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Gary Bettman longs for parity and Adam Silver strives for excellence. This is the fundamental difference between the NHL and NBA and their respective commissioners, and that difference is never more clear than right now in the aftermath of each final and on the eve of free agency.

But for all the faults of Bettman and the NHL none more short-sighted than limiting revenue by constantly undercutting big-market teams through more ways than the salary cap it is still a preferable system. The NHL Players Association has fought tooth and nail for more freedom, but look to the NBA to see what too much player freedom can look like.

There are, what, 20 teams in the NBA that have absolutely no chance to sign a big-name free agent? And apparently you need three or four stars now just to be in the conversation for making a conference final. Forget actually winning a championship.

So lets say youre the general manager of the Nuggets or Blazers, or a fan of the Kings or the Magic now what? Is the only way to build a winner by tanking, picking a terrifically talented and totally inexperienced kid in the draft, and then hoping that people want to come play with him?

How many NBA players are getting max contracts who dont deserve them, too? Then they have these opt-out clauses, so they pretty much can go play wherever they want. From what I can gather, Chris Paul didnt just demand a trade from the Clippers, but demanded he be sent to the Rockets. He said either he was going to opt out of his contract and sign with the Rockets as a free agent, meaning the Clippers would get nothing in return, or hed opt in and they could trade him. Hows that for owner Steve Ballmers $2 billion investment?

Meanwhile, the NHL salary cap enforces a strict system of communism. Last season, 25 of the 30 teams spent within $4 million of the $73 million cap, which goes up to just $75 million this season. The Predators, out of small-market Nashville, were a blast to watch while losing just four games in the first three rounds before losing to the Penguins pseudo-dynasty in the Stanley Cup finals. The Predators also had the seventh-lowest payroll in the league.

For even more contrast, Thursday was the one-year anniversary of the Predators making the biggest trade in franchise history and one of the biggest trades the league has seen in years. They sent their indomitable captain, Shea Weber, to the Canadiens in a one-for-one deal bringing back the electric P.K. Subban. For the longest time, Montreal general manager Marc Bergevin denied he was ever shopping Subban. Yet despite the enduring love of the majority of the fans, Subbans flashy style never quite fit the current culture of the organization. So despite all the protests that he wasnt going to be traded, he was shipped out and it changed the face of both franchises.

Now if Subban was moved to, say, Carolina, and he lost a lot in a dreary environment, it might be pointed out that the teams have too much control and the players too little. But there are no-trade clauses now all around the NHL too many, actually. The market has come to bear that marginally good players are in line for at least some sort of movement protection, and it limits teams mobility, and hence their ability to compete.

The balance has to be struck between the want of a full-league competition and that of a few teams that are so much better than the rest of the league. People might point to the NHL as a model for parity goodness knows Bettman does but they still have had three teams combine to win eight of the past nine titles. Theyve done that through generational players such as Sidney Crosby (Penguins, three Cups), Jonathan Toews (Blackhawks, three Cups) and Drew Doughty (Kings, two Cups). But their general managers have had to make moves on the fly to keep up, and thats what makes it interesting.

Meanwhile, the NBA has one two-week period to look forward to the NBA Finals. For the past three years, everyone knew it was going to be the Warriors versus the Cavaliers, so why would there be any interest for the first three rounds of the postseason? Forget having any interest in the regular season.

The difference is in the amount power the players hold, and it creates a league that is either competitive for nine months or competitive for two weeks. Put aside the entertainment value of the game itself, and Id still go for the former.

Its been a dramatic fall for Scott Hartnell, from his days as a heart-and-soul player for the 2009-10 Flyers who made it to the Stanley Cup final to now getting bought out by the Blue Jackets. The 35-year-old had just 13 goals and 37 points this past season in 78 games for John Tortorellas club, which finished in third place in the cutthroat Metropolitan Division with 108 points. The No. 6-overall pick from 2000 is now an unrestricted free agent, and he is going to have to prove hes still got more in the tank.

