Elon Musk confirmed Friday that SpaceX has asked the Pentagon to pick up the tab to provide ongoing Starlink satellite internet service to Ukraine, citing being told to “F*** off” by a Ukrainian ambassador after Musk proposed a peace deal in Russia’s war on Ukraine. Starlink’s letter to the Department of Defense was sent before the insult, but Musk seemed to confirm the insult has had an effect. Musk said Starlink’s costs are running about $20 million per month. The U.S. and others have been partially paying for the reported more than 12,000 terminals and service provided after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.

Elon Musk, file screen image.

On October 3, Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany Andrij Melnyk said to Musk, “Fuck off is my very diplomatic reply to you @elonmusk”

Early Friday morning, Musk replied to a Kyiv Post reporter who noted the insult in a report on Starlink, “We’re just following his recommendation,” with a shrugging emoji.

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Musk previously noted the expenses are becoming too much to handle for Starlink, “SpaceX is not asking to recoup past expenses, but also cannot fund the existing system indefinitely *and* send several thousand more terminals that have data usage up to 100X greater than typical households. This is unreasonable.”

The Washington Post reported the Biden administration is furious with Musk:

A senior U.S. defense official confirmed late Thursday that Musk had privately urged the Pentagon to pay up. The official said there was no comparable system with such widespread applicability. The bill is likely to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars over the next year, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The official described it as a scenario in which Musk “dangles hope over the heads of millions, then sticks the DoD with the bill for a system no one asked for but now so many depend on.”

“Elon’s gonna Elon,” the official added.

CNN reported in depth on the controversy, quoting a U.S. official attacking Musk (excerpt):

Though Musk has received widespread acclaim and thanks for responding to requests for Starlink service to Ukraine right as the war was starting, in reality, the vast majority of the 20,000 terminals have received full or partial funding from outside sources, including the US government, the UK and Poland, according to the SpaceX letter to the Pentagon.

SpaceX’s request that the US military foot the bill has rankled top brass at the Pentagon, with one senior defense official telling CNN that SpaceX has “the gall to look like heroes” while having others pay so much and now presenting them with a bill for tens of millions per month.

According to the SpaceX figures shared with the Pentagon, about 85% of the 20,000 terminals in Ukraine were paid – or partially paid – for by countries like the US and Poland or other entities. Those entities also paid for about 30% of the internet connectivity, which SpaceX says costs $4,500 each month per unit for the most advanced service. (Over the weekend, Musk tweeted there are around 25,000 terminals in Ukraine.)

In his July letter to Musk, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Gen. Zaluzhniy, praised the Starlink units’ “exceptional utility” and said some 4,000 terminals had been deployed by the military. However, around 500 terminals per month are destroyed in the fighting, Zaluzhniy said, before asking for 6,200 more terminals for the Ukrainian military and intelligence services and 500 per month going forward to offset the losses.

SpaceX said they responded by asking Zaluzhniy to instead take up his request to the Department of Defense.

On September 8, the senior director of government sales for SpaceX wrote the Pentagon saying the costs have gotten too high, approaching $100 million. The official asked the Department of Defense to pick up Ukraine’s new request as well as ongoing service costs, totaling $124 million for the remainder of 2022.

Those costs, according to the senior defense official, would reach almost $380 million for a full year.

Musk commented earlier Friday on the costs for supporting Ukraine with Starlink, “In addition to terminals, we have to create, launch, maintain & replenish satellites & ground stations & pay telcos for access to Internet via gateways. We’ve also had to defend against cyberattacks & jamming, which are getting harder. Burn is approaching ~$20M/month.”

Five people were killed on Thursday by a shooter dressed in camo in a wooded area in east Raleigh, North Carolina.

According to police, the killer is a 15-year-old boy with a ‘baby face.’

The teen suspect, who has yet to be named, is currently hospitalized and in critical condition.

A motive for the mass shooting is still unclear.

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“I heard two gunshots and they were really loud so I knew something was close by and then I heard three other gunshots,” said Robert, a witness who spoke with WRAL. “I saw him basically pass my house in the backyard. He had a long barrel shotgun. He was dressed in camo. He had a full backpack on that was also camouflage.”

The mass shooting took place near the Neuse River Greenway Trail, near Osprey Cove, according to media reports.

According to witnesses, the killer used a shotgun during his shooting spree, however, police did not confirm the type of weapon used in Thursday’s shooting.

An off-duty officer and a 16-year-old boy are among the victims killed on Thursday.

