October 23, 2026 (Vol.20 No. 38) - Pete Hegseth wanted it for its symbolism. Instead, it has become a metaphor for his and his president's incompetence.

When former Fox News commentator and current tattooed-freak Pete Hegseth was appointed Secretary of Defense, he felt he needed to project an image of strength. So right after he spent your tax dollars for a make-up room for his all-too-often television appearances and just before he unilaterally decided to rename his agency "The War Department," he decided to steal a real hero's valor by having Dwight David Eisenhower's office globe (above) shipped to his office. After all, if Ike (sans make-up and eyeliner) looked so masculine standing beside it, just think of how it could burnish Pansy-Ass Pete's image. According to NBC News: "The historic American artifact is cataloged and kept by the U.S. Army Center of Military History (CMH) but displayed in the Pentagon. The globe was kept in a senior Army office in the Pentagon, the officials said. Rather than wait for Army historians or CMH to move the globe, several staffers from Hegseth’s office tried to do so themselves, dropping it, creating a hole in the lower part of it and damaging another area, the officials said."

Oops!

Isn't that the perfect metaphor for the Trump Administration? In an attempt to project an image of strength, they demonstrate how impulsive, clumsy and weak they really are and, in the process, create global chaos. The gang that couldn't shoot straight has shown us once again their total disregard for customs and traditions most American hold dear.

As you can no doubt discern, this incident with the Eisenhower globe angers me. First, I am an admirer of Eisenhower, one of the greatest Americans in our history. To callously damage a historically significant artifact is unforgivable. As a historian, I am repulsed by this Administration's total disregard for American customs and traditions. As I have noted in this space before, history doesn't necessarily repeat itself, but it often rhymes. There is much the Trump crowd can learn from Eisenhower's calm and measured leadership. Instead, Trump's Band of Bozos carelessly used artifacts from Ike's life to wrap themselves in a greatest that they will never achieve.. Finally, as an American, I am offended by Trump'a and Hegseth's thoughtless and reckless attempt to reshape the Nation's Capitol. From the East Wing of the White House, to the Reflecting Pool, to the golf course at East Potomac Park and now to the iconic Eisenhower globe, everything this crowd touches dies.

Fortunately, most scars do heal. When Trump is gone - and Lord, what a happy day that will be - much of the physical damage he has done can be removed and repaired. I don't know whether the Eisenhower globe can be fixed, but at least it will be back into the hands of responsible adults who appreciate its historical significance. And, if we are lucky, there will be new historical artifacts from the prison cells from which members of the Trump crowd were incarcerated. That's it for now. Fear the Turtle.

October 17, 2026 (Vol.20 No. 37) - Poor Katie Zacharia. Like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming train, the latest in the line of Trump bimbos managed to crash and burn in just five days. But let's not dump upon this fragile and brainwashed little creature. She was set up for failure by a President who knows nothing these days but failure.

Zacharia didn't even last long enough in the much-abused position of Trump press secretary for her to be parodied on Saturday Night Live. First, there was her disastrous 15-minute, three-question, calling Trump her "Daddy" news briefing. Then there was the question of her qualifications. She called herself an attorney when she had never even passed the bar. Maybe she conflated working behind a bar as passing it. Finally, she made a series of embarrassing appearances on conservative media outlets that even tested the patience of Sean Hannity.

And now she is gone. It used to be that we measured White House appointments by "Scaramuccis," the 11 days Anthony Scaramucci foundered as press secretary. We will now call a five-day term of office a "Zacharia."

Zacharia was just the latest in a series of incompetent Trump White House press secretaries. She made Sean Spicer and Anthony Scaramucci look smooth. Even Karoline Levitt, the beauty school dropout whom I have already used this space to eviscerate, was better than this blonde Barbie. But, back to my original premise, this pattern of clueless and blindly obedient press secretaries is Donald Trump's fault. The White House press secretary has historically been a conduit of information between the President and the public. A good press secretary not only presents the administration's view of the world, he or she also advises the President on public concerns. However, that is not the case in this White House. The chief requirements for being Donald Trump's mouthpiece is blind loyalty, blonde hair and an ability to bullshit and blather. And the poor, dumb - most people don't know there a "b" in "dumb" - son-of-a-bitch in the Oval Office wonders why his approval rating is below that of Adolf Hitler.

I feel the need to remind you that I know what I am talking about. I used to be a press secretary - although we rarely used that term - for a small college and within a gubernatorial administration before I joined the University of Kansas faculty and taught public relations for nearly three decades. So when I say there needs to be a two-way relationship between the White House and the publics it is supposed to serve, this is not pie-in-sky dreaming. It is how democratic societies are supposed to work. The position of White House Press Secretary should be treated as the critically important position it is and not as an afterthought and reward for pretty young girls who flatter their boss.

