AHC: alternate timeline vignette

Your task, should you accept it, is to come up with a short story from an alternate time line. It can take the form of a short summary, news article, electoral map, wikibox, image, anything you can think of, as long as there's a story to it. Think of this thread as a way to explore those ideas of alternate timelines and what ifs that you can never bring yourself to do because you feel like you have to make a TL or TLIAW out of it. It's just a one shot deal, simple as that, so take your imagination for a spin!
 
My contribution

Nov 5th, 2014
Midterms a mixed bag for Romney


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President Romney’s hopes for a republican congress in the final two years of his first term were dashed Tuesday night as the democrats held onto the US Senate. Coupled with marginal gains in the house have made for a bad night for the Republicans nationwide.

Republicans managed to flip open seats in Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia, gained Arkansas by defeating incumbent Mark Pryor, but lost in Kansas when Pat Roberts went down to independent Greg Orman in a stunning upset that pollsters did not see coming. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) was defeated in a close race with Kentucky Secretary of State Allison Grimes (D), and Michelle Nunn’s (D) victory in Georgia countered some of the republican gains that night. Democrats also held onto seats in Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, Michigan, and New Hampshire where former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown (R) went down to incumbent Jeanne Shaheen (D) amidst allegations of carpet bagging by Brown.

Senate composition still to be decided

Louisiana is heading for a runoff election in December with incumbent Mary Landrieu (D) winning a plurality in the first round, Congressman David Vitter (R) coming in second place under 40%. Alaska has also not been decided as a close race there between incumbent Senator Mark Begich and 2010 GOP nominee Joe Miller separated by a few thousand votes in a state where it can sometimes take weeks for towns to submit results, as was the case in Begich’s 2008 victory. Currently the Democrats have 51 seats to republicans 46, even if the GOP wins the outstanding races that leaves them with 48 seats, and there remains the question of who Senator-elect Orman will caucus with.

House in limbo

Republican Speaker John Boehner will have a net gain of 12 seats in his caucus, erasing democratic gains in 2012, but the biggest casualty was former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Cantor went down in a primary upset over the summer, which led to a brief scandal when it leaked he planned to resign so he could take a higher paying corporate job immediately rather than waiting until January. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) then definitively ruled out holding a special election, pointing out that Congressman Cantor had a duty to represent his district until the expiration of his term, and that even holding a special election would leave the district vacant for a time. Cantor remains in office and is expected to leave on January 5th, it is unknown what his plans are now. Congressman Michael Grimm, who was caught on camera threatening a reporter from New York City channel NY1, lost his race for his Staten Island district amidst a federal probe into his taxes.

On the democratic side, Elizabeth Colbert-Busch was elected to a full term representing Charlston, SC, defeating incumbent Tim Scott. Colbert-Busch is the sister of popular comedian Stephen Colbert, whose private fundraising helped his sister compete against Congressman Scott. Seth Moulton also handedly defeated republican Richard Tiesi in Massachusetts North Shore, Tiesi’s support dried up after incumbent John Tierney was defeated in the democratic primary by Moulton. New Hampshire will also be preserving it’s one of a kind all female congressional delegation with congresswomen Kuster and Shea-Porter being reelected. Congresswoman Krysten Sinema, the first openly bisexual member of the house was handedly reelected in her Arizona district.

Downballot Disaster

While in congress the GOP has gained seats in both the house and senate, Republicans suffered heavy losses down ballot in gubernatorial races, while scoring upsets in two races. Unpopular incumbents lost in Alaska, Florida, Kansas, and Pennsylvania. Republicans also lost open races in Rhode Island and Maryland. In Massachusetts, republican nominee Charlie Baker is expected to request a recount to the Secretary of State’s office; Baker currently trails Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley by just over one percent of the vote in a state where the democrats have come out on top in every other statewide race this year. In Texas, Democrats managed to capture the governor’s chair in Austin with the dream ticket of Julian Castro and Wendy Davis. Castro, the popular mayor of San Antonio brought notable Wendy Davis onboard as his running mate and managed to squeeze by Texas attorney General Greg Abbot, proving that demographics in Texas are changing, though Texas’ first Hispanic governor faces a republican legislature that passed heavy abortion restrictions that Lt Governor-elect Wendy Davis has vowed to repeal. Republicans did manage to oust unpopular Illinois Governor Pat Quinn with businessman Bruce Rauner, but saw the Democrats increase majorities in the state legislature. Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber who was running for a historic fourth term saw a late October surprise in the form of ethics allegations surrounding him and his fiancée. State representative Dennis Richardson, the republican nominee, capitalized on this revelation to narrowly eak out a win against the formerly popular Kitzhaber, who will leave office in January marred by a potential legal probe. Governor-Elect Richardson however faces a democratic controlled legislature. Unlike Kitzhaber, Governor Jerry Brown’s quest for a fourth term was wildly successful in California, as was republican turned independent, turned democrat Charlie Christ’s bid for a second nonconsecutive term against Governor Rick Scott.

