Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth personally intervened to stop four officers from rising in the ranks. Before I tell you, guess - gender and/or race.

The New Republic:

The officers were originally on a one-star promotion list of about three dozen officers consisting mostly of white men, The New York Times reported Friday.

Hegseth had been pushing Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll to remove the four officers for months, but given their years of exemplary service, Driscoll refused, military officials told the Times. Hegseth finally removed their names himself, likely without the legal authority to do so.

As per military policy, the defense secretary is technically only supposed to approve or reject the entire list to prevent discrimination and prejudice—two things the former Fox News host has embraced in his catastrophic stint as defense secretary.

Since he was appointed in January 2025, Hegseth has gutted diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, pledged to remove women officers from combat, and banned trans people from serving in the military. “For too long, we’ve promoted too many uniform leaders for the wrong reasons—based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts,” he said in a speech last November.

A similar feud over race happened last summer when Maj. Gen. Antoinette R. Gant was selected to command the Military District of Washington. Hegseth’s chief of staff, Ricky Buria, was furious. He told Driscoll that Trump would not want to stand next to a Black female officer at military events, the Times reported.

 Trump and Hegseth are twin sons of different mothers. In 2028 we'll need a broom wide enough to sweep out both, and then, one whole of a hell of a lot more. 

Sanitization. And who knows, possibly some cash clawback. 

Who's thinking and talking about Kash Patel these days, and what's he saying?

 Only a one minute blurb, but things can grow legs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqZqBz16D4U

And Kash? Tune time. 

"In Thiel’s framing, the Antichrist is not an outwardly malevolent figure, but rather a comforting administrator, one that promises tighter control of innovation to stamp out the risk of runaway technology—particularly artificial intelligence—replacing humanity. This positioning is a farce, in Thiel’s telling, as the Antichrist is in reality quietly consolidating power and control over society. He has criticized groups wary of technological progress, including AI skeptics and environmentalists such as Greta Thunberg, for being pawns of the Antichrist. Thiel’s vision paints Silicon Valley technologists not only as architects of humanity’s future, but as protectors of civilization, often grounding his arguments in his Christian beliefs. His argument blends theological language with Silicon Valley’s anxieties over AI, transhumanism, and decay of meaning, and has been greeted with muted praise by some tech figures, such as fellow Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale."

 The lengthy headline is a run-together of two early paragraphs of a Yahoo repost of a Fortune report: 

Peter Thiel brings his Antichrist lectures to Rome — and Italian politicians are calling his ideas ‘scandalous’

Tristan Bove

Mon, March 16, 2026 at 1:49 PM CDT

 So, within that context, and in a who-do-you-trust mood, this.

Think of Peter Thiel as the man who bankrolled JD Vance into the mainstream. (With a bit of help but not really much from JD being his charming and compelling self.) 

"The fate of environmentalists is to spend their lives trying not to be proved right. Vindication is what we dread. But there’s one threat that haunts me more than any other: the collapse of the global food system. We cannot predict what the immediate trigger might be. But the war with Iran is just the right kind of event."

 The headline is the opening paragraph of: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/25/big-corporations-global-food-system-war-iran

 

Retrospectives of the Day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9kumiroe6M 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqPJLKBJJhU 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IsSpAOD6K8 

IOC.

Ignoramus in Chief - Below screen capture is from here.

 AJ-English has an inquisitive idea: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/25/large-polymarket-wall-street-bets-on-trumps-war-news-under-scrutiny -- this mid-item excerpt -

Polymarket gained mainstream popularity during the 2024 US presidential election, but it has become synonymous with suspected insider trading since January after well-timed bets on US plans to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, followed by the start of the war on Iran two months later.

Researchers have tracked dozens of examples of anonymous new accounts betting big but also correctly just before a critical event like the February 28 US-Israeli strikes that began the Iran war.

As of Wednesday, there were 355 live prediction markets on Polymarket linked to outcomes in the war, such as the identity of the next leader of Iran, the date of a US-Iran nuclear deal and when Iran will launch military action against Israel.

The independent on-chain analyst known as Andrew 10 GWEI told Al Jazeera one of the most “striking” recent examples of suspicious betting was his discovery of 38 accounts that he believes belong to one person and netted more than $2m betting correctly on the February 28 strikes.

Each of the accounts placed from four to 10 bets with a nearly 100 percent success rate, according to research Andrew shared on X. Also noteworthy was the fact that the user began preparing accounts with cryptocurrency transfers on February 22 before bets were placed on February 27 between 11:00 and 12:00 GMT on the chance of a February 28 strike.To continue, please allow functional cookies from third-party platforms.

Red flags

While successful Polymarket bets could be based on everything from open-source intelligence to simple beginners’ luck, researchers look for several red flags that suggest suspicious betting.

[...] ] Fintech platforms have not been the only source of suspicious betting over the past week as a series of well-timed Wall Street trades have also raised eyebrows and questions of possible insider trading.

The recent round of questionable trades all occurred early on Monday before the markets opened in the US and Trump announced on his Truth Social platform at 7:04am (11:04 GMT) that he was going to delay threatened attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure after “VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS” with Tehran.

In the 15 minutes before the announcement, trading spiked as 6,200 Brent crude and West Texas intermediate oil contracts with a notational value of $580m were exchanged, according to Bloomberg data.

[...] After Trump’s news on Monday, the price of Brent crude oil fell sharply from $112 a barrel to about $99 while West Texas intermediate fell from about $99 to $86, netting a small fortune for anyone who bet big on a price drop.

At the same time, pretrading volume on the S&P 500 e-Mini, which trades on the future performance of the S&P 500, surged about 6:50 am (10:50 GMT) on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

As an index of the 500 largest publicly traded companies in the US, the S&P 500 is regarded as a bellwether for the US economy and often responds to major news events, including Trump’s announcement.

