S. Constitution in 1868.

It shows in the new administration's persecution of transgender Americans, including Trump’s executive order purging trans service members from the military, another limiting access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth, and yet another ordering trans federal prisoners to be medically detransitioned and then moved to facilities that correspond to their sex at birth, an outcome that a trans woman suing the administration calls “humiliating, terrifying, and dangerous.”

The administration has ordered that federal employees must remove all pronouns from their email signatures and, as Jeremy Faust reported in Inside Medicine, that researchers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must scrub from their work any references to “[g]ender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female.” Faust notes that the requirements are vague and that because “most manuscripts include demographic information about the populations or patients studied,” the order potentially affects “just about any major study…including studies on Covid-19, cancer, heart disease, or anything else.”

Those embracing this ideology are also isolationist. As soon as he took office, Trump imposed a freeze on foreign aid except for military aid to Israel and Egypt, abruptly cutting off about $60 billion in funding—less than 1% of the U.S. budget—to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides humanitarian assistance to fight starvation and provide basic medical care for the globe’s most vulnerable and desperate populations. The outcry, both from those appalled that the U.S. would renege on its promises to provide food for children in war-torn countries and from those who recognize that the U.S. withdrawal from these popular programs would create a vacuum China is eager to fill, made Trump’s new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, say that “humanitarian programs” would be exempted from the freeze, but that appears either untrue or so complicated to negotiate that programs are shutting down anyway.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) appears to be beside himself over this destruction. “Let me explain why the total destruction of USAID…matters so much,” he posted on social media. “China—where Musk makes his money—wants USAID destroyed. So does Russia. Trump and Musk are doing the bidding of Beijing and Moscow. Why?” “The U.S. is in full retreat from the world,” he wrote, and there is “[n]o good reason for it. The immediate consequences of this are cataclysmic. Malnourished babies who depend on U.S. aid will die. Anti-terrorism programs will shut down and our most deadly enemies will get stronger. Diseases that threaten the U.S. will go unabated and reach our shores faster. And China will fill the void. As developing countries will now ONLY be able to rely on China for help, they will cut more deals with Beijing to give them control of ports, critical mineral deposits, etc. U.S. power will shrink. U.S. jobs will be lost.” Murphy speculated that “billionaires like Musk who make $ in China” or “someone buying all that secret Trump meme coin” would benefit from deliberately sabotaging eighty years of U.S. goodwill on the international stage.

And that brings us to the third faction: that of the tech bros, led by billionaire Elon Musk, who according to year-end Federal Election Commission filings spent more than $290 million supporting Trump and the Republicans in 2024. Musk appears to consider colonizing space imperative for the survival of humanity, and part of that goal requires slashing government regulations, as well as receiving government contracts that help to fund his space program.

Before he took office, Trump named Musk and another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy, to an extra-governmental group called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but Musk has assumed full control of the group, whose mission is to cut the federal budget by as much as $2 trillion.

Musk is interested in the government for future contracts, although a report from January 30, when Musk’s Tesla company filed its annual financial report, showed that the company, which is valued at more than $1 trillion and which made $2.3 billion in 2024, paid $0 in federal income tax. Today, Musk’s X social media company became a form of state media when the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it would no longer email updates about this week’s two plane crashes—one in Washington, D.C., and one in Philadelphia—and that reporters would have to get their information through X.

Musk’s goal might well be the crux of the drastic cuts to federal aid, as well as the attempt last week from the Office of Management and Budget to “pause” federal funding and grants to make sure funding reflected Trump’s goals. After a public outcry over the loss of payments to local law enforcement, Meals on Wheels for shut-ins, supplemental nutrition programs, and so on, the OMB rescinded its first memo, but then White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately contradicted the new memo, saying the cuts were still in effect.

The chaos surrounding the cuts could have been designed to make it difficult for opponents to sue over them. This method of changing government priorities through “impoundment” is illegal. Congress—which is the body that represents the American people—appropriates the money for programs, and the president takes an oath to execute the laws. After President Richard M. Nixon tried it, Congress passed a 1974 law making impoundment expressly illegal. But the on-again-off-again confusion appeared at first to stand a chance of stopping lawsuits. It didn’t work: a federal judge halted the funding freeze, suggesting it was a blatant violation of the Constitution.

