SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Tuesday blocked President Donald Trump’s latest bid to impose restrictions on citizens from several countries entering the United States, which had been due to take effect this week.
The open-ended ban, announced last month, targeted people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea, as well as certain government officials from Venezuela. It was the latest version of a policy that had previously targeted six Muslim-majority countries but had been restricted by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The “Monday Night Football” ratings for Week 6 were the lowest of the season as the Tennessee Titans beat the Indianapolis Colts 36-22 in Nashville, Tennessee.
According to Deadline, early numbers show that ESPN came away with ratings that were 13 percent lower than last week’s game, when the Minnesota Vikings beat the Chicago Bears 20-17.
Last week’s Monday night game was 17 percent lower than the week before, and final numbers came in at 3.7 in the key demographic of ages 18-49 and 10.3 million viewers.
The NFL endorsed criminal justice reform legislation Monday, despite national outcry that the organization should work to distance itself from political debate.
The NFL-backed bipartisan legislation introduced last week by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, the Washington Post reported. The legislation would cut mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders, give judges more discretion to tailor sentences to individual offenders, and establish programs to prepare low-level offenders to re-enter society.
“We felt that this was an issue over the last months, as we have continued to work with our players on issues of equality and on issues of criminal justice reform, that was surfaced for us, and we thought it was appropriate to lend our support to it,” NFL spokesman Joe Lockhart told reporters.
The endorsement comes amid national debate over NFL players kneeling during the pregame national anthem in protest against law enforcement’s alleged institutional mistreatment of minorities.
The U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) issued a detainer request on the Sonoma County Jail for Jesus Fabian Gonzalez, who was arrested Sunday on suspicion of arson in Wine Country fires that have killed at least 40 residents.
Breitbart News reported earlier this week that Sonoma County Sheriffs had arrested Jesus Fabian Gonzalez, 29, at Maxwell Regional Park in Sonoma County after a series of reports of ongoing fires in the region. Mr. Gonzalez was observed around 3:00 p.m. PDT wearing a jacket and walking “out of the creek area and a plume of smoke behind him,” according to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.
Mr. Gonzalez, who is homeless and reportedly known by law enforcement to have been living under a nearby bridge, claimed he was cold and had lit the fire to stay warm. But it was a balmy 78 degrees when he and the plume of smoke were first observed.
Mr. Gonzalez was booked into the Sonoma County Jail for suspicion of felony arson. His bail was set at a steep $110,000, according to the Sonoma County Sheriff Public Information Officer.
If President Trump wants to stop Iran from making the entire country of Iraq a subsidiary of the Revolutionary Guard, he’ll need to intervene in the burgeoning crisis in Kurdistan — and fast.
On Monday, Iraqi forces trounced Kurdish fighters and emerged victorious in a short fight for control of the oil-rich northern Iraqi town of Kirkuk.
And they couldn’t have done it without us.
When ISIS stormed Iraq in 2014, the demoralized Iraqi army collapsed, its troops deserted and fled. Baghdad was utterly humiliated. Then Kurdish fighters, known as Peshmerga, entered Kirkuk, secured the key city and kept it jihadi-free.
Since then, a better-trained, better-equipped US-backed Iraqi army has been fighting alongside the Peshmerga to chase ISIS out of the country. Now, with ISIS nearly dead, the Iraqi army turned its attention to Kirkuk — and chased the Kurds out in the name of national unity.
The Dow Jones industrial average crossed 23,000 mark for the first time on Tuesday — just two and a half months after it breached the 22,000 milestone.
Stocks boosting the blue-chip index included insurer UnitedHealth and Johnson & Johnson, which reported better-than-expected earnings.
Shares have mounted their historic rally amid continued optimism on Wall Street over President Trump’s plans to slash taxes and regulations, as well as continued strength in corporate profits. Still, some strategists wonder that the risks of a bubble are growing.
