What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[CountDeMoney]

If this sort of thing continues I think it's likely Trump will encounter an unfortunate accident before his term is up.

No it doesn't.  STFU

[merithyn]

Trump orders DC National Guard chief removed during inauguration ceremony.

In a bizarre move, Donald Trump has demanded that the commanding officer of the Washington, D.C. National Guard resign from his post in the middle of the Inauguration ceremony, even though the general will be in the middle of helping oversee the event's security, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

Maj. Gen. Errol R. Schwartz will be removed from his post at 12:01 p.m. on Inauguration Day, just after Trump is sworn in but before the Inaugural parade begins, according to a memo obtained by the Washington Post.

Schwartz has helped plan the security for Inauguration weekend, and he will be charged with overseeing the D.C. National Guard as well as an additional 5,000 troops sent in for the weekend. But he will have to hand over commend to an interim officer in the middle of Inauguration Day.

"The timing is extremely unusual," Schwartz told the Washington Post on Friday.

"My troops will be on the street," he added. "I'll see them off but I won't be able to welcome them back to the armory."

Schwartz told the Post that he was not informed why he must step down abruptly on Inauguration Day.

"I'm a soldier," he said. "I'm a presidential appointee, therefore the president has the power to remove me."

Trump's team has also ordered all politically appointed diplomats to leave their posts by Inauguration Day, breaking with tradition of allowing some ambassadors to stay on as their children finish out the school year.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/dc-national-guard-chief-removed-inauguration

Trump is so fucking, ridiculously petty. I seriously despise the man.

I wasn't a huge Bush Jr. fan, but I didn't hate him. This guy? If he died in a vat of boiling oil, I wouldn't shed a tear.

[CountDeMoney]

Trump is so fucking, ridiculously petty. I seriously despise the man.

I wasn't a huge Bush Jr. fan, but I didn't hate him. This guy? If he died in a vat of boiling oil, I wouldn't shed a tear.

That is really petty of you, Meri. So sad!

[11B4V]

Trump is so fucking, ridiculously petty. I seriously despise the man.

I wasn't a huge Bush Jr. fan, but I didn't hate him. This guy? If he died in a vat of boiling oil, I wouldn't shed a tear.

That is really petty of you, Meri. So sad!

[grumbler]

I'm not sure why the Trump administration is willing to spend so much effort to piss off the career foreign service guys by not allowing their most senior members (most ambassadors are foreign service) keep their posts until the school year ends, but they've made it happen.  I sure hope* that this doesn't come back to bite one or more of the ones responsible right in the ass.

At least the Trumpeteers aren't waiting to be petty.


*NOT!

[frunk]

Trump's cyber-guru Giuliani runs ancient 'easily hackable website'

US president-elect Donald Trump's freshly minted cyber-tsar Rudy Giuliani runs a website with a content management system years out of date and potentially utterly hackable.

Former New York City mayor and Donald loyalist Giuliani was today unveiled by Trump's transition team as the future president's cybersecurity adviser – meaning Giuliani will play a crucial role in the defense of America's computer infrastructure.

Giulianisecurity.com, the website for the ex-mayor's eponymous infosec consultancy firm, is powered by a roughly five-year-old build of Joomla! that is packed with vulnerabilities. Some of those bugs can be potentially exploited by miscreants using basic SQL injection techniques to compromise the server.

This seemingly insecure system also has a surprising number of network ports open – from MySQL and anonymous LDAP to a very out-of-date OpenSSH 4.7 that was released in 2007. It also runs a rather old version of FreeBSD.

Security gurus are right now tearing strips off Trump's cyber-wizard pick. Top hacker Dan Tentler was first to point out the severely out-of-date Joomla! install.

"It speaks volumes," Tentler told The Register, referring to Giuliani's computer security credentials, or lack of, and fitness for the top post.

"Seventy-year-old luddite autocrats who often brag about not using technology are somehow put in charge of technology: it's like setting our country on fire and giving every extranational hacker a roman candle – or, rather, not setting on fire, but dousing in gasoline."

[Ideologue]

Trump orders DC National Guard chief removed during inauguration ceremony.

In a bizarre move, Donald Trump has demanded that the commanding officer of the Washington, D.C. National Guard resign from his post in the middle of the Inauguration ceremony, even though the general will be in the middle of helping oversee the event's security, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

Maj. Gen. Errol R. Schwartz will be removed from his post at 12:01 p.m. on Inauguration Day, just after Trump is sworn in but before the Inaugural parade begins, according to a memo obtained by the Washington Post.

