Orange Tempest
- Thread starter Alternate History Geek
- Start date
I had my doubts about a storm of this scale devastating New England, the Maritime Provinces and beyond, but I suppose it's scientifically possible. The hitmen thing, though, is just WTF.
Apart from that, good show.
Marc A
I had my doubts about a storm of this scale devastating New England, the Maritime Provinces and beyond, but I suppose it's scientifically possible. The hitmen thing, though, is just WTF.
Apart from that, good show.
Marc A
Hmm, good point, I'll take it out.
I didn't do it!
I'm not particularly knowledgeable in those areas; anyone have any suggestions?
Also, I might or might not have an update today, but I'll try to have one up at least every other day if not more often.
I didn't - Obama merely took advantage of the Democratic landslide in Congress to push through a second, far more radical version which could never have passed were the Republican Party still a significant force in Congress.
Not when the Tea Party of today has radicalised virtually the entire Republican Party with their "NO COMPROMISE" message; the Depression-era GOP was willing to compromise to avoid utter destruction (which is what would have happened if they had been like today's Tea Party; the GOP would not have survived the Depression if they had been unable to compromise then), whereas today's Tea Party will never compromise, even when it is the only option to avoid defeat, resulting in them being much harder-hit by Igor than the Depression-era GOP would have been in a comparable situation.
Does that include John Hoeven? It'd be pretty impossible for him to lose, considering he won by 50 points OTL.
UPDATE!!!
"Unlike the Prime Minister here, I am not going to let the people of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and Prince Edward Island freeze to death just to help the government's bottom line!"
- Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff (Liberal\Etobicoke—Lakeshore), during a campaign speech in Windsor; he received thunderous applause.
--------------------
From Thousand Year Storm: Hurricane Igor and its Aftermath, by Meryl Fitzgavin, and Blue Giant: The Rise and Fall of Stephen Harper, by Suzanne Adams:
...Governor-General Michaëlle Jean dissolved Parliament on 26 November 2010, beginning the 43-day campaign period leading up to the 8 January general election, and for the most part, the trends begun before the vote of no confidence continued unabated through the early part of the campaign period; Harper's approval ratings and those of the Conservatives continued to plummet, a steady stream of MPs continued to desert the Conservatives in favour of the other parties, and New Reform and the Western Block slowly but steadily gained support and rogue MPs...
...Canada's Green Party, which had had only one MP in the Commons throughout their entire history up to this point, after MP for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country Blair Wilson was expelled from the Liberal Party, switched to the Greens a few months before the 2008 general election, and was not reelected, suddenly began to increase in popularity, in the same manner as its counterpart south of the border, as party leader Elizabeth May, standing for election in Central Nova, exhorted the populace of Canada to vote Green if they wanted to stop climate change from making Igor an every-year occurrence...
...The Bloc Quebecois continued to lose popularity as it continued to vacillate, a situation exacerbated when a Bloc MP made an inflammatory speech which said, in essence, "Quebec does not need Canada to babysit them, especially not when they make a botch of it!", conveniently forgetting that Quebec was finding itself stretched to the limit in trying to repair their own damage, and that the stream of federal aid coming into Quebec, significantly larger than the tiny trickle going to the Atlantic provinces (this situation was yet another of the many issues pulling people away from the Conservatives and the Bloc, especially those from Atlantic ridings but also significant numbers elsewhere), was the only thing preventing the relief effort in Quebec from collapsing, overwhelmed by the sheer scale of what needed to be done; the Bloc went into full scale collapse shortly afterward, when Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe publicly refused to expel the offending MP from the party caucus, only doing so a full week later, his hand forced by massive public protest, but by then it was far too late, as the Bloc started haemorrhaging MPs...
...As the Conservatives and the Bloc went down fast, the Liberals and New Democrats, both of which were surging, made an informal truce in order to avoid sabotaging their chances fighting each other and possibly allow one of the new upstart parties to slip through with a minority government, and both redoubled their efforts against the other parties; the Liberals' acceptance of the truce was likely triggered by nervousness about the NDP overtaking them and, if they won the most seats in the Commons, excluding them from the government, a possibility that would not have seemed possible before the Bloc imploded, but suddenly became very real when several Bloc MPs, disgusted at their old party, jumped ship to the New Democrats, and the NDP's polling in Quebec soared at the Bloc's expense, and consequently the Liberals chose to hedge their bets by accepting the truce and ensuring themselves a place in the new government even if they came in behind the New Democrats; later on, the Greens, their views overlapping considerably with those of the Liberals and NDP and showing the possibility of serving as a useful bridge between the two, also joined the budding coalition...
...Meanwhile, in the West, New Reform and the Western Block were steadily eating away at the Conservatives' support base from both sides, New Reform from the centrist side and the Western Block from the hard-right, and Prime Minister Harper found his prospects of staying, not just Prime Minister (a post which, privately, he had already given up much if not all hope of keeping), but even merely MP for Calgary Southwest, very much in doubt, as he faced a tight three-way race with a New Reformer and a Western Block member, along with candidates from the Liberals, NDP, and Greens, who, though they had no hope of winning, could potentially decide the election, tight as it was...