. . . to the opening of free agency on Saturday at noon. Its not exactly the strongest free-agent class, and thats exemplified by defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk being the No. 1 name out there. Someone is going to give him a huge deal and likely end up regretting it down the road. There are also questions with the Sharks big two, Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau. If they move on (and to different places), then things around the league might start to get interesting.

RIP to Dave Semenko, who for years was Wayne Gretzkys bodyguard with the Oilers. From all accounts, Cement Head was a true character, and he even once fought Muhammad Ali for a charity event in 1983.

Read more:
Why NHL's communism works, just look at the alternative - New York Post

Stilyagi, hippies, bikers, punks, rockers, and metalheads formed countercultures that often invited the wrath of the Soviet authorities. With the help of artist Alexander Petlura, who has the biggest collection of all things Soviet in Moscow, and a book titled Hooligans of the 80s by Misha Buster, RBTH takes a look at the rebellious youth of the Soviet Union.

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Counterculture in the Soviet Union, a country cut off from the West by the infamous Iron Curtain, consisted of an open youth rebellion against ideological and cultural stagnation, writes Misha Buster, author ofHooligans of the 80s. His book is one of several reputable sources that records stories of people who lived in the final days of the USSR. It also has a unique collection of personal photos.

Don't miss our awesome video atthe end.

Stilyagi (a derogatory appellation for members of a youth counterculture), hippies, rockers, punks, and metalheads coexisted until the end of the 1980s although each group experienced varying degrees of popularity during different periods.

Each group had a popular meeting point. Attraktsiya, a spot on Moscows Arbat Street was a magnet for breakdancers, while Zheltok Restaurant on Chistye Prudy Square was popular with hippies. Countercultural groups often fought each other, but sometimes united against policemen, who would later arrest them.

The Soviet media called them non-conformists, who deliberately devoid of all the good qualities possessed by a diligent Soviet citizen. They were even referred to as lazy parasites and fascists.

Many people interviewed in Busters book said many members of counterculture groups moved abroad, while some managed to start a business or a get a normal job.

The term Stilyagi, often translated as hipsters, dandies or beatniks, is the name of the first counterculture group from the Soviet Union. Born in the late 1940s, their heyday was in the 1960s, during the Khrushchev Thaw period, when censorship was relaxed (when compared with the Joseph Stalin era).

Moscow mods of the late 1950s dancing twist. / Valeriy Shustov/RIA Novosti

Having apolitical views and an admiration for foreign fashion, they tried to wear foreign labels and listen to western music. They greatly favored swing and boogie-woogie. Women wore dresses and high-heeled footwear, while men chose narrow checkered pants and shiny winkle-pickers.

Though their style changed a bit over time, the Stilyagi always wore unapologetically bold colors and bright jackets. Alexander Petlura says, keeping footwear shiny was so important, that they had a habit of wiping the tips of their shoes on the back of their pants, which eventually grated the fabric.

After the Soviet youth got acquainted with the Western world during the Khrushchev Thaw period, many other common subcultures became popular in the country, including hippies. On the surface, hippies in the USSR were quite similar to those in the United States. However American hippies mainly rebelled against consumerism, while their Soviet counterparts defied a conformist state, writesWilliam Jay Risch in his bookSoviet Flower Children.

Hippies / Lev Nosov/RIA Novosti

Soviet Hippies heavily used English slang and loanwords, and were heavily influenced by folklore. They often used to narrate their life stories, which were used as an alternative to anecdotes. The stories, called telega (carts), were later compiled into a book called1001 Party Telegaby Stepan Pechkin.

Soviet hippies, who generally shrugged off the idea of working, chose to beg for a living, says Petlura. They preferred to imitate the dressing style of fellow hippies in the United States, he adds.

The biker counterculture, just like that of the hippies, was also adopted from the West. In the USSR, where people usually could not afford a car, bikes became a common substitution. However, only a miniscule minority of Soviet bikers actually owned a bike, adds Petlura.

A female biker sitting on a motorcycle. / Oleg Porokhovniko/TASS

Many of them called themselves rockers and the two terms were often interchanged.

They liked hard rock music, which was illegally distributed in the USSR. The bikers tried to imitate their Western counterparts, but the lack of real leather jackets in the Soviet Union forced them to improvise. Some bikers tried to sew their own leather jackets, while most wore fake leather. A few just used plain black fabric instead.

