According to Politico, following Thursday’s indictment of Eric Adams, Gov. Kathy Hochul is examining her long-dormant power that lets governors remove local officials, such as New York City mayors. Lawyers in Hochul’s office on Thursday internally discussed the legal and constitutional framework for removing an elected official, according to two people familiar with the conversations […] The post Hochul Might Remove Adams, Then NY Gets Anti-Police, Anti-Israel Jumaane appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

According to Reuters, the United States plans to send more than $8 billion in military assistance to Ukraine. The Biden-Harris administration is holding urgent discussions with Congress to allow it to use up $5.6 billion in military aid for Ukraine before Sept. 30 – the end of the federal fiscal year. The clock is ticking. […] The post Never Ending: $8 Billion More for Ukraine, Escalation Possible appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

“Live from New York … it’s Democratic Talking Points!” “Saturday Night Live’s’ 50th season won’t kick off that way, but it might as well admit the obvious. The once-mighty sketch show, an institution which gave rise to some of Hollywood’s biggest comedy stars, is now little more than MSNBC with musical guests. Sound harsh? Quick, name the last sketch that skewered a Democratic politician. How many jokes did “SNL” tell about President Joe Biden’s obvious mental decline? The progressive’s retreat on free speech? Vice President Kamala Harris’ word salad speeches? Squatters gone wild? Big-city crime spikes? Illegal immigration impacting small town USA? To paraphrase Dean Wormer from “Animal House” … zero point zero. Will Heath/NBC via Getty Images When Sen. Ted Cruz caught heat for being away from Texas during a winter storm he caught holy heck from Team “SNL.” Get the drift? It’s impossible to miss the show’s extreme bias, an echo of late-night television in the post-Johnny Carson world. The show’s key players, including founder Lorne Michaels, are either kidding themselves about the show’s new normal or think it’s funny to lie about it. Michaels told The Hollywood Reporter that “SNL” still hits both sides of the aisle. Really. You can’t lecture the audience, which most of politics is now, people lecturing the audience. Ours is like, yeah, there are kind of idiots on both sides. And we’re not going to do anything that didn’t work at dress [rehearsal]. It has to play. It has to be comedy. We’re first and foremost a comedy show. That’s not a new show writer or a gullible cast member. It’s the comedy genius who introduced “Saturday Night Live” to us all the way back in 1975. The show’s early days cast a huge shadow on the new cast. Said shadow grows even longer this Fall. “Saturday Night,” hitting theaters Oct. 11, recalls the frantic 90 minutes prior to the very first “SNL” episode. Chaos! Excitement! Counter-culture comedy! It’s all there, directed by Oscar-nominee Jason Reitman. ‘Saturday Night’ 2024. Columbia Pictures/SPE. Broadway Video. Right of Way Films. SNL Studios. IMDB. Mostly unfamiliar faces bring Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner and the original “Not Ready for Prime-Time Players” back to screens across the country. The film is earning raves from early festival screenings. It also reminds fans why the show once delivered must-see comedy. Not every joke landed, of course. Others have aged poorly. If the sight of John Belushi in a bee costume makes you howl in 2024, you may need professional help. That unpredictability was part of the show’s appeal. You didn’t know what might happen next. Yes, it was live, and that element helped. The cast members dug into the show’s free-spirited ways, pushing the comedy envelope early and often. NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images All it took was one irreverent sketch to fuel water cooler gossip for days. The show’s finely tuned anarchy spoke to an era grappling with the end of the Vietnam War, the fallout from Watergate and an energy crisis.  Years later, “SNL” morphed into a comedy incubator: Aykroyd. Belushi. Murray. Chase. Murphy. Carvey. Rock. Sandler. Ferrell. Fey. It may have lost some of its comic edge, but it hit both sides of the political aisle and kept the focus where it belonged. Is it funny? Then it makes the final cut. NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images The current “SNL” lacks both laughs and cultural clout. When was the last time “SNL” broke out a major comedy star? Current player Bowen Yang has snagged steady big-screen work, but he’s never the star and his films typically make “indie-film” cash. The media will prop up the show’s 50th season, giving every anti-Trump sketch wall-to-wall coverage. A shrinking band of progressives will tune in to see how the show hits Trump in the weeks before the election. They know the show’s comedic targets even if they don’t know every punchline word for word. Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here! Everyone else has found new comedy faces to speak Truth to Power. Think Tim Dillon, Ryan Long, Andrew Schulz, Tyler Fischer and Shane Gillis. These comedians didn’t need “SNL” to jump-start their careers. Gillis famously got fired from the show before he could step on its historic stage for past “problematic” jokes. He returned four years later as a show host, his presence proving “SNL” needed him far more than he needed the NBC showcase. The rest reach out via Patreon, YouTube, stand-up stages, Netflix specials and podcasts, bypassing both Hollywood and the once-might “SNL” incubator. You never know what they’ll say next or who they’ll target with the next withering punchline. That sense of chaos once lived in “SNL’s” creative DNA. Now, that’s all but gone, replaced by corporate groupthink and an unwillingness to rock the boat. Remember how guest player Brad Pitt feted Dr. Anthony Fauci during the pandemic? Or how several cast members serenaded outgoing President Barack Obama with the song, “To Sir, With Love?” Later, “SNL” player Jay Pharoah admitted the show “gave up” on mocking Obama during his two terms in office. NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images What about Kate McKinnon warbling a mourning take on “Hallelujah” after Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump? Is this comedy or DNC propaganda? The line isn’t even blurry on most nights. “SNL” once invited both Trump and Elon Musk to host the show. Would NBC brass allow either to do the same today, even if the ratings would likely be huge?  That says it all. * * * Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of HollywoodInToto.com. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. Follow him at @HollywoodInToto. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