ABC News reported:

Police are searching for answers after a teenager allegedly killed five people, including a police officer, in a mass shooting along a nature trail in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Among the victims was Raleigh police officer Gabriel Torres, 29, who was on his way to work when he was shot and killed, according to Raleigh police chief Estella Patterson.

The four others killed were identified as Nicole Conners, 52; Susan Karnatz, 49; Mary Marshall, 35; and James Roger Thompson, 16. Police did not say what — if any — connection the victims had to the suspect.

Two others were injured.

The unnamed suspect, who local police described as a 15-year-old boy, was taken into custody with life-threatening injuries, according to a memo issued by the Department of Homeland Security and obtained by ABC News. It’s not clear if the suspect’s injuries were self-inflicted, the memo said.

The suspect was still hospitalized in critical condition as of Friday morning, according to the police chief.

Two disturbed women of the activist group Just Stop Oil threw tomato soup over a painting by Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers on Friday that was on display at London’s National Gallery.

Phoebe Plummer, 21, from London, and Anna Holland, 20, from Newcastle dumped two cans of Heinz tomato soup on top all over of an $80.99 million painting, which is protected by glass.

This whole incident was captured on film by Damien Gayle, a correspondent for the Guardian. Many people couldn’t believe what they had witnessed.

Watch the video below:

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“What is worth more, art or life? Is it worth more than food? Worth more than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?” said Phoebe Plummer.

“The cost of living crisis is part of the cost of oil crisis. Fuel is unaffordable to millions of cold, hungry families. They can’t even afford to heat a tin of soup,” she added.

Watch the video below:

The National Gallery staff quickly cleared the room, according to the Guardian.

Just Stop Oil is a climate campaign group in the UK using civil resistance demanding the UK Government agrees to end all new oil and gas production. It launched on 14 February 2022.

According to the activist group, “New oil and gas will lead to crop failure, food shortages and the collapse of law and order. Human civilisation as we know it is on the verge of collapse.”

According to the London Metropolitan Police, specialists removed the two women from the wall and they have been taken into custody after being arrested for “criminal damage and aggravated trespass,” CNBC reported.

“A spokesperson for the National Gallery confirmed that there was no damage to the painting, which has an estimated value of £72.5 million ($80.99 million),” the outlet added.

Back in June, a pair of Green activists glued themselves on the frame of a Vincent Van Gogh painting in London.

The two people belong to the same group, Just Stop Oil.

The unhinged leftists told their gallery audience, “Sorry everyone, we didn’t want to do this.”

The young man who glued himself to the painting has already been arrested 20 times and spent six weeks in prison this year.

In May a climate activist dressed as an old lady threw a cake at the Mona Lisa in France.

A 36-year-old man dressed as an old lady was arrested on Sunday after reportedly trying to break the glass protecting the famous Mona Lisa painting before throwing a cake on its surface in an apparent climate-related protest.

A frightening report out of the city of Baltimore’s schools finds that in one high school so many students are failing that one of its top students has only passed three classes in four years of attending school.

The mother of a student at west Baltimore’s Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts recently told Baltimore’s WBFF that her son will not be graduating this year despite attending the school for four years. And she wants to know why this has happened.

A major problem students face is the rising crime in Baltimore. Like the rising crime in so many other Democrat-controlled cities, Baltimore’s crime rate continues to spin out of control. In 2019, for instance, Baltimore suffered its highest murder rate since 1993.

Crime is so rampant that even TV shows have been forced to shut down filming because conditions became too dangerous for crew members.

The report on the Augusta Fells Savage student noted that Tiffany France’s 17-year-old son only passed three classes in four years and had a 0.13 grade point average. That isn’t enough to graduate, and the student will end up back in 9th grade starting next school year, France said.

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But France said that it is the school that failed, not her son.

“He’s stressed and I am too. I told him I’m probably going to start crying. I don’t know what to do for him,” France told Project Baltimore, WBFF reported. “Why would he do three more years in school? He didn’t fail, the school failed him. The school failed at their job. They failed. They failed, that’s the problem here. They failed. They failed. He didn’t deserve that.”

The student’s transcripts showed that he failed both Spanish I and Algebra I, but was passed on to Spanish and Algebra II, anyway. He also failed English II, but was sent on to English III despite failing the precursor.

France said that this is intolerable.

“I’m just assuming that if you are passing, that you have the proper things to go to the next grade and the right grades, you have the right credits,” France said.

Records also showed that even though the boy failed a whopping 22 classes during his first three years at the school, only one teacher scheduled a parent-teacher meeting. And France stated that no one at the school contacted her to tell her the boy was failing so badly.

France said that the school’s disinterest meant the boy wasn’t really given a chance.

