We have been discussing the long litigation of the Hunter Biden to first deny that he is the father of a child in Arkansas and then, after DNA testing proved he is the father, to resist efforts to establish child custody. He is now facing a contempt sanction for refusing to answer questions about his net worth and, after repeated court filings, was scheduled for a March 11th with what seemed like no-excuses court order. Now however Biden has a novel claim. Indeed, it is novel coronavirus and the danger of traveling. Thus, he is not acting ultra vires as much as ultra virus. Update: The judge has denounced Hunter Biden’s effort at delay as yet another “duplicitous” filing.
Previously, Arkansas Circuit Judge Holly Meyer declared Biden to be the “biological and legal father” of a child he fathered with former GW student, 29-year-old Lunden Alexis Roberts. Roberts, reportedly was a stripper at a Washington, D.C., club that Biden liked to party with while in Washington. Biden long denied being the father and has refused to support the child. He also refused to turn over information on his assets, part of discovery that Meyer referred to as “past due.”
In the order, Meyer ordered the Arkansas Department of Health to issue a birth certificate listing Biden as the father. Biden has children by at least three different women. Roberts filed papers that portrayed him as a deadbeat father, stating that Biden “had no involvement in the child’s life since the child’s birth, never interacted with the child, never parented the child,” and “could not identify the child out of a photo lineup.”
Biden has opposed efforts to confirm his wealth to establish support for his child. Now, he is demanding yet another delay, citing the risk of the virus as well as his wife’s late pregnancy for yet another delay in answering questions needed about his wealth. His filing states
“it is unsafe for the Defendant to travel, as travel restrictions have been implemented both domestically and internationally, particularly on airlines, due to the Coronavirus. Setting aside personal endangerment, Defendant reasonably believes that such travel unnecessarily exposes his wife and unborn child to this virus.”
Of course, his wife and child do not have to travel with him. Moreover, his concern for his unborn child has not been as evident with this born child in Arkansas. Finally, the CDC is not recommending that people not fly, particularly someone like Biden who is not in the high risk category. He could likely make the deposition and return in a single day while observing the recommendations for protecting himself from the virus like washing his hands.
Biden is also promising to file a letter from their doctor on the late pregnancy of his wife.
There is a suspicion that this self-quarantine is a tad opportunistic given Biden’s long effort to first deny his fathering this child and then oppose efforts to confirm his wealth for purposes of child support.
“There is a suspicion that this self-quarantine is a tad opportunistic given Biden’s long effort to first deny his fathering this child and then oppose efforts to confirm his wealth for purposes of child support.”
Ya Think?
Hunter of course forced the mother of his baby to get a court to force Hunter to provide DNA to pay child support, etc. Several weeks ago the court announced Hunter as the father. Soon after, a reporter asked Biden a completely normal and expected question, “How does it feel being a new grandfather?” Biden promptly burnt several circuit breakers, scowled grotesquely, and reply, “Classy…that’s a private matter.” Joe’s boot licking assistants feared telling Sleepy Joe the trial is public.
Sleepy don’t take it well whenever someone brings up the renown personality defects in Joe’s family, including Joe’s mental infirmities.
It will be free, but I’d pay money to see Trump aggressively demand, “Sleepy Joe, ‘splain what besides access to your favors did Burisma get, while they paid your spawn Hunter $86k/month for Hunter to suck on a crack pipe?” And, “Sleepy Joe, is it fair that you voted for drug laws sending blacks to prison for decades, while your spawn Hunter walked scot free addicted to crack for most of his adult life?”
OMG that’s gonna be epic! Maybe Sleepy Joe tries to jump Trump, the SS tazeS Sleepy Joe, and he dies on TV! CAN’T WAIT!
Rightwing Media On Coronavirus: Misinformation Amounts To Criminal Negligence
Sean Hannity used his syndicated talk-radio program on Wednesday to share a prediction he had found on Twitter about what is really happening with the coronavirus: It’s a “fraud” by the deep state to spread panic in the populace, manipulate the economy and suppress dissent.
“May be true,” Mr. Hannity declared to millions of listeners around the country.
As the coronavirus spreads around the globe, denial and disinformation about the risks are proliferating on media outlets popular with conservatives.
“This coronavirus?” Rush Limbaugh asked skeptically during his Wednesday program, suggesting it was all a plot hatched by the Chinese. “Nothing like wiping out the entire U.S. economy with a biothreat from China, is there?” he said.
The Fox Business anchor Trish Regan told viewers on Monday that the worry over coronavirus “is yet another attempt to impeach the president.”
Where doctors and scientists see a public health crisis, President Trump and his media allies see a political coup afoot. Distorted realities and discarded facts are now such a part of everyday life that the way they shape events like impeachment, a mass shooting or a presidential address often goes unmentioned.
But when partisan news meets a pandemic, the information silos where people shelter themselves can become not just deluded but also dangerous, according to those who criticize conservative commentators for shedding any semblance of objectivity when it comes to covering the president.
