Commentary, Satire & Poetry
Because no one will pay to build His WALL-- Not Mexico, not Congress, not even the Wall Street Journal or Faux News, not anyone-- The PRESIDENT will send soldiers with guns To make sure Mexico does not invade. Nat. Guard will guard the desert (without shade) As long as Trump proclaims that they will stand On…
By John Frederick Kaufman In honor of World Poetry Day Couplets for those who don't betray The verse of stars, the vow of stones And meet the sinking sun alone-- As if a cell can bar a soul ... As if a whale can hide the whole. (Photo: Of Pieter Lastman, "Jonah and the…
So North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has invited President Trump to meet with him to discuss, reports state, possibly doing away with the North's nuclear weapons. This meeting will supposedly take place somewhere within two months. Much can happen in two months for much seems to happen every day, every hour in the Trump White…
Trump's Spin Cycle "There is no Chaos, only great Energy!" Said the guy trapped in the washing machine.
We can thank South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his negotiators for achieving what the Trump administration has not: an agreement by North Korea to discuss ending its nuclear weapons program. It was the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un , who actually made the first gesture toward peaceable discussion when he offered to send a…
Continue reading ➞ South Korea (Not U.S.) Makes Progress on Peace with Help from the North
"Tough Love" Trump will issue tariffs in "a very loving way." (He thinks that we will love him even when we lose our pay.)
By John Frederick Kaufman It is the opinion of The Pacific that the annual joint military exercises involving the United States and South Korea, which commenced again today, are not in the best interests of peace in that part of Asia. While the war games are said to be defensive in nature, they act as…
Continue reading ➞ U.S./South Korea Joint Military Exercises Needlessly Increase Chances of War
By Rumple Oxbridge, liberal lyricist It's sad to see, the president said, knocking down our metal-molded racist generals green with age. Once such men were all the rage, killing to keep owning slaves. You gotta admit, they looked brave on their green horses, on pedestals, so "beautiful" were those generals as all the monuments…
Continue reading ➞ Rumple Oxbridge: “Ode About Not Missing Statues of Racist Generals”
By John Frederick Kaufman Reports from the violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia last Saturday make clear that the "Unite the Right" marchers, many of whom sported and voiced the hallmarks of white supremacy, had come prepared (in some cases armed with semi-automatic firearms) to instigate violence in the quiet college town. But the Charlottesville police…
"The Vacation-Taker Denier in Chief" at NY Times "Google Doesn't Want What's Best for Us" at NY Times "In the republic of marriage": Garrison Keillor at The Capital Times
"Militarizing the Presidency" at Boston Review "Robert Jeffress Gives Trump God's Permission to Launch War Against North Korea" at Right Wing Watch "Disarmament Shouldn't Be a Precondition for Negotiations with North Korea" at Institute for Policy Studies
The Pacific will be taking a print and nature sabbatical for awhile, not sure how long, perhaps the rest of the spring and summer. Thanks to readers and followers for their support.
The Pacific regrets it will not be posting much satire for the next few days due to the reality show some refer to as The White House. We simply cannot compete with such real-life unintentional confusion and humor. So our apologies. Once political reality returns to the merely abnormal (probably Monday), we will return for your…
By Rumple Oxbridge, liberal lyricist A journalist of the conservative type has branded my satirical prayer "a crime against the idea of verse." Well, well. I plead guilty in this literary sense: my verse lacks the sort of literariness that isn't concerned with truth or nonsense. In other words, it's a verse of ideas that doesn't…
Continue reading ➞ Rumple Oxbridge: “Liberal Verse is No Crime”
(Originally published on OtherWords.org, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies. Copyrighted under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported license.) Trump is using sympathetic out-of-work miners as a cover for what is really just a handout to dirty industry. By Jill Richardson When Barack Obama announced the Clean Power Plan, Scientific American used his own…
Continue reading ➞ Jill Richardson: Gutting Climate Protections Won’t Bring Back Coal Jobs
Arguing against military retaliation/intervention is not appeasement or surrender; it is an attempt to limit violence everywhere . . .
With the announcement today that the Obama administration will send 50 U.S. ground troops to northern Syria to "advise and assist" rebel groups fighting the Islamic State, many have noted that President Obama is breaking a promise he made repeatedly to Americans not to put troops on the ground in Syria. The administration claims that the special…
Continue reading ➞ All Democrats should oppose sending U.S. ground troops to Syria
There are basically two ways to honor American victims of war and terrorist violence: pound our patriotic chests and talk tough about destroying "the enemy" or work through peaceable means to end war and terrorism. I believe the latter choice is the most honorable and ultimately effective way to honor the memory of the Americans killed fourteen years…
Continue reading ➞ Best to Honor Victims of 9/11 by Working for Peace
According to the latest CNN poll, Wisconsin's Gov. Scott Walker is down to 5% in the race for Republican presidential nominee, a percentage he shares with Mike Huckabee. Donald Trump still trumps the rest of the Republican field by a growing margin. Ludicrousness reigns. Yes, there is such a thing as poetic justice. P.S.-- Gov.…
Continue reading ➞ Gov. Scott Walker now favored by only 5% of Republicans
(Photo of Russ Feingold in Public Domain) By John Kaufman The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's columnist Dan Bice looked up former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold's Progressives United PAC on OpenSecrets.org and found that a lot more was spent on fundraising and staff salaries than on direct contributions to candidates. This was supposedly big news because Feingold has championed…
