It was the dawn of the new millennium, and the Democrats had still yet to catch a break. They thought after the bitter taste left by H.W., they'd be a shoe-in. This wasn't the case, as the multitude of sexual scandals surrounding nominee Bill Clinton of Arkansas all but sunk his 1992 campaign, regardless of how well his policies might've appealed to the Rust Belt. It was a surprisingly similar story in 1996, when John McCain was somehow elected well over Jerry Brown of California (who essentially leaned foward and charged into the primaires), even after the Bush years only worsened the divide between working man and big business. Establishment candidates like Mondale hadn't worked, hawks like Dukkakis hadn't worked, centrist neoliberals like Clinton hadn't worked, even the cult of personality surrounding Governor Moonbeam hadn't worked. The left of America (out of spite, mainly) for someone a tad different.
Bernard Sanders ('Bernie' to his friends), Vermont favourite son and progressive trailblazer, was a perfect candidate for a disenfranchised Democrat. His popularity as Mayor or Burlington managed to propel him into House of Representatives seat after almost immediately after he left office. After a time, he was drafted to win the senate seat against the deeply unpopular Republican Jim Douglas. Uniting both students and workers, Sanders surged ahead of the general rabble of the 2000 Dem primaries, which included Robert P. Casey, Harris Wofford and Tom Harkin, entering into a steady competition with established favourite (and former nominee for Vice President) Al Gore. It was a combination of Gore's past relationship to Bill Clinton (read as establishment ties) and somewhat robotic drawl ("A lock box.") that gave Sanders the push he needed in key battleground states. Members of the DNC begged Sanders to pick a candidate that would complement both sides of the isle. They offered him a list of names, starting at the top with high-rankers and big names. Committed to his idea of a revolutionary new direction for the Dems, Sanders skipped the top tier and went all the way to the bottom of the pile, wherein resided the runts, the unimportant, and the no-namers. It was there he found --
Rafael Cruz Jr. ('Ted' to his friends) was born in Chinook, Montana. His father, Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, was Cuban American, born and raised in Cuba before obtaining political asylum in Texas, where the family would soon return to following his birth. After his father was struck down by a distracted driver, Cruz became encouraged to put his energy towards serving and protecting the people. Being the son of two computer programmers who worked diligently for an oil company, Cruz quickly became enamoured with the (at the time) new Atari Democrat philosophy touted by hopefuls such as Gary Hart. After graduating Princeton, he worked as a community volunteer, eventually finding work as a law clerk to James L. Dennis of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, a year before he was fronted as the Dem candidate to replace a vacant House seat. He was an inherent underdog, seemingly destined for political non-importance...right up until the Sanders campaign came knocking.
The televised debates were...interesting. While both candidates could see eye to eye on certain subjects -- Sanders praised the president for his attempts at bipartisanship and McCain complemented his opponent on being to the left of the Democratic zeitgeist (just as he himself had voted adjacent to the conservative Republican wing) --, this didn't last long. McCain labeled Sander's policies of being "way, way too left, maybe even borderline communist", Sanders attacked McCain's expansion of troops in Iraq, McCain accused Sanders of picking a virtual-unknown latin-american purely to attract minority voters, Sanders brought up the administrations record of failing infrastructure. By election day, Americans could see who was actually tackling the issues and who was resorting to petty identity politics.
The Alaska Provincial Police (APP) is the provincial police force for the Canadian province of Alaska. Formed in 1953 after the new province's policing authorities were reorganized, the APP is responsible for all law enforcement in Alaska outside of areas covered by municipal police forces, and is given authority to enforce the law on all provincial highways, enforce both provincial liquor laws and game/wildlife laws, aid local police departments, and maintain a criminal investigation branch. The provincial police have a jurisdiction of over 1.7 million kilometers and have less than 1,000 personnel to do it (653 troopers and 303 civilian auxiliaries), and frequently constables have either no backup or only one other constable for support, with the nearest other backup being hours away. As a result, Alaska Provincial Police constables have gained the reputation for being more self-sufficient and independent-thinking than their municipal, provincial or Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) counterparts. The APP experienced a surge of interest from the rest of Canada (as well as some in the United States) owing to the CBC series Alaska Police that aired from 2009 to 2015, highlighting many of the daily beats patrolled by APP constables in remote parts of Alaska as well as municipal police in Juneau, Anchorage and Chena and the challenges facing those police officers.
The Flint trilogy is a common name for a series of three documentaries by Canadian documentary filmmaker and writer Michael Moore, highlighting the deterioration of Moore's hometown of Flint, Michigan and using it to highlight the economic and social failures of capitalism. The first film in the series, Roger & Me (1989) shows the effects of General Motors (GM) moving several plants in Flint (reducing the number of GM workers in Flint from 90,000 to 50,000 in less than 15 years), with Moore attempting to meet with then-CEO Roger Smith to air his grievances about what he claims are the effects of Smith's leadership of General Motors. In the second film, Striking Flint (2002), Moore lambastes what he cites as the results of increasing economic inequality across Canada as well as the United States, and draws parallels to what he observes in Flint. The final film, Capitalism: A Love Story (2009), released in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis and the "Big Three" bailout, tackles what Moore believes are the flaws of capitalism as practiced in Canada and the United States, castigating the greed and shortsightedness that he believes leads to things such as the recession and bankruptcy of the major Canadian auto manufacturers, and with connecting themes explored in previous two films.
The series earned a combined $72 million at the box office on a $20 million budget, and Moore won the Academy Award for Best Director for his work on Striking Flint, widely regarded as his best film as well as one of the best documentary films ever made. Like many of Moore's projects, the trilogy's popular reception is colored in part by Moore's status as a left-wing provocateur, and his inclusion of himself as a part of his films, although even right-wing film connoisseurs admit that Moore is perhaps one of the best living Canadian filmmakers and polemicists.