But then, yesterday, Elon Musk forced the resignation of David A. Lebryk, the highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department. Lebryk had been at Treasury since 1989 and had risen to become the person in charge of the U.S. government payment system that disburses about $6 trillion a year through Social Security benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, contracts, grants, salaries for federal government workers, tax refunds, and so on, essentially managing the nation’s checkbook.

According to Jeff Stein, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post, Musk’s team wanted access to the payment system. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) demanded answers from Trump’s new Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, warning that “these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically-motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy. I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”

Now, though, with Musk’s people at the computers that control the nation’s payment system, they can simply stop whatever payments they want to.

Wyden continued by reminding Bessent that the press has reported that Musk has previously been “denied a high-level clearance to access the government’s most sensitive secrets. I am concerned that Musk’s enormous business operation in China—a country whose intelligence agencies have stolen vast amounts of sensitive data about Americans, including U.S. government employee data by hacking U.S. government systems—endangers U.S. cybersecurity and creates conflicts of interest that make his access to these systems a national security risk.”

This afternoon, Wyden posted that he has been told that Bessent has given the Department of Government Efficiency full access to the system. “Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it.”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo posted: “This is more or less like taking the gold from Fort Knox and putting it in Elons basement. Anyone who gets a check from soc sec or anything else[,] he can cut it off or see all y[ou]r personal and financial data.” Pundit Stuart Stevens called it “the most significant data leak in cyber history.”

All three of these factions are focused on destroying the federal government, which, after all, represents the American people through their elected representatives and spends their taxpayer money. Musk, who is an unelected adjunct to Trump, this evening gleefully referred to the civil servants in the government who work for the American people as “the opposing team.”

But something jumps out from the chaos of the past two weeks. Instructions are vague, circumstances are chaotic, and it’s unclear who is making decisions. That confusion makes it hard to enforce laws or sue, although observers note that what’s going on is “illegal and a breach of the constitutional order.”

Our federal government rests on the U.S. Constitution. The three different factions of Trump's MAGA Republicans agree that the government must be destroyed, and they are operating outside the constitutional order, not eager to win legal victories so much as determined to slash and burn down the government without them.

Today, senior Washington Post political reporter Aaron Blake noted that while it is traditional for cabinet nominees to pledge that they will refuse to honor illegal presidential orders, at least seven of Trump’s nominees have sidestepped that question. Attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard, now-confirmed defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, small business administrator nominee Kelly Loeffler, Veterans Affairs secretary nominee Douglas A. Collins, and commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick all avoided the question by saying that Trump would never ask them to do anything illegal. FBI director nominee Kash Patel just said he would “always obey the law.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[misfitwashere]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

FEB 2

Throughout now-president Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, it was clear that his support was coming from three very different factions whose only shared ideology was a determination to destroy the federal government. Now we are watching them do it.

The group that serves President Donald Trump is gutting the government both to get revenge against those who tried to hold him accountable before the law and to make sure he and his cronies will never again have to worry about legality.

Last night, officials in the Trump administration purged the Federal Bureau of Investigation of all six of its top executives and, according to NBC’s Ken Dilanian, more than 20 heads of FBI field offices, including those in Washington, D.C., and Miami, where officials pursued cases against now-president Trump. Acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove, who represented Trump in a number of his criminal cases, asked acting FBI director Brian J. Driscoll Jr. for a list of FBI agents who had worked on January 6 cases to “determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.”

Clarissa-Jan Lim of MSNBC reported that Trump denied knowing about the dismissals but said the firings were “a good thing” because “[t]hey were very corrupt people, very corrupt, and they hurt our country very badly with the weaponization.”

Officials also fired 25 to 30 federal prosecutors who had worked on cases involving the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and reassigned others. Bove ordered the firings. Career civil servants can’t be fired without cause, and these purges come on top of the apparently illegal firing of 18 inspectors general across federal agencies and a purge of the Department of Justice of those who had worked on cases involving Trump.

Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 in Nashville, Tennessee, reported on Friday that federal prosecutors were withdrawn from a criminal investigation of Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN) for election fraud; Ogles recently filed a House resolution to enable Trump to run for a third term and another supporting Trump’s designs on Greenland. On Wednesday, federal prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss an election fraud case against former representative Jeffrey Fortenberry (R-NE). Trump called Fortenberry’s case an illustration of “the illegal Weaponization of our Justice System by the Radical Left Democrats.”

