“Prince Andrew’s military affiliations and royal patronages are being returned to Queen Elizabeth II at her behest in the wake of his ongoing legal battle with Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
On Thursday, Buckingham Palace confirmed in a statement sent to Fox News that the reigning monarch, 95, agreed to accept the returned accolades.
“With The Queen’s approval and agreement, The Duke of York’s military affiliations and Royal patronages have been returned to The Queen,” the statement read. “The Duke of York will continue not to undertake any public duties and is defending this case as a private citizen.”
One royal source also claimed that the Duke of York will no longer use “His Royal Highness” or HRH in any official capacity.”
Comment: The royal princes, dukes, etc., have closets full of uniforms of every service in every grade imaginable for the purpose of decking them out as “leaders” (symbolic leaders to be sure) of the British military (or whatever is left of it). Nothing like that exists in the US where it is a crime to impersonate a soldier.
They also receive a lot of money from various bits and pieces of national activity that are in the crown’s “gift.”
Ah, well, it’s a British thing. We have the Harris/Biden Administration and its pursuit of utopia. pl
Presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris walks onto stage at her campaign stop at Manual High School in Denver on Aug. 2. Photo by Ali C. M. Watkins/Sentinel Colorado
“President Joe Biden’s job approval rating has fallen to 33%, with more than half of respondents expressing disapproval in the latest poll from Quinnipiac University, released Wednesday.
About 1 in 3 respondents approve of Biden’s performance, while just over half disapprove and 1 in 10 expressed no opinion.
33% approve of Biden’s performance.
53% disapprove of Biden’s performance.
10% had no opinion.
About half of Americans said that Biden is performing about as well as they expected, while about 4 in 10 said that he’s doing worse than they expected.
50% said Biden is doing about as well as they expected.
39% said Biden is doing worse than they expected.
7% said Biden is doing better than they expected.”
Comment: I would like the Republicans in politics and the media to stop talking about how big they will win in November. They are inviting the judgment of the gods on their cause.
Hillary against someone like DeSantis or Noem. Great idea! Hillary against Trump? Bad idea! I live in the belly of the liberal upper middle class here in Alexandria in the midst up many Democrats who hate Trump’s guts. There are many like them. pl
“In stark terms he urged Senate centrists to pick a side between racist historical figures and crusaders for civil rights.
“I ask every elected official in America. How do you want to be remembered?” Biden said.
“Do you want to be the side of the side of Dr. King or George Wallace?” he went on. “Do you want to be the site of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis? This is the moment to decide.”
House Republicans were quick to respond, tweeting a 1987 article in which Biden recounted praise he had received from the segregationist Wallace while a young senator.
Democrats have seized upon the voting rights issue amid a series of political setbacks that have caused Biden’s poll numbers to plummet, including the highest inflation in 39 years and record-smashing rates of new COVID-19 infections nearly two years into the pandemic.”
Comment: Before Biden “remembered” that he is actually a 19th Century Irish revolutionary who commanded the Irish Brigade in the Union Army after having come over on the “slave ships” from the UK, he was actually favorably inclined toward segregationists and former Klansmen like Robert Bird, the former “Grand Cyclops” whom he eulogized not so long ago. Harris is a nitwit petty tyrant who cannot even run her own little office successfully, but Biden is a mean-spirited man driven in his dementia by demons that are extremely dangerous. BTW, Biden voted in the senate for the posthumous restitution of Jefferson F Davis’ US citizenship. pl
““You said just a short while ago that … covid presented a grave danger to people in the workplace,” Roberts” And you thought it was only if 100 of them were employed…..
We need to shoot them, shoot them all; and then shoot them again. You know this is true. They are our greatest threat.
“China’s “artificial sun” tokamak has sustained a plasma reaction for a whopping 101 seconds at 120 million degrees Celsius, setting new records in the field of nuclear fusion. The breakthrough could pave the way for a carbon-neutral energy future.
EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak), or HT-7U, is a custom-built fusion reactor that has operated in different phases since 2006. Like many of the world’s tokamak experiments, EAST has reached fusion before. As a refresher, inside the donut-shaped (or, sometimes, more spherical) containment of a tokamak, sun-hot plasma swirls in a circle that’s held in place by supercooled electromagnets.
This magnetic field is the only thing floating between 360-million-degree plasma and a bunch of human-made materials that obviously can’t sustain that temperature. The plasma results from smashing different nuclei together, fusing them rather than splitting them.
This requires a huge energy investment, which critics say means fusion will never really get off the ground. And so far, all tokamaks work for just a scant few seconds at lower temperatures before something goes wrong.”
Arianespace’s Ariane 5 rocket with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope onboard, is seen at the launch pad, Thursday, Dec. 23, 2021, at Europe’s Spaceport, the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. The James Webb Space Telescope (sometimes called JWST or Webb) is a large infrared telescope with a 21.3 foot (6.5 meter) primary mirror. The observatory will study every phase of cosmic history—from within our solar system to the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe. Photo Credit: (NASA/Chris Gunn)
“There were two stunningly good pieces of news about the James Webb Space Telescope this weekend. One was widely reported—that after an intricate, two-week process, the telescope completed its deployment without any difficulties. The next steps toward science operations are more conventional.
The other piece of news, less well-covered but still important, emerged during a news conference on Saturday. NASA’s Mission Systems Engineer for the Webb telescope, Mike Menzel, said the agency had completed its analysis of how much “extra” fuel remained on board the telescope. Roughly speaking, Menzel said, Webb has enough propellant on board for 20 years of life.