The Supreme Court of Canada is the highest court in Canadian judicial system as well as the final court of appeal in Canada. Its rulings are binding on all other courts, unless overridden or made invalid by either an Act of Parliament or a provincial assembly using Section 33 (the "notwithstanding clause") of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that allows provinces to override certain portions of the Charter. Established in 1875, the Court initially was not the court of last resort and its ranks were filled largely by patronage appointments. Following the Second World War, the court became the de facto court of last appeal instead of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London and its membership became increasingly made up of career jurists and legal academics. With the last formal legal ties to the United Kingdom severed with the patriation of the constitution in 1982 and enactment of the Charter (which expanded the power of judicial review), the court has become an increasingly important part of Canadian political life.
The court is made up of nine justices, eight puisne justices and one chief justice, who presides over the court and, when the Governor-General is incapacitated or dies, acts as Administrator of the Government. All justices are appointed by the Governor-General on the advice of the prime minister, and must either be members of a superior court (such as a provincial supreme court or federal appellate court) or members of the bar for over ten years. Like all federal judges, members of the Supreme Court have a mandatory retirement age of 75. Because the province of Quebec uses civil law, instead of the common law system used in the rest of the country, two justices must be appointed from Quebec. Constitutional convention dictates that the remaining seven justices be apportioned with one justice from Ontario, Michigan, either Minnesota or Wisconsin, the northwest (Alaska, Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, or Saskatchewan), southwest (Dakota, Montana or Oregon), either New Hampshire or Maine, and the Maritimes (Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, or Prince Edward Island). Similarly, the Chief Justice is, by convention, one of the most senior puisne justices when the position of chief justice becomes vacant.
Currently, the court is led by Chief Justice Diane Sykes, who was elevated on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's advice after the retirement of her predecessor, Beverly McLachlin in 2017. McLachlin's retirement marked the most recent shake-up of the court' membership, with Sykes' position as puisne justice being filled by Sheilah Martin, the second justice appointed to the court on Trudeau's advice (including Sykes, the other seven were on the advice of Trudeau's predecessor, Stephen Harper). Unless a justice resigns or dies before their mandatory retirement date, the next vacancy on the court is scheduled to occur in 2022 (when Puisne Justice Michael J. Moldaver turns 75).
Striking Flint is an ATL film that Moore works on in place of Bowling for Columbine, since he is not an American ITTL. The other two films are OTL ones, with obvious minor differences (an appearance by President Reagan at a speech in Flint in Roger & Me instead has Prime Minister Mulroney appearing, for example).
Because Quebec is a smaller part of Canada ITTL, it is only entitled to two out of the nine Supreme Court seats instead of its OTL three.
The budget and box office returns are based off of the OTL figures from Roger & Me, Capitalism: A Love Story and Bowling for Columbine.
Now here's something from outside the U.S., starting with a little constitutional crisis in 2017:
Considered to be Italy's gravest constitutional crisis since the death of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in 1973 and the transition to democracy, the 2017 Italian constitutional crisis (sometimes known as the Tyrolean crisis) pitted the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi against the regional government of Tyrol and Trentino over the issue of Tyrolean independence. The crisis started when Regional President Arno Kompatscher announced an independence referendum to be held on 1 October, an act which was denounced by Berlusconi and suspended in the Constitutional Court. Kompatscher's government subsequently intended to hold the vote anyway, sparking a legal backlash by the Italian government and in the subsequent referendum, over 90% of voters cast their votes for independence on 1 October.
Kompatscher would subsequently declare independence in 27 October, leading the Italian parliament to invoke Article 155 of the constitution, suspending Tyrol and Trentino's autonomy and imposing direct rule over the region as a prelude to regional elections in December to elect a new parliament. As a result, Kompatscher and part of his cabinet would flee to the German Empire, particularly as the Ministry of Justice pressed for charges of sedition, rebellion, and embezzlement against them.
E Pluribus Unum Acadian French Italian constitutional crisis; Tyrolean independence referendum, 2017
As you probably guessed, the Austro-Hungarian Empire somehow survives to the modern day in the form of the United States of Greater Austria. As well as national elections, every state has their own elections. Featured above are Austria's and Hungary's state elections. The parties' names or leading candidates mean the same or act the same as in our timeline (The Republican Party in Hungary supporting the abolition of the monarchy, Matthias Strolz being a liberal, etc.). I hope to add more to this later and include a national election.
(If this should be categorized as current politics, I will move it.)
"One Nation" is a song by British band The Orange Sphere, on their 1996 album Ground. The song was influenced by the Pink Floyd song Echoes, also being influences by punk bands such as the Ramones. The result was, according to one reviewer, "a beautiful, weird, unique majestic experience that only the upper echelon of music's elite could dare replicate." On the song, the band used instruments such as sitar, a tack piano, heavy guitar distortion, and samples from speeches given by then-Prime Minister John Major. The song was in drafts after the band's tour for their second album, Republic, in late 1994. The band was beginning to listen to music by Alice Copper, Genesis, The Ramones, and Kraftwerk. "One Nation" was the first song penned for the upcoming Ground album. Another major influence to the band on this song was the rising big beat genre.
The song was released as the fourth song on Ground, released on May 9, 1996. The song received acclaim from critics, with some calling it the musical highlight of 1996. NME called the song "a physic trip", while Rolling Stone called the song "like taking hyper-LSD". The song was used in the soundtrack of the 1997 movie Trainspotting, also being used in various other mediums, such as Labour using the song (omitting the Major samples and using Blair samples) for the 1997 and 2001 elections, the official "hype song" for the NBA's Golden State Warriors, and used in Pespi's rebranding campaign in 2009.