That impulse to protect Trump showed yesterday in what a local water manager said was an “extremely unprecedented” release of water from two dams in California apparently to provide evidence of his social media post that the U.S. military had gone into California and “TURNED ON THE WATER.” In fact, water was released from two reservoirs that hold water to supply farmland in the summer. They are about 500 miles (800 km) from Los Angeles, where the fires were earlier this year, and the water did not go to Southern California. “This is going to hurt farmers,” a water manager said, “This takes water out of the summer irrigation portfolio.” But Trump posted that if California officials had listened to him six years ago, there would have been no fires. Shashank Joshi of The Economist called it “real ‘mad king’ stuff.”

Trump’s loyalists overlap with the MAGA crew that embraces Project 2025, a plan that mirrors the one used by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán to overthrow democracy in Hungary. Operating from the position that modern democracy destroys a country by treating everyone equally before the law and welcoming immigrants, it calls for discrimination against women and gender, racial, and religious minorities; rejection of immigrants; and the imposition of religious laws to restore a white Christian patriarchy.

Former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson has been a vocal proponent of Orbán’s ideology, and J.D. Vance this week hired Carlson’s son, 28-year-old Buckley, as his deputy press secretary. Although Trump claimed during the campaign he didn't know anything about Project 2025, Steve Contorno and Casey Tolan of CNN estimate that more than two thirds of Trump’s executive orders mirror Project 2025.

You can see the influence of this faction in the indiscriminate immigration sweeps the administration has launched, Trump’s announcement that he is opening a 30,000-bed migrant detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and officials’ revocation of protection for more than 600,000 Venezuelans legally in the U.S. and possibly also for Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans. You can see it in the administration’s attempt to end the birthright citizenship written into the U.S. Constitution in 1868.

It shows in the new administration's persecution of transgender Americans, including Trump’s executive order purging trans service members from the military, another limiting access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth, and yet another ordering trans federal prisoners to be medically detransitioned and then moved to facilities that correspond to their sex at birth, an outcome that a trans woman suing the administration calls “humiliating, terrifying, and dangerous.”

The administration has ordered that federal employees must remove all pronouns from their email signatures and, as Jeremy Faust reported in Inside Medicine, that researchers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must scrub from their work any references to “[g]ender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female.” Faust notes that the requirements are vague and that because “most manuscripts include demographic information about the populations or patients studied,” the order potentially affects “just about any major study…including studies on Covid-19, cancer, heart disease, or anything else.”

Those embracing this ideology are also isolationist. As soon as he took office, Trump imposed a freeze on foreign aid except for military aid to Israel and Egypt, abruptly cutting off about $60 billion in funding—less than 1% of the U.S. budget—to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides humanitarian assistance to fight starvation and provide basic medical care for the globe’s most vulnerable and desperate populations. The outcry, both from those appalled that the U.S. would renege on its promises to provide food for children in war-torn countries and from those who recognize that the U.S. withdrawal from these popular programs would create a vacuum China is eager to fill, made Trump’s new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, say that “humanitarian programs” would be exempted from the freeze, but that appears either untrue or so complicated to negotiate that programs are shutting down anyway.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) appears to be beside himself over this destruction. “Let me explain why the total destruction of USAID…matters so much,” he posted on social media. “China—where Musk makes his money—wants USAID destroyed. So does Russia. Trump and Musk are doing the bidding of Beijing and Moscow. Why?” “The U.S. is in full retreat from the world,” he wrote, and there is “[n]o good reason for it. The immediate consequences of this are cataclysmic. Malnourished babies who depend on U.S. aid will die. Anti-terrorism programs will shut down and our most deadly enemies will get stronger. Diseases that threaten the U.S. will go unabated and reach our shores faster. And China will fill the void. As developing countries will now ONLY be able to rely on China for help, they will cut more deals with Beijing to give them control of ports, critical mineral deposits, etc. U.S. power will shrink. U.S. jobs will be lost.” Murphy speculated that “billionaires like Musk who make $ in China” or “someone buying all that secret Trump meme coin” would benefit from deliberately sabotaging eighty years of U.S. goodwill on the international stage.

And that brings us to the third faction: that of the tech bros, led by billionaire Elon Musk, who according to year-end Federal Election Commission filings spent more than $290 million supporting Trump and the Republicans in 2024. Musk appears to consider colonizing space imperative for the survival of humanity, and part of that goal requires slashing government regulations, as well as receiving government contracts that help to fund his space program.

