Cool idea. I would have liked to have seen that scene when he told Mac. Is she still in Charlie's job?
2018 Presidential Election
- Thread starter Marky Bunny
- Start date
Monday April 10th, 2023
Labour row as Shadow Chancellor Patrick Brazil refuses to back pledge to increase benefits by 15%
Labour's financial plans descended into chaos today as the Shadow Chancellor refused to back a Shadow Cabinet colleague's pledge to raise benefit's above inflation to 15% if they win the general election which is due by October 5th.
It came after Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Kate Wells had vowed that Labour would make the increase, but the Shadow Chancellor refused to give the same guarantee. He sidestepped the question when asked when Labour would act on Kate Wells pledge, saying: "We are committed to helping those on benefit's, but I cannot talk %'s until I am in Number Eleven".
The BBC understands in the past few weeks there have been rising tensions between the Shadow Chancellor and Kate Wells who held his job before the 2018 election, before she famously lost her seat, before returning to the House of Commons in a 2019 by-election, making her return to the front bench in the reshuffle last May.
Monday, April 10, 2023
Right-wing sweeps into power in Italy
Rome — Voters in Italy awarded a large victory to the parties of the right-wing yesterday, spelling an end to nine years of center-left government in Italy.
A combination of three parties, the right-wing populist Lega ("League") and Brothers of Italy parties, plus the center-right Forza Italia ("Forward Italy") have won a combined 225 seats out of the 400 in the country's Chamber of Deputies, which was reduced from 630 as a result of a successful constitutional referendum put to voters in 2020.
The center-left Democratic Party, led by prime minister Nicola Savino, and its partners won 128 seats, which resulted in Savino conceding the election to the center-right early in the evening. Savino, who took over for his predecessor Manuel Boschetti in early 2022, had suffered from low approval ratings since becoming prime minister and faced relentless attacks for his government's landing of the refugee crisis as a result of the Libyan civil war.
Lega leader Luca Silvestri, who was designated as the coalition's candidate for prime minister earlier this year, was tasked today by President Francesco Corragio to form a government. Silvestri has made a name for himself in Italian politics as a hardline nativist, and has been outspoken about his opposition to what he has called "interference" by the European Union in Italy's management of Libyan refugees. He has previously stated that he would push for a renegotiation of European treaties regarding border control and immigration and refugee policies should he become prime minister.
The results show a backlash against the previous governments' handling of the migrant crisis and consolidation of the anti-migrant vote in the center-right; the populist Servants of the People party lost nearly half of its vote share compared to the previous election in 2018, in large part due to the rise of Lega as the main party on the center-right, displacing the more moderate, less populist Forza Italia.
Tuesday, April 11th 2023
Doron tasked with forming a new government in Israel after inconclusive election
Tel Aviv — Incumbent prime minister Gilad Doron has been given the task to form a new government, two weeks after an election that leaves no easy path to a majority in the Knesset, the country's legislature.
President Mazar Doran, after consulting with the leaders of all 11 parties that won seats to the 120-member Knesset, gave Doron, as leader of the largest party (the right-wing Likud) the first crack at forming a government that can command the confidence of at least 61 members of the Knesset. Doron, who has led Israel since his predecessor Efraim Zahavy was rendered comatose by a stroke in October 2018, was forced to call an early election after his government collapsed following the Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
The Golan withdrawal resulted in a fracturing in the "national camp" of secular nationalists and religious Zionists, with the former largely accepting the Ankara Agreement and the three-state solution that ended decades of conflict between Israelis, Palestinians and several of Israel's Arab neighbors. In contrast, prior to the Golan withdrawal, the religious Zionist movement had been opposed to the Ankara framework, believing that the surrender of parts of the Holy Land to non-Israeli control was a violation of the Torah (specifically God's promise of the Holy Land to Abraham and his descendants), but were placated by the Ankara Agreement's allowance on free movement for citizens within the three resulting states (Israel, Palestine and Jerusalem).
Golan, which Israeli forces captured from Syria during the Six-Day War in 1967, however, been effectively ceded back to Syria, which is not party to the agreement's strictures on free movement. The announcement of the withdrawal from Golan, which under international law was illegally-occupied Syrian territory, sparked an exodus of religious Zionist parties from the government. The government and the withdrawal were saved by a confidence-and-supply agreement reached with other parties until the final Israeli troops withdrew in December 2022.