I've been reading Eric Kurlander's Hitler's Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich...
The Wewelsburg Incident was a catastrophic disaster which took place on December 2nd, 1944, in the district of Paderborn, in Nazi Germany. The Incident resulted in the deaths of numerous high-ranking Nazi officials, including Heinrich Himmler and Bernhard Frank, along with potentially several thousand others in a thirty-kilometer radius around the site of the Incident. The cause of the Incident is unknown, and after the end of World War II, all records related to it were deemed to be highly classified by Allied authorities. They remain held under that status to this day.
"History has recorded Point as a victory. As I've aged, I've come to feel differently. I presided over one of the greatest defeats in human military history. And I won't pretend that the men and women I lost in the battle didn't influence the decision that came after." - Admiral (Ret.) Vihaan Reddy, 2174 (comment made to biographer)
"Seven thousand souls gone in the space of a few heartbeats." - Commander Sophia Singh-Ruiz, captain of ASV Leopard, on destruction of ASV Atlantic
"The intent, like every battle, had always been to fight at long-range, where our firepower would whittle them down with minimal losses. But when the Mobile Rig closed, and covered the rest of their fleet as it advanced to knife-fight ranges...that's when things got bloody for us." - Rear Admiral Elinah Zhou, commanding admiral of the 7th Fleet
"I've committed the name of every ship we lost to memory. The list is a totem to me, a talisman. At night, I see them. The thousands of faces of the men and women we failed. That I failed. Crying out the names of the ships they served on, and waiting to welcome me to their embrace." - Rear Admiral Neil Grayson, commanding admiral of the 5th Fleet
"The Second Battle of Point was the opening engagement of the Second Eastern Colonial Rebellion, also known as the 2162 Rebellion and by the names of its various local iterations. Though preceded by Bloody '61, a year of violence and upheaval that culminated in the deadly Navarro Plaza bombings and the assassination of Colony Manager Fiodor Golubin, and intermittent ground conflict, the Battle of Point is considered the first formal action of what is now thought of as the "declared war" phase of the conflict (January 2162 - September 2170)..."
A History of the War on Ashoka
A.T. McCall, PhD, Lt. Gen., Alliance Army (ret.)
University of Mariner Valley Press
2195
___
(From A History of the War on Ashoka, Volume II: Castle, 2162-2164, by A.T. McCall)
APPENDIX I
ALLIANCE NAVAL ORDER OF BATTLE, BATTLE OF POINT 2162
ANNOTATED
* Indicates destroyed or damaged beyond repair
[1] The ASV Atlantic (class lead) is the first and only carrier-class space vehicle to ever be destroyed, and the largest man-made object to ever be destroyed.
[2] From A Naval History of the Second Battle of Point, 2162:
“Lieutenant Commander Joseluis Gonzalez, F-61 Thor pilot attached to the Atlantic, recounted later in his memoirs, ‘I remember what it was like to see her go down…the eerie silence of it all. The explosion was the largest I’d ever seen, and the cloud of fire seemed to stretch on forever. She was in two great pieces, slowly drifting apart. Then only a few minutes later, her reactors touched off, and the entire aft piece of her was no more.’”
[3] Class lead.
[4] The Kilimanjaro fired the “killing blow” that destroyed the pirated PNI Mobile Rig Alpha, which destroyed the Atlantic and several other ships.
[5] The Atlantic CBG not only lost its flagship, but lost a further eight ships, representing a loss of nearly 40% of its ships (including half of its frigate complement), and more than half of its sailors.
[6] The London was lost with all hands after being hit by three rounds from the modified Mobile Rig Alpha.
[7] Class lead.
[8] Class lead.
[9] The Moscow was damaged extensively in the first hour of the battle; roughly half her sailors were evacuated before another round impacted, destroying her.
[10] Class lead.
[11] Sixty-four crew members survived the destruction of the La Paz.
[12] Lost with all hands after engaging Mobile Rig Alpha. Her Lyle Drive was hit by a round from the rig’s main cannon, causing a chain reaction of explosions that atomized the ship.
[13] Class lead.
[14] Lost with all hands.
[15] Class lead.
[16] Class lead.
[17] First Alliance ship to be lost in the battle.
[18] The Adwa interposed itself between hostile forces and the heavily damaged and beleaguered Dodoma, rescuing the cruiser at the cost of over two hundred of her crew. Her commanding officer received a posthumous Star of Terra, and the entire crew a commendation.
[19] Nearly completely destroyed after a hostile light freighter accelerated to Mike 10 and impacted the Troy amidships; only a total of thirty-nine crew members survived in the extreme fore and aft ends of the ship.
[20] Saint-Mihiel suffered a similar fate as the Troy; fourteen crew members survived after two impacts.
[21] Kili was damaged beyond repair after receiving in excess of thirty forensically confirmed cannon rounds and upwards of a dozen missile impacts.
[22] Lost with all hands.
[23] Rammed Mobile Rig Alpha, disabling one its cannons, for which its commanding officer later received a Star of Terra and her crew a commendation.
[24] Lost with all hands in the explosion of the aft section of the Atlantic; Tharsis had been closing in to engage in rescue and relief efforts.
[25] Critically damaged in explosion of the aft section of the Atlantic; Hannibal had been closing in to engage in rescue and relief efforts.
[26] Critically damaged in explosion of the aft section of the Atlantic; Iroquois had been closing in to engage in rescue and relief efforts.
[27] Lost with all hands.