This is twice the conservative pre-launch estimate for Webb’s lifetime of a decade, and it largely comes down to the performance of the European Ariane 5 rocket that launched Webb on a precise trajectory on Christmas Day.
Prior to launch, the telescope was fueled with 240 liters of hydrazine fuel and dinitrogen tetroxide oxidizer. Some of this fuel was needed for course adjustments along the journey to a stable point in space, about 1.5 million km from Earth, where Webb will conduct science observations. The remainder will be used at Webb’s final orbit around the stable Lagrange point for station-keeping and to maintain its orbit.
So every kilogram of fuel saved on Webb’s journey to the Lagrange point could be used to extend its life there. Because ten years seemed like a fairly short operational period for such an expensive and capable space telescope, NASA had already been contemplating a costly and risky robotic refueling mission. But now that should not be necessary, as Webb has at least two decades of life.
A lot of this comes down to the performance of the venerable Ariane 5 rocket. NASA and the European Space Agency reached an agreement more than a decade ago by which Europe would use its reliable Ariane 5 rocket to lift the telescope into space, and in exchange, European scientists would get time to use the telescope.
During an interview with The Interplanetary Podcast, Ariane 5 program manager Rudiger Albat explained how European rocket scientists approached the Webb launch. Each Ariane 5 vehicle is interchangeable, but engineers and technicians involved in the production of the rocket know which components are going on which rocket. So when they were building a part of Webb, an engineer might say, “I’ll take a second look” to make sure the piece was the best it could be.
The Ariane 5 program also selected the best components for Webb based upon pre-flight testing. For example, for the Webb-designated rocket, the program used a main engine that had been especially precise during testing. “It was one of the best Vulcain engines that we’ve ever built,” Albat said. “It has very precise performance. It would have been criminal not to do it.””
“Bragg’s memo also detailed the following instructions for prosecutors to reduce charges filed by cops in various cases:
Armed robbers who use guns or other deadly weapons to stick up stores and other businesses will be prosecuted only for petty larceny, a misdemeanor, provided no victims were seriously injured and there’s no “genuine risk of physical harm” to anyone. Armed robbery, a class B felony, would typically be punishable by a maximum of 25 years in prison, while petty larceny subjects offenders to up to 364 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Convicted criminals caught with weapons other than guns will have those felony charges downgraded to misdemeanors unless they’re also charged with more serious offenses. Criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree, a class D felony, is punishable by up to 7 years behind bars.
Burglars who steal from residential storage areas, parts of homes that aren’t “accessible to a living area” and businesses located in mixed-use buildings will be prosecuted for a low-level class D felony that only covers break-ins instead of for more serious crimes. Those more serious crimes, class B and class C felonies, would be punishable by up to 25 and up to 15 years in prison respectively.
Drug dealers believed to be “acting as a low-level agent of a seller” will be prosecuted only for misdemeanor possession. Also, suspected dealers will only be prosecuted on felony charges if they’re also accused of more serious crimes or are actually caught in the act of selling drugs. That felony would mean facing up to seven years behind bars.” NY Post
Comment: This fellow is a long time radical. His presence on stage with the Rev Al (Tawana) Sharpton is a dead giveaway as to where he is politically. “Payback is a bitch” might be his motto or perhaps “40 acres and a mule.” His “reforms” essentially posit that Blacks should not be punished for taking the White man’s things. After all, they are the products of racial and class oppression and are protected by the White Man’s selfish law. Drug dealers? Oh well, that would fall into the category of “40 acres and a mule.”
“New GPS III Follow-on satellites — or GPS IIIF for short — will continue to improve the constellation’s accuracy and protection against jamming.
GPS III satellites are already a substantial upgrade to the current constellation, providing three times greater accuracy and eight times better anti-jamming capability than their predecessors. In addition to introducing a new civil signal that is compatible with other navigation satellite systems, the five GPS III satellites on orbit completed the space component of M-code — an even more secure and accurate signal for military use.
The Space Force has launched five of the planned GPS III satellites, and three more have been declared “available for launch” but are waiting in storage with prime contractor Lockheed Martin. The remaining two are undergoing testing.
The Space Force has a contract with Lockheed for up to 22 GPS IIIF satellites. The service already exercised contract options for seven GPS IIIF satellites, with the most recent award taking place in October 2021, when Space Systems Command issued $737 million to the company for three more satellites.
GPS IIIF satellites will be more advanced than their predecessors. Most notably, the new space systems will prove a new Regional Military Protection capability, a steerable M-code signal that can concentrate the effect in a specified region. RMP can provide up to 60 times greater anti-jamming measures, helping ensure soldiers can access critical position, navigation and timing data in contested environments.”
Comment: Will this improvement affect the GPS services offered gratis to the civvie world? What other countries have something like GPS? pl
Top down or bottom up has always been the question in US government.
“Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., defended federal involvement in elections, citing Alexander Hamilton while claiming election loss “cannot be left up to the states.”
This week marked one year since the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that occurred on the day that Congress set to certify President Biden’s win in the 2020 election over former President Donald Trump. The controversy around the post-election days focused on Trump’s efforts to challenge election losses in key states, including Georgia where State Secretary Brad Raffensperger famously rebuffed the then-president’s effort to find more votes.
The dispute revived a long-standing argument over the role of federal officials in elections that some believe should remain entirely under the control of local and state officials. “
Comment: All the nonsense about Alexander Hamilton is representative of the desire of the Democrats to transform The Union into a centralized state in which one party rule (theirs) is insured by destroying the features of the US Constitution that were designed to prevent exactly that.