...As the election neared, Harper, seeing his party splinter apart for the second time in less than eighteen years, having seen his chances of remaining Prime Minister drop to essentially nil, and very much unsure that he would be able to hold onto even his own seat in the Commons, is said by some to have contemplated suicide, though, fortunately, if he did entertain the thought of taking his own life, he chose not to go through with it...
...Polling Day dawned clear and cold over much of Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and the three northern territories, but a snowstorm blanketed large areas of the Atlantic provinces with up to six centimetres of the white stuff (though fortunately voting did not have to be delayed in any riding, thanks to the heroic efforts of snowplow crews who ensured that the numerous families with extra mouths to feed, having taken in refugees with noplace else to go, could get to the polls without their newfound guests, unfamiliar with their new homes, getting lost and freezing to death in the cold), and the 8th was actually somewhat warmer than average, though quite cloudy, in much of British Columbia and to a lesser extent Alberta...
...The leaders of the seven major parties, plus many of those at the helms of the innumerable smaller parties that had little to no hope of actually winning any seats, stayed up very late that night, nervously waiting for the polls to close in British Columbia and the Yukon, and for the nationwide blackout of the election results (imposed every federal election to prevent Western voters from possibly being influenced by seeing the already-finalised results from the East) to end; when it finally did, Michael Ignatieff punched his fist in the air, Stephen Harper buried his head in his hands in despair at becoming only the third sitting Prime Minister to have simultaneously lost the Prime Ministership and his seat in the Commons (after Arthur Meighen in 1921 and 1926 and Kim Campbell in 1993) and then reached for his newly-acquired copy of Time and Chance, Elizabeth May smiled slightly before letting out a long yawn, Gilles Duceppe swayed and had to grab the edge of his desk to steady himself, and one of Jack Layton's aides turned to him and said, in a slightly shaky voice, "Congratulations, Prime Minister".
FINAL RESULTS
New Democratic Party: 89 seats
Liberal Party: 82 seats
New Reform Party: 57 seats
Green Party: 46 seats
Western Block Party: 18 seats
Conservative Party: 15 seats
Independent\No Affiliation: 1 seat
The Bloc Quebecois had MPs in the Commons prior to the election, but won no seats.
Government: New Democratic\Liberal\Green coalition
Official Opposition: New Reform Party
"Unlike the Prime Minister here, I am not going to let the people of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and Prince Edward Island freeze to death just to help the government's bottom line!"
- Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff (Liberal\Etobicoke—Lakeshore), during a campaign speech in Windsor; he received thunderous applause.
--------------------
From Thousand Year Storm: Hurricane Igor and its Aftermath, by Meryl Fitzgavin, and Blue Giant: The Rise and Fall of Stephen Harper, by Suzanne Adams:
...Governor-General Michaëlle Jean dissolved Parliament on 26 November 2010, beginning the 43-day campaign period leading up to the 8 January general election, and for the most part, the trends begun before the vote of no confidence continued unabated through the early part of the campaign period; Harper's approval ratings and those of the Conservatives continued to plummet, a steady stream of MPs continued to desert the Conservatives in favour of the other parties, and New Reform and the Western Block slowly but steadily gained support and rogue MPs...
...Canada's Green Party, which had had only one MP in the Commons throughout their entire history up to this point, after MP for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country Blair Wilson was expelled from the Liberal Party, switched to the Greens a few months before the 2008 general election, and was not reelected, suddenly began to increase in popularity, in the same manner as its counterpart south of the border, as party leader Elizabeth May, standing for election in Central Nova, exhorted the populace of Canada to vote Green if they wanted to stop climate change from making Igor an every-year occurrence...
...The Bloc Quebecois continued to lose popularity as it continued to vacillate, a situation exacerbated when a Bloc MP made an inflammatory speech which said, in essence, "Quebec does not need Canada to babysit them, especially not when they make a botch of it!", conveniently forgetting that Quebec was finding itself stretched to the limit in trying to repair their own damage, and that the stream of federal aid coming into Quebec, significantly larger than the tiny trickle going to the Atlantic provinces (this situation was yet another of the many issues pulling people away from the Conservatives and the Bloc, especially those from Atlantic ridings but also significant numbers elsewhere), was the only thing preventing the relief effort in Quebec from collapsing, overwhelmed by the sheer scale of what needed to be done; the Bloc went into full scale collapse shortly afterward, when Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe publicly refused to expel the offending MP from the party caucus, only doing so a full week later, his hand forced by massive public protest, but by then it was far too late, as the Bloc started haemorrhaging MPs...