In Busters book, which consists of multiple interviews with important figures of the era, Feddy Begemot recalls that his his first leather jacket was sewn by his sister Anya. Bikers were also fond of paddings just like their associates abroad. While they liked Naval Jacks, skulls, crosses, and other symbols, they were very much against alcohol and drugs.

Despite having to penetrate the Iron Curtain, the breakdance movement was popular among the Soviet youth. Most of them learned the moves by themselves or by copying them from Western movies. Mila Maximova in an interview forHooligans of the 80sremembers that many of them preferred to make arm waves and robotic moves, while just a few people actually managed to master spins or other power moves.

Breakdancer Performing in Gorky Park / Getty Images

We knew them by name, there were about five of them in Moscow, she adds. By the time the breakdance movement gained massive popularity as a counterculture, the Soviet youth developed their own fashion style. White sneakers and gloves were important, says Maximova. It was close to impossible to find white sneakers since most pairs available in the market were brown or black. Breakdancers often bleached their shoes.

They also liked knickers that did not look anything like jeans and a lot of additional accessories such as chains, sweatbands, bracelets, and sweatshirts with foreign logos.

A special project dedicated to Soviet counterculture by Look at Me and Adidas Originals saysthe dancers later managed to get skateboards and spray paint.

With banned foreign music growing in popularity, alternative genres, including heavy metal, became a fad among young Soviet citizens. Heavy metal bands like Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Judas Priest, and Megadeth were popular among the rebellious youth.

The scene from "The Commentary on the Appeal for Pardon" movie directed by Inna Tumanyan. Metalheads / S. Ivanov/RIA Novosri

Nikolay Korshunov wrote in an article for RussiasHooligansmagazine that Soviet metalheads took their counterculture very seriously and would try and stop posers. Youngsters, dressed as metalheads, would be stopped on the streets and questioned about their knowledge of heavy metal. They would be asked to name at least 15 heavy metal bands. Many new fans would fail the test, Korshunov added.

Since getting a real leather jacket or jeans was close to impossible, many metalheads improvised.

We couldnt be bothered with wearing American clothes, Sergei Okulyar says inHooligans of the 80s.We needed to have something of our own, which looked as intimidating as possible.

Sometimes people would make sweatbands from handbags and then sell them to punks or other metalheads.

Punks were less uniform in their style, which mainly depended on which part of the USSR they lived in, Siberian punks were offshoots of hippies, while punks from Tallinn were indistinguishable from their European counterparts. St. Petersburgs punks led a half-Bohemian lifestyle, and those in Moscow fused styles from across the country.

Punks in Moscow / Iliya Pitalev/RIA Novosti

The inner nihilism was in contrast with their outer appearance, which comprised of brightly colored Mohawks, piercings, jackets, T-shirts with images of their favorite bands, and handmade belts with rivets.

Misha Clash says inHooligans of the 80sthat their dress code changed to long leather coats, heavy dark makeup and haversacks.

Their performances often turned violent and ended with the smashing of the windows of major stores. This eventually led to arrests and detentions. There are also stories of loud punks coming to the civil registry office in an inebriated condition. It was a part of the punk culture to shout profanities while getting married.

Costumes: Alexander Lyashenko (Petlura)

Make-up artist: Zinaida Saplina

Place: DK Petlura

Actors: Aleksey Lyubimov, Nikita Schetinin, Ekaterina Sinelschikova, Anastasiya Karagodina

Excerpt from:
Soviet counterculture: How rebellious youngsters opposed communism - Russia Beyond the Headlines

Firebrand Ann Coulter on Wednesday tore into fellow conservative Sean Hannity on Wednesday, saying the Fox News host "would endorse communism" if President Trumpthought it was a good idea.

Sean Hannity, bless his heart, has the zeal of the late Trump convert, Coulter wrote in a blog post.

He would endorse communism if Trump decided to implement the policies of The Communist Manifesto, she wrote, also claiming that the Senate GOPs healthcare bill actually does fall under that category.