It's no secret that Donald Trump does not like the press. But like moth drawn to a flame, he can't live without it. It was his ability to manipulate the media by drowning out all opposition with ludicrous, lubricous - look it up - and often obscene pronouncements that helped him become president. Fittingly, those same forces are now in the process of destroying his presidency. Even Lloyd Bridges, who in 1958 starred in a TV series called Sea Hunt, was never as far under water as Donald Trump is. If justice is to be done - and I think it will be - this fat, addle-brained, shell-of-a-man will face an electoral thumping next month the likes of which we haven't seen in decades.

And may God Bless America. That's it for now. Fear the Turtle.

October 16, 2026 (Vol.20 No. 38) - The classic definition of insanity is the expectation of a different outcome while doing the same thing over and over again. That sums up America’s gun policies. “Thoughts and prayers” will not stop gun violence. Tighter gun laws will.

Just yesterday, another small community experienced the horror of gun violence. This time, it was Bend, Oregon, where three children and a teacher were killed by a gun-wielding 16-year-old before citizen with a gun intervened and killed the shooter. While the police are to be commended for their rapid response, arriving within two minutes of the first reports of gunfire, as should the private citizen who quickly intervened, we need to ask ourselves why do we continue to tolerate having our schools resemble Dodge City in the 1880s?

As of today, there have been at least 46 school-shooting incidents at K-12 schools and college campuses this school year. And it is only October. My position on the matter of gun control is well-known. We can preserve Second Amendment rights to gun ownership while instituting reasonable safeguards against assault weapons with high volume ammunition magazines. Nobody’s rights are being violated by restricting access to assault military-style weapons. To be fair, I do not know very much about either the Oregon shooter or his weapon at the time of this writing. However, that doesn’t really matter in the face of yet another mass casualty shooting. How in hell does a 16 year-old have access to “long gun” and are we comforted by the prospect of gun-wielding well-intentioned individuals administrating frontier justice?

I wrote about the mindset of shooters in my book Thirteen Minutes: Death of an American High School. It is a fact-based story about the shooting at a fictional Midwestern high school. The people in my made-up story are no better off than the good people of Bend, Oregon, who had been satisfied with the delusional mindset that “It can’t happen here.” And yet it does, over and over and over and over again. And, as I note in my book, there is no single profile of a mass casualty shooter. The only common sense approach is to limit access to these weapons and ammunition. However, in the current political environment, that’s not going to happen.

I am frustrated and angry. And considering the current state of civil society in the United States, I am also scared.Remember, many of those red-neck bastards who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, were heavily armed. And what have we done to insure that such a travesty could not happen again? Not a damn thing, that’s what. Until we, as a civil society, are willing to take reasonable steps to protect the safety of our kids in their classrooms, we will, literally, remain under the gun. That's it for now. Fear the Turtle.

October 9, 2026 (Vol.20 No. 37) - A message to my fellow Kansans: Do you want to go back to the days of Brownbackikstan?

For those who unfamiliar, I am referring to the governorship of Sam Brownback, whose pro-big business policies of the 2010's drove the Kansas economy into the toilet. He was the most unpopular governor in the country. The state was finally stabilized when voters elected an adult, Laura Kelly, to serve as governor. Now, as Kelly is term-limited, she is getting ready to turn over the reins of state government to either Republican House Speaker Ty Masterson or Democrat State Senator Cindy Holscher. A New York Times poll says Masterson has a five-point lead over Holscher. If that poll is true - we won't really know for three weeks if it is - then Kansans had better prepare themselves for Brownbackistan II, a place where the government gives to the rich by taking away from the poor.

What will Masterson do if he becomes governor? He says he wants to end the "tax squeeze" on Kansans by proposing a $2 billion tax cut. Never mind that the Tax Foundation ranks the state's tax burden in the middle of all the states in the Union. What Ty doesn't say is how he will pay for his tax break, nor that it will mostly benefit the wealthy. But since he has taken credit for Brownback's tax plan, we can reasonably guess where the money will come from: Education, roads and rural health care. When it comes to education, Masterson says the schools should focus on reading and math - and not what he calls "woke nonsense" of DEI. Of course, that "woke nonsense" is about the kinds of things that are important for children to learn to live in and eventually lead a civil society. And even if Masterson is correct, how will he be able to have our kids focusing on reading and math if he guts the education budget in favor this tax breaks?

