Hello Dante? What Level Is This?

[ponchi101]

Which is the part of him that is smart. He sees things only as "tools", and he find ways to use them.
TWT was there to share info. He saw that it can be used to mold opinions.
He is MF evil, but he is smart in those aspects.

[ti-amie]

Trump’s FBI Moves to Criminally Charge Major Climate Groups
The Trump administration is targeting climate organizations that received a Biden-era grant.

The FBI is moving to criminalize groups like Habitat for Humanity for receiving grants from the Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration.

Citibank revealed in a court filing Wednesday that it was told to freeze the groups’ bank accounts at the FBI’s request. The reason? The FBI alleges that the groups are involved in “possible criminal violations,” including “conspiracy to defraud the United States.”

“The FBI has told Citibank that recipients of EPA climate grants are being considered as potentially liable for fraud. That is, the Trump administration wants to criminalize work on climate science and impacts,” the @capitolhunters account wrote Wednesday on X. “An incoming administration not only cancels federal grants but declares recipients as criminals. All these grantees applied under government calls FOR ENVIRONMENTAL WORK, were reviewed and accepted. Trump wants to jail them.“

The Appalachian Community Capital Corporation, the Coalition for Green Capital, and the DC Green Bank are just some of the nonprofits being targeted.

“This is not fraud. This is targeted harassment,” @capitolhunters continued. “The idea of criminalizing community climate work wouldn’t have originated at the FBI—it likely comes from EPA director Lee Zeldin, who today cut all EPA’s environmental justice offices, which try to reduce pollution in poor and minority communities.”

Zeldin’s order eliminates 10 EPA regional offices as well as the one in Washington, D.C.

https://newrepublic.com/post/192660/tru ... anizations

[ti-amie]

(((Tendar)))
‪@tendar.bsky.social‬

Follow
Trust in US military hardware has eroded that much in the last two months that even the official account of Lockheed Martin feels compelled to deny the existence of the kill switch in the F-35.

‪hamstorau.bsky.social‬ ‪@hamstorau.bsky.social‬
·
8m
There does not need to be a discrete kill switch, there are still many ways they could achieve this effective result. How can you trust the latest updates are not installing something that disables capabilities when a particular radar signature is detected etc? Can't trust the US at all.

The Really Real Bird‬ ‪@thereallyrealbird.bsky.social‬
·
42m
They have a "kill switch" It is called ITAR. Withdraw a FMS, TAA, MLA, or export licenses, and without support or spare parts, it won't be very long before every F-35 is just very expensive hanger queen.

[ti-amie]

The New York Times
‪@nytimes.com‬

Follow
Breaking News: The Pentagon is set to brief Elon Musk on the U.S. military’s closely guarded plan for any potential war with China, officials said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/p ... ky-nytimes

[dryrunguy]

The New York Times
‪@nytimes.com‬

Follow
Breaking News: The Pentagon is set to brief Elon Musk on the U.S. military’s closely guarded plan for any potential war with China, officials said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/p ... ky-nytimes

Let the U.S. Department of Defense contract protests begin. The COIs here are brazen. And watch none of the protests be upheld by the Government Accountability Office for "lack of grounds"...

[ponchi101]

This is beyond insane. You are briefing a foreign national on your plans about China.
And he owns TWT. What could go wrong?

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

Receipts re the above

Commerce secretary: No one but ‘fraudsters’ would complain about missed Social Security check
by Aris Folley - 03/21/25 4:33 PM ET

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick raised alarm over “fraudsters” receiving Social Security benefits, as Trump allies have ramped up rhetoric about potential waste in the program amid a major restructuring effort at the agency that oversees the program.

During an appearance on the “All-In” podcast that was released on Thursday, Lutnick said the government doesn’t “have to take one penny from someone who deserves Social Security, not one penny for someone who deserves Medicaid, Medicare.”

“What we have to do is stop sending money to someone who’s not hurt, who’s on disability for 50 years,” he claimed. “It’s ridiculous, and they have another job.”

At one point in the wide-ranging, nearly two-hour conversation, Lutnick also said that if Social Security “didn’t send out their checks this month,” his “mother-in-law, who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain.”

“She’d think something got messed up, and she’ll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining,” the billionaire businessman said.

“Anybody who’s been in the payment system and the processes, who knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen, because whoever screams is the one stealing,” he said. “Because my mother-in-law’s not calling, come on, your mother, 80-year-olds, 90-year-olds, they trust the government.”

“So, the people who are getting that free money, stealing the money, inappropriately, getting the money, have an inside person who’s routing the money,” he said. “They are going to yell and scream.”

His comments come after tech billionaire Elon Musk, whom President Trump tapped to head up the Department of Government Efficiency, called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” earlier this month and suggested there could be hundreds of billions of potential cuts targeting waste in entitlement programs.

The rhetoric has prompted pushback from experts and advocates who have accused Trump allies of spreading false claims about the amount of fraud actually found in the program.