In the newly-elected Knesset, conservative parties supporting the withdrawal won 38 seats, while three religious Zionist parties and one secular anti-withdrawal party (the newly-created Yisrael Chazak) combined for 35. Two centrist parties whose support was vital in keeping the withdrawal to continue, Hosen and Kadima won a combined 40 seats.
Should Doron fail to form a government that can win the confidence of a majority (61 members) of the Knesset by May 9, Hosen leader Shaul Cohen will be given the mandate to try and form a new government. If Cohen cannot form a government, Israeli voters will return to the polls for new elections.
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Tuesday, 11 April 2023
IMF forecast throws cold water on Conservative "Britain's Working" ads
A forecast by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released just days after the governing Conservative Party launched an ad campaign titled "Britain's Working" that the party claims highlights the party's "sound economic stewardship" has resulted in fodder for comedians and the opposition parties.
While the party, gearing up for a general election, touted Britain's economic success under their leadership, the IMF reports that it projects Britain to have the worst economic performance of any of the so-called G20 countries (the twenty nations with the world's largest economies) in 2023. It predicts that the British economy will slightly shrink from its 2022 level, with the group blaming soaring interest rates and the country's highly-privatized energy sector being much more susceptible to price hikes than other developed nations'.
"Our nation's economy is on the path for continued growth," Chancellor of the Exchequer Kevin Grimes said in a statement. "Our country's forecast has been revised upwards multiple times by the IMF since earlier this year, and we will see an increase in domestic purchasing power as energy prices stabilize in the summer months."
Labour shadow chancellor Patrick Brazil, however, said that the report showed "just how far behind we lag on the global stage."
"My counterpart in the government seems to think that, after 13 years of Conservative rule, being dead last in economic growth means we are due for a turnaround," Brazil said. "I couldn't agree more, but we differ on how we turn things about. He thinks this forecast means his government deserves another go. As for me, well..."
As of press time, the Conservatives have not pulled the "Britain's Working" ads, but a spokeswoman said that the party would be "reevaluating the messaging" around the party's economic governance.
House passes major healthcare reform bill
Tuesday, April 18th, 2023
The House of Representatives passed the American Health Care Protection Act earlier today, which if passed would be the largest reform to American healthcare since the introduction of Medicare/Medicaid in the 1960s.
In a party-line vote, House voted 231 to 200 to pass the bill, which would offer major overhauls to the United States healthcare system: in addition to providing a public option of a government-run health insurance agency that would compete with private health insurers, the act would expand Medicare and Medicaid to cover Americans aged 60 to 65 and making under 133 percent of the federal poverty line, respectively. Other major reforms include allowing young adults to remain on their parents' insurance until age 26, create healthcare exchanges for consumers to purchase healthcare and make it illegal to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions and eliminating lifetime caps on coverage. The act would also subsidize states' Medicaid expansion until 2035 and offer temporary subsidies to insurance companies to compensate for stricter federal healthcare standards.
Republicans quickly denounced the bill as a "massive power grab" and "dangerous expansion of the government" with House Minority Leader Mitchell Harris (R-IN) calling the bill a "nightmare" that would cause "the loss of millions of jobs across the country."
"This monstrous bill will cause our nation's debt to explode, and its burdensome regulations on our nation's healthcare providers causing massive disruptions to Americans." a House GOP statement said upon the bill's passage.
An amendment offered by Rep. Montell Jamsion (D-NY) that would amend a section of the bill from automatically enroll every American reporting an income under 133 percent of the federal poverty line and who did not indicate that they had other health insurance into their state's Medicaid program into one that automatically enrolled Americans into an expanded Medicare program was overwhelmingly defeated. A bill by George Simmell (D-CA) that would similarly create a universal healthcare system in the United States failed with only half of the Democratic caucus voting in its favor (123 in favor to 304 against).
The legislation will head to the Senate, where it is expected to face lockstep Republican opposition as well as concerns from red state Democrats.