In the post, titled "Even Trump Can't Make Goldman Sachs Popular," Coulter went after Goldman Sachs and Wall Street, claimingTrump is at risk of falling under their influence and that he should stay the hell away from them.

On his show last Thursday, he tried to get me to defend Trump's rich person remarks about Cohn. I wish you could see the segment ..., Coulter said, explaining that the show ran out of time.

With the zealotry of those who came late to the Trump party, Hannity fully endorsed Trump's faith in Cohn, adding, I never got a job from a poor man! She continued.

Hannity did not mince words in his response to the blog, saying on Twitter that Coulterhad fallen "in and out of love" with Trump, among other Republicans.

Ann, u fall in and out of love with Christie Romney Trump and how many others. Frankly you just bore me. https://t.co/ERf1TUUk8U

Coulter said blunt honesty will help the president in the long run rather than people who blindly agree.

The best way we serve the people we admire is to tell them the truth, she added.

The rest is here:
Ann Coulter: Hannity 'would endorse communism' if Trump thought it was good - The Hill

Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

Conservative provocateur Ann Coulter slammed Sean Hannity in a blistering column on Wednesday, saying the Fox News commentator "would endorse communism" if Donald Trump did.

"Sean Hannity, bless his heart, has the zeal of the late Trump convert," Coulter wrote in the column on her website. "He would endorse communism if Trump decided to implement the policies of 'The Communist Manifesto.'"

The two firebrands have been feuding since last week, when Coulter accused Hannity of censoring from his show her comments about Trump's relationship with Goldman Sachs.

Coulter said she had criticized Trump's praise for his chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs president, whom he called one of the "great, brilliant business minds" on his Cabinet during a rally in Iowa last week.

Trump added that he did not want a "poor person" running the economy, and "that's the kind of thinking we want" a line Coulter told Hannity she objected to.

"On his show last Thursday, he tried to get me to defend Trump's "rich person" remarks about Cohn," Coulter said. "I wish you could see the segment, but, unfortunately, Hannity decided no one would ever see it."

The pre-recorded segment was cut for time, Hannity said. The host has faced criticism for his unceasingly pro-Trump coverage.

But to Coulter, who bills herself an early Trump supporter, it does no good to blindly praise the president.

"Those of us who have been here for a while know how to party responsibly," she said. "The best way we serve the people we admire is to tell them the truth."

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Ann Coulter shreds Sean Hannity: 'He would endorse communism' if Trump did - SFGate

Rioter in Venezuela. Photo: Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Images

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Soviet experiment, the New York Times op-ed page has been publishing a regular series on communism. The overall tone of the essays runs toward wistfulness, and the latest contribution, by Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of the left-wing journal Jacobin, presents communism as tanned, rested, and ready. Sunkara sees a new future for Marxism, only this time without the purges, gulag, mass starvation, and other unpleasant features.

Sunkara argues that the original Bolsheviks had good intentions, but their project somehow took a wrong turn along the way. We may reject the version of Lenin and the Bolsheviks as crazed demons and choose to see them as well-intentioned people trying to build a better world out of a crisis, he argues, but we must work out how to avoid their failures.

Like many Marxist apologias, this fails to grapple with the inherent authoritarianism that is embedded in an illiberal thought system. This is why every Marxist government in history has monopolized power. An ideology that describes a large segment of society as an enemy class that must be eliminated is never going to respect political rights for its opponents. The Bolsheviks had plans to brutalize their opponents from the outset. As early as 1917, Lenin wrote, Only in Communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists has been completely broken only then the state ceases to exist, and it becomes possible to speak of freedom. Lenin may have been well-intentioned in the most abstract sense of imaginingpeaceful egalitarian paradise as the final stage of his vision. But he always envisioned the journey to that destination traversing a river of blood.

Older leftists often defined themselves by their relation to existing communist states. Some Social Democrats maintained a fierce anti-communism, while others defended some or all aspects of the totalitarian horrors in places like the Soviet Union or China.

Jacobin has existed for less than a decade, and Sunkara is young enough that he can confidently assert that his version of Marxism would never descend into the brutality of the 20th-century version.