[28] Lost with all hands.
[29] Destroyed in defense of the ASV Pacific.
[30] Destroyed in defense of the ASV Pacific.
[31] Lost with all hands.
[32] Charged forward and engaged the stolen, rebel-held blank, in order to draw fire away from the crippled cruiser Tehran. Succeeded in delivering a killing blow, directly to the blank’s main cannon, which caused a chain reaction that destroyed the ship. Was damaged beyond repair; commanding officer received a Star of Terra, and the rest of her crew received other commendations.
[33] Lost with all hands.
[34] Lost with all hands.
[35] Class lead; destroyed early in the battle.
[36] Class lead.
[37] Head of engineering received Star of Terra after taking command of the critically damaged Freedom after the deaths of the CO, XO, and other command personnel, and directing the ship to ram an enemy ship pursuing the damaged destroyer Gura.
[38] Delivered the killing blow to three enemy held frigates in a knife-fight engagement with an enemy formation. Commanding officer posthumously received Star of Terra, and her crew received other commendations.
[39] Class lead.
[40] Repulse was ordered by her commanding officer to ram the ventral side of enemy ship, which resulted in the enemy ship being disabled, but subsequent hits to the Repulse, in addition to damage from the ramming, resulted in her being damaged beyond repair.
[41] Last ship to be destroyed in the course of the battle, but with the survival of three hundred thirty of the three hundred fifty crew.
[42] Destroyed while screening the withdrawal of the critically damaged destroyer Salta.
[43] Lost with all hands.
[44] Lost with all hands.
[45] Orca was split in two when a large round struck her amidships; miraculously only ten sailors died.
[46] Class lead.
[47] The Daring lost fourteen class sisters during the course of the battle; the heroics of the Daring herself, and the sacrifice of other Daring-class frigates, are the subject of a popular colonial folk song.
[48] Destroyed attempting to intercept Mobile Rig Alpha.
[49] Class lead.
[50] Lost with all hands.
[51] Collided at high speeds with the Lynx after sustaining multiple hits, including one that passed clean through both sides of the ship – passing the bridge on its way.
[52] The Serval impacted her, disabling her main cannon and killing over one hundred crew.
-ASV SpiritintheSky (MN-053)
-ASV KissingBandit (MN-055)
-ASV TickettoRide (MN-056)
-ASV This Machine (MN-058)
-ASV Ghost of Tom Joad (MN-059)
-ASV Screw Loose (MN-061)*
-ASV Youthful Indiscretion (MN-066)
-ASV Cranky (MN-069)
4th Monitor Squadron “Scalp Takers”
-ASV Character Building (MN-003)
-ASV Strong Silent Type (MN-015)
-ASV Charity (MN-017)
-ASV Divine Intervention (MN-021)
-ASV Six Little Friends (MN-026)
-ASV Colony Drop (MN-029)
-ASV Stiff Sinews (MN-032)*
-ASV Our Island (MN-035)
7th Monitor Squadron “Lucky Sevens” [3]
-ASV Red Rock (MN-024)
-ASV Say Hey (MN-025)
-ASV Rolling Rock (MN-044)
-ASV Shower Daily (MN-063)*
-ASV Foehammer (MN-070)
-ASV Widowmaker (MN-071)*
-ASV Fall Down Go Boom (MN-082)*
-ASV Herald (MN-101)
9th Monitor Squadron “Wild Weasels”
-ASV We’ll Meet Again (MN-031)
-ASV Law of the Jungle (MN-054)
-ASV Shelter In Place (MN-057)
-ASV Learning Curve (MN-073)
-ASV Concerned Citizen (MN-074)
-ASV An Elegant Weapon (MN-077)
-ASV Agua Fria (MN-095)*
-ASV Chaotic Neutral (MN-106)
12th Monitor Squadron “Best In Show”
-ASV Highly Against Protocol (MN-091)
-ASV Shot At Dawn (MN-092) *
-ASV Big Lick (MN-100)
-ASV Kill Hat (MN-112)
-ASV He Ain’t Heavy (MN-116)
-ASV Sweet Nothings (MN-123)
-ASV Size Isn’t Everything (MN-137) *
-ASV Preventative Measures (MN-146)
13th Monitor Squadron “Black Cats”
-ASV Plot Twist (MN-079)
-ASV Low Road (MN-086)
-ASV Dead As Good Friday (MN-104) *
-ASV Ugly Finder (MN-108)
-ASV Tax Form (MN-109)
-ASV That’s All Folks (MN-113)
-ASV Joyful Noise (MN-139)
-ASV High-functioning Alcoholism (MN-150)
15th Monitor Squadron “Bounty Hunters” [4]
-ASV Bond (MN-007)
-ASV Conversation Skills (MN-087)
-ASV Glass Jaw (MN-099)
-ASV Concealed Carry (MN-111)
-ASV Jango and Boba (MN-125) *
-ASV Golden Skate (MN-132) *
-ASV Sunday Punch (MN-136)
-ASV Iron Horse (MN-144)
[1] The Alliance Navy Monitor Fleet (famous for its feats of daring when being referred to politely; “suicidal antics” when not) detachment to the invasion force is credited with upwards of two hundred kills during the engagement, and assisting with countless more.
[2],[3],[4] The First, Seventh, and Fifteenth Monitor Squadrons carried out the orbital bombardment of Savannakhet Mai.
"In the aftermath of the orbital bombardment, Alliance Naval High Command, after receiving instructions from the President, ordered Rear Admiral Grayson to relieve Admiral Reddy of command, and to send him under escort back to the Presidio. Reddy remained there while a formal investigation was initiated, and recommended that the matter proceed to a court-martial..."