Before he took office, Trump named Musk and another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy, to an extra-governmental group called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but Musk has assumed full control of the group, whose mission is to cut the federal budget by as much as $2 trillion.

Musk is interested in the government for future contracts, although a report from January 30, when Musk’s Tesla company filed its annual financial report, showed that the company, which is valued at more than $1 trillion and which made $2.3 billion in 2024, paid $0 in federal income tax. Today, Musk’s X social media company became a form of state media when the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it would no longer email updates about this week’s two plane crashes—one in Washington, D.C., and one in Philadelphia—and that reporters would have to get their information through X.

Musk’s goal might well be the crux of the drastic cuts to federal aid, as well as the attempt last week from the Office of Management and Budget to “pause” federal funding and grants to make sure funding reflected Trump’s goals. After a public outcry over the loss of payments to local law enforcement, Meals on Wheels for shut-ins, supplemental nutrition programs, and so on, the OMB rescinded its first memo, but then White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately contradicted the new memo, saying the cuts were still in effect.

The chaos surrounding the cuts could have been designed to make it difficult for opponents to sue over them. This method of changing government priorities through “impoundment” is illegal. Congress—which is the body that represents the American people—appropriates the money for programs, and the president takes an oath to execute the laws. After President Richard M. Nixon tried it, Congress passed a 1974 law making impoundment expressly illegal. But the on-again-off-again confusion appeared at first to stand a chance of stopping lawsuits. It didn’t work: a federal judge halted the funding freeze, suggesting it was a blatant violation of the Constitution.

But then, yesterday, Elon Musk forced the resignation of David A. Lebryk, the highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department. Lebryk had been at Treasury since 1989 and had risen to become the person in charge of the U.S. government payment system that disburses about $6 trillion a year through Social Security benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, contracts, grants, salaries for federal government workers, tax refunds, and so on, essentially managing the nation’s checkbook.

According to Jeff Stein, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post, Musk’s team wanted access to the payment system. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) demanded answers from Trump’s new Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, warning that “these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically-motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy. I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”

Now, though, with Musk’s people at the computers that control the nation’s payment system, they can simply stop whatever payments they want to.

Wyden continued by reminding Bessent that the press has reported that Musk has previously been “denied a high-level clearance to access the government’s most sensitive secrets. I am concerned that Musk’s enormous business operation in China—a country whose intelligence agencies have stolen vast amounts of sensitive data about Americans, including U.S. government employee data by hacking U.S. government systems—endangers U.S. cybersecurity and creates conflicts of interest that make his access to these systems a national security risk.”

This afternoon, Wyden posted that he has been told that Bessent has given the Department of Government Efficiency full access to the system. “Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it.”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo posted: “This is more or less like taking the gold from Fort Knox and putting it in Elons basement. Anyone who gets a check from soc sec or anything else[,] he can cut it off or see all y[ou]r personal and financial data.” Pundit Stuart Stevens called it “the most significant data leak in cyber history.”

All three of these factions are focused on destroying the federal government, which, after all, represents the American people through their elected representatives and spends their taxpayer money. Musk, who is an unelected adjunct to Trump, this evening gleefully referred to the civil servants in the government who work for the American people as “the opposing team.”

But something jumps out from the chaos of the past two weeks. Instructions are vague, circumstances are chaotic, and it’s unclear who is making decisions. That confusion makes it hard to enforce laws or sue, although observers note that what’s going on is “illegal and a breach of the constitutional order.”

Our federal government rests on the U.S. Constitution. The three different factions of Trump's MAGA Republicans agree that the government must be destroyed, and they are operating outside the constitutional order, not eager to win legal victories so much as determined to slash and burn down the government without them.

Today, senior Washington Post political reporter Aaron Blake noted that while it is traditional for cabinet nominees to pledge that they will refuse to honor illegal presidential orders, at least seven of Trump’s nominees have sidestepped that question. Attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard, now-confirmed defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, small business administrator nominee Kelly Loeffler, Veterans Affairs secretary nominee Douglas A. Collins, and commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick all avoided the question by saying that Trump would never ask them to do anything illegal. FBI director nominee Kash Patel just said he would “always obey the law.”

