The best thing about Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton said on Sunday night, may be his children.

The business development team at Trump Hotels appears to agree. As Politico pointed out on Friday, at the end of September the company, led by Trump and his three oldest children, announced its new hotel brand would be called Scion. That means “descendant of a notable family,” noted the press release.

What’s really notable, of course, is that Scion is the rare—and possibly singular—venture of the Trump commercial empire that does not wear the blustering patriarch’s name like a badge.

If this does not quite signal the Trump Organization's retreat from the scandal, lies, and bigotry that have characterized Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, it does appear to represent a hedge of business against politics. And Scion may be an early indicator of how Trump the brand—which birthed Trump the politician—might wind up feeling, and managing, the backlash.

It's almost impossible to predict how the remaining 27 days until the U.S. presidential election will pan out. But there is one person who might be able to glance into the future: the All-Seeing Trump.

The fortune-telling machine, modeled on the infamous Zoltar from the film Big, has been roaming the streets of New York giving its stark vision of the days to come.

With fire red eyes and a frankly terrifying face set beneath flowing blonde hair, the animatronic version of Trump spews equally daunting forecasts.

“Look into my crystal ball and see America’s future," it says. "I see a huge investment into a modern high-speed rail system. Very advanced. Very fast. And we’re going to use it to deport eleven million illegal Mexicans.”

More: http://mashable.com/2016/10/12/trump-fortune-telling-machine/?utm_cid=hp-r-2#FUAsokdWuiqs

In CNN Films' "We Will Rise: Michelle Obama's Mission to Educate Girls Around the World," the First Lady, Meryl Streep, Freida Pinto and CNN's Isha Sesay take a journey to Morocco and Liberia, where they meet young women overcoming incredible odds to change their lives.

http://www.cnn.com/shows/cnn-films-we-will-rise

The term “alt-right” probably makes you think of Twitter or a dark subreddit, or 4chan, or some social medium occupied by meme-slinging, Trump-supporting, unapologetically bigoted provocateurs. You probably don’t think of a PO box in Whitefish, Montana. But that’s the alt-right’s street address.

More precisely, it’s where you send mail to the National Policy Institute, the think tank that built the movement. The president is Richard Spencer, who coined the term “alternative right” in 2008 in an article he wrote for a far-right website. And when you follow the alt-right back home, the movement’s goofy, social media-friendly trappings fall away. NPI doesn’t actually traffic in cartoon frogs and fedoras. The people who run it are just white supremacists.

On paper, NPI doesn’t look influential. It’s a website, a PO box, a Google Voice number, and—according to its last available tax forms—$16,000 worth of assets and an annual income that barely cracks six figures. NPI publishes research papers and books—classics like “Racial Differences in Intelligence, Personality, and Behavior” and The Red Pill. (The phrase “red pill” has mutated from a Matrix reference about embracing painful truths to a shorthand for supporting racism and misogyny.) NPI’s mission statement describes its members as “dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States, and around the world.” They’re serious: Spencer himself was denounced by and deported from Hungary—a famously xenophobic country—for organizing a pan-European white supremacist event.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups in the US, NPI is one of the four most influential organizations of academic racists in the country. Its companions on that list include the Charles Martel Society, run by NPI’s founder, millionaire publisher William Regnery. Also on the list: the New Century Foundation, which is run by Jared Taylor, one of the founding members of NPI’s board. It’s a small pond, and just about everything you fish out of it has some connection to NPI.

But now that clique’s ideas, the ideological tentpoles of the alt-right movement, have swum out into the mainstream.

<snip>

The most memorable moments, revealing the aspects of his personality I’d never forget, usually happened off-camera. In the second episode of my season on The Apprentice, my team won the week’s competition, and as a reward, Trump escorted us on a trip to the Playboy mansion, where we would party with Hugh Hefner and whatever Playmates were there. My team consisted mostly of women. As a chauffeur opened the door on our limousine, we were greeted by Hefner’s three then-“girlfriends,” Kendra Wilkinson, Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt, who were then costars on a reality show of their own. They ushered us inside. After a fireside chat with Hef, we headed to the backyard, where dozens of women — some wearing bikinis, others sporting bunny ears and bowties — surprised our team with a pool party.

