The reporting on conflicts of interest has finally gotten through to Trump and the Trumplings.

Realizing that his presidency could face potentially crippling questions over conflicts of interest, Donald J. Trump and his family are rushing to resolve potential controversies — like shuttering foundations and terminating development deals — even as the president-elect publicly maintains that no legal conflicts exist.

In recent days, the president-elect and his aides have said that he intends to distribute the assets of his personal charity and then close it down, has examined a plan to hire an outside monitor to oversee the Trump Organization and has terminated some international business projects.

He’s not exactly a quick study, is he. How long has it … Read the rest

A festive treat.

… Read the rest

Have a disturbing film clip from France24 (in English).

https://youtu.be/5tSYGfEg1IY

Do not read the comments.… Read the rest

I am relieved – the Rockettes don’t have to perform at Trump’s coronation inauguration if they won’t want to. Unlike some women in show business, they get to say No to Donnie from Queens.

Within hours of confirming plans to appear at the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, the Radio City Rockettes were plunged into a maelstrom of social-media outrage Friday amidreports that the performers were contractually obligated to dance at the ceremony or lose their jobs.

But as the day wore on, both the Madison Square Garden Company, which manages the Rockettes, and their union, the American Guild of Variety Artists, said that any of the dancers could opt out of the Jan. 20 inauguration ceremony

This is how we live now – an adviser to the next president saying grossly racist and malevolent things in public.

Carl Paladino, a former Republican nominee for governor of New York and an adviser to president-elect Trump, included the death of President Obama and “return” of first lady Michelle Obama to Africa on his list of things he wanted for 2017.

Paladino was responding to a survey by an alternative weekly magazine, Artvoice.

Asked what he would like to happen in 2017, he said he hopes that “Obama catches mad cow disease” and dies after having relations with a Hereford, a type of cow. Asked what he would most like to see go, Paladino responded that Michelle Obama

A “queer” woman explains why she hates lesbians so much.

Some years ago, a close friend and I developed a not-so-subtle code for queer women too basic for our tastes: We’d make an “L” with our thumbs and forefingers against our foreheads, like the loser sign that was popular when we were in middle school. In this case, the “L” stood for lesbian.

We, too, were lesbians—generally speaking. But the women my friend and I mocked (and trust, I am duly shamed by this memory) were what we’d call “capital-L lesbians.” We were urban-dwelling and queer-identified and in our 20s; the other women came from the suburbs, skewed older, and were, we presumed, unversed in queer politics. We

There’s a video. There’s always a video.

Anis Amri was killed in a suburb of Milan after he shot a cop.

Hours after the shootout, the Islamic State-linked news agency, Amaq, released a video that purports to show Amri swearing allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State.

Speaking in a black-hooded windbreaker on an iron bridge with white railing and scrawled graffiti, he called on Muslims in Europe to rise up and strike at “crusaders.”

“God willing, we will slaughter you like pigs,” he said in the video, whose date and location was not given.

Yeah that’s nice – a god who endorses murdering random people “like pigs.”

He added, “to my brothers everywhere,

The Hill reports that Trump said Michelle Obama didn’t mean it when she mentioned a hope deficit.

“We have tremendous hope, and we have tremendous promise and tremendous potential,” Trump said in Mobile, Ala., on the final stop of his “thank you” tour.

“And I actually think she made that statement not meaning it the way it came out,” Trump continued about Obama.

She was nice when he went to visit them that one time, and sat there looking like an overgrown child about to throw a tantrum. He said she couldn’t have been nicer. No doubt, Donnie from Queens, because she’s adult like that, but that doesn’t mean she thinks you’re a good future president or a good human … Read the rest

Currently in Trump –

The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2016

The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes

Stupid and dangerous.

He’s itching to use them. He said so during the campaign. There’s nothing in him that would tell him no, mustn’t do that. He wants to, so he will.… Read the rest

The American Humanist Association on the Religious Freedom Act:

The American Humanist Association lobbied both Democrats and Republicans for inclusive language in HR 1150 that would recognize the rights of humanists, atheists and other nonreligious individuals, in addition to defending theistic religious minorities. The Act states that “the freedom of thought, conscience, and religion is understood to protect theistic and non-theistic beliefs as well as the right not to profess or practice any religion.” The Act also condemns “specific targeting of non-theists, humanists, and atheists because of their beliefs” and attempts to forcibly compel “non-believers or non-theists to recant their beliefs or to convert.”

There’s an ambiguity in that last sentence, thanks to a word that could be a … Read the rest

Obama signed a newly fortified international religious freedom act last Friday, and for the first time ever it included us pesky no religion-havers.

“The new law has some really interesting language in it,” said Caroline Mala Corbin, professor of law at the University of Miami. “It takes an expansive view of religious liberty, saying freedom of religion is not just about the right to practice religion. It is also about the right to have your own views about religion including being agnostic and atheistic.”

You’d think that would be obvious, wouldn’t you – that freedom of religion would include refusal of and dissent from religion. It’s not much of a freedom if you’re not allowed to reject … Read the rest