The biggest surprise was the seemingly impossible reelection of Maine Governor Paul LePage to a second term despite low approval numbers and a history of inappropriate remarks. LePage however can count his victory to vote splitting as he did in 2010, returning candidates Elliot Cutler and Shawn Moody siphoned off votes from Democrat Mike Michaud enough to give LePage a victory of 39%, a marginal improvement of his 2010 total of 37%. The state legislature remained in democratic hands, and lawmakers are discussing implementing a runoff election system as soon as the new session convenes. Some State lawmakers have openly called for LePage to resign his new term and allow State Senate President Justin Alfond, a Democrat, to assume the Governorship. LePage fired back in a statement: “the people of Maine have twice elected me to be governor, and I will serve the entire term to which I have been elected”. The Governor has since been mocked on twitter, pointing out the fact a vast majority have voted against him twice now. “39/100 does not = “the people”. Learn to do math!” one user wrote, others used the hashtag #Resign, and there have been calls to recall the governor despite no such provision existing. Some state lawmakers say that a bill allowing a recall process could be passed as well next year.
Republicans made marginal gains in state legislatures across the country, failing to flip many chambers they had their sights on. In Alaska, Bill Walker will become the first independent Governor in the state’s history after a successful coalition with then Democratic nominee Byron Mallott to form a joint ticket. Republican Governor Sean Parnell is pinning his hopes on a sudden turnaround as the same late votes that Senator Begich is counting on might allow him to reverse his defeat. Governors Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Tom Corbet (R-PA) were defeated after unpopular policies, and a highly contentious court battle in Kansas over school budgets and ineffective tax cuts.


Romney’s Reaction.

President Romney spoke to reporters in the east room of the White House, but attempted to downplay the results of the election which some political pundits have said was a “shellacking” like former President Obama suffered in 2010.

“The American people have shown that they are tired of politics as usual, and the gains made in the house and senate show that they want to start to move in a different direction.” The President said. “I look forward to once again working with both parties in congress to pass legislation that will benefit the American people and American jobs.”

President Romney has a rough year and a half in office and very few legislative victories to show for it. His intervention in the 2013 budget impasse saw the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate transferred to a state by state basis in exchange for keeping the Act popularly known as Obamacare intact. He got a marginal increase in tax cuts on the wealthy in exchange for more tax credits for the middle class, not solving the deficit and frustrating “tea party” republicans in congress. His response to ISIS and the aborted decision to insert 1500 ground troops into northern Iraq have caused even his own party to criticize him, despite public opinion polls showing support for the aborted troop plan.
“Republicans stayed home this election cycle” said one DNC source “Romney just isn’t the candidate who was narrowly elected in 2012, when it comes to governing he might as well be back in Massachusetts.”

Heading into the final two years of his first term, political strategists have suggested the President’s next agenda item may be immigration reform, which both President Bush and President Obama were unable to get done while in office. Romney has voiced objection to the string of court rulings in support of gay marriage, but has said he will not act until the Supreme Court rules definitively on the issue. Republicans have called for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage nationwide, but with a democratic senate and skewed results in state legislatures an amendment may be beyond his reach.


Looking at 2016.

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) was very critical of Romney’s leadership in the months leading up to the election, said the President compromised too often with the Democrats and moderates in his own party. “In 2013 he avoided the shutdown and kept most of Obamacare intact by making morphing it into the Romneycare.” De Mint said “Keeping intact most of President Obama’s legislation has hurt American jobs. And he continues to hurt the American family by not pushing for a constitutional amendment to outlaw gay marriage.” While most Americans approved of the last minute compromise the President negotiated in 2013 to avoid a shutdown, his approval numbers slipped among republicans, and his tepid response to Syria/ISIS and the economy have kept his approval below 45% since late last year. Some political strategists don’t rule out a primary challenge by DeMint against the President in 2016.

Former President Obama declined to comment on the results of the election, but was a frequent sight on the campaign trail in Illinois stoking speculation he could seek a return to the senate in 2016 by challenging Senator Mark Kirk (R) for his old seat, the former President definitively ruled out challenging Romney in 2016. The two most talked about names of democrats are former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and outgoing Governor Deval Patrick (D-MA), who’s 2012 DNC speech and handling of the Boston Marathon terror attacks catapulted him to the national spotlight. Hypothetical polls currently give Romney around 40% compared to 38% for a generic democrat, with the remaining undecided.