‘Exploit information for profit’

Unusual Whales, a platform that tracks unusual activity from large or influential investors known as “whales”, reported that one trade involved buying S&P 500 futures with a notational value of $1.5bn and selling oil futures with a value of $192m.

“These orders were 4-6x larger than anything else at the time. The trader seemingly made huge gains,” Unusual Whales wrote in a post on X.

Spikes were also seen on other futures markets like the DAX Index Futures and Euro Stoxx 50 Index and across the Nasdaq and Russell 2000 Indexes, according to Bloomberg.

Observers said this kind of activity was highly unusual because it happened before the market opened on Monday and on a day without an anticipated news hook, such as the release of critical US economic data or a company earnings call.

Independent commodities trader Peter Brandt told Al Jazeera that he found the timing of the trades suspicious among other large, recent “market-shaking announcements”.

“I’ve traded long enough [five decades] to know, where there is smoke, there is usually fire,” Brandt said, adding that the trades were nevertheless legal because there is no law in the US against “this type of insider trading” of futures contracts for oil and the S&P 500.

US economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman took a much harsher view, writing on Substack that there was an “obvious explanation” to Monday’s otherwise “baffling” trades.

[...] The White House did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment, but a White House spokesperson told the Financial Times this week that it does not “tolerate any administration official illegally profiteering off of insider knowledge” and accusations of insider trading were “baseless and irresponsible reporting”.

‘Insider trading’

Amid the growing scrutiny of recent trades on Iran-based news, members of the Democratic Party have called for more regulation of prediction sites like Polymarket.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who has accused officials in Trump’s Republican administration of “insider trading” on Iran war news, last week introduced the Banning Event Trading on Sensitive Operations and Federal Functions (BETS OFF) Act in Congress.

The BETS OFF Act would prohibit platforms like Polymarket and its competitor Kalshi from allowing bets on “government actions, terrorism, war, assassination, and events where an individual knows or controls the outcome”.

In the short term, both Polymarket and Kalshi moved to address questions of insider trading this week.

If we are to take Trump at his word, even if a BETS OFF Act were to pass both chambers, he would not sign it before getting, if ever, his voter-screwing FACT Act on his desk. Then, of course, he'd sign it since neither Jarad, the offspring, himself, or Cabinet folks would stoop to insider trading for self enrichment. Nor would Stephen Miller.  Or his spouse. We can have that kind and degree of trust in our leadership.

JD would not insider trade either. They taught him it was a no-no at Yale. The US of A is so fortunate to have the degree of rectitude DC shows the world, Trump on downward. And it has oil giants too. What luck.

 

Do well or go elsewhere.

The headline is my offering as a marketing slogan for U Minn. It sums things up cleanly.

What precipitated it was a Star Tribune item -

The U paid a marketing firm $15M for a new slogan. The internet has thoughts.

“Leave a Future” is the University of Minnesota’s first new tagline in 20 years. People aren’t quite sure what it means, or what to think of it. By Eleanor Hildebrandt and Zoë Jackson - The Minnesota Star Tribune - March 19, 2026 at 6:26PM

The story is paywalled, but basically the slogan had been "Driven to Discover" which is something a university would be expected to say.

"Leave a Future" makes me think of putting a baby onto somebody's doorstep, ringing the bell and getting out of sight before the door opens.

But, that's me.

Strib noted the U Foundation and the U somehow splitting costs apparently have used the firm "Rise and Shine Partners" for marketing services - no shit, "Rise and Shine." Slogan specialists, apparently. A brief early paragraphs excerpt -

Officials from the U were unavailable to comment for this story. The U’s foundation, which paid for the majority of $15 million contract with marketing firm Rise and Shine and Partners to help the U with branding over five years, also did not respond to a request for comment. Rise and Shine and Partners said it could not comment on active work.

At a March 6 meeting where U staff unveiled the new slogan, Susan Hagen, the U’s director of creative services, said the tagline is about evolving the university’s brand to prioritize education and service alongside research. She said research showed that the community wanted to “expand beyond a hard focus into just research.”

Hagen said the university’s branding needs “to be a little less Minnesota humble and a little more bold and proud.”

Susan Hagan is made by that multi-paragraph text to look like a skilled bullshitter, so rise and shine that thought for a while. Or whatever. More bold and proud? Huh?

"Pay your library fines" could also be a fine university slogan, for any university.

But leaving a future seems to mix tenses strangely, as Strib noted a student saying.

But back to my impression, that doorstoop baby is a future, and being left completes the thought. Tell me I am wrong.

"Get serious once you get here," is another good university slogan for any student not having gold family connections, where that golden family offspring can get by on "C" grade point average and do well as a graduate. Trump's son in law got through exHarvard after all, so perhaps Harvard should have a marketing slogan,"The Endowment Gains a Future." Who knows. 

Another slogan and leave it there, "Not Animal House." That indirectly suggests either a step better or worse in administrative chops than the fictional institution.

"Pay Tuition" seems too harsh. It's not about cash flow, is it?

To the extent slogan formation is like headlining, the Strib headline did sluff over the Rise and Shine people doing marketing services over five years, getting fifteen million over time, not for a one shot "Leave a Future" thing, and the clarification in the story arguably left the fleshing out bit too late in the story. Headlining 101 lore is do not misimpress, but hook the reader by ambiguity, such as,"The Iranians have shown multiple options after the first bomb dropped." A headline like that, the reader wonders, what "options?" You suck the reader into the story. 

This Strib headline gets the reader wondering, "What Internet thoughts?" It does work that way. Actually, "The Internet HAS Thoughts," would work as a headline for this blog, as in where do you go with a tagline like that? What "Thoughts?"

 

.