It’s obvious by now that the toll paid in human lives exceeds any of the goals that Lincoln, et al, laid out when they dragged us into this war. It’s also obvious that you can’t justify the deaths of our young men with clever, folksy stories.
As we approach the 1864 elections, it’s plain that Lincoln is not the man to lead this nation forward. He needs to go back to Illinois and split rails and leave governance to more capable hands.
Of course, we can’t expect him to make this important decision himself. Perhaps his wife could intervene on behalf of the nation and talk some sense into the man, who flatters himself that he will regain the presidency despite the obvious signs that his candidacy is doomed.
It’s patently absurd for the President, in the face of failure after failure, and after having dismissed some of the most capable military men in the Union Army, to continue to believe that there are better times coming or that his misguided policies will advance us towards victory.
It is also clear that the public has no taste for the world promised by Mr. Lincoln and his allies. However you feel about such things, practicality dictates that the Republicans take a less revolutionary approach in the coming campaign if they expect to have any chance of attracting the votes necessary to retain the White House and Congress.
There is also the looming prospect of defeat, as Davis and the Confederacy have at least a chance of solving their economic woes while Lincoln has put the Union under such a debt load that there is no reasonable prospect of recovery.
The plain fact is clear to everyone: General McClellan and the Democrats are poised for a major victory in November unless the Republicans ditch Lincoln now and select someone with a better chance of winning the election and then bringing this regrettable war to a satisfactory ending.
We need action, and we need it immediately. The time for gibes and folksy tales are long since past. Lincoln must step down before he is cast down.
(The cartoons are genuine. The text is a fair approximation of what experts were saying. The intent is sarcasm.)
And another thing …
Clarity can be difficult in complex matters, and Luckovich and Bagley do well to point out the overall leanings of the McConnell Court towards catering to the interests of major corporations.
However, the decision casting down the Chevron precedent and putting regulatory rulings in the hands of law school graduates rather than qualified engineers may be closer to the accusation of selling out than the more obvious case alluded to here, rejecting the federal law against post-action payoffs.
In the ruling on “gratuities,” Justice Kavanaugh did not write that gifts and money given to politicians for doing the bidding of corporations should be legal. Rather, he said that state laws should govern the matter and that the federal law, as written, did not properly apply.
Jackson, Sotomayor and Kagan dissented, and not unreasonably. But the end result of the ruling was to place the matter in the hands of Congress, with Kavanaugh plainly stating that a federal law could, indeed, cover the matter if Congress wanted to write it.
There have been Congresses that would be eager to take up that challenge, and there have been Presidents who would have welcomed the chance to sign such a bill into law.
Much — and much more than this — depends on what happens in November.
Meanwhile, addressing the stripping of power from regulatory agencies should be on more cartoonists’ dockets.
As an Adirondacker, I wouldn’t want to see the full-on return of acid rain from Midwestern industry, and I’d rather it were controlled by the EPA, however imperfectly, than left up to Harlan Crow, who owns a lovely lakeside retreat there, with its own SCOTUS mascot.
Note, however, that Thomas joined in the decision to let the pollution continue for the time being.
Perhaps Harlan isn’t a fisherman.
And then there’s this:
Clay Jones responded to the Surgeon General’s call for a warning on social media with this cartoon and a blog entry in which he opined — and I’d tend to agree — that the warning would hardly be effective with such an addictive attraction.
I remember when warnings first appeared on cigarette packages. I had been smoking since I was 14 and, by then, 1966, I was 16, in high school and had a pack-a-day habit. But I was at least made aware of the hazards each time I picked up a pack, and it did help persuade me to quit.
At 34. But better late than never.
However, let’s talk timing, because Jones published his cartoon and blog on June 27, and he made the impassioned point that guns are also a health hazard and maybe deserve warning stickers, too.
He may not have been aware that, two days earlier, the Surgeon General had — without calling for stickers — echoed that concern:
Jones notes that stickers on rock music may have increased sales rather than discouraging them, and that “everybody knows” the hazards of social media just as “everybody knows” the hazards of smoking.
And both Jones and Jeff Stahler (AMS) expressed doubt over the efficacy of warning labels on guns, Jones apparently unaware of the Surgeon General’s concerns, Stahler in response to them.
It seems clear that everyone should know that guns can kill people, but so what? Most of my young friends began smoking by filching cigarettes from their parents, and we’ve seen the way too many parents are no more careful in how they store their guns.
Here’s where it leaves me: I’m glad the Surgeon General has spoken up about firearms, but we didn’t need to overthrow the Chevron precedent to put gun safety in the hands of judges. We’d done that long ago, and seen what happens when SCOTUS purports to be firearm experts.
Makes me wonder if they also think they know more about medicine than the Surgeon General? After all, they’ve also pronounced themselves qualified to speak about pharmaceuticals.
If a Republican Senate began appointing smokers to the bench, would the Tobacco Industry offer them gratuities afterwards?
I don’t know.
We should ask an expert.
So, the advice to Mr. Biden should not be that he drop out of the race now, but rather that after his re-election, he should avoid the therater!
