Thursday, October 15, 2026
PMT: Is She a Lawyer?
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Socialist Bear
The Hundred-Acre Wood: Socialist Hellhole
By Mark Osler
I believe it was the great Lee Greenwood who taught us an important lesson in song: “Children are the future/teach them well/and let them lead the way.” It is certainly true that there is no future if our children are misled! That is why I was so shocked to find that my grandson had come home from public school with a book about a character I will refer to here only as “Socialist Bear” (the name used in the book is disgustingly scatological and I refuse to repeat it in print).
Almost the first thing we learn about Socialist Bear is that he is an avid follower of Communist Godfather Bernie Sanders. An illustration shows the bear sitting idly (no doubt waiting for a welfare check) in front of his home below a large sign simply reading “Sanders.” And if we missed the point the text accompanying the simplistic drawing reveals that Socialist Bear “lived in a forest all by himself under the name of Sanders.” At this point I had a pretty good idea of where things were going—straight to some kind of idealized Bernie-delusional Communist/Socialist society. I was right.
In the book’s first lesson, Socialist Bear gets busy grabbing free stuff. He climbs a tree and steals some honey and acts as if he is somehow entitled to it—because of course the world owes him free food! In what could be a credo for the Dumbocratic elites, Socialist Bear concludes ”The only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey… And the only reason for making honey is so as I can eat it." [emphasis in the original] Getting stuff for free—the essence of socialism!
Then, of course, we meet his comrades, each of whom exemplifies a socialist “virtue.” One, fittingly, is identified only as “Piglet.” This character really hits all the marks for our burgeoning American socialists. Piglet appears to be gender non-binary, parading around in a striped onesie-style outfit in the style of Taylor Swift. The aptly named “Piglet” seems to represent the immature socialist-voting population, as the young animal worshipfully follows Socialist Bear wherever he goes, with great enthusiasm.
Predictably, another of Socialist Bear’s buddies seems tailor-built to mock the idea of the traditional family. She is a single mother who keeps her child (“Roo”) jammed into a pocket all day. There is no sign of a father or any type of employment. Yet, like “Piglet,’ she seems to live off whatever she can cadge from those doing actual work. And that pocket must smell terrible!
Finally, there is a donkey character that clearly represents the mainstream Democrats who are now feeling threatened by Democratic Socialists—the donkey even looks like Chuck Schumer. The Donkey complains constantly about everything, just the way Schumer and his minions constantly complain about America. Whining is somehow portrayed as endearing, just as we see among the American leftist community.
The cast of characters in whole are portrayed as a warped DEI assemblage who lack any kind of cultural coherence. Apparently as a result of some kind of Biden-esque open borders policy, animals native to five different continents populate this patch of the woods: Socialist Bear is from North America, the kangaroo is from Australia, piglets are from Europe, tigers (there is a tiger) are from Africa, and woozles are from Asia. The costs of this unbridled invasion from foreign lands in terms of crime, etc. are, of course, never addressed.
The whole lot of them follow Socialist Bear as he completes absurd tasks which include finding the donkey’s tail, getting unstuck from a window after attempting to break into someone’s house to take their food, and aimlessly walking towards the North Pole (the location of all this appears to be Communist Vermont). The whole thing seems intended to train kids to believe that hard work is unnecessary and that the state will take care of everything. It is a world unencumbered by capitalism where no one has an actual job, seemingly making the “Hundred-Acre Wood” some kind of socialist nirvana.
In the end, Socialist Bear is revealed to be completely controlled by a European, which is of course one of the true goals of American socialism. He is even shown being dragged by one foot up the stairway to socialized medicine.
As a good grandfather, I threw the book in the trash and made my grandson promise that instead of reading that kind of nonsense he would come over after school and watch television with me. That way he can at least learn what is really going on in the world.
We must be vigilant; creeping socialism is everywhere. We just need to educate ourselves and look for it!
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
5 Big Post-Trump Questions
Monday, October 12, 2026
Book recs via haiku
to pay attention and to
walk with awareness.
“Trudeau and Doonesbury”
A walk through my high school and
college years, laughing.
Ask, “Is a River
Alive?” Yes, without question.
A wisdom Koan!
“Theo of Golden,”
A great beach read adventure
Revealed in the end!
It is a Catch-22 see,
So crazy you fly.
disappoints. Bean trees, Pigs in
Heaven start us off.
The Book Woman of
Troublesome Creek — good and bad in Appalachia.
“And the creator
loves pizzazz” Annie Dillard
shares her world with us.
Of Golden ... now I'm reading
Calamity Club.
Sigurd O's Listening Point
Pine trees, lakes, blue skies, forests.
Best stunning book club surprise
Spare, deep, eloquent.
Sunday, October 11, 2026
Sunday Reflection: Government Killing
“What we’re seeing is the brutality of the institution of the death penalty coming back into public focus,” said Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis who has studied the death penalty. “Tennessee didn’t intend to do that; the federal government does.”
“Given that there has been a rise in executions,” he added, “it’s a good time to have that debate.”
Josh Howerton, the pastor of Lakepointe Church, an evangelical congregation with locations in and around Dallas, argued on social media that executions in the Bible were carried out publicly as deterrents.
“I do not think you can say it’s unbiblical or automatically wrong,” he said of public executions, noting passages that described public stonings.
Saturday, October 10, 2026
"The All-American Dysfunctional Family"
Friday, October 09, 2026
Haiku Friday: Book recommendations