The 1968 Republican presidential primaries were the selection process by which voters of the Republican Party chose its nominee for President of the United States in the 1968 U.S. presidential election. Governor of California Ronald Reagan was selected as the nominee through a series of primary elections and caucuses culminating in the 1968 Republican National Convention held from August 5 to August 8, 1968, in Miami Beach, Florida.
The United States presidential election of 1968 was the 46th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1968. The Republican nominee, Governor of California Ronald Reagan, defeated the Democratic nominee, incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Analysts have argued the election of 1968 was a major realigning election as it permanently disrupted the New Deal Coalition that had dominated presidential politics for 36 years.
The United States presidential election of 1972, the 47th quadrennial presidential election, was held on Tuesday, November 7, 1972. Incumbent Republican President Ronald Reagan defeated Democratic Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota.
Something a little different, although still - alas - political.
List of Alliance MPs
The victory of Al Gore in 2000 brought to an end the short-lived post-Cold-War orthodoxy that America was the world's policeman: bent on kicking the shit out of non-white people. Instead, peaceful transitions of power were achieved in Iraq and Afghanistan by the end of his second term and the world began to work together to combat the threat of climate change.
The impact of this on New Zealand was the growth in confidence of the Left, which had already won power in 1999. Supporting the Labour government was the Alliance coalition of parties - namely the leftist NewLabour Party, the Democrats for Social Credit, the Maori rights party Mana Motuhake, and until 2002 the remnants of the utterly pointless Liberal Party. The Alliance had included the Green Party until 1997, but at that point the Green MPs elected on the Alliance ticket 'waka-jumped' to form their own independent party and failed to enter Parliament in 1999, receiving a tragic 4.96%. Another 10,000 party votes, or another 12 votes in the Coromandel electorate, would have seen them through.
Now that the Alliance were in coalition with a Labour government and holding several ministerial positions, internal battles became fiercer. The Leader, Jim Anderton of NewLabour, rapidly gained a reputation as Helen Clark's lapdog, and this angered the more doctrinaire leftists. Perhaps if the Government had been led into some sort of retread of the Gulf War or a similar exercise in Middle East imperialism, the Alliance would have split asunder, but as it was, the only major result of the civil war was that a few of the thinner-skinned MPs retired in 2002. Despite the ructions and the inevitable loss of popularity due to forming part of a Government, Jim Anderton's approachable charm in the debates resulted in the loss of only two seats. Now, however, the balance of power in caucus was more on the side of the hard-liners (Laila Harre of NewLabour, Willie Jackson of Mana Motuhake and Matt McCarten, who went from NewLabour to Mana Motuhake in 2004, being the party's heavy-hitters, versus a collection of oddities and nonentities) and after 2002 the Alliance voted merely to give Labour supply and confidence, without chaining themselves with a coalition.
This essentially ended Anderton's ministerial career and he resigned from the leadership and from Parliament in 2005. He was replaced in the Wigram electorate by his protege Megan Woods and as Leader by Laila Harre, who had the backing of a new convert to the Alliance - former Labour Minister Tariana Turia. During the early 2000s, the issue of Maori rights had become more and more divisive and more and more emotive, with National Leader Don Brash attacking Maori in his Orewa Speech. Labour were also engaged in alienating their hitherto monolithic Maori support base with the Seabed and Foreshore controversy, and Turia defected to Mana Motuhake in 2004, going on to stand in a by-election for her own seat. She brought a cadre of Maori activists and voters with her, which thoroughly changed the balance of the party. The initial dominance of the white, working class NewLabour supporters had been weathered away by fatigue and Anderton's support of Labour, and now - partly by increased membership, partly by superior talent - the head honchos were now Mana Motuhake.
This is not to say that the Alliance was now solely a vehicle for supporters of Maori sovereignty. Matt McCarten, the Party President as well as an MP, was clear that his primary focus was on the class disparity between Maori and middle class Pakeha, not on enriching tribal elites for the sake of it. But this was the source of much of their popularity, which explains why Harre and the (white, middle class) members of the Democrats for Social Credit were progressively sidelined. Harre resigned as Leader as a sort of fait accompli in 2007, two years after getting rid of Jim Anderton and a year before retiring to go into local politics, and was followed by Tariana Turia. One of her strategic masterstrokes was to invite the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party to join the Alliance, a move which increased the Alliance's vote while also gaining several quality people such as Metiria Turei. In 2008, despite the fall of Phil Goff's Labour-led government to John Key, the Alliance came out smiling, having gained two seats, including a third electorate - Te Tai Tokerau.
During the Fifth National Government, a string of pale, male and stale Labour leaders threw the diverse Alliance caucus into a better light, thus helping their electoral prospects. Mama Tere Strickland was New Zealand's second trans MP, while the Maori caucus could always be relied upon for a barn-storming speech - even Matt McCarten, who had struggled with a stammer since childhood and yet was always listened to. The internal pressures of the Alliance were moving against Mana Motuhake, though: simply because of an aging caucus. Most Mana Motuhake MPs had been activists for decades and some were moving into the ambit of the hierarchical tribal interests that McCarten had tried to avoid. As such, a lot of young progressives moved to Legalise Cannabis instead as the cause du jour. This eventually enabled Metiria Turei to oust Turia as leader in 2013, and she went on to win a record high number of votes and seats in 2014.
