Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread III
- Thread starter Peabody-Martini
- Start date
"Big" Bill Stoughton is a master of "Clean Graft" and apparently he has a good eye for talent with his mentoring of James Hendrix who is going to be his liaison to the African-American voters who are more up for grabs without the IOTL Republican Party Southern Strategy.
A Nixon that does not have his IOTL resentment and paranoia becoming President ITTL is something that has great potential and with no Saudi Arabia dominating the Middle East oil supply and a Russia with more technological resources should mean that the Stagflation of the Seventies is practically butterflied away.
Glad to see how Sophie and Ziska are helping each other deal with their problems without making a big deal of it.
A Nixon that does not have his IOTL resentment and paranoia becoming President ITTL is something that has great potential and with no Saudi Arabia dominating the Middle East oil supply and a Russia with more technological resources should mean that the Stagflation of the Seventies is practically butterflied away.
Glad to see how Sophie and Ziska are helping each other deal with their problems without making a big deal of it.
To our American readers, I would like to ask if the situation in the USA in TL is seeming more bipartisan as the uniting ideolgical enemy is missing?
Because it seems to me that the split is happening right now or was that also an issue in OTL only papered over by the common enemy?
I ask as it seems more pronounced then OTL to me, but as an European that has not lived then it is hard to tell.
Because it seems to me that the split is happening right now or was that also an issue in OTL only papered over by the common enemy?
I ask as it seems more pronounced then OTL to me, but as an European that has not lived then it is hard to tell.
The present situation in TTL in the United States is what existed before the Cold War, McCarthyism, and Newt Gingrich created the idea that there were no honest disagreements, ever. Nelson Rockefeller was considered a liberal Republican and in TTL the Dixiecrats remain within the Democratic Party for now. At the same time, the Soviet Union is gone and the German Empire isn't seen as being an existential threat. As we progress through the last year of the 1960's and into 70's things will get very interesting.
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Honestly respect people who get over their disabilities and deal with it in daily life. I would feel like utter crap if I couldn't do even a 1/4th of the stuff I can do now. I can honestly say that I thank God or whatever that I can walk, run, and do whatever I want with very little discomfort. Here is to hoping the world becomes more accessible to people in wheel chairs, crutches, and whatever other prosthesis is needed to get to live a normal life. Cheers.
So Boeing is still a player on the international stage, at least for now and as long as petty party politics & old fashioned graft don't scupper their plans. As for the big plane market being dominated by Boeing & Focke-Wolfe-Dornier, what are the next tier doing? Are Lockheed & Douglas rising to the challenge? Does British Aerospace exist or are Short Brothers, Avro, Bristol, Vickers-Supermarine still independent? And did Ilyushin and Antonov survive the war & the return of the Romanovs? How long before Russian pride demands a long-haul wide body commercial aircraft of their own?
With Jimi Hendrix and his experiences in the South; this could set him up to play a significant role in a future Nixon administration. Assuming, of course, that a such charismatic & talented Black politician survives his next election tour of the region. Pressure ITTL's America seems to be building to a very dangerous level, giving rise to what will go down in (alt-)history as "interesting times".
Good to see that Kat's intervention with Sophie & Ziska is bearing fruit. That bicycle is going to get them both into so much trouble and, of course, so much fun.
With Jimi Hendrix and his experiences in the South; this could set him up to play a significant role in a future Nixon administration. Assuming, of course, that a such charismatic & talented Black politician survives his next election tour of the region. Pressure ITTL's America seems to be building to a very dangerous level, giving rise to what will go down in (alt-)history as "interesting times".
Good to see that Kat's intervention with Sophie & Ziska is bearing fruit. That bicycle is going to get them both into so much trouble and, of course, so much fun.
In this story it's been in service for a while with both Canada and Germany.
I now have a vision of Ziska, crashing her bike, a well meaning stranger running up to help, and said stranger seeing Ziska's leg a couple of feet away from her and then fainting. Ambulance then has to be called for stranger. It would give the two of them a great story for years to come.
many, many years ago, during my epic Army career, (both months of it), there was a guy going through his trade training who had lost the lower part of one of his legs in a road accident, (I think it was below the knee), anyway. Anyway, his favourite trick was to sit the NAAFI bar with his leg turned the wrong way and just act like it was normal. Caught quite a few of us out.
No, Stoughton will want to stay as Speaker, he has more power that way. Unless somethings happens to the Democrats in congress he will be, in some ways, more powerful than the President in some matters. Anything that has to do with taxes and money, the President will have to bring him onboard early in the process and let him actually run the show in the House. Lots of opportunity for the right individuals and their supports in this case. Foreign policy is run out of the Senate so it will depend on who the Majority leader is and how well he gets along with the President at the time.
My take is that IOTL JFK runs and wins the Congressional District that the ITTL Speaker Stoughton is in.
Basically "Big" Bill Stoughton is a combination of IOTL Sam Rayburn and Thomas "Tip" O'Neill who did replaced JFK in the same district after JFK won his Senate race in 1952.
Years ago, back in high school, one of my classmates had a glass eye (Spanish made, couldn't tell it was fake). He used to take it out from time to time "To keep an eye on [insert thing here]" if he had to leave class/hall for some reason or just to clean it if it felt gritty. His favourite prank was to pretend to sneeze and 'pop' his eye out at the same time.
One day he genuinely forgot we had a brand new, fresh-out-of-teachers-college teacher (she'd been at school for a week), pulled his eye out to clean it, and she freaked because she didn't know he had a prosthetic eye. Full blown hysterical screaming from her; desperate scramble to replace his eye and reassure her that he was ok from him. She turned out to be a pretty good teacher in the end.
The Fighter/Bomber flown by Ben Hirsch is an Arado Ar-414 Pfeil, which happened to have been the result of a partnership with Avro Canada.
Care to guess what Pfeil means?
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