Passwords and private information belonging to top national security officials in the Trump administration have been found online, according to the German publication Der Spiegel.

In a stunning report published on Wednesday, the paper said its journalists “used commercial people search engines along with hacked customer data that has been published on the web.” Those whose information was compromised include Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.

“Private contact details of the most important security advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump can be found on the internet,” the outlet wrote. “DER SPIEGEL reporters were able to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses and even some passwords belonging to the top officials.”

Spiegel explained:

Those affected by the leaks include National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Most of these numbers and email addresses are apparently still in use, with some of them linked to profiles on social media platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn. They were used to create Dropbox accounts and profiles in apps that track running data. There are also WhatsApp profiles for the respective phone numbers and even Signal accounts in some cases.
As such, the reporting has revealed an additional grave, previously unknown security breach at the highest levels in Washington. Hostile intelligence services could use this publicly available data to hack the communications of those affected by installing spyware on their devices. It is thus conceivable that foreign agents were privy to the Signal chat group in which Gabbard, Waltz and Hegseth discussed a military strike.

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The revelation comes just two days after Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic published a wild story detailing how Waltz added him to a Signal group chat with Hegseth, Gabbard, Vice President JD Vance, and other top Trump officials, where they discussed a looming airstrike on a Houthi rebel target in Yemen.

Lol. Don’t know if I can root for him any longer.

Oh boy. This is going to make all the self loathing virtue signalling white libs heads explode. He destroyed the diversity is our strength canard

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After portal entries and eligibility limitations?

Lowe
Corhen
Kante
Cummings
And new HS freshman player coming in

Not an awful group to build around if they all are back if you can fill in portal.

Pitt hosts Duquesne in the season opener, Aug. 30.

The Pirates are away, but a bigger draw will clog the North Shore parking lots.

The barnstorming Savannah Bananas play at PNC Park the same day. The Bananas are entertainers like the Harlem Globetrotters. Apparently their two game set here is sold out.

I was hoping for a 6pm kickoff, a Pitt win followed by fireworks. Now I am not so sure about a night game.

Anybody have inside info on this?

SMF not happy

As we mark the 5 Year Anniversary of basically when shutdowns began (sports getting canceled), I wanted to put this graph out because if you remember back then, many of you were saying Covid wasn't killing anyone. It was just the flu and people were dying at normal rates but there was a conspiracy to put Covid on the death certificates for hospital reimbursements. Back then, you said the only way to tell if it was a real thing would be based on death rates because you can write whatever you want on a death certificate but you cannot lie about whether or not someone actually dies. Well, here they are:


Historical jump in deaths from 2019 to 2021. Another big jump in 2021. A drop in 2022 but still probably slightly higher than a non-Covid 2019/20/21/22 normal trend. Drop in 2023 so we are back on what would have been a normal, slightly gradual rise from 2019 to 20 to 21 to 22 to 23 if there was never Covid.

But I swear that most of you will either believe these death numbers are wrong or say Covid still didn't cause any deaths and this jump in deaths was caused by something else. Or, or, just hear me out. Covid actually did kill a ton of people (yes, mostly old people) in 20 and 21. You can criticize the shutdowns all you want, that's a whole different debate. I am simply saying Covid was real and killed a lot of people. Would anyone admit that?

Over the past two weeks the Post Gazette and now DK on Sports ran just huge, detailed articles on how the Pirates are struggling, even in debt, despite their low payrolls. Of course the one sided DK article was his usual pathetic puff stuff believing everything fed to him and the PG had MLB experts refuting the Pirates claims. But despite that, both had angles on how the Pirates either struggle to make money or in fact, are losing money.

Joe Starkey, summoning up some common sense approach today then blasted Bob Nutting.

Joe Starkey: If the Pirates are financially stressed, why hasn’t Bob Nutting sold? And will he fight MLB?​

I can’t be the only one confused here.