Schwartz has helped plan the security for Inauguration weekend, and he will be charged with overseeing the D.C. National Guard as well as an additional 5,000 troops sent in for the weekend. But he will have to hand over commend to an interim officer in the middle of Inauguration Day.

"The timing is extremely unusual," Schwartz told the Washington Post on Friday.

"My troops will be on the street," he added. "I'll see them off but I won't be able to welcome them back to the armory."

Schwartz told the Post that he was not informed why he must step down abruptly on Inauguration Day.

"I'm a soldier," he said. "I'm a presidential appointee, therefore the president has the power to remove me."

Trump's team has also ordered all politically appointed diplomats to leave their posts by Inauguration Day, breaking with tradition of allowing some ambassadors to stay on as their children finish out the school year.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/dc-national-guard-chief-removed-inauguration

Trump is so fucking, ridiculously petty. I seriously despise the man.

Maybe he refuses, arrests Trump, and installs Obama as Lord Protector?  That'd be cool.

[DontSayBanana]

Trump's cyber-guru Giuliani runs ancient 'easily hackable website'

US president-elect Donald Trump's freshly minted cyber-tsar Rudy Giuliani runs a website with a content management system years out of date and potentially utterly hackable.

Former New York City mayor and Donald loyalist Giuliani was today unveiled by Trump's transition team as the future president's cybersecurity adviser – meaning Giuliani will play a crucial role in the defense of America's computer infrastructure.

Giulianisecurity.com, the website for the ex-mayor's eponymous infosec consultancy firm, is powered by a roughly five-year-old build of Joomla! that is packed with vulnerabilities. Some of those bugs can be potentially exploited by miscreants using basic SQL injection techniques to compromise the server.

This seemingly insecure system also has a surprising number of network ports open – from MySQL and anonymous LDAP to a very out-of-date OpenSSH 4.7 that was released in 2007. It also runs a rather old version of FreeBSD.

Security gurus are right now tearing strips off Trump's cyber-wizard pick. Top hacker Dan Tentler was first to point out the severely out-of-date Joomla! install.

"It speaks volumes," Tentler told The Register, referring to Giuliani's computer security credentials, or lack of, and fitness for the top post.

"Seventy-year-old luddite autocrats who often brag about not using technology are somehow put in charge of technology: it's like setting our country on fire and giving every extranational hacker a roman candle – or, rather, not setting on fire, but dousing in gasoline."

And it's been taken down.  And not a "page is taking too long to respond" message, either, it appears the DNS entry has been flushed, so it's been deliberately taken down- question is, was it taken down by Giuliani Security, or was it taken down by someone else to prove a point?  Probably the former, since somebody doing the latter would probably have vandalized the hell out of the page to show it was pwned.

[Syt]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/14/donald-trump-john-lewis-mlk-day-civil-rights

Donald Trump starts MLK weekend by attacking civil rights hero John Lewis

Donald Trump provoked fresh outrage on Saturday by lashing out at a revered civil rights activist who challenged the legitimacy of his election win.

The criticism of US congressman John Lewis came on the day of a civil rights march in Washington aimed at Trump's incoming presidency, two days before America observes the annual Martin Luther King Jr Day and six days before the country's first black president leaves office.

Lewis, who was beaten by state troopers during the historic 1965 march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, is the first leading Democrat to publicly question Trump's right to govern.

"I don't see this president-elect as a legitimate president," he told NBC's Meet the Press this week.

The 76-year-old congressman from Georgia, seen by some as the moral conscience of the nation, will boycott Trump's inauguration, the first he has missed since becoming a member of Congress three decades ago.

"I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected, and they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton," he said.

Clinton received 2.9m more votes than Trump but lost the electoral college. When assailed, Trump is known to favour a playbook of hitting back harder, even against seemingly no-win targets such as Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of a US soldier killed in Iraq; Alicia Machado, a Miss Universe winner; and Meryl Streep, the Oscar-winning actor.

On Saturday he decided that Lewis should be no different, using Twitter to say that he "should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk – no action or results. Sad!"

The comments – from a man backed by figures linked to the Ku Klux Klan and other racist far-right groups – drew a scathing response, even from the president-elect's own party.

Ben Sasse, a Republican senator for Nebraska and frequent Trump critic, said on Twitter: "John Lewis and his 'talk' have changed the world." Conservative commentator Bill Kristol posted: "It's telling, I'm afraid, that Donald Trump treats Vladimir Putin with more respect than he does John Lewis."

Evan McMullin, a former CIA officer who ran as an independent conservative in the presidential election, said: "While you avoided the draft, John Lewis risked his life for equality in America. You'll never even dream of such selfless patriotism, Donald."

Howard Wolfson, a former deputy mayor of New York, commented: "John Lewis did more to make America great in one day on the Edmund Pettus Bridge than Donald Trump ever will."

This week, Lewis also spoke out against Trump's nominee for attorney general, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, during a confirmation hearing. Sessions was denied a federal judgeship in 1986 over alleged racist remarks. This week, a letter from King's wife, Coretta Scott King, opposing his nomination was rediscovered and published by the Washington Post.

"We need someone as attorney general who's going to look out for all of us, and not just some of us," said Lewis, a protégé of King.

Trump's latest Twitter storm coincided with a civil rights march in Washington led by activists angry over his offensive remarks about Muslims, Mexicans and other minority groups. The Rev Al Sharpton planned to lead protesters along the National Mall, ending at the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial, about two miles from the steps of the US Capitol, where Trump will be sworn in as president on Friday.

"The 2017 march will bring all people together to insist on change and accountability," Sharpton told Reuters. "Donald Trump and his administration need to hear our voice and our concerns."

Civil rights groups including Sharpton's National Action Network, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Council of La Raza, as well as US senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, were expected to join the march, kicking off a week of demonstrations before, during and after Trump's inauguration.

Trump got 8% of the black vote in the presidential election, according to exit polls; Clinton received 88%.

The changing of the guard in Washington, however, is gathering momentum. Even before Trump takes office, Republicans won a gateway victory in Congress on Friday in their efforts to scrap Barack Obama's signature healthcare law. With a 227-198 House vote, Congress gave final approval to a budget that will ease passage of a still-unwritten bill replacing the Affordable Care Act.

The budget "gives us the tools we need for a step-by-step approach to fix these problems and put Americans back in control of their health care", House speaker Paul Ryan said after the vote.

But internal divisions are emerging. At least seven Republicans have said they want to wait until a replacement is ready before they will vote to repeal Obamacare, wary that 20 million people who gained health insurance could suddenly lose it.

Trump could also face a bumpy ride from his own cabinet. This week several of his nominees underwent Senate confirmation hearings and expressed views that differed from his own on everything from Russian hacking to the Iran nuclear deal to immigration rights.

The president-elect brushed off the dissent, claiming he had told his picks to "say what you want to say". He said: "I may be right, they may be right."

Meanwhile, on Saturday Obama delivered his last weekly address at the White House with a call for active citizenship.

"Our success depends on our participation, regardless of which way the pendulum of power swings," he said. "It falls on each of us to be guardians of our democracy; to embrace the joyous task we've been given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours. Because for all our outward differences, we all share the same proud title: citizen."

He added: "It has been the honour of my life to serve you as president. Eight years later, I am even more optimistic about our country's promise. And I look forward to working along your side, as a citizen, for all my days that remain."

[CountDeMoney]

[11B4V]

 

[Ed Anger]

Sorta turned on.

[Berkut]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R58fJ7Eetbg&feature=player_embedded

If Trump was otherwise a perfectly average candidate, his categorical refusal to divest himself and meet even the most basic of ethics standard is ground for impeachment the day he takes office.

[grumbler]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R58fJ7Eetbg&feature=player_embedded

If Trump was otherwise a perfectly average candidate, his categorical refusal to divest himself and meet even the most basic of ethics standard is ground for impeachment the day he takes office.

Unfortunately, it isn't such grounds.  However, he is certainly inviting such a crisis.

I think the reason he won't try to avoid corruption is that he is terrified that it will lead to people finding out how phony his "fortune" is.  That's also why he is too terrified to let anyone see his tax returns.  He's no pauper, but he's also no billionaire.

[CountDeMoney]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R58fJ7Eetbg&feature=player_embedded

If Trump was otherwise a perfectly average candidate, his categorical refusal to divest himself and meet even the most basic of ethics standard is ground for impeachment the day he takes office.

Good for Director Shaub, letting his feelings be known before he dies from a particular pathogenic strain of botulism next Thursday.