Question: In universe, what year will this TL end? And how, given the length of both threads are updates kept lore friendly instead of retconning constantly
Probably as long as Mark, caedus and MD17 want to keep it going. At this point the threads been running for 13+ years, and the clock in universe matches whatever the current calendar is. So if you are looking to see who wins 2024? See you Election night 2024.
I think you mean 2026.
Also I’m gonna guess the TL will wind down once we get to a point where whole elections rely on original characters if only because at that point the West Wing connection is tenuous. .
Senate "Gang of Twelve" attempt to avoid filibuster of healthcare bill
Monday, April 24th, 2023
A bipartisan group of six Democrats and six Republicans, dubbed the "Gang of Twelve" was formed in order to avoid a filibuster of President Seaborn's proposed healthcare reform after Senate Minority Leader Cody Riley (R-AL) threw down the gauntlet on Sunday, saying that the Republican minority was "fully prepared" to prevent the bill from becoming law.
The group, led by the chairs and ranking members of the Senate Finance Committee and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, was formed to craft a modified healthcare bill that would avoid a filibuster while also appeasing both the administration, which campaigned on reforming the nation's healthcare system, and congressional Republicans who have thus far been almost entirely opposed to Democratic proposals to do so.
"We believe that a well-crafted piece of legislation on healthcare reform can find bipartisan support in Congress," one of the group's leaders, Jeff Heston (R-UT) told the press. "It will require a lot of give-and-take, but I believe that a compromise can be reached to avoid an unnecessary showdown [in the Senate]."
Besides Heston, the group includes: Arthur Breech (D-HI), Robert Cantina (R-AK), Matt Clausen (D-PA), Dante Jenkins (D-NJ), Nicole Kershaw (D-CA), Ryan Lyndell (D-MA), Ben Newell (D-CO), Michael Rojas (R-NM), Curtis Ryan (R-OR), Patrick Stacy (R-TN) and Ellie Wilkins (R-NH). The group's political ideology ranges from solid liberals like Kershaw and Lyndell, the two Democratic committee chairs to an establishment conservatives like Heston and Stacy, their Republican counterparts.
The group will seek to hash out an alteration of the American Health Care Protection Act (AHCPA) bill that passed the House last week that it can present to both the White House and Senate Republicans privately before the AHCPA is expected to make its way to the Senate floor in May. None of the 22 Democrats who sit on either the Senate Finance or HELP committees (or both) have indicated they would vote the bill down in the committee stage, where Democrats can pass the AHCPA through on a party-line vote.
Comcast emerges as leading contender in Atlantis sale
Tuesday, April 25th, 2023
Comcast Corporation has emerged as the biggest bidder in the contest to acquire Atlantis World Media, AP reports. A deal valued at $42.1 billion has reportedly been accepted by Atlantis CEO Reese Lansing who will announce the deal and present it to the board some time this week. The proposed deal will combine Comcast's existing media empire with that of Atlantis, and expand their television reach to approximately 20 million subscribers coming from Atlantis Cable News and other networks and properties. Comcast is offering a merger at $32.47 per share and 2.625 shares of Comcast per Atlantis share.
The deal will make Comcast, alread America's largest media conglomate, an even bigger player in their industry. As such, the deal will likely be subject to scrutiny from regulatory bodies. In order to adhere to FCC regulations, the deal is reported to involve the sale, shuttering, and reduction of various minor Atlantis and Comcast properties, particularly redundant cable television stations and systems. The goal is to stay under the 30% benchmark the FCC usually requires of cable.
Atlantis rejected a bid from private equity to purchase only ACN and spin off other properties into a separate corporation. The bid was led by former Treasury Secretary Christopher Parker and his brother George Parker V, the co-chairmen of the Parker Corporation. The Parker brothers expressed their interest in preserving ACN's political perspective and presented themselves as a better fit for the company culture. Although the Parker deal was supposedly offering $24.7 billion just for ACN, it was mooted by the AWM board, who preferred a holistic sale that would involve all assets of the firm. The Comcast deal was seen as more attractive due to the greater valuation and merger into an existing, larger corporation.