“A lot of this rise has been because of hopes of a tax cut, if there is any disappointment there, the answer to the bubble question is yes,” Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at First Standard Financial, told The Post.
Amanda Segel, an executive producer of the Weinstein Company television drama “The Mist,” has accused Hollywood film producer Bob Weinstein of sexually harassing her.
Segel said that Weinstein repeatedly made romantic overtures to her over the course of three months during the summer of 2016, when he asked her to join him for private dinners, Variety reported Tuesday.
The harassment began in the summer of 2016 and continued on and off for about three months until Segel’s lawyer, David Fox of Myman Greenspan, informed TWC executives—including COO David Glasser—that she would leave the show if Bob Weinstein did not stop contacting her on personal matters.
A candidate for the Untied States’ Congress has said she stands by her claims she was abducted to an alien spaceship at age seven, but that the incident shouldn’t detract from what she’s done here on Earth since then.
Florida hopeful Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera has claimed in past Spanish TV network appearances, most recently in 2011, that she was taken aboard a ship with three blonde creatures that resembled Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer statue.
“I don’t exactly know what happened,” she told The Associated Press on Monday. “I believe it is real. But I was seven years old. It was an experience I had a thousand years ago.”
Since those television appearances, Ms Rodriguez Aguilera has served as a council member in the city of Doral, where she was appointed vice mayor. She also teaches leadership at Miami Dade College and runs a consulting firm, Bettinara Enterprises.
Ms Rodriguez Aguilera is one of five Republicans running to replace Rep Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Republican), when she retires at the end of next year.
Joy Behar defended comedians as “important people right now” under President Donald Trump.
It happened during a panel discussion on “The View” Monday after James Corden made a joke during the amfAR gala Friday night that related to the numerous sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein.
“Last week everyone was saying the late night hosts didn’t mention the Weinstein scandal,” Sunny Hostin explained. “But you know they were always making jokes about Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly. ‘SNL’ [Saturday Night Live] took a hit for not saying anything. Now you have ‘SNL’ doing something. You have James Corden doing something, and now it’s, ‘oh, it’s in poor taste, it’s too soon.’”
I’ll pass on the theological lecture from Joe Scarborough.
Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” host Joe Scarborough said President Donald Trump was the “antithesis” of the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Scarborough said, “You look in Matthew, and go through the Beatitudes. Every single Beatitude. You go through Jesus’s teaching. What he says he wants people to be. Donald Trump is the antithesis of just about every single thing that Jesus Christ said on the Sermon on the Mount. Go read it.”
He added, “None of us are perfect, but he goes out of his way it seems to thumb his nose at all conventions. Including the basics of the Beatitude.”
A Sioux Falls man who carried firearms into an April rally told a federal judge on Monday that he was heartbroken about charges brought against him and urged him to “act justly” in handing down his sentence.
Federal Judge Lawrence Piersol on Monday sentenced Ehab Jaber, 46, to 7 months imprisonment with served time suspended, 7 months community confinement or home detention and 3 years probation.
Jaber in April attended a speaking event in Sioux Falls called “Sabotaging America: Islam’s March Toward Supremacy,” which featured speakers warning about the “dangers” of the religious faith. Jaber streamed video of himself on Facebook entering, then leaving the event and later expressed disdain that attendees would listen to the speakers.
In the video recorded from his car, Jaber showed five firearms that he had in the vehicle and said, “be scared.”
“This was a tinderbox that could’ve gone the other way, but it didn’t,” said Federal Judge Lawrence Piersol as he handed down the sentence.
Jaber smiled as Piersol shared his sentence with the court.[…]
Jaber told the court that he was “heartbroken” to see the high attendance at the April speaking event. He had formerly worked as a waiter and bartender and said he was saddened to see people he’d served attending the event that condemned his religion.
“I was heartbroken to see that many people at a hotel on a Sunday,” he said. “I served them food, I served them drink. I was heartbroken, I wasn’t angry.”
