October 12, 1864

WASHINGTON (Routers) Amidst continuing insurgent action, and fearing disenfranchisement of a large part of the population and the almost certainty of even greater violence in the months ahead, many are now recommending that next month’s Presidential election be delayed until the broken nation can be pacified.

“It’s absurd to hold an election when so much of the country is in rebellion, and won’t accept its results,” said a spokesman for General McClellan’s campaign. “This election will be properly viewed as a farce, and simply provide an excuse for the insurgents in the southern and western regions of the country to continue to fight.”

Many Democrats are frustrated because they fear that with recent Union atrocities resulting from General Sherman’s brutal Atlanta campaign, the voters in the south of the country, which should be largely sympathetic to them and their candidate, will be demoralized and unable to show up at the polls. Moreover, even the “liberated” slaves will continue to support the insurgency in the face of such depravity on the part of the occupiers. To justify their position, they point out that, in fact, the insurgents continue to fight on, making the war seem inevitably unwinnable. Just last week, at Alatoona Pass, they inflicted over 700 Union casualties on General Sherman’s troops.

Even parts of the country that the Unionists claim have been pacified remain under threat. Armed insurgents, often inflamed by the ruthless persecution of southern sympathizers, have taken Union men from their homes, whipped them, and on some occasions, shot them. Thousands have been terrorized even in central and southern Illinois. Gangs of rebel sympathizers from Missouri, opportunistic horse thieves and other criminals, and deserters have joined with the Illinois guerillas to threaten entire towns.

In response, both the War Department and the State Department have released a joint statement, claiming that postponing the fall election would only grant an unearned victory to the rebels, and show them that their terroristic tactics can be successful.

“While we understand General McClellan’s concern that this election is unwinnable for him in light of recent Union victories–victories, we should add, to which he contributed nothing–delaying the election would be a tragic mistake. For three score and fifteen years, this nation has regularly held elections per the Constitution, in war and in peace. We stand unique in the world in our ongoing commitment to free elections, and letting the people speak. It is all the more important to maintain that unsullied record in the face of the greatest crisis to face our young nation. In fact, we quote the president with an excerpt from an upcoming speech: ‘We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.'”

This statement has failed to satisfy administration critics. “It’s clear that Secretary Stanton never had a plan for the pacification of this region after Sherman’s brutal invasion,” grumbled an undersecretary at the War Department, who wished to remain nameless.

Others note that it just shows the continuing mistake of going to war on false pretenses. “The president said that this was about keeping the Union together, but with the Emancipation Declaration two years ago, we can now all see that this was a lie, and that it was only an excuse to free slaves, and destroy the southern economy for the benefit of rich northern industrialists,” a Copperhead campaign staffer said. “It’s unreasonable to think that we will ever be able to defeat this enemy, fighting on their home ground against foreign occupation.”

He continued, “…how can we have an election in which large numbers of the electorate are effectively cut off from the political process? All it will do is prolong the day until the nation can coalesce, if that’s even ever possible. It would probably be better to simply admit right now that trying to build a country out of so many fractious viewpoints, cultures and religions was a mistake born of ignorance of history.”

NEW YORK (APUPI) After several months, many thousands of legal hours billed, and several barrels of latte consumed, the independent report on CBS’ flawed reporting of the Emperor’s new clothes has been released, to the relief of network executives who feared much worse. While several producers have been asked to resign, Dan Rather will continue to report on Imperial fashion, and the report verified that the story may still have been fake, but accurate.

The network had previously reported that the Emperor had a new wardrobe, and provided footage of him walking down the street in it, waving to the crowds. But after a little boy at the anti-Imperial Free Republic website pointed out that the Emperor was, in fact, dressed only in his birthday suit, a media storm broke out over the apparent controversy, putting Dan Rather and his network on the defensive, and resulting in the appointment of an independent commission to discover how such apparent misreporting had happened.

The commission got quickly to work, and investigated the situation in great depth, carefully examining the footage themselves, and visited web sites in which several bloggers had taken pictures of themselves with and without clothing, to demonstrate the difference. They also spent many exhaustive hours viewing and documenting scholarly sites on the internet, as other potential examples of clothesless individuals for comparison.

In addition, they interviewed several clothing experts, one of whom demonstrated himself in a full flesh-colored body suit to show how one could appear to be naked while fully clothed. A self-proclaimed professor of Nude Queer Theory at Berkeley even wrote a dissertation on how it was possible, and even likely, for homophobic audiences to fantasize a nude Emperor out of subliminal fear of the power of the nude male body. This study was roundly criticized by numerous bloggers, particularly when it was revealed that he had no actual credentials other than occasional weekends at nude beaches in Santa Cruz. In any event, it should be noted that no one so far has been able to produce a body suit that exactly replicates the nude look in the same manner as simply taking off one’s clothes.

According to the report “…after a thorough scrutiny of the footage of the Emperor’s march down the street, it’s impossible to find the slightest shred of clothing on him. Closeups show every pore and wrinkle on his body. Moles and other imperfections displayed on the Imperial body during the parade appear to match exactly royal medical records reluctantly supplied to this commission by the palace physician.”

The report continues, “…nonetheless, some experts claim that it’s possible to be fully garbed and yet appear to be naked, and in the face of conflicting data, we will probably never be able to know for certain whether or not he indeed was wearing any clothes.”

The report added, as additional and similar examples of the evidentiary state, that it is similarly impossible to authenticate with certainty whether or not O. J. Simpson murdered his wife, or Americans walked on the moon in 1969, or even whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow.

In addition, despite the fact that the producer of the program coordinated closely with the Imperial clothing industry in the production of the story, including breathless emails that said “I’d give anything to show how fabulous these new clothes are, and show up those skinflints who think that an Imperial wardrobe is a waste of taxpayer funds,” and a bumper sticker on her car saying “End Second-Class Royal Threads!,” there was no obvious political motivation for the rush to air of the parade.

Beleaguered CBS anchorman Dan Rather took the report as vindication as well. “If it ever, improbably, turns out that the Emperor really wasn’t wearing any clothes, I want to be the one to break that story,” he exclaimed. “I’d be as anxious as an armadillo in a flak-jacket factory to get that story out.”