The merger comes at a time when cable news is in decline. Viewership figures are decreasing for all networks year over year and the finances have ebbed accordingly. The effect of a merger between two of the largest cable enterprises is unknowable.
So… I usually don’t like doing this but I do recall that outside of NBS (which I think was either from Sorkin’s Sports Night, or Studio 60. I honestly can’t remember) there was another media giant mentioned in the West Wing Universe. It came up in the episode where CJ eliminated all the chairs in the press room expect for 5, and outside of the OTL networks mentioned there was one that was fictional, something called Mert Media, has any thought ever been given to what that company was? I know at times the show‘s background world building was on the back burner, but just thought I would ask.
Personally I thought it could have been a stand in for Hearst Corporation
Personally I thought it could have been a stand in for Hearst Corporation
In the old thread, MertMedia was established as the successor to the original Tunney company, which was later re-bought by the Tunneys, and that company is the one which owns NBS.
Wednesday April 26th, 2023
Julie Barton expelled by Tories after bullying and lobbying investigation
The Conservative Party has expelled MP Julie Barton after she was found guilty of bullying two of her former parliamentary aids, she was also found to have breached lobbying rules.
The member for Cheltenham lost the party whip in June last year meaning she sits in the House of Commons as an independent, but the Conservative party have now stripped her of her party membership as well. She said her expulsion "confirms the culture of corruption, collusion and cover-ups", and that she intended to stand again at the General Election due to be held this year as an "Independent Conservative".
A Conservative Party spokesman said Mrs Burton was expelled " After an almost year long investigation and following the recommendation of a disciplinary panel".
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The big benchmark I am waiting for is when we hit 500 pages on this thread and have to go to Thread #3. I still have the original thread saved on my favorites bar to refer to. It was when it hit Page 510 that this thread started.
Seaborn pokes fun at himself and GOP opponents at White House Correspondent's Dinner
Sunday, April 29th, 2023
President Sam Seaborn, attending his fifth White House Correspondent's Dinner as president, poked fun at both himself and his opponents in the Grand Old Party on Saturday. The event was hosted by comedian Roy Wood Jr., who ribbed Seaborn, the press corps and even the Secret Service, with the agency embroiled in a lawsuit over its agents' handling over then-Republican nominee Alan Duke's health issues.
"They probably didn't want to try and find out if the nearest hospitals were in [Duke's healthcare] network." Wood said.
The comedian poked fun at Seaborn for "trading in Jack Hunter" for Vice President Bobby Tyler. "I don't want to tell you you're getting older, Mr. President, but let me put it this way: you aren't the first man in his fifties to trade in a station wagon for a sports car."
Seaborn also poked fun at himself, saying that he began thinking the criticism of his reliance on his colleagues from the Bartlet administration were valid, "but after talking to Will Bailey, C.J. Cregg and Charlie Young, I decided it wasn't [valid]."
The president also joked about think pieces by liberal opinion writers, penned in the wake of his re-election last November, that would abolish the two-term limit on the presidency to allow him to run again: "I'm flattered, but I believe in the two-term limit established by George Washington. I came to this conclusion after discussing a third term with Lauren [Parker-Seaborn] and then saw that she began watching an awful lot of movies where a woman kills her husband."
The president took shots at his Republican opposition, warning attendees to imbibe carefully: "If you find yourself disoriented or confused, you're either drunk or Patty King", mentioning the woman who claimed that the administration's healthcare proposals would include "death panels" to forcibly euthanize the elderly and infirm.
"My friends in the Republican Party seem to be having trouble making good decisions," Seaborn said. "Their party is still healing over a divisive primary and general election campaign, they lost both chambers of Congress in the last election and are threatening to shut down the legislative process over a plan that includes reforms that a majority of Republicans support, like making it illegal to deny someone healthcare coverage based on pre-existing conditions."
"And I can relate to that difficulty: I tried to make Franklin Hollis vice president of the United States."
In his closing remarks, Seaborn paid tributes to journalists in the White House Press Corps and reiterated his calls for the release of American journalists detained in Afghanistan, Iran, and Venezuela, and asked for the audience and national media organizations to support local news organizations. Seaborn also paid tribute to Ethan Bailey and Kevin Ramirez, two American photojournalists who were killed covering the fighting in Libya in the past year.