Piersol said Jaber’s health weighed into his decision, calling the potential cost of Jaber’s ongoing heart issues “the elephant in the room.”
Jaber had a quadruple bypass surgery earlier this year and had three stents put in that were found to have been blocked.
Declining NFL television ratings will lower CBS earnings, according to Credit Suisse.
The firm cut its third-quarter EPS estimates by 5 percent, citing CBS’ softer Sunday NFL ratings. The media company reports on Nov. 2.
“We expect third-quarter network advertising to decline 3 percent (previously +1 percent), driven by soft ratings for both the summer schedule and for the start of the NFL season,” wrote Credit Suisse analyst Omar Sheikh. “With only one of the three content licensing deals we expected for the second half announced in third quarter, we also expect content licensing revenue growth to be skewed to the fourth quarter.”
Sheikh maintained his outperform rating and price target on CBS shares, which remains at $75, or 32 percent upside from Friday’s close. He cut his third-quarter EPS estimate to $1.08, below Street consensus estimate of $1.12 from FactSet.
The analyst said CBS’ Sunday NFL ratings are down 17 percent year over year during the first several weeks of the football season, according to the report. Sheikh released a similar report last week on Twenty-First Century Fox’s earnings, which he also expects to disappoint thanks to weaker ratings by the NFL.
Former Secretary of State John Kerry wasted no time condemning President Trump’s decision not to recertify, and to possibly withdraw from, the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran that Kerry negotiated on behalf of his boss Barack Obama. President Trump insisted on significant improvements to the Joint Plan of Comprehensive Action (JCPOA), as the deal is formally known. The JCPOA’s fundamental flaws that President Trump wants fixed include Iran’s ability to block unfettered international inspections, the wiggle room that Iran is exploiting to continue developing and testing ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, and the sunset clause on nuclear enrichment that would provide Iran a clear path to becoming a nuclear armed state after the current restrictions are lifted. Obama and Kerry had promised that these issues would be dealt with satisfactorily before agreeing to the final terms of the JCPOA. Instead they caved to Iranian pressure in order to get the deal done.
Now that President Trump is trying to clean up the mess Obama and Kerry left him, Kerry has the gall to label President Trump’s decision a “reckless abandonment of facts in favor of ego and ideology” and to accuse the Trump administration of “lying to the American people.” It was the Obama administration that recklessly abandoned the facts in pressing ahead with the deal. The Obama administration lied to the American people, abandoning its own promises to ensure that the deal contained ironclad protections. Moreover, all that President Trump has done so far is to return the JCPOA to Congress for review. Had Obama followed the Constitution and submitted the JCPOA to the Senate as a treaty in the first place, the JCPOA in its present form almost certainly would not have been approved. Congress should now have the opportunity to revisit the JCPOA to determine whether the protections that the Obama administration promised are working as advertised. Congress should also consider whether time limits on Iran’s commitments continue to make sense in light of what we are now experiencing with Iran’s nuclear technology collaborator, North Korea. It bought time to turn into a full-fledged nuclear power under our noses.
Kerry had promised that the Iranian regime would be prohibited from testing ballistic missiles. This turned out to be a lie. After the JCPOA was finalized, with no such prohibition included, Iran continued to test such missiles. The Obama administration’s response was that the missiles had become a separate issue, to be dealt with under a new United Nations Security Council resolution endorsing the JCPOA. The new resolution replaced clear prohibitions imposed on Iran’s ballistic missile program with a weak declaration in an annex that simply “calls upon” Iran not to undertake any activity such as development and test launches related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons for eight years.
