Authoritarian power transfers usually involve (immediate) executions, or at least the imprisonment/exile of important people from the previous government/administration/regime, to stabilize the new regime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Political_Surviva...
The Heritage Foundation (who is behind all this and has been at it since 1973), says that the transfer of power will be bloodless if we allow it to remain bloodless.
Presumably authoritarian regimes only execute/imprison/exile dissidents if they think it's necessary to eliminate opposition. An authoritarian regime which does not think there's much of a threat to opposition probably wouldn't bother.
Serves to prove it's not an authoritarian regime? They know they won by not so much and are likely to lose next time, especially given Trump can't run anymore.
TBF, we're only on day 2. (I am 90% certain it won't come to that, but there's a 10% queasiness left that hasn't been ameliorated by the haphazard approach untethered from legality that we've seen so far)
"This guy is running around giving everyone pardons. The funny thing, maybe the sad thing, is he didn’t give himself a pardon. And if you look at it, it all had to do with him."
I fully expect Trump to ruin Biden's final years with investigations and court cases. Maybe that's not out right execution, but Trump definitely wants revenge.
I mean if Biden actually was making corrupt deals trading influence/access for money then he absolutely should be investigated and prosecuted for it. And there's already hard proof that Hunter was selling access to his father, and that the foreigners he was selling said access to believed he could actually provide it.
If we didn't have the DOJ and other institutions protecting Biden for the last several years it would be pretty easy to find out if he actually did sell influence (vs. Hunter deceiving the people he was making deals with) with just a couple of warrants and subpeonas.
He ran on “lock her up” in 2016 and never followed through.
I find it hilarious that everyone is scared of Trump when there was a concerted effort by the other side to use the justice system to stop him from ever running again.
Need I remind everyone of multi-year Russiagate investigation that was all made up? The misdemeanor charges that becomes felonies with massive fines? The media collusion to silence the Hunter Biden laptop story when the FBI knew at the time it was real?
It’s the pot calling the kettle black. It’s the thieves accusing everyone else of stealing.
> I find it hilarious that everyone is scared of Trump when there was a concerted effort by the other side to use the justice system to stop him from ever running again.
I honestly don't get what you mean by this. Lets say all your comments about Biden, the FBI, laptops and whatever else are 100% true. How does that change if I should be worried about stuff Trump might do? To use a totally extreme example, if John Wayne Gacy went around talking all the shit in the world about Jeffrey Dahmer, does that somehow make Dahmer not a serial killer?
> He ran on “lock her up” in 2016 and never followed through.
So that proves he lies and makes promises he can't/won't/doesn't keep? Is that a positive trait in a politician? How are we supposed to determine when he is 'just joshing, bro' and actually is being truthful? And yes, I know Biden and the dems also make promises they don't keep, but again that doesn't excuse Trump from doing the same.
An established bureaucracy used to "following orders" will just soldier on assuming the authoritarian comes in legally. The most well known example is Germany. The Führer came in elected, got voted to dictator after the Reichstagsbrand and then never left power - and barely anyone in the executive resisted.
And this is likely also where the US are heading. The putsch will not be loud and with a bang like Syria, it will be slow as molasses but about as difficult to impossible to stop like a broken dam worth of water moving downstream.
I mean, it's pretty clear they want to sue Fauci and more. Attacking dedicated public servants working for the health of the country is going to have serious negative effects.
It seems unlikely that any court case would "uncover the truth" about the decision making behind that. Unfortunately, this has become so politicized that determining the steps that lead to NIH funding research in China, determining if a law was broken, and what the intent was, are unlikely to happen in the future.
It seems very unlikely to me that a knowledgeable head of an NIH institute would break the law in a discoverable way. My guess is that when this occurred, the decision-makers did not believe they were doing anything illegal.
(I think NIH funding virology research in China is dumb. That should not have happened.)
A couple things make me think they knew they were doing something illegal. One, they changed the definition of GoF when questioned about it, in a way that makes no sense. Two, they tried to avoid transparency laws like FOIA as well:
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/nih-foia-covid-ori...
If you keep using HN primarily for political and ideological battle, we're going to have to ban you. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, and we've asked you more than once already.
Understood.
Gain-of-function is one of those terms that only really makes sense with a lot of biological context and knowledge. Trying to explain that to the general public or politicians (especially in an adversarial context like a congressional hearing) is just not going to work.
Trying to hide things in their chat messages and texts and emails was dumb. I still can't believe they did that (one guy even used the exact scenario that we learned at Google: don't say anything in email that would get printed in a negative light on the front page of the NY Times; I had a manager there who actually did have one of his emails, as part of the Oracle Java court case, in a prominent article in the Times). Public employees of the government should assume that literally everything they produce as part of their job (including on personal devices) will eventually be seen externally by people without the necessary context to understand.
From what I can see, Fauci already admitted he made a collection of bad statements and decisions. For me, that's the end of the matter. Suing him over this is just going to damage the country. For example, next time there is a crisis, all those hardworking public servants are going to look at what happened and conclude "no, I will not be the public communicator that helps the country understand the situation we are in and how we are going to get out of it".
>I think NIH funding virology research in China is dumb. That should not have happened.
This gets really subtle and tricky. This type of thing is closely linked to biological weapons research and we want collaboration and transparency to an extent to maintain access to information.
> (I think NIH funding virology research in China is dumb. That should not have happened.)
I'm not sure why "in China" is your point of concern here? Lots of virology research presents minimal danger, and seems fine to me to fund even in geopolitical adversaries (after calculation of the diplomatic and scientific costs and benefits).
My concern with the WIV's work is that they were searching for deadlier and faster-spreading human viruses. So if their research succeeds, then they're deliberately just a containment failure away from a novel human pandemic. China's laxer safety standards compounded that risk, but I'd oppose such work in Baric's lab at UNC too.
Ok but that is where the bats are. And funding gives you access. Even with funding China blocked a lot of investigation. Just wait until we get Ebola 2 or what not.