...As the Conservatives and the Bloc went down fast, the Liberals and New Democrats, both of which were surging, made an informal truce in order to avoid sabotaging their chances fighting each other and possibly allow one of the new upstart parties to slip through with a minority government, and both redoubled their efforts against the other parties; the Liberals' acceptance of the truce was likely triggered by nervousness about the NDP overtaking them and, if they won the most seats in the Commons, excluding them from the government, a possibility that would not have seemed possible before the Bloc imploded, but suddenly became very real when several Bloc MPs, disgusted at their old party, jumped ship to the New Democrats, and the NDP's polling in Quebec soared at the Bloc's expense, and consequently the Liberals chose to hedge their bets by accepting the truce and ensuring themselves a place in the new government even if they came in behind the New Democrats; later on, the Greens, their views overlapping considerably with those of the Liberals and NDP and showing the possibility of serving as a useful bridge between the two, also joined the budding coalition...
...Meanwhile, in the West, New Reform and the Western Block were steadily eating away at the Conservatives' support base from both sides, New Reform from the centrist side and the Western Block from the hard-right, and Prime Minister Harper found his prospects of staying, not just Prime Minister (a post which, privately, he had already given up much if not all hope of keeping), but even merely MP for Calgary Southwest, very much in doubt, as he faced a tight three-way race with a New Reformer and a Western Block member, along with candidates from the Liberals, NDP, and Greens, who, though they had no hope of winning, could potentially decide the election, tight as it was...
...As the election neared, Harper, seeing his party splinter apart for the second time in less than eighteen years, having seen his chances of remaining Prime Minister drop to essentially nil, and very much unsure that he would be able to hold onto even his own seat in the Commons, is said by some to have contemplated suicide, though, fortunately, if he did entertain the thought of taking his own life, he chose not to go through with it...
...Polling Day dawned clear and cold over much of Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and the three northern territories, but a snowstorm blanketed large areas of the Atlantic provinces with up to six centimetres of the white stuff (though fortunately voting did not have to be delayed in any riding, thanks to the heroic efforts of snowplow crews who ensured that the numerous families with extra mouths to feed, having taken in refugees with noplace else to go, could get to the polls without their newfound guests, unfamiliar with their new homes, getting lost and freezing to death in the cold), and the 8th was actually somewhat warmer than average, though quite cloudy, in much of British Columbia and to a lesser extent Alberta...
...The leaders of the seven major parties, plus many of those at the helms of the innumerable smaller parties that had little to no hope of actually winning any seats, stayed up very late that night, nervously waiting for the polls to close in British Columbia and the Yukon, and for the nationwide blackout of the election results (imposed every federal election to prevent Western voters from possibly being influenced by seeing the already-finalised results from the East) to end; when it finally did, Michael Ignatieff punched his fist in the air, Stephen Harper buried his head in his hands in despair at becoming only the third sitting Prime Minister to have simultaneously lost the Prime Ministership and his seat in the Commons (after Arthur Meighen in 1921 and 1926 and Kim Campbell in 1993) and then reached for his newly-acquired copy of Time and Chance, Elizabeth May smiled slightly before letting out a long yawn, Gilles Duceppe swayed and had to grab the edge of his desk to steady himself, and one of Jack Layton's aides turned to him and said, in a slightly shaky voice, "Congratulations, Prime Minister".
FINAL RESULTS
New Democratic Party: 89 seats
Liberal Party: 82 seats
New Reform Party: 57 seats
Green Party: 46 seats
Western Block Party: 18 seats
Conservative Party: 15 seats
Independent\No Affiliation: 1 seat
The Bloc Quebecois had MPs in the Commons prior to the election, but won no seats.
Government: New Democratic\Liberal\Green coalition
Prime Minister: Jack Layton (New Democratic Party)
Official Opposition: New Reform Party
Leader of the Opposition: Nina Grewal (New Reform Party)
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Orville_third
Banned
Nice to have Layton in. I do have a rather unusual suggestion regarding the near-Green senate win. I think the Green runner-up would be Tom Clements, director of Friends of the Earth and a leaning anti-nuclear activist. (He's one of the best candidates the Greens have had for Senate- and I backed him.) The loser would be a noted Obama foe who would resign his seat a few years later OTL- Jim DeMint.
Congratulations- you just elected Alvin Greene.
Congratulations- you just elected Alvin Greene.
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So...how does Hoeven in North Dakota lose? He won with 77% of the vote.
Hmm, good point - changing to have him manage to eke out a victory, thus being the only Republican in the 2010 elections to win a seat that had been won by a Democrat in 2008.
iddt3
Donor
Long term, as bad as this storm was, it looks like it's going to serve as a wakeup call, and spur massive infrastructural investment in the Northeast (which probably pulls us out of the Recession, though I suspect there will be a quarter where the Economy drops pretty badly), and heavy investments all over the coast in anti flood measures, as well as hopefully a reevaluation of Federal Flood insurance polices leading to people living in places they really shouldn't.
May you please change the color of the name of the western block party. I can barely read it due to the color and it hurts my eyes.
So what happened to Maine? How badly does Portland and the islands of Casco Bay get hit?