(full map of results on the next page)

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Nice Thread Concept!

I think I'll go pop culture for my first attempt...

Chapter 5

By the end of 1979, the only thing that could be said for the 2600 was that it had (barely) sold it's entire production run of 1 million units (827,375 to be exact) and that, in doing so, had ensured that Warner would go forward with Nolan's long planned successor console; the 5200 'Super System'. (Remember: We only had to sell 3/4 of the units to begin production of the 5200.)

That's not entirely true. It had one other thing going for it.

Nolan had convinced the higher ups to hold the home port of Space Invaders over as not only a launch title for the new machine, but also to make it the pack-in cart for the new system and 'a Super System exclusive'.

This decision would prove to be almost as important to the success of the Atari Super System as the care taken in it's development; from the custom graphics and display chips, to the dedicated sound generator (True story, some knucklehead actually suggested piggybacking a rudimentary sound generator on the pot controller, I shit you not.), to the on-board memory management chip, to the 8/16 RAM split; 8K of general purpose RAM, 16K of dedicated VRAM.

That, and using the Western Design Center WDC65C02S, rather than a second source MOS Tech 6502C as the CPU.

I wish I could say that we were all, totally, 100% confident that the 5200 was going to be what it ended up as right from the start, on Friday, May 30, 1980...

...but that would be a lie.

That, and Nolan admitted to Mike Wallace in '83 that we were all pretty much shitting our pants right up until the first store (a Crazy Eddie's in Brooklyn of all places) sold out it's entire stock- 30 units -in less than 30 minutes of the store's opening that day.

One unit a minute? Insane. Unsustainable. Nice, but watch, there's still going to be 2,499,970 units unsold at noon Eastern.

We had no idea just how wrong we were.

Within the first 72 hours of release, 2 million units sold.

72 hours.

2 million units sold.

That's 463 units per minute.

Did famed quarter magnet Space Invaders being sold- for the first time anywhere as a home port (And a damn good one at that; better than the arcade, as ours was in full color!) -and exclusively for the Super System probably have something to do with those numbers?

Yeah. Nobody will ever convince me otherwise, because, while launch titles like Adventure (which begot Sword Quest, which begot The Godfrey franchise), Grand Prix (not bad, but landing that deal with Taito to port Pole Position a year later would be the bigger racing franchise and bigger seller by, oh, about a couple million units), Superman (that spring, gamers would believe a man could fly), Star Raiders, and Nolan's personal favorite, Pinball Arcade, certainly helped keep sales strong going forward, the vast majority of Day 1 sales were Super System only.

Then again, at $200 a unit and $25 a game cart, that was to be expected, and besides, you got Space Invaders with the machine! Who could ask for anything more?

(Not a lot of people for the first month or so.)

The rest, as they say, is history.

Approximately 4.5 million units sold by the end of calendar year 1980.

Approximately 10 million game carts sold by the end of calender year 1980.

White Christmas? Try Green Christmas.

Nolan had tossed the dice and staked his position in the company to a very risky proposition and won. The brass at Warner wouldn't question him again until he and Jay and I rolled the first 16 bit, Motorola 68k powered proto-type system into the board room in July of '83, but I'll get to that later.

Aside from watching profits super nova, three equally pivotal events would take place later in the year.

The first came at the end of June, when Nolan went 180 on his home computer stance.

After Apple, Commodore and Tandy put the Apple II, PET and TRS-80 on the market in '77, the Warner guys wanted us to build a home computer. Nolan refused. We were a game company, not a computer company. We didn't have the hardware to do it, and nobody wanted to rush development of the Super System chipset just to build a computer while the 2600's weren't exactly flying off store shelves at a much cheaper price than a home computer would cost.

Three years later, however, with Super Systems flying off store shelves as fast as they could be stocked, Nolan began to view an Atari home computer very differently.

The hardware was not only where we wanted it, but we were further refining it into improved performance, more cost effective renderings; ANTIC and CTIA would end up combined into a single VLSI known as VISION (with 80 column display capability, among other improvments), MELODY evolving into HARMONY and the HAL MMU morphing into FREDDIE.

With that sweet WDC65C02S, running at 3.5 MHz, combined with the refined chipset and the massive drop in price of RAM chips, Nolan saw the possibility for something bigger, even more revolutionary than a game machine.

A tool that could educate and enrich the masses.

It was there, in that meeting in Sunnyvale in late June of 1980, that the Atari 1200XL home computer was conceived.