In 2017, however, two things happened: Metiria Turei admitted to having been a benefit fraudster in the 1990s in an attempt to siphon off Labour voters, and Jacinda Ardern replaced David Parker as Labour Leader in the middle of the campaign. This stopped the Alliance surge in its tracks, with soft Alliance supporters going Labour. Additionally, most of the Legalise Cannabis Party betrayed their leader by defecting en masse to the Green Party, led now by multi-millionaire tax wonk Gareth Morgan. If it hadn't been for Jacindamania, it is quite possible that the Greens would have finally entered Parliament in 2017, but it was not to be. The Alliance, meanwhile fell down to just 7 seats and lost major players such as John Minto and Annette Sykes, as well as failing to elect rising stars like Curwen Rolinson.
On the plus side for the Alliance, the election of a Labour-United Future Government with the Alliance as a support partner means that Metiria Turei is able to present a referendum on legalising cannabis in her role as Health Minister, while Paula Gillon is bringing Social Credit economic ideas to the table as Associate Minister of Finance.
On April 6, 1941, Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas died of a stroke. He had held his office for twenty-seven long years, in which he had had an immense impact - the Eighteenth Amendment, the Federal Credit Union Act, antitrust laws, women's suffrage, all had come into law with Sheppard's assistance. But now he was leaving office the only way Southern senators ever did - feet-first.
It was now up to Governor Ernest Thompson to appoint his replacement. Soon after news reached Washington, Thompson's phone rang twice in quick succession. Nobody knows what Governor Thompson talked with Alvin Wirtz, political boss and Undersecretary of the Interior, about. The same is the case for his conversation with President Roosevelt. But by the end of the day, you could probably guess.
Lyndon B. Johnson had served in Congress for only four years, and had no other experience in elected office. He was only 33 years old. But he, nevertheless, made his way into the United States Senate. And his star was still on the rise.
Johnson's election in the special election of 1941, and his re-election to a full term a year later, were among the only pieces of good news for the Democrats. Across the nation, incumbent Democrats were getting their asses kicked.
One example of that happened concurrently with Johnson's re-election. Ernest Thompson was a mostly unobjectionable two-term Governor. But many saw him as a "do-nothing Governor", and in a wave year, residual goodwill could only carry him so far.
Omicron Pi Lockhart was a former teacher and businessman with an impressively improbable name which was usually rendered as O. P. Lockhart. He was also a close confidant of Pappy O'Daniel who had served as O'Daniel's campaign manager in 1938 and the chairman of his Lone Star Party since then.
Some say that, had Lyndon Johnson wanted to, he would have won the election for Thompson. Given how close Thompson's margin was in '38, that is hardly uncontroversial. But I would be remiss in not pointing out that Johnson had his own base of support now, one which didn't need Johnson to prove himself for Roosevelt.
That base included Populists who remembered Sam Ealy Johnson. And his ideological match was not the happily corporate Ernest Thompson, but the man who railed against the insurance companies and promoted a state pension everywhere he went.
Governor Frank Merriam was no more popular in his first term than in his second. As a rising tide of progressivism swept the Assembly, his cheerful vetoing of pension and healthcare bills galvanized opposition. As public opinion soured on the war, Merriam's efforts to put Japanese-Americans in internment camps aroused protests across the state. And as new media like the San Francisco-based Labor Action and the Los Angeles Observer (which featured the column Universe, written by Assemblyman Robert Heinlein) began to overtake the old papers, Merriam's friendship with paper barons like William Randolph Hearst and Los Angeles Times editor Harry Chandler became less and less relevant.
Even for those who recalled the painful loss four years earlier, Merriam's downfall seemed to be a story in search of a protagonist. Culbert Olson had had a heart attack and passed away less than a week after he would have been inaugurated. Upton Sinclair declined to run, content in his status as a respected "elder statesman" and as a bestselling author. Francis Townsend was widely blamed for splitting the vote in 1938, and seemed content himself to promote his pension idea. Parley Christensen was focused on his job as Mayor of Los Angeles. Augustus F. Hawkins was considered unlikely to be elected, largely because he was black. Robert Heinlein was too young, and decided not to run for his seat in 1942 anyway, instead going to work for the Navy.
But there was one option the California Democrats and Frontier League (many of whom would form the "Golden Dawn" Party in December 1942) could find. John Steinbeck was many things - an avowed leftist, a bestselling author, an OSS asset and war correspondent who had been shot in the leg in Australia. And on January 4, 1943, he added "Governor of California" to that resume.
"All enemies of Hawaii shall choke with the ash of Kīlauea and the tears of our motherland."
~ The most famous version of the "Ash and Tears" chant, first delivered by Talia Williams during a speech on 17 March 2402
The Warriors of Prosperity was a militant Hawaiian nationalist group that dominated the Hawaiian islands and terrorized the Pacific Ocean throughout the 25th and 26th centuries. Founded and led by Aloisi Gabbard, a Hawaiian revolutionary and cult leader, the Warriors of Prosperity was a designated terrorist organization in several dozen countries, including the United States of America, Japan and Australia. Originating as the Hawaiian National Movement, the Warriors of Prosperity have their roots in the Hawaiian Wars of Governorship, the ancient strife between the Hawaiians and the American government, and the enmity between Aloisi Gabbard and his older brother Joseph Gabbard, prominently known as "the Peacemaker" for his efforts to peacefully and nonviolently accelerate the full independence of Hawaii, at that point an autonomous state in all but name, from the United States.
