A Little Humor: Babylon Bee: Controversy As SNL Invites Real Live Comedian To Perform

The Babylon Bee offers another clever satirical piece on Saturday Night Live inviting comedian Dave Chapelle to host the once funny program.

NEW YORK, NY — Saturday Night Live, a show dedicated solely to solemn social critiques and pedantic lectures, has made waves after inviting a real live comedian to perform.

With actual comedian Dave Chapelle slated to host SNL this weekend, the show's writers and cast members were reportedly working tirelessly to prepare for the exposure to comedy.

"It's a big change for us, trying this 'comedy' thing," said castmember Kate McKinnon while using air quotes. McKinnon is best known for her recurring role as Hillary Clinton being somber, sad, and full of gloom. "I've been working on a few 'jokes' myself. Here's my best one..."

McKinnon then proceeded to rant for seven minutes on how Donald Trump was a bad man. 

You can read the rest of the humor piece via the below link: 

Controversy As SNL Invites Real Live Comedian To Perform | Babylon Bee 

Stratcom Commander Says U.S. Should Look To 1950s To Regain Competitive Edge

Todd Lopez at the DOD News offers the below piece:

The current conflict in Ukraine is not the worst that the U.S. should be prepared for. Around the corner, said the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, the U.S. must be prepared for much more.

"This Ukraine crisis that we're in right now, this is just the warmup," Navy Adm. Charles A. Richard (seen in the below photo), commander of Stratcom, said. "The big one is coming. And it isn't going to be very long before we're going to get tested in ways that we haven't been tested a long time."

During a speech at the Naval Submarine League's 2022 Annual Symposium & Industry Update Richard said the U.S. must get itself prepared.

"We have to do some rapid, fundamental change in the way we approach the defense of this nation," he said. "I will tell you, the current situation is vividly illuminating what nuclear coercion looks like and how you, or how you don't stand up to that." 

Competitors like China, Richard said, are outcompeting the U.S., and in a dramatic fashion. The U.S. must step up its deterrence game, he said, or it's going to be bowled over. 

"As I assess our level of deterrence against China, the ship is slowly sinking," he said. "It is sinking slowly, but it is sinking, as fundamentally they are putting capability in the field faster than we are. As those curves keep going, it isn't going to matter how good our [operating plan] is or how good our commanders are, or how good our forces are — we're not going to have enough of them. And that is a very near-term problem."

One area where the U.S. still dominates is with its underseas capabilities — the U.S. submarine fleet, Richard said. 

"Undersea capabilities is still the one ... maybe the only true asymmetric advantage we still have against our opponents," Richard said. "But unless we pick up the pace, in terms of getting our maintenance problems fixed, getting new construction going ... if we can't figure that out ... we are not going to put ourselves in a good position to maintain strategic deterrence and national defense." 

Regaining the advantage in other areas might mean looking backwards, as much as 60 or more years, Richard said, to a time when the U.S. military was able to do things faster than what it does today.

"We used to know how to move fast, and we have lost the art of that," he said.

One example he provided was that of the AGM-28 Hound Dog cruise missile, which entered service in 1960. 

"The Air Force went from a request, almost written on a napkin ... when they figured out in the late 1950s that the Soviet integrated air defense systems were getting to the point that the B-52 just wasn't going to make it in, and we needed a thing called up 'cruise missile.' And so, they envisioned what a standoff weapon looks like." 

The U.S. military was able to deliver the Hound Dog cruise missile in just 33 months. 

"We had two squadrons of B-52s equipped with this 800-nautical-mile Mach two-plus, one megaton nuclear warhead with accuracy that was really good for its day, hanging off the wings of B-52s in less than three years," he said. "This weapon was so cool you could actually turn the engines on, on its cruise missiles on your wings, to give you additional thrust on takeoff." 

Richard said there are other examples of how the U.S. military was able to rapidly develop and field capability to meet its needs, and that the U.S. must get back to that. 

"We have got to get back into the business of not talking about how we are going to mitigate our assumed eventual failure to get Columbia in on time, and B-21, and LRSO, and flip it to the way we used to ask questions in this nation, which is what's it going to take? Is it money? Is it people? Do you need authorities? What risk? That's how we got to the Moon by 1969. We need to bring some of that back. Otherwise, China is simply going to outcompete us, and Russia isn't going anywhere anytime soon." 

