Thursday, October 15, 2026

 

PMT: Is She a Lawyer?

 


Donald Trump's new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, seems to be having a rough first week. The New York Times, for one thing, seems to be on her case for calling herself a "lawyer."

My understanding has always been that if you graduate from law school you are a "lawyer" and if you have passed the bar you are an "attorney-at-law" or "attorney." The evidence is that she graduated from law school but did not take (or did not pass) the bar. She is fine to call herself a lawyer, so long as she doesn't start practicing law without a license. It doesn't appear she has done that.

At any rate, she is not doing a legal job. You don't need any qualifications at all to be press secretary. 

The problem is that she doesn't seem to be very good at that, based on her first performance at the podium. But... it's a first performance. Maybe she will get better.

Just don't hire her if you get arrested!



Wednesday, October 14, 2026

 

Socialist Bear

 


[I wrote this as an op-ed, but the satire was lost on the editors, some of whom were not familiar with Winnie-the-Pooh, or the opening lines of Whitney Houston's "The Greatest Love of All." I offer it now here, in the hope that my Razorites are able to get where I am going with it]

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

 


After the election in 2028 (and what I predict will be a tumultuous two years of divided government), whatever administration takes over-- of either party-- is going to have to face 5 big questions:

1) What to do about Social Security

Social Security is going to be insolvent within 10 years without serious action. There are no easy choices. Just two hard ones: lower benefits or raise taxes.

2) Creating a stable immigration policy

The Trump policy has been a bulldozer. To maintain labor markets and retain talent, a more stable policy must be developed.

3) Actually regulating A.I.

Trump refuses to go there. Congress is unable to without a super-majority or Trump. But this stuff is going to get really weird really fast.

4) Rebuilding international relationships and U.S. Identity

Who are we to the rest of the world? We have broken from our past as trusted allies and a safe economic partner. Do we try to go back there?

5) The national debt

Shocking, and the fault of both parties. This one... no, they don't have to deal with it. They can ignore it, as we have since the Clinton era. But the harms will compound.

Monday, October 12, 2026

 

Book recs via haiku

 So much to read! There are some great recs in here...

CraigA has some thoughts I love:

“Raising Haire,” asking us
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!

And it is wonderful to see the Medievalist back with us:

Yossarian won't fly,
It is a Catch-22 see,
So crazy you fly.

Des, I will look into these:

Kingsolver never
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.

Christine has two recs in one poem (and a crossover with Craig:

So enjoyed Theo
Of Golden ... now I'm reading
Calamity Club.

John, I need to look this one up!:

Singing wilderness
Sigurd O's Listening Point
Pine trees, lakes, blue skies, forests.

And Anonymous, I will!:

Read Small Things Like These
Best stunning book club surprise
Spare, deep, eloquent.



Sunday, October 11, 2026

 

Sunday Reflection: Government Killing

 


On Friday, I was hard at work in the library on my clemency book. A call came in from a New York Times reporter, so I stepped outside to talk to him for a minute, leaning against a blaze-red maple. He didn't want to talk about clemency-- he wanted, instead, to discuss what is going on with the death penalty: specifically, the failed attempt to execute Christa Pike in Tennessee and the planned public execution by the federal government of Nidal Hasan. In that article, Executions are Again on the Mind of a Divided Public, I said this:

“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.”

I'm glad that the Times included the word "brutal," because it is a brutal process. Yes, the crimes were brutal, but the cycle of violence needs to stop-- and the rational actors, the governments, need to be the ones to model that. 

Later in the article, I was gobsmacked by this quote:

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.


Yes, in the Old Testament, people were stoned to death. But in John 8 we have Jesus himself brought to observe a legal stoning (of a woman caught in adultery) and he told the people holding stones "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"-- he literally tells them they don't have the moral authority to kill her!

I continue to be shocked at the way Christians can pluck things from the Old Testament and ignore the teaching and example of Jesus.



Saturday, October 10, 2026

 

"The All-American Dysfunctional Family"

 



Friday, October 09, 2026

 

Haiku Friday: Book recommendations

 


The weather is getting cooler, and it is nearly time to get the fireplace tuned up. That means it is reading season! Let's throw out some book recommendations this week, in haiku. Here, I will go first:

"Man's Search for Meaning,"
Victor Frankl tells us how
Bad that things can get.

Now it is your turn! Just use the 5/7/5 syllable pattern, and have some fun!

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