Born in 2343, Aloisi Gabbard grew up in a time of technological stagnation, subtle ethnic strife and dissatisfaction. He did not achieve any prominent position in the Hawaiian government, despite being a member of the age-old Gabbard political dynasty, and his upbringing may have contributed to his mental issues. While working as a bureaucrat in the First Hawaiian Center, Gabbard frequently read nationalist classics like The Undivided Civilization of Bharat by I Gede Ganjah Ketu and was heavily influenced by prominent Hindutva thinkers, among them Chatur Barigai and Rura Seth, and Hawaiian nationalists such as Hikialani Keli'i, a monarchist who was arrested and executed by the "American cronies" in November 2288. However, his brother, Joseph Gabbard, was Attorney General of Hawaii and a bulwark against American oppression and revolutionary chaos, which Aloisi did not appreciate. Like all "Yankee imperialists", Aloisi saw his brother Joseph as a puppet of the overseas American tyrants, embezzling from the oppressed people of Hawaii and appeasing the Yanks in order to give himself a higher position. To say the least, Aloisi and Joseph did not have a friendly relationship.
At some point in the 2380s, Aloisi Gabbard joined a closed Hindu community upon invitation by his younger cousin, Talia Williams. In 2390, after the death of Joseph at the hands of an unknown assailant and the re-election of Governor Rico Matsui, Aloisi issued a pamphlet called "The Prosperity of Hawaii", in which he called out the Hawaiian leadership for "selling out their home isles to America for some bucks". Following the spread of his supporters, Aloisi ran in the 2394 elections, promising the Hawaiians "a reborn Hawaiian nation, safe from the degenerate Yankee menace". Aloisi was mostly supported by poor and radicalized Native Hawaiians and Samoans, and lost by a heavy margin to middle-class urbanite Devin Cabral. Nonetheless, Aloisi was in luck: Devin considered Aloisi a potential ally. Devin also ran on an "unity" ticket and, fearful of a radical bloodshed, made Aloisi Gabbard the head of State Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. Later, on July 2396, the Washington Place was destroyed by a set of bombs, killing the beleaguered Governor and his family instantly. The open animosity between the mostly-Democratic Government of Hawaii and the nationalist Aloisi Gabbard set off the Hawaiian Wars of Governorship, which the Hawaiian National Movement would just barely win, storming the State Capitol.
Rechristened the Warriors of Prosperity, Aloisi and his supporters had little control over Hawaii, their organization becoming increasingly cult-like and despised by the majority of the Hawaiian people. In the meanwhile, the Warriors dealt with the lackluster intervention of the American government and the resistance of the Hawaiian people against the Warriors of Prosperity. It is then that the Warriors began to utilize Ash and Tears flags, which almost always incorporated the Hindu swastika and the color red. The Warriors of Prosperity became infamous for their routine slaughter and torture of dissenters, and Gabbard himself became infamous for his ways of dealing with potential rivals; Talia Williams, once one of Aloisi's closest allies and his chief propagandist, started to disagree with Aloisi on certain points. After a chance meeting with her cousin, she would become schizophrenic and, much later, effectively braindead until her disappearance in 2415. During these years, the demented, aging Gabbard would order his soldiers to carry out the "Enlightened Purges", a series of concentrated attacks against the "peoples who weren't culturally Hawaiian", which included Japanese, Europeans and Native Hawaiians that did not support the Gabbard regime. An estimated 3,000,000 perished in the Purges, with the entire Japanese-Hawaiian population systematically wiped out save for some two thousand people. Gabbard would die in 2424, succeeded by Minister of Demographics, Eme Maile, who would proceed to boost the decimated birth rate through ambitious and inane genetic programs, while raiding neighboring nations "in the name of Hawaiian prosperity".
Although the Warriors of Prosperity would be deposed in 2465, they would continue to exist, enacting atrocities in the Pacific, until the annihilation of their major leadership by cyber-Gurkhas in 2560. Their effects on Hawaii are still felt today, with thousands of memorials to the "Enlightened Purges" across the Hawaiian Islands and the Pacific Region, visited by people of mostly Hawaiian-Samoan extraction, followed by Balinese, European and other minorities.
While I did create the separate thread for Our Fair Country in this forum, I felt that these two related wikibox & page were noteworthy enough to post as a standalone here in here.
Since the party's formation in the aftermath of the Second World War and the Presidency of Henry A. Wallace, the Conservative Party of the United States had quickly become the main opposition to the Republican Party in the country. Despite their strong support in the southern United States amongst former Democrats and in the Midwest amongst Taftite Republicans, the party continued to struggle in the Northeast and West coast of the country. With the election of Joe Kennedy in 1960, Conservatives hoped to expand their base amongst Republicans whom become dissatisfied with the increasing liberalism in the party. Nowhere was this more true than in New York. New York had undoubtedly the most liberal members of the Republican Senate caucus in the form of Kenneth Keating, who occupied the Class 1 seat from 1959 until 1971, and Jacob Javits, who occupied the Class 3 seat from 1957 until 1975. When Keating opted to retire in 1970, the Conservative Party in New York saw this as a chance to pickup a seat in the most populace states in the Union.
The Republican Party nominated Representative Charles Goodell for the seat. Despite having a reputation as a moderate in the House, Goodell campaigned on a solidly liberal platform in the race. The Conservatives nominated their 1968 nominee James L. Buckley. Buckley campaign focused on tackling the ever increasing crime rates as well as his support for the Japanese in the ongoing Sumatra War engulfing the East Indies. Goodell campaigned on his opposition to getting involved in the war stating that it was "Japan's problem." Despite New Yorks trend towards the GOP, the rise of conservatism in the United States led to the race being more competitive had it been Keating v. Buckley.
In the end, Goodell narrowly won election to the Senate, and would hold the seat until his retirement in 1982. Buckley would take his second defeat at the hands of a Liberal Republican in stride and would work to help his brother, William Buckley, receive the Conservative Party's nomination for the Senate in 1974 and would defeat Jacob Javits in the election, becoming the first member of the Conservative Party to represent New York in the Senate. As for James, he would move to Connecticut in 1977 and make a successful run for the Senate in 1980.
No real story to this one, as it is based off the results of a poll undertaken by the Javits Senatorial Campaign which included polling on the Presidential race, being conducted from July 21st to July 31st. Having lost the Republican nomination, the campaign became acutely aware that their fortunes largely rested on then presumptive Liberal presidential nominee John Anderson as he would be headlining the Liberal ticket in New York, with the expectation that votes for Anderson would translate to votes for Javits, and should Anderson falter Javits himself would falter. The poll itself found that Reagan was leading Anderson in New York by a (36-31) margin, with President Carter down to around (16%), the remainder undecided.
However, as is mentioned in the NYT article I found the poll cited in, the poll itself was conducted during the height of Billygate and of the division caused by the Democratic Primary campaign with Ted Kennedy, and should be understood in that context.
I have the county by county results I calculated to get the result in the spoiler.
Note: This is part of the universe of the Time Crisis Series, a series of light gun games developed by Namco Bandai. All properties go to them. Most information displayed here is based off official information.
The United States Biological Weapons Special Operations Unit (BWSOU), most commonly known as the Hamlin Battalion, BWOPS and Task Force Grey within JSOC, was an elite top secret special mission unit of the United States Army under the direct and operational control of the Joint Special Operations Command. The unit was tasked specialized missions primarily in animal warfare and in field reconnaissance, although later missions would be primarily focused on the testing and deployment of genetically modified animals, entomological weapons and biological weapons in warfare, both in testing and in the field. For a time, the so-called Hamlin Battalion was one of the few units in the United States Armed Forces that was cleared to handle and research biological weapons on its own terms, under the supervision of the United States Joint Intelligence Division. Nearly all of Hamlin Battalion's recruits were selected from the top classes of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, and specialised bioweapon handlers were selected from other special forces groups, most notably from Delta Force and Seal Team Six.
The unit was officially formed on May 6, 1948, shortly after the end of the Second World War and has secretly participated in every major conflict involving the United States up to 2006, including the Korean War, Vietnam War, First Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War. It also had conducted secret labratory experiments and field tests not under the supervision of the United States Military during the period between 1996 and 1999 which resulted in several incidents in Alaska although it was later covered up.
The unit would be officially disbanded on July 22, 2007 as a result of the entire unit mutinying and eventually going rogue along with its commander, and in the process triggering the Terror Bite terrorist attacks across the country. The exposure of the Revelations Attack Plot alongisde the mutiny would force the United States Armed Forces to declassify all documents relating to the Hamlin Battalion stretching back to the foundation of the unit in 1948, including operations it conducted under the guise of biological warfare. The attacks it conducted in California and Colorado is considered by the United States Federal Government and the United States Armed Forces to be a bioterrorist attack, from the biological weapon attack on San Francisco International Airport targeting a group of VSSE Agents, to a large fire fight in the streets of San Francisco to the final attack on Buckley Air Force Base near Aurora, Colorado.
Cemaleddin Kaplan is one of the most notorious figures in modern Turkish history. IOTL the theologian left Turkey for a German exile in 1980 after a military coup, which had destroyed his political ambitions and seemed to prevent his plans of launching an Islamist party in Turkey to potentially emulate the Islamic Revolution which had taken place in Iran a year prior. In Germany Kaplan founded Islamist organisations which ultimately evolved into a group calling itself Kalifatstaat (Caliphate State). While Cemaleddin died in 1995 and his son took over the group, it was dismantled in 2001 due to changes in German law. His son Metin continued to be a noteworthy figure in German islamist movement until his deportation to Turkey in 2004.
So... If Turkey had experienced something similar to the Iranian Islamic Revolution, Cemaleddin is one of the prime candidates for the position of alt-Khomeini.
Possible causes: A war or pestilence in Italy leads to massive emigration to the French/German-speaking borderlands, particularly the cosmopolitan and multilingual city of Strasbourg. Many of Tuscany's greatest minds settle in Strasbourg, Colmar, and Mulhouse, where the intellectual achievements that spark the Renaissance (particularly the printing press and the rediscovery of ancient Greco-Roman literature) occur. However, as this part of Europe is sparse in Roman ruins, the architecture of the Alsatian Renaissance differs from that of the Renaissance we know in that is based off of Gothic and Romanesque, not classical, styles, with a drive to build taller and nimbler buildings. The result is that the Renaissance visually looks much more "medieval" and towering Gothic structures replace Greek and Roman temples as the symbol of high architecture (although there is, similarly to our Arts and Crafts Movement, a turn away from ever more extravagant and fragile Gothic buildings towards the solidity and "honesty" of classical models). Pugin, Ruskin, and Morris all are advocates for returning to "rustic" Roman and Greek culture and the "humble honesty" of a Greek or Roman temple as opposed to a 140, 150, or even 180-meter wedding-cake steeple.
Bill Clinton (born August 19, 1946) is an American political strategist, former Cabinet Secretary, campaign manager, political analyst, and author [1]. He is a member of the Democratic Party, having gained national attention for his work as the lead strategist of the unsuccessful presidential campaign of North Dakota Senator George McGovern [2] [3]. Later, he served as Cabinet Secretary for President Mickey Leland, then as Chairperson for the Democratic National Committee from 2011 to mid-2016 [4][5][6]. Clinton was elected chairperson of the Democratic National Committee in May 2011, replacing Virginia Senator Tim Kaine. On July 24, 2016, Clinton announced his resignation from his position after several news outlets made light of his past relationship with 2016 candidate Hillary Rodham [7][8]. His resignation was finalised on July 28 following the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Recently, Clinton has come into additional controversy when multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct [9][10][11].