“This sort of media spin poses a clear and present danger to public health,” said Charlie Sykes, a longtime conservative host and author who published a book, “How the Right Lost Its Mind,” in 2018. “If you have people out there who feel all of this is overblown, and feel the need to act out their lack of concern by not taking precautions, it could be exceptionally dangerous.
Edited From: “How Rightwing Pundits Are Covering Coronavirus
This Evening’s New York Times
Seth, despite the fact that America’s actions have allowed us a far lower infection rate, so far, then much of the rest of the world, you have claimed Trump is doing a bad job.
Never let a crisis go to waste.
Absolutely, politicians, their lackeys the media, activists, and many Democrats themselves, parrot nonsense like Trump is doing nothing. They do this knowing full well that our number of cases is low. And why is that? Our people travel to Asia, Europe, South America. It’s because our efforts have flattened the curve.
So, yes, people are abusing a pandemic for political purposes, which is quite low.
There is no reason to panic, nor is there a reason to blow this off. The CDC has trained for this. Hopefully we will learn how to keep improving pandemic responses in future, because there will always be more of them.
Senate Committee Cancels Subpoena Regarding Bidens
A top Senate Republican abruptly canceled plans to subpoena records and testimony from an official connected to a Ukrainian firm that once employed the son of former vice president Joe Biden.
The decision by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, comes as Democrats have attacked the probe as politically motivated, especially as Biden surges in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination and the chance to face President Trump. Some have warned it could play into Russian efforts to spread disinformation ahead of the presidential election in November.
In a message Wednesday to members of the panel, sent roughly an hour before a planned vote, Johnson said he would indefinitely postpone the subpoena for documents and testimony from Andrii Telizhenko, a Ukrainian national who worked for a U.S. lobbying firm that acted on behalf of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that employed Hunter Biden as a board member.
Johnson said he was doing so “out of an abundance of caution and to allow time for [senators] to receive additional briefings.”
But Johnson indicated that the investigation would continue. He said in an interview Wednesday that he would instead seek to directly subpoena the lobbying firm, Blue Star Strategies.
“My concern is they have not been cooperative,” he said. “If we can get all the records, get all the answers, that’s great. If not, we’re going to have to continue and use other measures.”
While Johnson said he withdrew plans for the Telizhenko subpoena to win bipartisan support for his probe, the bigger issue may have been qualms among his fellow Republicans.
Two GOP panel members, Mitt Romney of Utah and Rob Portman of Ohio, signaled discomfort with the subpoena. Romney, after initially criticizing the appearance that the probe was politically motivated, announced last week he would vote for the subpoena. Portman privately expressed concerns about the reliability of any information Telizhenko might share.
Edited From: “Senate GOP Chairman Abruptly Shifts Course On Subpoena Targeting Bidens
Today’s Washington Post
I am fielding more questions on COVID-19 than any other topic. The panic being created by the news industry (both sides) is going to overwhelm our health systems nationally.
The following transcript from March 10th podcast with Dr Anthony Fauci was meant for physicians but I think some here might appreciate it.
Podcast 256 — Anthony Fauci: Talking with patients about COVID-19
https://podcasts.jwatch.org/index.php/podcast-256-anthony-fauci-talking-with-patients-about-covid-19/2020/03/10/
Joe Elia:
Dr Fauci, I wanted to ask you, what is the one thing you hope that people listening to this podcast will do differently in response to COVID-19?
Dr Anthony Fauci:
You know, it’s a binary thing. I want them not to panic because panic gets people to do unreasonable things that are even counterproductive to what you’re trying to do from a public health standpoint. You might overwhelm systems when you don’t need to overwhelm systems. But on the other hand without panicking and without making it dominate your life, pay attention to the fact that you have to act differently like you’ve never acted before. You’ve really got to be socially distant.
You know, it’s very interesting that my deputy was one of the two Americans who went to China as part of the WHO umbrella group that visited and in China now, they got hit badly, they had a few missteps in the beginning but they’re getting it right now. I mean, they’re really being super, super careful. They don’t allow anyone to eat at a common table. They have these little tables that are separated from each other in the hospital and other places where people don’t mingle. I mean, we’re all social beings but for the next few months, and I hope it does go down, it might not, but I hope it does the way flu does, we just got to hunker down. It’s part of what we need to do, we need to hunker down.
Turley said:
“Finally, the CDC is not recommending that people not fly, particularly someone like Biden who is not in the high risk category. He could likely make the deposition and return in a single day while observing the recommendations for protecting himself from the virus like washing his hands.”
In Hunter’s case, it clearly wasn’t imperative that he be there in person. They wrapped it up without anyone having to get on a plane. It’s safer not to be jetting around, at the moment.
It’s settled, apparently:
“Hunter Biden child support case reaches ‘global, final settlement’: Court papers”
https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/hunter-biden-child-support-case-settlement
‘Hunter Biden, the embattled son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and an Arkansas woman have reached a “global, final settlement” in their often tumultuous child support battle, court papers show.
‘Biden, 50, and the woman, Lunden Roberts, notified Independence County, Arkansas, Judge Holly Meyer of the development on Wednesday, with Roberts’ attorney writing that they had reached the agreement “late last night.”’