Toward the end of the evening, I found myself in a small circle, conversing with Trump, Hefner and another contestant. With a wry smile, Trump looked at Hefner and said, “It’s hard for me to tell which of these girls are yours, and which ones are mine.” The women on my team were well-credentialed business executives, people Trump had supposedly hand-picked for their skills. In that moment, the only real difference to Trump between them and the scantily clad Playmates who were there for his entertainment was that some of the women were “his,” and some weren’t.

<snip>

By now, most viewers know that the “reality” on each reality TV show is a carefully created bubble of its own, and I came to think of the reality on this show as Trumpland. In Trumpland, the rule of Mr. Trump is absolute. In Trumpland, you have human worth only if you please The Donald. In Trumpland, female business executives are no different than scantily clad Playmates, or at least have to keep quiet if they’re placed in the same box. In Trumpland, a step outside the lines drawn by Mr. Trump, like my joke about Sanjaya, triggers a sharp, furious response.

<snip>

Want to throw off an opponent? Do something out of bounds, like attacking their spouse’s appearance. Want to embarrass a boyish 22-year-old Apprentice candidate who lacks your machismo? Sit in your boardroom, cameras rolling, and ask him if he’s a virgin. Want to win white working-class voters in the midst of an existential crisis? Attack immigrants, advocate a border wall, and promise to bring those would-be supporters back to a simpler time of cultural and economic supremacy.

Clown-related crime has started to take over Metro Detroit. You can keep up with all the local clown incidents with our list below.

Creepy clown allegedly spotted at car wash in Clinton Township

Boy injured, 2 women frightened by clowns in Sterling Heights

Armed clown robs Walgreens in Brownstown Township

2 clown robberies reported in Ann Arbor

Embassy Suites in Livonia robbed at gunpoint by man wearing clown mask

Shots fired at officers during pursuit after hotel robbery involving clown in Livonia

U of M - Dearborn urges students, staff to be cautious after clown sighting

Woman carjacked by armed man wearing pumpkin mask in Madison Heights

2 women dressed as clowns arrested in Roseville after chasing girls

In collaboration with the White House, Funny or Die is releasing a PSA Tuesday starring Vice President Joe Biden, his signature aviator sunglasses, and Workaholics actor Adam Devine aimed at preventing sexual assault on college campuses.

The new video is one of over two dozen celebrity PSAs released since the White House launched the It’s On Us campaign two years ago to address campus rape. In the video, shared in advance with BuzzFeed News, Biden and Devine pose as undergrads at a college party. Eventually, the duo snag the microphone to deliver a message about preventing college sexual assault.

<snip>

The White House is hoping the video will lead to a boost in people taking the It’s On Us pledge to speak up to stop sexual assault. According to White House officials, 50,000 signed up after Biden plugged the pledge at this year’s Oscars, an 18% increase overall. A total of 344,406 have taken the pledge in the past two years, while over 430 colleges and universities have created their own PSAs for It’s On Us.

Biden is a chief spokesperson for the campaign, which will host its annual “week of action” starting Oct. 10. This week, he will host a training for the It’s On Us Student Advisory Committee and a reception for It’s On Us and advocates who work on violence against women at his residence at the Naval Observatory, according to White House officials.

<snip>

“Any man who takes a drunk woman up the stairs in a fraternity house is a damn coward, man,” Biden told host Jimmy Fallon. “There’s nothing manly about this. They should get knocked on their ass. We’ve got to change the way we think about this. And I’m convinced the vast majority of men understand, and it’s about time we speak up, and we intervene when we see it.”

As an acid attack survivor, Monica Singh once found it incredibly difficult to look in the mirror. Her scarred skin brought her back to the day men poured a bucket of acid on her in Lucknow, India — a violent retaliation for her rejection of a marriage proposal.

More than half of Singh's body was burned instantly, altering her appearance forever. But the activist says using a mirror has helped her reclaim love for her reflection, and for herself.

More than a decade after her attack, Singh's story is now being used to empower other acid attack survivors through an unusual medium — a comic book. Titled Priya's Mirror, the book uses augmented reality and image recognition to bring its characters to life on any mobile device.

Singh was the inspiration for Anjali, one of the book's main characters. The narrative itself, which is based on the format of Hindu mythological tales, curates the real-life stories of several acid attack survivors in India.