Two local publications have posted fresh stories on the Pirates’ finances — and have come to violently different conclusions.

The Post-Gazette’s Mark Belko reported that the Pirates are profitable and could easily be spending more on players.

Dejan Kovacevic also reported on his site that the Pirates are losing money and have “taken on debt the past couple of years, including 2024.”

Both are fascinating deep dives.

Both are also stocked with enough financial minutiae to make your head spin like a Paul Skenes splinker.

The bottom line for me: If the finances are as challenging as these stories claim, why hasn’t Bob Nutting sold the team? What’s in this for him?

If he’s actually interested in winning, then why isn’t Nutting already fighting Major League Baseball before the current collective bargaining agreement expires on Dec. 1, 2026?

And why wasn’t he first in the protest line before the last CBA was ratified in 2022? To the contrary, he quietly signed off on it.

It seems awfully curious that Nutting would put himself through such financial hardship every year if there wasn’t something in it for him. And again, if the Pirates are in such a disadvantageous position that even reaching, say, a payroll of $100 million would leave their business model in jeopardy, as team president Travis Williams suggests in the Post-Gazette piece, why isn’t Nutting fighting MLB tooth and nail to improve the situation?

See, despite the differing conclusions of these two stories, there was a shared theme: Both, in part, painted the Pirates as a financially stressed organization. Kovacevic’s piece reported that as literally true, and the Pirates portrayed themselves as such in Belko’s piece, even if others decidedly did not.

Not suprised by that.

Figured we could use this as an offseason discussion thread. Any updates on whats expected from your end Paul, Staff Changes, players that may leave and guys they may target? I know theres a good chance Cam leaves, same with Marlon Barnes Jr. Alvaro Folgeuras at RMU a name to watch, has become friends with the twins, and they have been recruiting him to join

If any of you guys want to fully understand what we’ve been trying to tell you for years, and how this relates to the Signal scandal, take the 9 minutes and listen. You thought we were bullshitting you. We weren’t. He’s a summary of what we’ve been saying.

And you guys are buying into it hook line and sinker.

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I dont know, guys. Is this separation of powers thing too old-school? Is checks and balances outdated? I'm thinking we should grant the POTUS unchecked powers to do anything he wants even if its super illegal. These judges man, they are up to no good. Let the Republican president do anything he wants to do with no check and then when the Dems win, let the Dem POTUS do anything he wants to do, no matter how crazy far-left it is? Right?

Ah what could have been - Sean Miller met with Heather Lyke about a week before she hired Jeff Capel.

Heather actually wanted to hire him and he was ready to leave Arizona for obvious reasons. But there were too many in upper administration and a few of the trustees and in the legal department who all said "absolutely not" so it was dead on arrival.

But it was a nice thought while it lasted.

I thought maybe Pitt could hire Miller away from Xavier in a year but that ship has now sailed. The "Sean Miller to Pitt" train will not happen as he has once again reached the top of the profession and landed one of the elite jobs out there. Texas has wasted loads of talent, loads of resources and loads of prospects right in their backyards and is one of the most underachieving programs in the country.

But that doesn't change the fact that Texas should be one of the premier programs in the country because, well, they do have resources, recruiting pipelines and loads of talent.

Miller is obviously an excellent coach but is he an elite coach? That remains to be seen. He would have been perfect at Pitt because he has made a living out of winning with less. And he is obviously a beloved figure in the program history and has all kinds of ties and whatnot.

The thing is, when he was at Arizona he had plenty of elite talent and plenty of opportunities to get that program over the top and never could. And for all of his accolades and all the praise he receives remember this - he has never (not as a player, not as an assistant coach, not as a head coach) been to the Final Four.

I think this is a good hire for Texas, Miller will get them to a Sweet 16 level most years and they will consistently win and be in the tournament. At a place like Pitt, that would be good enough, but at Texas, they aren't hiring him to "win 25 games a year" they are hiring him to get to the Final Four and win a championship.