—

[apoloadonisandnarcissus]

“some wounds that cannot be wholly cured”

What will be the most likely consequences of Morgoth’s crown wound on Galadriel? Let’s us explore the possibilities, clues and foreshadowing:

The parallel between Galadriel's series arc and Frodo's arc as well, and you can look at... you know... a couple... sort of commoneries they have. You know, Frodo getting stabbed by the Morgul blade and Galadriel getting stabbed by the crown of Morgoth. And you know, his, sort of like, push and pull relationship with the Ring, her push and pull relationship to Sauron, which is basically the Ring personified. Hum... there's some interesting things to look at and unpack there across the series. - J.D. Payne 

Galadriel/Frodo and Sauron/One Ring parallels in “Rings of Power”

At the same time he struck at the feet of his enemy [Witch King of Angmar]. A shrill cry rang out in the night; and he felt a pain like a dart of poisoned ice pierce his left shoulder […] With a last effort Frodo, dropping his sword, slipped the Ring from his finger and closed his right hand tight upon it.

“I fear, Sam, that they believe your master has a deadly wound that will subdue him to their will […] He is not slain, and I think he will resist the evil power of the wound longer than his enemies expect. I will do all I can to help and heal him. […] Findol will lead you onward, he shall see you safely to Rivendell.”

“What happened at the Ford?” said Frodo, after they had recovered. “It all seemed so dim somehow; and it still does.” […] “I don’t know.” Frodo answered. “They [the side and shoulder] don’t feel at all: which is an improvement, but” -he made an effort- “I can move my arm again a little. Yes, it is coming back to life. It is not cold,” he added, touching his left hand with his right.

In “Fellowship of the Ring”, Frodo is injured by the Witch King of Angmar, using a Morgul blade. In spite of being physically healed by Elrond, this wound never fully heals, not even after the One Ring is destroyed and Sauron is defeated. And on its anniversary, Frodo becomes seriously ill.

In Two Towers, Frodo can sense the wound whenever the Witch King is nearby:

a Rider, all black, save that on his hooded head he had a helm like a crown that flickered with a perilous light. Now he was drawing near the bridge below, and Frodo's staring eyes followed him, unable to wink or to withdraw. […] Here, yes here indeed was the haggard king whose cold hand had smitten down the Ring-bearer with his deadly knife. The old wound throbbed with pain and a great chill spread towards Frodo's heart.

Frodo also got a nasty scar for life:

One evening Sam came into the study and found his master looking very strange. He was very pale and his eyes seemed to see things far away. “What’s the matter, Mr. Frodo?” said Sam. “I am wounded,” he answered, “wounded; it will never really heal.” But then he got up, and the turn seemed to pass, and he was quite himself the next day. It was not until afterwards that Sam recalled that the date was October the sixth. Two years before on that day it was dark in the dell under Weathertop. Time went on, and 1412 came in. Frodo was ill again in March, but with a great effort he concealed it, for Sam had other things to think about.

“Alas! there are some wounds that cannot be wholly cured," said Gandalf. “I fear it may be so with mine," said Frodo. "There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?” Gandalf did not answer. Return of the King

This wound forever changes Frodo, and it’s only a blade forged by Sauron, what consequences will Morgoth’s very own crown, a object filled with dark magic, have on Galadriel?

If Frodo’s wound is anything to go by, the hypothetical consequences will be it will never heal; and, straight out of “Harry Potter”, the wound will hurt whenever Sauron is near.

And can 2x08 already have provided us with some foreshadowing on this?

Galadriel's case

First things first: Morgoth’s crown is not a Morgul blade, per say. “Morgul-knifes” were dark magic weapons forged by Sauron in Minas Morgul, to gift the Nazgûl. This is necromancy, and they, indeed, turned victims into slave wraiths to the Nine and to Sauron himself (and this was the goal in stabbing Frodo, for him to surrender the One ring).

The difference here is: the tip of the Morgul blade would remain inside of the victim to complete this wraith-transformation process (this happened to Frodo, and the tip had to be removed); and the sun would vanish/destroy them (this also happens in “Fellowship of the Ring”, when the Witch King leaves the blade behind).

We know neither of these things happened with Morgoth’s crown (which was forged by Morgoth, and reforged by Sauron, to fit himself). And I highly doubt Morgul-blades had the power to destroy Sauron’s physical form, either (this is another misconception: he lost the ability to take on “fair form” after the Fall of Númenor, not physical form).

Unless we are assuming Sauron “took notes” from this event with Galadriel, and perfected the method with his own Morgul-knives, but his overall attitude and his smile of victory seems to imply he knew exactly what he was doing in this scene.