Trump has vowed not to cut Social Security benefits, however. Lutnick also said on Thursday that he’s against raising the retirement age — a proposal some Republicans have floated in Congress as a way to help shore up solvency for the program.

“I find it disgusting when we’re the richest country in the world, and some politician says in order to save Social Security, rather than getting rid of the waste, fraud and abuse, we should move it to 70,” Lutnick said.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ity-fraud/


Workers pay into Social Security every paycheck and can begin withdrawing from their account after a certain age.

[ti-amie]

‪Teddy Wilson‬ ‪@reportbywilson.bsky.social‬
·
5m
White male fiction writers haven’t recently won these specific awards or been awarded this specific prestigious fellowship, which means “…the literary pipeline for white men was effectively shut down.”

That’s right, there are no more White male writers.

[dryrunguy]

Haven't seen it mentioned here, but it deserves to be noted. The "War With China" briefing scheduled for Musk was cancelled. The NY Times published this shortly after the cancellation was announced.

::

Why the Pentagon scuttled its briefing of Musk on war plans
By Jess Bidgood

Over the past 24 hours, my colleagues’ report that Elon Musk was set to be briefed on the military’s top-secret plans in the event of war with China has shaken Washington. It even seemed to take President Trump by surprise.

Musk’s planned visit to a secure room in the Pentagon was called off after The Times published its article on the visit, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

This morning, Trump denied the briefing had been planned. But he also made clear that he thought Musk should not have access to such war plans.

“Certainly, you wouldn’t show it to a businessman who is helping us so much,” Trump said. He added, “Elon has businesses in China, and he would be susceptible perhaps to that.”

I called Eric Schmitt, a Times national security reporter, who kindly stepped into one of the few Pentagon hallways where you can actually get cell service, and asked him to bring us up to speed.

JB: Let’s start at the beginning. What did you learn yesterday about what was originally planned?

ES: The Pentagon was scheduled to give a briefing to Musk this morning on the classified war plan for China. We were told it was going to be in this secure conference room called the Tank, which is typically where you’ll have very high-level military briefings with members of the Joint Chiefs or senior commanders. The idea that a civilian like Elon Musk, who’s not in the chain of command, would be getting any briefing in the Tank — much less on highly sensitive war plans for China — was certainly unusual, and it was alarming to some people.

The administration has pushed back on your reporting. But you and the rest of the team are standing by the story.

We’re absolutely sure this is what was scheduled. There were a couple of things that gave us confidence, besides our sourcing being very strong. If Musk were really coming to the Pentagon for a more casual discussion, why would you hold it in the Tank? What’s more, the main briefer for the originally scheduled meeting was the four-star admiral in charge of the Indo-Pacific area, Samuel Paparo — and he would be the wartime commander in the event of a conflict with China.

What ended up happening this morning?

Musk arrived at about 9, on schedule. He went up to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office for what we were told would be about a 30-minute meeting. There were still tentative plans to have a Tank meeting at 9:30. Then it turned into 9:45 and 10. We were seeing top military officials moving between Hegseth’s office, on the third floor, and the Tank, which is one floor below. Shortly after 10, all the aides outside the Tank dispersed, and we were told that the Tank meeting with Musk was definitely off.

We saw Musk leave — he ignored our questions — and later, President Trump appeared in his office with Hegseth and again said our story wasn’t true. But we learned that, after our story published, the White House basically scrapped the original briefing, the war plan briefing, and went to Plan B, which was the more vanilla version.

In his office today, Trump did something new: He acknowledged that Musk has potential conflicts of interest when it comes to China. What did you make of that?

It was kind of revealing in terms of how Trump thinks about Musk’s role, because he praised Musk and how valuable an adviser he is. But then he stopped, just to point out pretty clearly where Musk’s influence ends, and what he should not be able to be doing. He seemed to be drawing some boundaries around what Elon Musk could or could not do, which he really hasn’t done very much at all up to this point.

In his remarks, Trump gave some indication that he didn’t seem to know that this briefing, as it was originally proposed, had been offered to Musk. He said he called his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and Hegseth to ask about the reports when he saw them. It’s not like he was clued in ahead of time.

What does this episode tell us about the White House, the Pentagon and Elon Musk?

It’s raised questions about the relationship between Musk’s operation and the Pentagon. Secretary Hegseth has really bent over backward to publicly welcome the DOGE staff in. Yesterday, he posted a short video saying how DOGE, working with Defense staffers, had identified $580 million in contracts that they could cut. So he’s really tried to embrace the spirit of Musk and trying to win over Musk. For what purpose, we don’t really know. Is it to seriously help him fulfill his pledge to cut? Is it to protect some of the programs he might want to preserve?

It also raises questions about the communication between an inexperienced defense secretary, the White House and Musk. Are they all on the same page?

[ti-amie]

If the orange menace's lips are moving he's lying.

That said good work by the New York Times in reporting this story. The follow up interview is eye opening. Calling Hegseth an "inexperienced defense secretary" is putting it mildly. He is there to do Tiny's bidding. That the meeting was called off says to me that people raised holy hell about it.