FONDA: I don’t regret going to Vietnam. The United States was bombing the dikes in North Vietnam — earthen dikes in the Red River Delta. If the dikes had given way, according to Henry Kissinger, somewhere around 2 million people could have died of famine and drowning. And we were bombing, and it wasn’t being talked about. And I thought, ‘I’m a celebrity. Maybe if I go, and I bring back evidence.’ And it did stop two months after I got back, so I’m proud that I went. It changed my life all for the good”
Democrats are firm believers in never letting a good crisis go to waste. It’s why they started talking about blocking gun sales to people on the no-fly list after Orlando, despite the shooter not being on the no-fly list, and universal background checks after Sandy Hook, despite that killer stealing his guns. In addition to the disaster that is the current ban on bump-fire stocks bill, House Democrats have pulled some shenanigans of their own.
They think the time is right to ban online ammo sales, standard capacity magazines, and to require dealers to report anyone who buys two or more guns during the same five-day period. In other words, the standard anti-gun wishlist.
House Democrats have introduced a number of new gun control measures in the wake of a deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas.
Among the proposals are HR.3962 to ban online ammunition sales, H.R. 4025 requiring gun dealers to report the sale of two or more rifles to the same person in a five-day period, and HR. 4052, which would ban magazines able to hold greater than 10 rounds.
“Several of my colleagues and I have introduced commonsense legislation that, if enacted, would reduce gun violence and the tragic impact it has on our communities,” said U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, the New Jersey Democrat sponsoring the Stop Online Ammunition Sales Act.
Coleman’s proposal is much like a state law approved last year by voters in California in the respect that it would require federally licensed ammo dealers to directly confirm the identity of those buying ammo over the Internet by verifying a photo I.D. in-person. Also, the measure would require the vendor to report any individual sales of more than 1,000 rounds in a five-day period to the U.S. Attorney General. Garnering 29 co-sponsors, all Democrat, the measure has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.
This is nothing more than political grandstanding, a desperate effort to be seen to be “doing something” in the wake of Las Vegas.
Black community leaders say U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren should have stayed out of Boston’s mayoral race instead of endorsing Mayor Martin J. Walsh in a decision they say is a snub to minority neighborhoods.
Warren, in an endorsement rally at Doyle’s Cafe in Jamaica Plain yesterday, pledged to stand with Walsh over his challenger, City Councilor Tito Jackson, though he had previously campaigned for her.
“I love Tito. And have worked with Tito for a long time and I hope that Tito is going to have an important role going forward in public service,” Warren told reporters. “But Marty has shown us for four years what it is that he can accomplish, and what it is going forward that he is determined to accomplish. So, I’m here with Marty.”
Warren’s decision irked some of Boston’s black leaders who said it would have been wiser to stay out of the race between two progressive Democrats — a race Walsh is already heavily favored to win.
“It’s a bit of a surprise that the senator would enter into the contest at this stage of the game. The high road would have been to stay neutral,” said Darnell Williams of the Roxbury-based Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts. “The black community will be somewhat reflective because the senator is going to be running for re-election. And some people may say, ‘When we needed you, you weren’t there.’ ”
Larry Ellison, president of the Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers, added, “This is one she probably could have sat out. I don’t think he (Walsh) needed her help in this race. I’ve been getting a lot of calls from people in the communities of color and they haven’t been really happy about it.”
Priscilla Flint Banks of Dorchester’s Black Economic Justice Institute, stressing that she was voicing her own opinion, said, “I’m very disappointed in her. As far as I’m concerned, she’s just like the rest of them — the ones who say they’re going to do so much for our community and don’t.”
Arizona Sen. John McCain, a Republican, warned of a “half-baked nationalism” threat to America’s principles Monday while accepting the Liberty Medal in Philadelphia.
McCain, during a speech for his medal ceremony, ripped into the “spurious” nationalism that is occurring throughout the country, ABC News reported.
“To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history,” McCain said in his speech.
This guy has is either completely oblivious or is so obnoxious that he thinks people will buy this.
What is quite said is that none of the liberals following Boykin, who used to work for Bill Clinton and helped Hillary Clinton during this past campaign, knew what the picture was or why it was wrong to post it.
But it definitely wins most offensive tweet of the day…