Masterson says he wants to defend "Kansas values." However, his Browbackian approach to governance will do the opposite. It is my experience that Kansans value education, fairness, equal opportunity, and the right to choose their own path without government interference. Recent votes against anti-abortion and court-stacking measures support my judgement. If elected, a Masterson-led state government will intrusively attempt to dictate what Kansans should and should not do. Under his leadership in the State Senate, Kansas state government has already invaded the state's high school and college classrooms, eliminating what he has called "woke" DEI policies. He and those of his ilk are ignoring an undeniable, unavoidable and uncomfortable truth: Within the next 15 years, the United States will become of majority-minority country where non-white residents outnumber whites. It's going to happen, and there isn't a damn thing Masterson can do about it. So why not embrace the change instead for running and hiding from it like a scared little boy? Keep in mind that the Republicans already have supermajorities in the state House and Senate. Without a the checks and balances of a Democrat governor like Kelly or Holscher, imagines the kind of mischief the Neo-con ultra-conservatives will impose upon you.

Both Masterson and his opponent voted in favor of a bill granting 10-year state and local tax exemptions to data centers in 2025. Now, 18-months later, the two candidates are taking opposite stances. Holscher says there should be a freeze on new data centers until the financial and ecological impacts of these water and energy hungry facilities are introduced into rural communities. For his part, Masterson is accusing Holscher of "flip-flopping." Of course, he doesn't mention the $1 million campaign contribution his campaign received from IT sources. Which kind of leader do you want, one that is willing to reconsider her position when new facts emerge or one who is in the pockets of the nation's "Tech Bros?"

I don't trust Masterson. Ty lies. He says he supports public education while planning to gut it. He says he supports rural health care when the votes he has taken on the subject over the years tells us a different story. He says he will protect "Kansas values" while his legislative agenda closely mirrors that of Donald Trump's top hatchet-man, Stephen Miller. (Ask the farmers, ranchers and meat packers of Western Kansas what they thinks of ICE's immigrant round-up.) The essential truth is this: When it comes to the issues that matter most to Kansans, Ty lies. And if you do not want to go back to the bad old days of Brownbackistan, then Masterson should not be our next governor. That's it for now. Fear the Turtle.

October 3, 2026 (Vol.20 No. 36) - The junior U.S. Senator from the state of Kansas is in a heap of trouble. After serving as Donald Trump's lapdog for the past six years, he now finds himself in a fight for his political life and, like a lot of other Trump toadies this fall, he is losing.

Quack Marshall has more luggage than your typical Samsonite store. First, there's the question of his residency. He'd have you believe that he lives in a small, three-bedroom cabin near St. John in south-central Kansas. But there's a paper trail that suggests his $1.2 million Sarasota, Florida, home is where he spends most of his time. And the more he denies it, the less credible he becomes. Then there's the question of his support for Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, which has had a devastating impact on Kansans. It's hard to tout tax relief for billionaires while cutting SNAP benefits and healthcare for thousands of his constituents. Then there is Marshall's support for Trump's costly and mismanaged war against Iran. On several occasions, Marshall could have been the deciding vote to force Trump to follow the War Powers Act. Instead, he has blindly followed Trump, Hegseth & Company down an inflationary rabbit hole with no end in sight. And one should never forget that Marshall's first act as a U.S. Senator was to try to overturn the election of Joe Biden as president. Of course, the biggest albatross around Quack Marshall's neck is Donald Trump, who is historically unpopular. Trump wants this election to be a referendum on his presidency. Democrats could not agree more.

But there's more. Roger the Dodger - he's avoided town halls with his constituents for the past 19 months - has come under scrutiny for his business practices as a doctor. He's been suing his patients for past-due bills and having some arrested while charging exorbitant interest rates. All of this is going on as he has repeatedly voted against expanding Medicare for Kansans in need. No, this guy ain't no Dr. Marcus Welby. He's also noted for having a bad temper. He used his influence to get out of a legal jam prior to joining the Senate. He also famously told voters hurt by the war-driven rapid rise of gas and diesel prices to suck it up. In short, Roger Marshall is not a very nice man.

Contrast and compare Marshall with his opponent, Adam Hamilton, who most pundits say has a real shot of winning Marshall's seat for the Democrats. By all accounts, Hamilton, pastor of the largest Methodist congregation in the country, is a nice and compassionate man. He is also one who says he is willing to reach across the aisle and work with Republicans to solve problems important to Kansans. Hamilton dominated Marshall during their recent debate at the Kansas State Fair. After running away from his Democrat challenger, Marshall is now open to a second debate on live television October 21. That and the knowledge that the Republicans have decided to start pouring millions of dollars into the Kansas senate race is a sure sign that Quack Marshall, politically speaking, may soon be a dead duck. That's it for now. Fear the Turtle.