“Sopranos” actress Drea de Matteo had words of condemnation for some of her Hollywood peers turned political activists, including Meryl Streep and George Clooney.  “I’m still a super liberal so I feel like it’s time for us all to come together but a lot of people on the Left are afraid … George Clooney, Meryl Streep, all of these huge celebrities endorsing war, supporting Dick Cheney,” the actress said during a Wednesday appearance on Fox Business.   “I don’t understand the inversion and how people have flipped unless they’re ‘under the gun’ so to speak … I find it hard to believe that people like George Clooney or Meryl Streep don’t actually know what’s going on. Maybe they should use their bank accounts to support what’s happening in the world right now,” she added. The 52-year-old went on to rail against the current state of the entertainment industry. “I think that Hollywood is meaningless,” she said. “The American Dream is on hold. I feel like Hollywood is dead. The music industry is dead … There’s no … artistic movement speaking out about this … You don’t see fine art. There’s usually protest art about wars and censorship. We’re stagnant right now.” “I find it interesting to see these celebrities that are endorsing a situation that is the antithesis of what they once stood for as celebrities sort of and freedom of everything,” de Matteo said. “Speech, art, integrity. I question their integrity right now.” Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here! This isn’t the first time the actress spoke out against celebrities and their political involvement. She spoke with The Daily Wire about Hollywood stars making political endorsements and why she’s opposed. “In the past, I understood the value,” she said during an interview earlier this month. “There was a rock and roll aspect to it, you know, you had all these musicians, there was a celebration of the country. I know now that there is no celebration of this country, and there’s no patriotism.” “I feel like a lot of these celebrities are either tone deaf, and they don’t know what’s going on,” de Matteo said. She added that most “well-intentioned liberals” would “abandon ship” if they knew what was really going on.  “It feels sad to see how misinformed [celebrities] are,” she says. “If they’re not misinformed, then it makes me question their integrity as a human being and why they would want to hurt people on that level,” de Matteo said of Hollywood stars endorsing Kamala Harris for president.