Turley said:
“Finally, the CDC is not recommending that people not fly, particularly someone like Biden who is not in the high risk category. He could likely make the deposition and return in a single day while observing the recommendations for protecting himself from the virus like washing his hands.”
In Hunter’s case, it clearly wasn’t imperative that he be there in person. They wrapped it up without anyone having to get on a plane.
Infection Expert Conradicts Trump At Congressional Hearing
Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, warned lawmakers on Capitol Hill Wednesday that the outbreak is “going to get worse.”
“I can say we will see more cases, and things will get worse than they are right now,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the House Oversight Committee after cases in the country soared past 1,000.
“We must be much more serious as a country about what we might expect,” Fauci added. “We cannot look at it and say, ‘Well, there are only a couple of cases here, that’s good.’ Because a couple of cases today are going to be many, many cases tomorrow.”
Fauci also refuted the claim that the virus was no more deadly than the flu or previous outbreaks, such as H1N1 influenza.
“People always say ‘Well, the flu does this, the flu does that.” The flu has a mortality of 0.1 percent. This has a mortality of 10 times that,” Fauci said.
He added that Americans shouldn’t rely on the virus dying down during warmer weather.
“We do not know what this virus is going to do,” he said. “You would hope that when we get to warmer weather it would go down. But we can’t proceed under that assumption.”
Edited From: “Coronavirus Outbreak ‘Going To Get Worse’, Warns White House Expert Anthony Fauci”
Today’s New York Post
Fauci was lowballing it.
trump is finally getting the picture. came out with a strong statement at 9.
travel from europe banned
i told you guys batten a month ago this was going to be big. batten down the hatches, its going to get a lot worse
Readers would do well to ignore sources with known political agendas
The most reliable and trusted sources on COVID-19 developments are the 2 medical journals of record in America, both with free access to their COVID-19 resources.
New England Journal of Medicine- Coronavirus (Covid-19)
https://www.nejm.org/coronavirus
Journal of American Medical Association – Coronavirus Disease 2019
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/pages/coronavirus-alert
According to the docket, the case has been settled.
Anonymous – maybe it is settled, paperwork tomorrow. No paperwork tomorrow, Hunter is in the hot seat.
According to the docket, a settlement has been reached.
Corona Fears Cause Trump To Snap At White House Meeting. Fed Chairman Target Of Fury
Donald Trump, in an explosive tirade Monday, urged Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to encourage Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell to do more to stimulate the economy, two officials familiar with the exchange said, revealing the president’s mounting fury as his administration struggles to corral economic fallout from the novel coronavirus.
Trump has frequently complained about the Fed in public for at least two years, but his latest effort to pressure Mnuchin to privately push for action has not been previously reported.
During that tense Monday meeting in the Oval Office, Trump fumed that Powell never should have been appointed and is damaging the nation and his presidency.
He then told Mnuchin, who had encouraged Trump to nominate Powell in 2017, to engage with the chair and ask him to take more-dramatic steps to arrest the stock market’s plummet, according to three White House officials and a senior Republican. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to reveal the exchange.
The Fed moved to lower interest rates slowly last year amid signs of a slowing economy, and it enacted an emergency interest rate cut last week as the stock market’s volatility worsened. That move has done little to assure investors that the economy will be able to power through the coronavirus outbreak, and markets have continued to slide.
“Our pathetic, slow moving Federal Reserve, headed by Jay Powell, who raised rates too fast and lowered too late, should get our Fed Rate down to the levels of our competitor nations,” Trump wrote Tuesday on Twitter. “They now have as much as a two point advantage, with even bigger currency help. Also, stimulate!”
The Fed has lowered interest rates so much, and there is so much demand for U.S. debt because of investor fear, that mortgage rates are at an all-time low. If the Fed continued to lower rates, it’s unclear what sudden benefit it could offer the economy.
While Trump has long publicly clashed with Powell, Monday’s outburst was an “eruption” unlike many others due to the political and economic stress that has gripped the White House as the coronavirus spreads, one of the officials said. It caused some White House aides to worry that the president’s fury with Powell could lead to upheaval and economic woes if he continues to lash out at the Federal Reserve.
Trump has blamed Powell in the past for the stock market’s poor performance. In 2018, when the stock market was sliding because of anxiety about Trump’s trade war with China, he asked advisers whether he had the power to fire Powell.
Edited From: “Trump Urged Mnuchin To Pressure Fed’s Powell On Economic Stimulus In Explosive Tirade About Coronavirus”
Today’s Washington Post
Update: The Arkansas judge issued an order yesterday evening rejecting Hunter Biden’s “duplicitous” requests and his argument that he needed a nine-month delay in his paternity case proceedings because of the coronavirus outbreak and other personal matters. But today, the parties said they had reached a “global, final settlement of all issues.” Biden’s abrupt reversal, if approved by Independence County Circuit Court Judge Holly Meyer, would mean that Biden would not need to turn over his financial information to the court. The source of the funds that were paid to settle the case remains unknown. Naturally.
“Pay” meets “off” and justice suffers.