Tunney offers massive bid for ACN
Monday, May 1st, 2023
William Tunney in 2020. Photo by Jeff Tambor.
TMG Chairman William Tunney has reportedly made a $34.3 billion bid for Atlantis Cable News, the news division of Atlantis World Media. Although AWM was in negotiations the past week to sell the entire company to Comcast for approximately $42.1 billion, Mr. Tunney seeks to buy just the news network for a price worth over 80% of the Comcast bid for the entire corporation.
Sources close to Mr. Tunney, whose conglomerate is already the parent company of NBS, CND, and dozens of other news networks and properties, say that the billionaire mogul is seeking a further expansion of his domain by buying out his closest competitor. Disinterested in the broader Atlantis empire, Tunney wishes to expand his already tremendous reach in the world of news. After making lower offers during the initial post-sale announcement phase, Mr. Tunney has reportedly grown frustrated by being rejected by Atlantis CEO Reese Lansing, whom he referred to in 2017 as a "clumsy interloper" who was worth "less than half his mother and father put together." Though personal enmity may be involved, Mr. Lansing has remained firm during the sale process that he wanted AWM to be sold as a whole rather than divided into smaller parts.
There is no word yet on whether Reese Lansing or the Atlantis board are receptive to Mr. Tunney's bid. However, such a considerable offer would be hard to justify rejecting. The rumor of the bid already sent Atlantis stock rocketing up, with a 42% price increase by closing time on Monday. The offer is regarding as a massive overbid by industry experts and Tunney insiders. Former TMG CFO Alan Kirby told NBS Today "there is no network worth 30 billion dollars... Bill will just say the biggest number necessary to get what he wants." Indeed, though the bid gave Atlantis a bump in the markets, the Tunney group saw a corresponding decline as investors grow concerned over the aging chief's decision making capability. TMG stock performed erratically on Monday before closing $2 below its original position. It remains to be seen what the long term effects of this prospective buyout will have on the respective companies.
Saturday May 6th, 2023
King Charles the 3rd coronated
King Charles the 3rd and Queen Camilla were crowned in a ceremony full of music and symbolism at Westminster Abbey. About 2,200 people, including the Royal Family, celebrities, faith leaders and heads of state, were there to witness the event. Thousands of people lined the streets of London to catch a glimpse of the King and Queen as they went past.
The King and Queen then appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace to wave to crowds gathered below and watch a flypast of the Red Arrows.
Monday, May 8th 2023
Twenty years on: The Zoey Bartlet kidnapping
Washington, D.C. — Twenty years ago today, Americans were awoken to shocking news: the president's daughter had been kidnapped and he had invoked the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to hand power over to the Speaker of the House.
Although she was taken late on the night of May 7, 2003, the news that Zoey Bartlet, the youngest daughter of then-president Josiah Bartlet, had been abducted and her Secret Service bodyguard was murdered broke early on the morning of May 8th. The ensuing manhunt lasted a little more than 48 hours, involving thousands of federal, state and local law enforcement officers and deputized National Guard units from Maryland, Virginia before Bartlet was rescued after a shoot-out involving her kidnappers, members of the Islamic Bahji who had attempted to leverage her safety for the withdrawal of Bahji prisoners in Pakistan.
In the interim, Josiah Bartlet became the first president to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment's provision to temporarily transmit the powers of the presidency to the next individual in line. With the kidnapping coming less than a week after the vice presidency was vacated by John Hoynes after he admitted to having an extramarital affair with a D.C. socialite, that person was a Republican, Speaker of the House Glen Allen Walken.
Walken described having "'felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me' just like it had to President Truman upon learning of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's death." upon learning of Zoey Bartlet's kidnapping and her father's intent to temporarily relinquish his office and make Walken the acting president. But by all accounts, Walken rose to the occasion: in his first public appearance as acting commander-in-chief, he reassured the nation that the government was continuing to function while also communicating his own stewardship over the presidency until the man voters had re-elected in a landslide six months earlier could return to the office.