There's also this.

Katie Phang
‪@katiephang.bsky.social‬



“I don’t know when it was signed, because I didn’t sign it,” Trump told reporters Friday evening.

So…

(1) Trump is lying & he signed it?
(2) Trump is senile & doesn’t remember signing it?
(3) Trump had Marco Rubio use the autopen to sign it?

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/21/politics ... index.html

[ti-amie]

And this

Watch Elon Musk smoke marijuana on podcast

[ponchi101]

That is not new. That was several years ago. Tesla stock took a tumble, for a while.
I am absolutely convinced that he does these things every once in a while to manipulate the stock. He has somebody take a short on the stock, he goes out there and does something ridiculous and the market responds. Just a tiny drop makes him more billions, and then the stock recovers.
He manipulates the market very well.

[ti-amie]

White House acknowledges ‘inadvertent’ leak involving top Trump officials
The Atlantic reported that its top editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, was accidentally added to a group chat where Trump’s national security team plotted attacking Yemen.

March 24, 2025 at 3:34 p.m. EDT Today at 3:34 p.m. EDT

By Dan Lamothe and Michael Birnbaum

Several top officials in the Trump administration discussed highly sensitive military plans using an unclassified chat application that inadvertently included a journalist, the White House acknowledged Monday, a development that swiftly drew criticism from Washington’s national security establishment.

Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said the message thread revealed in an extraordinary report by the Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, “appears to be authentic,” and that administration officials were “reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”

The “inadvertent number” belonged to Goldberg, whose article details a robust policy discussion that occurred in the lead-up to a March 15 military operation targeting Yemen’s Houthi militants. Goldberg reported being added to the group chat, which occurred on the encrypted messaging platform Signal, by President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz. Other participants included Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, the Atlantic article says.

Hughes, the National Security Council spokesman, characterized the discussion as “a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials” executing Trump’s national security strategy. But the disclosure raises questions about how the administration has discussed classified issues and whether anyone will be disciplined.

Senior Trump administration officials have warned in recent days that they will investigate unauthorized leaks to journalists, citing reporting in a number of publications. Several of them also for years criticized the handling of classified information by Democrats in other cases.

The news was greeted by Democrats with exasperation and anger.

“If true, this story represents one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen,” Sen. Jack Reed (Rhode Island), the Senate Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat, said in a statement. “Military operations need to be handled with utmost discretion, using approved, secure lines of communication, because American lives are on the line. The carelessness shown by President Trump’s cabinet is stunning and dangerous. I will be seeking answers from the Administration immediately.”

Goldberg reported that he received an invitation to connect on Signal on March 11 from an account identified as belonging to Waltz. Goldberg, who has been criticized by Trump in the past, wrote in his article Monday that he assumed it was Waltz, but wondered whether it might also be someone pretending to be the national security adviser.

Two days later, Goldberg wrote, he received a notification through Signal that he was to be included in a group chat titled “Houthi PC small group,” an apparent reference to a principals committee meeting that typically includes Cabinet members and other senior national security officials. Several of the accounts appeared to designate subordinates as their representatives, including Andy Baker, Vance’s national security adviser, and Dan Caldwell, a senior Defense Department official.

Vance, according to the Atlantic article, said he thought the Trump administration was “making a mistake” by launching what U.S. military officials have since declared an open-ended operation against the Houthis. The vice president noted that about 3 percent of U.S. trade runs through the Suez Canal, where the Houthis have concentrated attacks on commercial shipping transiting the Red Sea, and that there is “real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary.”

The Hegseth account, according to the Atlantic’s report, responded a short time later that he understood Vance’s concerns and fully supported the vice president raising them with Trump. The defense secretary then appeared to add that the “messaging is going to be tough no matter what” because “nobody knows who the Houthis are,” and so those plotting the operation should seek to convince the American public that “1) Biden failed & 2) Iran funded.” Those were apparent references to the Biden administration not being able to stop Houthi attacks, which the militant group began in response to Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip, and Tehran’s long-standing backing of the Houthis.

Contrary to Vance, Hegseth advocated military action, saying there was a risk that the Trump administration’s plans to attack could leak publicly or that Israel could take action against the militants first, leaving the administration unable to “start this on our own terms,” Goldberg recounted in his article.

As the bombing campaign moved ahead, Hegseth’s account shared details that Goldberg said he believed could put at risk the safety of U.S. troops or intelligence officials, especially those deployed in the Middle East. Those details, the Atlantic article says, allegedly included the specific weapons to be used and in which sequence the Houthi targets would be hit.

A spokesman for Hegseth, Sean Parnell, did not respond to requests for comment Monday. Hegseth had departed on a military aircraft for Asia shortly before the Atlantic story published.

Hegseth, a National Guard veteran and former Fox News host who did not previously hold senior positions in government, has said repeatedly that he will bring accountability back to the Pentagon.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... -atlantic/

[ponchi101]

I know it is popular to speak ill of all politicians. But that is the reason you need career politicians, to avoid doing stupid things like this.