Alleged Sicilian Cosa Nostra Members Among 91 Jailed In Italy Over EU Subsidies Fraud

The British newspaper the Guardian offers a piece on Sicilian Cosa Nostra members receiving prison sentences for subsidies fraud.

Judges in Italy have handed down prison sentences to 91 people, including alleged mafia members, after a large-scale EU agricultural subsidies fraud.

According to magistrates in the Sicilian city of Messina, mobsters fraudulently received more than €5m (£4.3m) in subsidies between 2010 and 2017, including funds for thousands of hectares of “ghost” farmland in the east of the island that was either nonexistent, stolen from farmers or owned by the Italian state or regional government.

The sentences ranged from two years to 30. Among the charges that resulted in convictions were extortion, fraud against the EU and mafia association.

Prosecutors said the Batanesi mafia clan – one of the oldest crime families on the island, operating in the Nebrodi regional park, a hilly region popular for grazing – was believed to be at the centre of the fraud, which allegedly involved more than 150 companies.

Annual EU agricultural subsidies of up to €1,000 a hectare provide an incentive to organised crime. A magistrate wrote in the investigation file that it was often the case that one phone call from an organised crime boss was enough to prompt a farmer to give up his land out of fear of retaliation. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

Alleged mafia members among 91 jailed in Italy over EU subsidies fraud | Italy | The Guardian   

Philadelphia Contractor Sentenced To Prison For Bribing OSHA Inspector

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia released the below information: 

PHILADELPHIA – United States Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero announced that Tony Ren, 59, of Philadelphia, PA, was sentenced to three months in prison, one year of supervised release, and was ordered to pay a $50,000 fine by United States District Court Judge Mark A. Kearney after being convicted of two counts of bribery.

In December 2021, the defendant was convicted at trial of attempting to bribe an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Compliance Safety and Health Officer in order to induce the official not to report safety violations at a Philadelphia construction site run by Ren, and to eliminate previous safety violations and corresponding fines. As detailed in the Indictment, in October 2017, the OSHA official conducted an inspection of a worksite on Arch Street in response to an imminent hazard report. During the inspection, the official observed numerous violations of OSHA standards including debris in passageways, electrical issues, holes in the floor, and gas tanks with broken pressure gauges. As the evidence presented at trial showed, on two separate dates in November 2017, Ren offered $1,500 cash bribes to the OSHA official in exchange for the official falsifying the inspection results, deleting previous violations from OSHA’s computer system, and agreeing not to report the violations so that the defendant could avoid the substantial penalties that would follow.

“OSHA inspections and standards exist for a reason: to prevent injuries and protect workers,” said U.S. Attorney Romero. “This defendant attempted to subvert this system of protections by bribing an official to look the other way on multiple workplace safety violations. This case should serve as a warning to all employers and contractors that our Office will investigate and prosecute fully this type of corruption.”

“Tony Ren paid bribes to an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Compliance Safety and Health Officer in order to induce the officer not to report safety violations at a Philadelphia, PA construction site operated by Ren, as well as to eliminate previous safety violations and their corresponding fines. We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners and OSHA to investigate those who attempt to undermine the workplace safety laws that exist to protect American workers,” stated Syreeta Scott, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Philadelphia Region, U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General.

The case was investigated by the United States Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General, Office of Investigations-Labor Racketeering and Fraud and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Mary Kay Costello.

Philly's Loss Is Wichita's Gain As Former Philadelphia Deputy Police Commissioner Joseph Sullivan Becomes Wichita's Chief Of Police

Broad + Liberty ran my piece on former Philadelphia deputy police commissioner Joseph Sullivan leaving Philly to become Wichita's chief of police. 

You can read the piece via the below link or the below text:

 Paul Davis: Philly’s loss is Wichita’s gain (broadandliberty.com)

The City of Wichita announced that former Philadelphia deputy police commissioner Joseph Sullivan will become Wichita’s chief of police.