Which leads me to the next theory: blood binding. The entire fighting sequence appeared to be a charade building towards one moment: Sauron binding Galadriel to him. He did, after all, stabbed her with a dark magic object infused with his own blood (Adar used it to destroy his previous physical form, in 2x01).

2x01 / 2x08 parallels: “Only blood can bind.” (Adar; 1x05)

We saw Sauron mind-communicating with Galadriel after the stabbing. To me, this scene marks the beginning of his grouping of her mind, for thousands years to come (because we haven’t seen this in the show, yet).

Visually, we have some clues that seem to indicate this, indeed, happened:

These shots can imply blood binding theory is correct, and Sauron might have transferred some of his powers to Galadriel. This is not mere “camera work”: in the first screenshot it’s Sauron looking down at Galadriel, and the second is Galadriel waking up. The effect on both is the same; hinting a sharing power between them.

And Sauron didn’t do this “by accident”; not only he’s been a master in blood magic for over thousands of years (probably for longer than Galadriel herself has been alive), but this was his intention ever since 1x08: “you bind me to the light, and I bind you to power.”

Then, "Rings of Power" appears to have taken some inspiration from these dark veins on Galadriel's chest in her "elf-witch" form in Peter Jackson adaptation of "The Hobbit", for Sauron's wounds from Morgoth's crown in 2x01:

We can see the dark veins appearing on his neck, face and forehead:

Interestingly enough these are the same veins on Frodo’s wound from the “Fellowship of the Ring” adaptation (2001), so I’m not sure why Peter Jackson decided to place them on Galadriel’s chest, in 2014.

Anyway; can this be a clue towards something? Will we see this version of Galadriel in “Rings of Power”?

In Tolkien lore, Galadriel is a powerful “elf-witch”, an Elven queen of great magic and power, however in "Rings of Power" we haven't seen her either dealing nor displaying any kind of magical abilities. Yet. Having her blood bound with Sauron can be the show’s explanation for her source of magical power, as well as to why she never faces him directly, working against him from afar, and why Sauron couldn’t conquer Lothlórien unless he went there, himself; as well, as for Sauron’s grouping of her mind for thousands of years into the future, and how Galadriel is able to see into his mind, as well.

The Unexplicable Wound on Galadriel's Face:

A mysterious wound appears on Galadriel’s face, and some fans seem to think this might have been an error in editing. But, is it, really?

We know, for a fact, Sauron didn’t cut her face; he didn’t had time for that. Galadriel cuts his face, he turns around and goes for the stabbing in the next minute. But, in the meantime, the wound is already on her cheek (and is the same as the one she cuts on his face):

However, there’s another character with the same wound:

And this wound isn’t meaningless, because the scar is still visible on Galadriel’s face, even after her healing by Two of the Three Elven rings of power. She had several cuts on her face, but they were nearly gone but this one (besides the obvious camera focus).

And this scar looks off, because it doesn’t look like a cut scar, but a burn mark, almost.

Even stone cannot hide the mark of one whose very hand is flame unquenched. He was here... Sauron was here. Galadriel arrives at Forodwaith, 1x01

But what does this mean? When did Sauron ever touched Galadriel's cheek? He touched her chin, in 1x08. And how is Elrond connected to all of this? Why do these three characters share the same scar, in the same place?

Because the "Elrond in the tent" in 2x07 was not Elrond, at all. It was Sauron. Context: here, here, here, and here.

[krispyweiss]

Former Manassas, Souther-Hillman-Furay Band Keyboardist Paul Harris Dies at 78

- “He shares our legacy,” Stephen Stills says

Keyboardist Paul Harris, who played with Manassas and the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, has died at 78, fellow musician Rick Roberts said.

Harris died Oct. 25; no cause was given.

“Paul was a quiet, sweet man, raised with professional musical training,” Roberts said. “To me, he seemed to be slightly out of his element in the often-vulgar, always-outrageous rock ‘n’ roll world.”

Harris worked with Stephen Stills on both Manassas albums before hooking up with Souther-Hillman-Furay, featuring his former Manassas bandmate Chris Hillman, J.D. Souther and Richie Furay. Harris’ session work included stints with B.B. King, Grace Slick, John Sebastian, Joe Walsh and others.