That does not mean, however, that its disposition toward left-wing authoritarianism is entirely theoretical. There is one experiment in Marxist, or quasi-Marxist, government recent enough to gauge Jacobins tolerance for left-wing repression: the Hugo Chvez regime in Venezuela.

The left-wing populist government established by Chvez and his successors may not be as brutal as the regimes of Stalin or Mao, but its ruthlessness is beyond serious dispute. Under the leadership of President Hugo Chvez and now President Nicols Maduro, the accumulation of power in the executive branch and erosion of human rights guarantees have enabled the government to intimidate, persecute, and even criminally prosecute its critics, says Human Rights Watch. Human rights defenders and journalists frequently faced campaigns to discredit them, as well as attacks and intimidation. Political opponents and critics of the government continued to face imprisonment, notes Amnesty International. A 2015 State Department report cites, among other human-rights violations, abuse of political prisoners; interference with privacy rights; lack of government respect for freedom of assembly; lack of protection for Colombian migrants; corruption at all levels of government; threats against domestic NGOs. Maduro has neutralized the opposition-dominated National Assembly elected in December 2015 and decimated the judiciarys independence, reports the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Readers of Jacobin have gotten a very different sense of things. The magazines coverage of Venezuela, at least as far as I was able to find online, dates back to the immediate aftermath of Chvezs death. Even by that relatively late date, when the authoritarian nature of the regime was already clear, Jacobin was defending it against its perfidious neoliberal critics.

The tone of the nearly two dozen Jacobin stories on Venezuela I was able to find ranges from celebratory to defensive. Today we mourn the death of Chvez, tomorrow we return to the grind for socialism, concludes one 2013 piece. Much of Jacobins early criticism of the regime laments that Chavism has not gone far enough. The Jacobin line in 2014 was that, Only a deepening of the Bolivarian Revolution can save it. Or, What is needed today, and what is more urgent than ever, is not dialogue or reconciliation, not harmony and understanding, but a radical commitment to press decisively forward. Indeed, the counterrevolutionary dissidents needed to be crushed: To the extent that the Bolivarian Revolution has problems, the solution to them wont come from chats with those looking to overthrow it, but rather the organization of workers trying to fulfill its potential. There can be no neutral ground between those two positions. The so-called human-rights abuses were merely a pretext for Yankee imperialism.

This is all the same rhetoric Marxists used to justify the bloodshed in Soviet Russia and Maoist China. The revolution is not a dinner party, etc., etc.

As the Venezuelan economy has tumbled into crisis and the regimes failure has grown harder to deny, Jacobins coverage has softened, but only incrementally. Demands for more fervent adherence to Marxist dogma have given way to criticisms of the regimes critics. If you have read the mainstream conservative analysis of Donald Trump, which focuses heavily on pushing back against the media and his opponents, the tone will be familiar.

In mainstream accounts of last weeks protests in Caracas, the opposition is depicted as an essentially peaceful force, complains one story. Strangely missing from the narrative of the Venezuelan oppositions peaceful march to victory over a cruel dictatorship was the small detail of the murder of a Venezuelan police officer by demonstrators Wednesday evening, insists another article, assailing a double standard: In most cases, blue lives apparently matter an awful lot except when theyre serving under a self-declared socialist national government that has been branded an unusual and extraordinary threat by the United States. A procession of stories has dismissed reports of failure in the country. Western journalists are wrong, FiveThirtyEight is wrong, even Bernie Sanders is wrong.

Sunkara may want to work out why Marxist principles failed in the past, but he seems determined not to arrive at any conclusion that implicates the ideological principles that caused those failures.

In his Times op-ed, Sunkara suggests, The threat to democracy today is coming from the right, not the left. That is correct, but only because in the United States today, Marxism represents a minuscule faction with no plausible opportunity to obtain national-scale power. Those on the left who care about safeguarding democracy should work to keep it that way.

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Judging by todays performance, theyre still interested in holding live daily briefings if the press is in the hot seat.

More:
100 Years After the Bolshevik Revolution, Communism Hasn't Changed - New York Magazine