“I feel like they never gave my son an opportunity, like if there was an issue with him, not advancing or not progressing, that they should have contacted me first, three years ago,” she said.

The report also found that even with the dismal 0.13 GPA, the student is ranked number 62 out of a class of 120. That means nearly half the class has passed even fewer than three classes in four years.

“He feels embarrassed, he feels like a failure,” France added. “I’m like, you can’t feel like that. And you have to be strong and you got to keep fighting. Life is about fighting. Things happen, but you got to keep fighting. And he’s willing, he’s trying, but who would he turn to when the people that’s supposed to help him is not? Who do he turn to?”

The Baltimore School District did not really have a satisfactory explanation for why France’s son was so ill-served by the district when WBFF asked for a comment.

But one administrator did respond to WBFF’s questions and said, “I get angry. There’s nothing but frustration. We see on the news the crime that occurs, the murders, the shootings, we know that there are high levels of poverty in Baltimore. Things like this are adding to that. His transcript is not unusual to me. I’ve seen many transcripts, many report cards, like this particular student.”

The administrator is right as far as it goes. The city is unsafe. This year, it was reported that Baltimore has a worse murder rate than El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, three countries that have been rife with gang activity, conflict, political strife and war. So, kids are dealing with a lot of things they should not have to be facing in this city that has been controlled by Democrats since 1967, when the last Republican mayor, Theodore McKeldin, left office.

Regardless, this problem is nothing new. Last year, WBFF reported that graduation rates at the Baltimore schools had fallen to a six-year low, as less than 70 percent of students earned a high school diploma.

The story seems to show that this whole situation is a tragedy for Baltimore’s children who are being completely failed by their politicians and educrats. Not only are the schools not educating these kids, the whole political establishment can’t even keep them safe long enough for them to even try to succeed in their schools.

Sadly, the statistics show that Baltimore’s children are being set up to fail from the start.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

The corrupt and criminal DOJ and FBI under Biden went too far when they raided President Trump’s iconic home – Mar-a-Lago.  This was unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful. 

As we reported right after the criminal DOJ and FBI raided his home, the DOJ way overstepped the law.

EXCELLENT: Former Law Clerk for Justice Gorsuch Lays Out Why the Mar-a-Lago Raid Based on Today’s Affidavit Was “Unprecedented…Unnecessary, and…Unlawful”

This group of Obama gangsters took from the President what many believe were documents that showed their many crimes before and after President Trump was elected in 2016.

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BOOM! Kash Patel: This Entire Raid on Mar-a-Lago Was to Prevent Disclosure of Declassified Russiagate Documents that Implicate FBI! (VIDEO)

President Trump is right also when he claims this even shows the double standards with Biden and Obama’s DOJ and FBI.

Bill O’Reilly says that the investigations into Trump are BS.

Bill Clinton kept Presidential records and no one came to get them.  This is because the President has the absolute right to bring with him any documents he wants.

Hillary destroyed documents requested by the FBI.  She wasn’t President and had no right to keep them.  But no worries, the FBI protected her.  There was no raid on her property to obtain any documents or phones that were destroyed by her rather than hand them over.

Trump has been treated unfairly since he came down the elevator. 

Chris Geldart

DC Deputy Mayor Chris Geldart was charged with assault and battery after getting into a fight in the parking lot of Gold’s Gym in Arlington earlier this month.

According to Fox 5 DC, Geldart grabbed a personal trainer’s neck in the parking lot after an altercation.

The victim, Dustin Woodward, said Geldart has been causing problems at Gold’s Gym for a while and not just that one location in Arlington.

Woodward said Geldart abuses his power and is known at multiple Gold’s Gym locations.

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“In the video, DC’s deputy mayor is on the right (in tank top & shorts), Dustin on the left (in long-sleeve and workout pants) – and according to Arlington Police, an argument stemmed from Chris allegedly opening up his car door and hitting the parked car of Dustin’s girlfriend. The dispute escalated to the point where Dustin says Chris was cursing and screaming, which caused him to turn around and tell Dustin to “shut up.” This is when Chris got in Dustin’s face in a confrontational style. Later in the video, the two men are chest-to-chest and Dustin says Chris put his hands on his throat before he was able to push him away.” Fox 5 DC reported.

WATCH:

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser previously said Geldart was “on leave” while the matter is under review.

Geldart resigned this week.

“I’m saddened to say that I have accepted the resignation of Deputy Mayor Chris Geldart, but I am proud of the work that we have done together over the last eight years, and I am immensely grateful to Chris for his service to the city,” Muriel Bowser said.

WATCH: