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Reports of protests are overblown. A few incidents around the country, but nothing major.

5 (45.5%)

A few major incidents in capitals, but nothing much in DC.

5 (45.5%)

A major incident in DC, but nothing much around the country.

0 (0%)

More than 10 capitals have major upheavals, but nothing much in DC.

0 (0%)

A major incident in DC plus more than 10 capitals with significant upheavals.

1 (9.1%)

More than half the capitals around the country have problems with protesters, but DC is quiet.

0 (0%)

DC has major problems, while more than half the capitals around the country also have considerable trouble with protesters.

0 (0%)

Huge disruption to the day.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 9

Voting closed: January 19, 2021, 10:49:21 PM

[facilitatorn]

Acosta swept out with the rest of the trash. Now he’s free, R Kelly is hoping Acosta winds up leading the prosecution against him. It’s more likely they wind up sharing a cell. The CBP head is soon to join crooked Alex in the White House midden for being a devotee to the famous fascist Facebook group. Citizenship question is dead as well.

No one looses like the GOP.

[bodiddley]

Fast forward thirty years and the President of Russia in dealing with USA has zero economic power, zero military power and yet is winning the ideological battle because his best asset for defeating the USA is the President of The USA.

Slowly but almost surely Putin is becoming the President of a reconstituted Soviet Union.

Putin has lots of oil and mineral wealth.
Leverage over Europe, dependent on Russian natural gas.
A strong enough military to save Assad in Syria and steal the Crimea from Ukraine.  Not to mention taking over the Eastern edge of Ukraine, securing chunks of Georgia and Moldova, while keeping their foot on the throats of Chechnya and Dagestan.
While maintaining a menace towards the Baltics.

And not as the Soviet Union.  Russia very unlikely to incorporate all those -stans and former republics again.  Or to have satellites in Eastern Europe.  Maybe Belarus would join Russia for old times sake.  Putin is powerful and dangerous, but it's Russia +, not nearly the old Soviet Union +.

[REDSTATEWARD]

The fact that it ended is not in dispute.   Your assertion that SDI caused the dissolution of the CCCP is what is being challenged.   

I'll wait.

That train left the station 30 years ago.

So you admit there is no evidence to support the causal relationship between SDI and the collapse.of the Soviet Empire but lack the intellectual bravery to admit it. Behave as expected.

LOL
SDI was a lynchpin in Reagan’s Defense buildup.  An important factor in the Reagan Doctrine—that America would come to the aid of freedom fighters to throw off Soviet tyranny. It ended the Brezhnev Doctrine, which claimed that all socialist countries would fight any effort to introduce capitalism on their turf.
Gorbachev with all of his attempts to save the Soviet Union finally understood  the obvious:  the Soviet Union was so far behind in the Arms Race it had no choice but to just go away.

You can keep saying the same thing, but you still haven't really shown how SDI was a linchpin or THE linchpin (not sure what a "lynchpin" is, unless it's a sharp object you find in some salad dressings).  The collapse was far more about economics than intimidation by Ray Guns (pun intended).  Here's part of an essay by a historian, based on CIA and DOS documents from that period:

During the 1960s and 1970s, the Communist Party elite rapidly gained wealth and power while millions of average Soviet citizens faced starvation. The Soviet Union’s push to industrialize at any cost resulted in frequent shortages of food and consumer goods. Bread lines were common throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Soviet citizens often did not have access to basic needs, such as clothing or shoes.

The divide between the extreme wealth of the Politburo and the poverty of Soviet citizens created a backlash from younger people who refused to adopt Communist Party ideology as their parents had.

The USSR also faced foreign attacks on the Soviet economy. In the 1980s, the United States under President Ronald Reagan isolated the Soviet economy from the rest of the world and helped drive oil prices to their lowest levels in decades. When the Soviet Union’s oil and gas revenue dropped dramatically, the USSR began to lose its hold on Eastern Europe.

Meanwhile, Gorbachev’s reforms were slow to bear fruit and did more to hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union than to help it. A loosening of controls over the Soviet people emboldened independence movements in the Soviet satellites of Eastern Europe.

Political revolution in Poland in 1989 sparked other, mostly peaceful revolutions across Eastern European states and led to the toppling of the Berlin Wall. By the end of 1989, the USSR had come apart at the seams.

An unsuccessful coup by Communist Party hard-liners in August 1991 sealed the Soviet Union’s fate by diminishing Gorbachev’s power and propelling democratic forces, led by Boris Yeltsin, to the forefront of Russian politics.

Source:

https://www.history.com/topics/russia/history-of-the-soviet-union#section_8

If you want to pursue some other line of reasoning go right ahead. It hardly changes the facts, easily researchable from leaders of oppressed Iron Curtain countries, that the primary reason behind the fall of the Soviet Union was the collapse of Brezhnev Doctrine. And oneWestern leader above all others forced the Soviets to give it up and abandon the arms race, brought down the Berlin Wall, and ended the Cold War at the bargaining table and not on the battlefield: President Ronald Reagan.

[bodiddley]

Tony, not only are many older ex-industrial cities hurting and in need of an infusion of talent and energy.

But many small towns in the countryside have been all but abandoned.  There are towns out on the prairies that will give a lot of land to anyone willing to build a home.   Many have very cheap houses available.  New immigrants could breathe new life into some of these old dying farm towns.  I assume many/some of these immigrants from central america have done farm labor, and would be willing to make a go of it in the US.

[Hairy Lime]

The fact that it ended is not in dispute.   Your assertion that SDI caused the dissolution of the CCCP is what is being challenged.   

I'll wait.

That train left the station 30 years ago.

So you admit there is no evidence to support the causal relationship between SDI and the collapse.of the Soviet Empire but lack the intellectual bravery to admit it. Behave as expected.

LOL
SDI was a lynchpin in Reagan’s Defense buildup.  An important factor in the Reagan Doctrine—that America would come to the aid of freedom fighters to throw off Soviet tyranny. It ended the Brezhnev Doctrine, which claimed that all socialist countries would fight any effort to introduce capitalism on their turf.
Gorbachev with all of his attempts to save the Soviet Union finally understood  the obvious:  the Soviet Union was so far behind in the Arms Race it had no choice but to just go away.

You can keep saying the same thing, but you still haven't really shown how SDI was a linchpin or THE linchpin (not sure what a "lynchpin" is, unless it's a sharp object you find in some salad dressings).  The collapse was far more about economics than intimidation by Ray Guns (pun intended).  Here's part of an essay by a historian, based on CIA and DOS documents from that period:

During the 1960s and 1970s, the Communist Party elite rapidly gained wealth and power while millions of average Soviet citizens faced starvation. The Soviet Union’s push to industrialize at any cost resulted in frequent shortages of food and consumer goods. Bread lines were common throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Soviet citizens often did not have access to basic needs, such as clothing or shoes.

The divide between the extreme wealth of the Politburo and the poverty of Soviet citizens created a backlash from younger people who refused to adopt Communist Party ideology as their parents had.

The USSR also faced foreign attacks on the Soviet economy. In the 1980s, the United States under President Ronald Reagan isolated the Soviet economy from the rest of the world and helped drive oil prices to their lowest levels in decades. When the Soviet Union’s oil and gas revenue dropped dramatically, the USSR began to lose its hold on Eastern Europe.

Meanwhile, Gorbachev’s reforms were slow to bear fruit and did more to hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union than to help it. A loosening of controls over the Soviet people emboldened independence movements in the Soviet satellites of Eastern Europe.

Political revolution in Poland in 1989 sparked other, mostly peaceful revolutions across Eastern European states and led to the toppling of the Berlin Wall. By the end of 1989, the USSR had come apart at the seams.

An unsuccessful coup by Communist Party hard-liners in August 1991 sealed the Soviet Union’s fate by diminishing Gorbachev’s power and propelling democratic forces, led by Boris Yeltsin, to the forefront of Russian politics.

Source:

https://www.history.com/topics/russia/history-of-the-soviet-union#section_8

If you want to pursue some other line of reasoning go right ahead. It hardly changes the facts, easily researchable from leaders of oppressed Iron Curtain countries, that the primary reason behind the fall of the Soviet Union was the collapse of Brezhnev Doctrine. And oneWestern leader above all others forced the Soviets to give it up and abandon the arms race, brought down the Berlin Wall, and ended the Cold War at the bargaining table and not on the battlefield: President Ronald Reagan.

Plenty of people, including Havel and Walesa credit the Helsinki accords and James Carter's focus on human rights. Not that you would ever admit that.

But even conceding defense spending played a role in the economic collapse of the.Eastern Bloc, SDI's role is what is at issue, and you have never offered more then a quick was too as support. SDI was never more than a laughing stock.

[facilitatorn]

Red’s whole life is a laughingstock. He won’t know what you mean.

[Hairy Lime]

I figured his use of the phrase "lynchpin" reflected his world view.

[FlyingVProd]

Work on the Star Wars program resulted in the invention of laser eye surgery.

Nonsense.   LASIK grew out of peacetime research on the laser at Bell Labs et al.   Feel free to provide evidence for your claims.   

Star Wars laser used in eye surgery
BY: DAVID SALISBURY

https://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/reporter/index.html?ID=1244

------

From a simple Google search.

I assume that Vanderbilt University is an acceptable source of information.

The researchers on the Star Wars program made a lot of advancements, but a lot of stuff is secret. 

Salute,

Tony V. 

[FlyingVProd]

Tony, not only are many older ex-industrial cities hurting and in need of an infusion of talent and energy.

But many small towns in the countryside have been all but abandoned.  There are towns out on the prairies that will give a lot of land to anyone willing to build a home.   Many have very cheap houses available.  New immigrants could breathe new life into some of these old dying farm towns.  I assume many/some of these immigrants from central america have done farm labor, and would be willing to make a go of it in the US.

We have lots of room for our new immigrants, we need to welcome them.

We have an abundance of land here in the USA for our new immigrants, we need to come from a place of abundance. Trump wants us to believe that somehow immigrants are stealing from the American citizens, or that somehow our immigrants are hurting America, but it is all baloney, our immigrants are great for America, and we are a nation of immigrants, our nation was built by immigrants. And we have enough land for everyone, there is not a shortage of land in the USA.

We need to get the information out there to the people, that Trump is wrong, and that we can easily welcome our new immigrants.

And we need to let the immigrants know about opportunities in the USA, to rebuild and repopulate dying cities and dying farm towns, etc.

Salute,

Tony V.

[barton]

Work on the Star Wars program resulted in the invention of laser eye surgery.

Nonsense.   LASIK grew out of peacetime research on the laser at Bell Labs et al.   Feel free to provide evidence for your claims.   

Star Wars laser used in eye surgery
BY: DAVID SALISBURY

https://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/reporter/index.html?ID=1244

I assume that Vanderbilt University is an acceptable source of information.

Tony V.

SDI didn't develop this kind of laser.  It was already available, so no, you can't paint this as a peacetime spinoff from original DoD research.  The article you cited mentions this in two places.   SDI basically wasted 33 Billion on a technology that would have destabilized the balance of power by giving the false security of imagining that a full-scale missile attack could be shot down, and that a nuclear war was survivable.  It was MAD (mutually assured destruction) that kept the Cold War cold.  Here is the relevant passage from your Vanderbilt paper:

Although the Pentagon’s main interest in FEL technology was its potential for producing laser beams of extremely high power, FEL proponents realized from the beginning that it was an important new tool for a wide range of basic research, including biomedical applications.     

And...(bolded word mine)

Vanderbilt’s free-electron laser (FEL) is a powerful type of laser that was adopted by the Defense Department as part of the “Star Wars” missile defense program...   

  That is to say, it already existed.   

SDI = Boondoggle + Laughingstock.   Promoted by a President who made decisions based on astrology.   Your love may be misplaced, Tony.   Just because something "makes jobs" doesn't mean it's an unqualified good thing.   Making canisters of nerve gas and biological weapons also employed people.  Stalin employed people to round up peasants and murder them.   Many Germans collected paychecks gassing Jews, Poles  Gypsies, and gay people.  Etc.

[REDSTATEWARD]

But even conceding defense spending played a role in the economic collapse of the.Eastern Bloc, SDI's role is what is at issue, and you have never offered more then a quick was too as support. SDI was never more than a laughing stock.

But even conceding defense spending played a role in the economic collapse of the.Eastern Bloc,
By Jove, you are finally catching on.
Reagan caused billions to be spent on SDI research and the Soviets tried to match the spending. Voila! They went broke. And the they broke up. 
By 1993 Bill Clinton ended SDI.  It proved to be one of the most successful economic programs the US had ever undertaken to the betterment of our security but also the future of most of Europe who was freed from life behind an Iron Curtain.

[barton]

I figured his use of the phrase "lynchpin" reflected his world view.

Heh!   And he still hasn't connected any dots.  Why should I believe it was the much snickered at SDI, and NOT conventional military buildup, that drove the USSR to overspend?  Or the other factors aforementioned?  I knew a guy in Oregon who worked on SDI and he said, basically, that they knew their project was never going to work and that it would eventually have the plug pulled.   He was sure the Soviets knew it, too.  Two words:  Chaff Bomb.

[bankshot1]

I always thought there were lots of reasons for the break-up of the Soviet Union, but it was basically economic. After a disasterous war in Afghanistan, they could no longer afford both guns and butter, for themselves, or their dependents in Eastern Europe. So they chose margarine, they couldn't afford butter.

Also Walesa in Poland was the prescursor and the vanguard of the growing demands in the communist bloc for greater freedom and economic power visa a vis the state.

Having a Polish Pope didn't hurt either.

The Soviets could not afford to fight a multi-front economic war as a desperately poor country. And the US had deeper pockets. And we could afford to develop Star wars shit. Fuck the Russians could barely afford to buy a ticket to watch the film.


Perhaps we will learn the lesson the Soviets learned as we go deeper into debt and empower our oligarchs gut this country, steal its wealth, while blaming the middle-class and threaten to take away their social security blanket.

Except we won't negotaite terms with Russia, it will be with China.

[FlyingVProd]

We made a lot of progress, and you are safer from what was learned from the Star Wars program. 

And for instance, we made advancements in our ability to "see" the nuclear weapons, I cannot talk about it, but trust me, you are safer from what was learned from the money spent on the Star Wars program.

And a lot of our researchers are still relatively young, a lot of these scientists are only in their fifties.

Great stuff is happening because of money spent during the Reagan years, and we are safer.

Salute,

Tony V.

[Hairy Lime]

But even conceding defense spending played a role in the economic collapse of the.Eastern Bloc, SDI's role is what is at issue, and you have never offered more then a quick was too as support. SDI was never more than a laughing stock.

But even conceding defense spending played a role in the economic collapse of the.Eastern Bloc,
By Jove, you are finally catching on.
Reagan caused billions to be spent on SDI research and the Soviets tried to match the spending. Voila! They went broke. And the they broke up. 
By 1993 Bill Clinton ended SDI.  It proved to be one of the most successful economic programs the US had ever undertaken to the betterment of our security but also the future of most of Europe who was freed from life behind an Iron Curtain.

Trying to keep up with defense spending played a role in the economic collapse.of the Eastern Bloc - a policy pursued by every president throughout the Cold War. But it was only one factor in the economic collapse. If you really want to point to a single thing that lead to the collapse of the Soviet empire, that event took place in June 2 - 11, 1979. SDI? The decision to fire Anna Walentynowicz and the decision to invade Afghanistan played greater roles.