The Biden-Harris administration, which has consistently undermined the state of Israel during its year-long battle against the Islamist terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, is joining the United Nations to invoke immunity for UNRWA and its employees who aided and abetted Hamas in its murderous massacre of more than 1220 people in Israel last October 7. In August, the UN admitted that nine UNRWA employees “may have been involved in the seventh of October attacks.” “Some of those employees were described as teachers and social workers — and included an Arabic instructor who was revealed to be a Hamas military commander that helped slaughter Kibbutz Be’eri,” the New York Post noted. In June, more than 100 victims of the October 7 massacre filed a lawsuit against UNRWA, saying UNRWA “knowingly providing Hamas with the US dollars in cash that it needed to pay smugglers for weapons, explosives, and other terror materiel” and that Hamas money changers collected 10%-25% on transactions, “ensuring that a predictable percentage of UNRWA’s payroll went to Hamas.” “In addition, the lawsuit said UNRWA ‘knowingly provided material support to Hamas in Gaza’ by allowing the terror group safe harbor in its faculties, including schools and other buildings used for weapons storage or command centers, based on the assumption that its premises ‘were inviolate’ and thus immune to attack by Israel,” The Times of Israel reported. Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here! But the United Nations and the Biden-Harris administration want to whitewash the issue and make its employees immune from prosecution, declaring, “Since the UN has not waived immunity in this instance, its subsidiary, UNRWA, continues to enjoy absolute immunity from prosecution, and the lawsuit should be dismissed.” “The plaintiff’s complaint does not present a legal basis for claiming that the United Nations waived its immunity,” Biden’s DOJ echoed. “Therefore, because the UN has not waived immunity in this case, its subsidiary, UNRWA, retains full immunity, and the lawsuit against UNRWA should be dismissed due to lack of subject matter jurisdiction.” As Mark Goldfeder, director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, and Eugene Kontorovich, professor at George Mason University Scalia Law School, noted: Under the UN Charter, its officials are entitled to such “privileges and immunities as are necessary for the independent exercise of their functions.” The United Nations thus claims that immunity from civil suits for invading a country and massacring its citizens is “necessary” for the exercise of its functions — and President Biden and Kamala Harris apparently agree. If immunity for mass murder is necessary for the UN’s functioning, maybe it is time to rethink the UN entirely.

Former President Donald Trump sat down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at Trump Tower in New York City on Friday, just one day after President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with the European leader and announced an additional $8 billion in military assistance for Ukraine. The meeting also comes days after Zelensky called Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), “too radical” and expressed doubt that Trump has a plan for ending the war between Russia and Ukraine. The conflict is now in its 31st month as Russian and Ukrainian soldiers continue to fight over Ukraine’s southern and eastern territory. Donald Trump meets Zelensky in New York. "We're gonna have a good meeting." pic.twitter.com/uSUQt8HJST — The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) September 27, 2024 Trump has promised to end the bloodbath in Ukraine if he becomes president. Before meeting with Zelensky, Trump told reporters, “We’re going to work very much with both parties to try and get this settled,” The Hill reported. “We have a very good relationship, and I also have a very good relationship, as you know, with President Putin. And I think if we win I think we’re going to get it resolved very quickly,” Trump added before Zelensky chimed in, saying, “I hope we have more good relations.” “But it takes two to tango, you know, and we’re going to have a good meeting today,” Trump continued. “And I think the fact that we’re even together today is a very good sign.” Zelensky told The New Yorker earlier this week, “Trump doesn’t really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how.” “With this war, oftentimes, the deeper you look at it the less you understand,” Zelensky added. “I’ve seen many leaders who were convinced they knew how to end it tomorrow, and as they waded deeper into it, they realized it’s not that simple.” The Ukrainian president also said Vance is “too radical,” arguing that the Republican vice presidential candidate’s message “seems to be that Ukraine must make a sacrifice.” Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here! Trump blasted Zelensky at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday for “making little nasty aspersions” toward him. The former president also called Zelensky the “greatest salesman on Earth,” adding, “Those buildings are down. Those cities are gone. They’re gone. And we continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal.” Some conservatives accused Zelensky of “election interference” after he appeared with Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) at a factory in the battleground state of Pennsylvania earlier this week. During their visit to the factory, Shapiro signed an artillery shell that was being shipped to Ukraine. “The facility was in a politically contested battleground state, was led by a top political surrogate for Kamala Harris, and failed to include a single Republican because – on purpose – no Republicans were invited. The tour was clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats and is clearly election interference,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) wrote in a letter to Zelensky.