“Paul Harris was a lovely, lovely guy,” Stills said on a statement. “Immensely talented and creative, he was a really sweet person that we all loved. He shares our legacy.”

10/26/23

[beardedmrbean]

CBS News has a fine heritage and some great news talent, but the folks in charge seem determined to destroy its reputation.

Start with the ludicrous blowback to CBS Mornings host Tony Dokoupil’s Sept. 30 interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates, in which Dokoupil pressed Coates on crucial facts he’d left out of his new anti-Israel book, such as the fact that the Jewish state is “surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it.”

They were all completely reasonable questions to ask about a polemic of its author, an intellectual who certainly should be able to defend his work.

But other network staff were furious at this act of Journalism 101: You’re not supposed to question lefties about their claims, it seems.

Surely they weren’t angry just because Coates is black, or anti-Israel?

Whatever: The suits pulled Dokoupil into a meeting with CBS News standards and practices team and its “Race and Culture Unit,” and reportedly chewed him out on a staff call, claiming his questioning of Coates didn’t meet CBS’ “editorial standards.”

CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon and her lieutenant Adrienne Roark reprimanded him for bringing “bias” to the interview, but failed to explain exactly how.

The re-education effort was also to feature a followup staff meeting moderated by Dr. Donald Grant, whom management called a “mental health expert, DEI strategist and trauma trainer” — but that got squelched after outside critics exposed Grant as wacko whose social-media posts include a racist smear of Sen. Tim Scott.

Meanwhile, Coates on a Trevor Noah podcast suggested that Gayle King (who was also sitting in on the interview, along with Nate Burleson) had told him before the sitdown what she planned to ask.

That sounds a lot more like a violation of good news practice than what Dokoupil did, but there’s no sign of any trouble for King.

Then came Bill Whitaker’s entirely professional interview of Kamala Harris, where she time and again dodged any substantial answers, prompting him to follow up, only for the Democratic candidate for president to dissolve into fresh word-salads and other evasions.

Once again, the higher ups felt compelled to intervene — by blatantly editing the package to make Harris look less awful.

Yes, blatantly: Soon after taping, the network released the raw footage of her hopeless answer to a question about Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

But by the time it aired that night, they’d edited in a “response” that was actually pulled from earlier in the conversation, and so make her seem more competent and less, well, Harris-y.

That is: CBS literally faked the “news.”

The editing also featured dubbing in narration by Whitaker over some of her responses, thereby burying more of the inconvenient truths revealed by the interview.

It’s hard to blame the Trump campaign for demanding that CBS release the raw transcript: It’d be one honorable response to being exposed as blatantly partisan hacks.

All this, incidentally, follows the thumb-on-the-scale work of CBS’ moderators in the J.D. Vance-Tim Walz debate, including Margaret Brennan’s utterly partisan and counter-factual “fact-check” of Vance.

CBS should be proud of Dokoupil and Whitaker’s work, ashamed of King and Brennan, yet management instead seems determined to teach up-and-comers to avoid honest journalism.

Ultimate owner Sheri Redstone has publicly supported Dokoupil and implicitly slammed the suits who came down on him.

Redstone’s trying to sell off CBS, but she might want to demand a management housecleaning now, since the folks running the news division seem determined to mis-manage its value down to zero.

[astoundingbeyondbelief]

"Directors of the Monsterverse" notes

The one featurette exclusive to the 4K Godzilla/Kong Monsterverse 5-Film Collector's Edition set is also just up on Fandango at Home (formerly Vudu) for free. It's possible that the disc version is longer, but what's on streaming has a hefty 49:06 runtime, so I doubt it.

Notes on the discussion:

The venue is Warner Bros. Stage 11, "where Casablanca and ER were shot."

No closed captions, boo.

Skullcrawler egg props from Godzilla vs. Kong were present, as well as the goofy Godzilla suit used to promote King of the Monsters.

Mike Dougherty brought one of his dogs. (Recall that the his dogs inspired the personalities of Ghidorah's three heads.)

Jordan Vogt-Roberts took Adam Wingard out to dinner shortly after he was hired to direct Godzilla vs. Kong, warning him what to expect on his first mega-budget movie (a "Scared Straight thing"). That led to the Monsterverse directors meeting up more regularly.

Vogt-Roberts relays an analogy from producer Eric McLeod: trying to do something spontaneous on a larger film set, like changing a shot angle, is like steering an aircraft carrier.