It'd be about two years before it hit the general market, but we were shipping a precursor machine (the computers the crew at Atari Games had used to develop our own Super System games) to the guys from Activision and Imagic by November.

Then, just like the Activision and Imagic guys had left Atari Games to found their companies, guys from Activision and Imagic were leaving to found companies of their own, like Epyx and Broderbund, two third party producers who would help cement the home video game console into the fabric of American popular culture and even make it damn near a household staple. (Five years, 30 million units sold? Maybe not a staple, but pretty damn impressive!)

The 1200XL, however, would have an even bigger impact on how games are made and who makes them.

There's a reason the initial production run of 1200XL's was 3 million units.

Sure, there were schools, and responsible adults looking for a solid home computer for home accounting and running small businesses and things like that, and these were two really big parts of Nolan's grand vision.

The third part, however, was, as he put it (and I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wording this wrong) "For the college or tech school kid with $500 bucks and a dream. The future of our industry: The gamers themselves.".

I asked Brian Fargo once if he would have founded Interplay had he never gone to work for Imagic and been exposed to the versatility of our early 5200 development computers.

He said "Probably not.".

A world without Bard's Tale, Wasteland, Fallout and on and on?

I genuinely shudder to think.

Okay, so start up was a bit more than '$500 and a dream'...but it was close enough that guys like Brian were willing to throw the dice on it.

The second big event came at the end of August, when Jay took a hefty payout and left to create Hi-Toro Labs, his own chip development firm. While I was initially saddened by Jay's departure, I eventually came to look at it as a net positive- and now a flat out monumental moment in the history of the IT industry on the whole.

Jay and his crew developed chips that would change the way graphics and sound hardware would be produced, and, ultimately, how graphics and sound would be generated to this day.

Again, that's something we'll get to later.

The third big event happened in December.

See, there was this game released by Namco in 1980, called Pac-Man.

Maybe you've heard of it.

Anyhoo, in December, Nolan had landed a meeting with the honchos at Namco.

Now, while that initial meeting obviously wasn't going to produce 'Pac-Man by Christmas!', it did score a major coup against our competitors at the time (if Mattel and Magnavox could really be called that).

It secured a preliminary deal that would ultimately lead to an exclusive license for Atari to port Pac-Man for our machine, leaving everybody else to twist.

It would also set a precedent that would (at least once) come back to bite us in the ass.

Again, we'll get to that later...



Excerpt from 'Atari World: The Incredible True Story of Atari', by Nolan Bushnell and George McCleod, Random House, 2000.
 
I love the concept here.

So, I'll take a shot...

WASHINGTON, APRIL 22, 1947 (UPI) -- FRESHMAN CONGRESSMAN RICHARD NIXON (R-CA) WAS KILLED IN A TRAFFIC ACCIDENT HERE EARLY THIS MORNING. NIXON, WHO WAS SWORN IN IN JANUARY, WAS ELECTED TO REPRESENT CALIFORNIA'S 12TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT. ACCORDING TO PRELIMINARY REPORTS, MR. NIXON WAS KILLED WHEN THE VEHICLE IN WHICH HE WAS RIDING WAS STRUCK BY A VEHCLE THAT RAN A RED LIGHT.

NIXON WAS A NAVY VETERAN WHO SERVED IN THE PACIFIC THEATER AND WHO WAS ELECTED IN THE 1946 ELECTIONS, DEFEATING LONGTERM DEMOCRATIC REPRESENTATIVE JERRY VOORHIS. HE IS SURVIVED BY HIS WIFE PATRICIA RYAN NIXON AND DAUGHTERS TRICIA AND JULIE.

--MORE--

--30--
 
buming back to life

Acting-President Allen pays tribute to Tim Russert, dodges economic questions.
June 14, 2008

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then Senator Allen speaks to Tim Russert during his 2005 confirmation hearing to be Vice President.

President Allen spoke from the tarmac in Cedear Rapids, Iowa has he prepared to board Air Force One to return to Washington after a two day swing through the hawkeye state. Allen, the presumptive GOP nominee, said Russert was one of the best journalists of the past decade, calling him "as fair as [Vince] Lombardi himself." and saying that news journalism "had once more lost a giant." The Acting President has been continuing his low key campaign schedule since President Cheney's incapacitating May 10th heart attack, although the worsening economy may force the incumbent VP to ramp up efforts prior to the Republican National Convention in September.

When asked about the worsening situation with the housing bubble and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, President Allen deflected questions and insisted he had to return to Washington for meetings with congressional leadership and the NSC. Since assuming the Presidency while Cheney is recovering, Allen's approval ratings have been in the mid 40s and his poll numbers against likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton have her winning by a 5 point margin.

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