Philadelphia’s loss is Wichita’s gain. The Kansas city, where legendary lawman Wyatt Earp once served as a police officer, will benefit from all of the experience and knowledge Joseph Sullivan gained in Philadelphia.

“Sullivan has more than 25 years of law enforcement and management experience,” the announcement stated. “As Deputy Commissioner of Patrol Operations in the Philadelphia Police Department, he oversaw a force of 4,698 sworn officers and civilian personnel and was responsible for the majority of the Department’s $750 million annual budget.”

The announcement noted that since retiring from the Philadelphia Police Department, Joseph Sullivan worked in business development at Lawmen Supply Company and as President of Families Behind the Badge Children’s Foundation in Philadelphia.

“Joe Sullivan has a proven ability to successfully lead and manage a world-class police department. I have every confidence that he is the right person at the right time to take on the challenging task of ensuring Wichita residents have trust in the integrity and transparency of our police department,” said City Manager Robert Layton. “His experience in patrol leadership will help us as we work to enhance patrol operations. He joins us at a crucial time for the Wichita Police Department and will help guide us through a period of change. I look forward to welcoming him to Wichita.”

The announcement went on to state that “Chief Sullivan will be tasked with enhancing the recruitment, training and mentoring of staff and focusing on data-driven policing. He also plans on strengthening community policing and increasing citizen engagement with the department.

Joseph Sullivan will begin as chief of police in early December. He will manage a $108 million budget and supervise more than 900 employees in the state’s largest police department.

I’m happy for Joseph Sullivan, but I’m sorry to see him go to Wichita. In my view, he should have appointed Philadelphia’s police commissioner. He is far more experienced, and far more successful as a police executive than our current police commissioner, Danielle Outlaw.

Outlaw previously served as the chief of police for Portland, a notoriously liberal city, and before that she served as the deputy chief of police in Oakland police. She has little street experience and less street “cred.” I’ve spoken to a good number of Philly cops, and they are all unimpressed with her police background, and they are even less impressed with her leadership since becoming the commissioner.

Not only was Sullivan not appointed commissioner, but in January of 2020, he was forced to retire. Although he preferred not to talk about his departure with me, at the time he confirmed in texts to NBC10 reporters that he was leaving the Philadelphia Police, “But departure is not my decision.”

According To NBC10, he didn’t elaborate, except to add that he is “no longer needed.” He may have not been needed by the new commissioner, but he was most certainly needed by the city of Philadelphia. If only he had been the commissioner during the violent protests and riots in May 2020 after the death of George Floyd.

His skill and leadership would have made a huge difference in the police response to the riots, and I believe there were would have far less damage to businesses and less chaos. I’ve interviewed Joseph Sullivan several times over the years. I was thankful for his insightful and well-articulated comments when I interviewed him several times for my former Crime Beat column, which then appeared in Philadelphia Weekly.

I recall when I first interviewed Joseph Sullivan and then-Commissioner Charles Ramsey in 2013 for Counterterrorism magazine about Philadelphia’s Homeland Security Bureau, which Joseph Sullivan then headed.

I interviewed Commissioner Ramsey at the Roundhouse, the former police headquarters, and he expressed total confidence in Joseph Sullivan’s ability and leadership skills.

“I’ve given him all the “toys,” Ramsey told me.

Commissioner Ramsey said he had transferred SWAT, bombs, canine, aviation, and the marine unit to the Homeland Security Bureau. He depended on Joseph Sullivan to keep Philadelphia safe from terrorists and other public safety threats.

Perhaps the next mayor will bring Joseph Sullivan home to Philadelphia and appoint him as the police commissioner. Philadelphia, like Wichita, would be in good hands.

Paul Davis is South Philadelphia writer who covers crime.

A Little Humor: Johnny's Halloween Costume

 

A Little Night Music: Nina Simone Sings Jazz Classic 'My Baby Just Cares For Me'

I’ve been listening to jazz great Nina Simone sing her classic jazz song, My Baby Just Cares For Me, on youtube.com. 

The song, originally sung by Eddie Cantor in the 1930 film, Whoopee!, was written by Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn. Nina Simone recorded the song in 1958.   

You can listen to the song via the below link:

Nina Simone - My Baby Just Cares For Me (1958) - YouTube