The crisis rocked the nation, presaging over a decade of terror and increased American military intervention abroad, from Walken's attacks on Bahji camps in Qumar during the crisis all the way to the ongoing military operations in Qumar today. For two days, Americans were glued to their television as the kidnapping evolved into a geopolitical crisis not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis forty years before.
With the passage of two decades, filmmakers and documentarians have begun to feel free to create media based on the kidnapping: a four-part series docudrama on the crisis, Fifty-One Hours, will air on HBO, while a joint NBC/PBS documentary, Zoey, will air on Thursday night on both networks. While Fifty-One Hours, with Joey King starring as Zoey Bartlet and Brendan Fraser as Walken, will be a dramatic retelling of events, Zoey features interviews from both investigators, historians and several of the surviving participants, including former presidents Walken and Matthew Santos (at the time, a sophomore congressman from Texas) and Zoey Bartlet Young (as she is known now) herself.
Bartlet Young previously gave few interviews about the kidnapping, and has said that she suffered the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for years after, being especially reticent to speak about being drugged by her then-boyfriend Jean Paul, Vicomte de Condé (who himself would die of a drug overdose in 2019) and the death of Secret Service agent Molly O'Connor, who died attempting to prevent her kidnapping. She married Charlie Young, her father's former White House bodyman (and current US Trade Representative), in 2009, and the couple welcomed a daughter, Josie in 2020 while Bartlet Young was working at several Washington-based non-profits. Her daughter's birth, she says, made her feel ready to talk about those three days in May 2003 again.
"It's important," Bartlet Young said, when interviewed for Zoey, "That she and every other American girl learn from what happened to me," she says, about being drugged with GHB, a commonly-known "date rape drug", which investigators found was a "crucial element" of the kidnapping's success. ("Had Zoey Bartlet been fully conscious, aware of her surroundings, and not been incapacitated by being unwillingly given GHB," an investigative report by the Secret Service written in 2004 relayed "...it is unlikely that the kidnapping of May 7, 2003 would have proceeded as smoothly as it did, and possibly been thwarted by an activation of Ms. Bartlet's 'panic button' that was never utilized due to her incapacitation.") The late Condé, in statements to federal investigators after being granted immunity, reportedly attempted to dose her with ecstasy, but was given GHB by his drug dealer, Mohamed Amimour, an accomplice of the three kidnappers who is set to be released from federal prison next year and deported to his homeland of Algeria, having served two decades after being convicted of multiple crimes related to the kidnapping.
"Be careful and be safe," she says. "The consequences if you aren't could be massive."
Senate Republicans prepare for filibuster on healthcare
Sunday, May 14th, 2023
With the American Health Care Protection ACT (AHCPA) heading to the Senate floor this week, Senate Republicans have begun preparations to filibuster legislation they have decried as "un-American."
"We have been running game plans all week," Senate Minority Whip Max Lobell III (R-GA) told Fox News Sunday host Shannon Breame today. "We hope, of course, that the Democrats will see sense and take the opposition to mean that this bill needs major, major reforms, but I'm not hopeful."
Republicans and conservatives have come out strongly against the AHPCA, attacking both it for "harmful and clumsy government intervention" in the healthcare market (in Lobell's words) and the act's projected increase in federal healthcare spending. Several far-right commentators and even some legislators, such as congresswomen Marsha Holzhauer (R-TN) and Patty King (R-GA) have propagated untrue assertions that the bill would fund abortions, create government 'death panels' to euthanize elderly patients or, per King, "allow the government to make your children trans[gender]."
A bipartisan "Gang of Twelve" have been attempting to negotiate "fixes" to the bill to head off a filibuster, but efforts appear to have been unsuccessful.
Senate Majority Leader Jimmy Fitzsimmons (D-MA) told NBC's Meet The Press that Senate Democrats were similarly bearing down for a filibuster and that it was "possible" the Senate would cut into its nine-day recess for Memorial Day if the filibuster continued that long.
"We are hoping that a solution is found and that any obstructionist tactics can be overcome so that we all can meet with constituents and celebrate our fallen heroes on Memorial Day," Fitzsimmons said. "But ultimately it is down to how reasonable the Republicans and [Minority] Leader [Cody] Riley are about a bill that most of the American people are in favor of."