Gareth Edwards described the feeling of visiting a Godzilla set that wasn't his own movie (King of the Monsters) as like "walking in on your wife cheating on you."

The ever-escalating zaniness of the Monsterverse films wasn't carefully considered, it just happened; Wingard, for one, felt it wasn't possible to return to the tone of Godzilla (2014) after King of the Monsters.

Dougherty describes a Toho Studios visit where he wore part of a Godzilla suit.

Vogt-Roberts never imagined that the Hollow Earth introduced in Kong: Skull Island would become so integral to subsequent films.

The opening credits for Godzilla (2014) were inspired by the JFK credits.

Edwards ordered a ton of G-Fan back issues to prepare for directing Godzilla, and was surprised when the package included a note from J.D. Lees apologizing for bashing Monsters in one of those issues.

Wingard carefully maneuvers Edwards away from saying that following King Kong vs. Godzilla was a much easier task than following the original Godzilla or King Kong, as he should.

Dougherty says he's glad that they as a group gave Kong a happy ending ("for now").

Vogt-Roberts doesn't accept that Kong lost against Godzilla in Godzilla vs. Kong because their battle against Mechagodzilla was part of the same fight; embarks on a lengthy military analogy. Wingard disagrees vociferously. Dougherty tries to say something but Edwards advises him to "let them fight."

Vogt-Roberts wanted Kong to have brown fur to reflect the rabbit fur used on the original stop-motion model.

Edwards jokes that they kept trying variations on Godzilla's design until "someone came with a gun and went, 'If you don't stop now, the movie doesn't get released.'"

I think there's a behind-the-scenes shot of Mothra (showing the layers of VFX that went into her waterfall emergence) that wasn't in the King of the Monsters bonus features.

Ready Player One was released just as Wingard's team was settling on Mechagodzilla's Godzilla vs. Kong design; he was dismayed to hear about it at first, then relieved to see how different it looked.

Vogt-Roberts really wants to see Hedorah turn up in the Monsterverse.

[sweetbunpura]

RSA Dorm: Jungleheart

A dorm inspired by The Lion King where you're transported into the lush and rich jungle where the King lived. The dorm is massive, housing the largest number of students within. The air in the dorm has a sense of authority to it, as this is the dorm that's kept on a regiment. Out of all the dorms, they're most accepting of people and often the most friendly.

Statue: Simba - Spirit of Inclusivity

Dorm Leader: Sissel Kingscholar (OC) - Based on Kovu, Lion beastman long dark brown hair with braids in it, kind but nervous about leading the dorm.

Vice Dorm Leader: Pine Voiser (OC)- Based on Maximus, horse beastman, medium length blond hair, stoic but a gentleman.

Notable Members:

Palette Vascez (OC) - Chameleon beastman, based on Pascal.

J.D. Burrows (OC) - based on Tarzan.

Bones Kingscholar (OC) - Based on Nuka, Sissel's brother, Lion beastman

Lei Oak (OC) - Based on Terk, ape beastman

Taylor Birch (OC) - Based on Tantor, elephant beastman

[boanerges20]

Thanx @eckoz-ofa-hauntedpassion for the tag! I'm curious....

1)- Do u get along with animals? A: Yeah!

2)- Do u like to read comic books or monga? A: Both,i love the art on them!

3)- Do u consider urself a people person? A:Not much..hahaha!

4)-Name 3 things u do 4 fun? A:Ride a motorcycle,paint and take some pictures!

5)-What is ur favorite color? A: Black for sure,and some deep red/purples and turquoise blue..

6)- What type of movies do u like 2 watch? A:Sci-Fi and Thrillers...

7)- Which do u prefer, boxing, MMA or neither? A:Boxing for sure, the classic!

8)- Do u have a favorite book? A: J.D. Salinger "The Catcher In The Rye"

9)- Have u ever experienced anything supernatural? A:Ohhh yes! Lotta times!

10)- Name 3 of ur most cherished songs that u identify with that could also describe U? A: "Love Will Tear Us Apart"- Joy Division "Born Under A Bad Sign"- Albert King "Paranoid"- Black Sabbath

*¤*☆*¤*☆*¤*☆*¤*☆*¤*☆ Keep on the game my dudes and dudettes! It's your turn!: @rockerchica @gloria-glitter @louwitcher @x-heesy @11alicenwondrland11alice @alice-wake-up @bosses-stay-flawless