(Theater)
SCOTUS seems more than a little happy to leave wolves in charge of looking after the sheep.
So, from now on, the six RW SC justices get all their medical treatment from people with law degrees, not medical degrees. All car and home repairs (including electrical and plumbing) are now performed by other judges. When they fly, the plane is piloted by a judge, not a qualified pilot.
It’s a poor comparison since, as the cartoons show, opposition to Lincoln’s candidacy was mostly fueled by ideological reasons. McClellan didn’t promise to be more effective at achieving Lincoln’s war aims; he proposed to abandon them, leave slavery intact, and probably agree to a division of the country. Horace Greeley (I assume some of these cartoons were printed in his New York Tribune) had criticized Lincoln in 1862 for being insufficiently anti-slavery, but by 1864 was advocating for a negotiated peace, which in practice meant disunion and slavery. Very few people who agreed with preserving the union, eradicating slavery, and carrying the war through to unconditional surrender supported anyone other than Lincoln.
In comparison, most of the people who are advocating for Biden to step aside agree with him ideologically; they just don’t think he will be able to beat Trump.
My dad is two years older than Biden. I love my dad, but I wouldn’t want hin driving a car. The President of the United States typically does not drive his own car, but I am not sure I would want someone who I wouldn’t trust behind the wheel of a car to be my only line of defense against fascism.
You’re not wrong, but that’s why I was purposefully vague, the point being that, even in a moment of obvious crisis, there were people willing to abandon the incumbent, including — as you note — some prepared to run up the white flag.
Going point-for-point in satire rarely works. I doubt Leibniz, had he still been alive, would have truly believed that the Lisbon earthquake was a good thing, but having Pangloss believe it made “Candide” a classic.
When old dad drives the car, he is solely responsible for the results. President Biden is not “driving” alone, but rather has a whole team working on implementing agreed goals.
The November election is not about just the man, but also the goals, the team, the direction we want to go. I feel confident in Biden and his team, and his tenure so far reinforces that confidence.
(It’s also about the Earth’s future, but you wouldn’t know that from the debate or the post-debate yapping).
In terms of running the country, I’m not worried about Biden driving the car into the ditch — as you say, he’s not really driving the car by himself.
But in terms of keeping us from all ending up in concentration camps, I’m very concerned, since Biden (and not his team) is the presidential candidate who is running against Trump. If Biden, as an individual, doesn’t win this election, we will all have to deal with the consequences.
It’s unlikely that Harris, Whitmer, or Newsom would pursue significantly different policies from Biden on any issue, and in fact they would probably be advised by most of the same people. However, Whitmer (in particular) would have a significantly better chance of beating Trump.
The math is simple. There are zero people who would vote for Biden who wouldn’t vote for Whitmer, but there are people who would vote for Whitmer who wouldn’t vote for Biden.
Democrats used to care about “electability,” while consistently being poor judges of it; this is why they chose Walter Mondale over Jesse Jackson (for all the good it did them), Michael Dukakis over Jesse Jackson (for all the good it did them), John Kerry over Howard Dean (for all the good it did them), Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders (for all the good it did them), and Joe Biden over Bernie Sanders (who was, and remains, one of the most popular politicians in the United States). But they bury their heads in the sand at the mounting evidence of Biden’s un-reelectability.
Unfortunately, the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been before.
Beautiful satire.
Clay Bennett today, though not satire, is beautifully predictive.
It’s not so much that judges will make regulatory decisions on their own, but that they no longer have to defer to Executive-branch expertise by default. They are freer to listen to and follow the experts provided by the industries being regulated. Industry experts, like SCOTUS justices, are compensated by the billionaire friends in the oligarchy.
1864 election spoiler alert: after Thomas Nast’s “Compromise with the South” cartoon was published in Harper’s Weekly and widely distributed as a poster…
>> President Abraham Lincoln called the artist “our best recruiting sergeant” and Ulysses Grant stated “he did as much as any man to preserve the Union and bring the war to an end.”
https://isuspecialcollections.wordpress.com/2021/12/20/the-father-of-santa-claus-thomas-nast
sorry, i intended this as a post, not a reply.
Here is a link to the “Compromise with the South” drawing in Harper’s Weekly:
https://books.google.com/books?id=JlmZUYrDH4IC&pg=PA573#v=onepage&q&f=false
Good one today. Thanks!
How much authority do originalists subscribe to Judicial Review, if it isn’t in the Constitution?
1864 election spoiler alert: after Thomas Nast’s “Compromise with the South” cartoon was published in Harper’s Weekly and widely distributed as a poster…
>> President Abraham Lincoln called the artist “our best recruiting sergeant” and Ulysses Grant stated “he did as much as any man to preserve the Union and bring the war to an end.”
https://isuspecialcollections.wordpress.com/2021/12/20/the-father-of-santa-claus-thomas-nast
Dedparate attempt to make Biden look good. AT the time he was considering his second term, he was 55, sound of mind, and not a pathetic old man concerned with creating a new world order ran by the rich.