ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Every time the Washington political press freaks out and goes into full panic mode against President Trump, the blockbuster, Watergate-volume story always unfolds the same way.

First the news starts leaking or breaking. Newsrooms from the Potomac to the Hudson become seized and fixated on every morsel of the delicious story. News flashes zing around the internet.

Then it hits cable television and the press starts slinging the most salacious and scandalous accusations they can whip up, charging the president with the highest crimes imaginable.

Each time, these reporters sink deeper and deeper into a fantasyland as they dream bigger and bigger. THIS TIME, they keep thinking, we FINALLY got him!

Reporters and Democrats alike not to repeat myself are actually now speculating about whether Mr. Trump will survive the certain impeachment hearings to come.

But then, as the heavy breathing subsides and the adrenaline rush gives way to factual, concrete reporting, the most damning charges fall away.

Turns out Mr. Trump is a germaphobe and wasnt in that Russian hotel room.

The bust of Martin Luther King is still in the Oval Office.

He didnt abandon conservatives by naming his sister to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Trumps Tower and people involved in his campaign were, in fact, surveilled.

Slowly, agonizingly, Truth becomes very inconvenient for all these people predicting Mr. Trumps certain demise.

In the end, they are all left clinging to the smallest Styrofoam shard of their original story, bobbing in the harsh sea of Donald Trump Derangement Syndrome.

The last remaining wastrels pontificating about the scandal formerly larger than Watergate are left with just one flimsy accusation.

Well, he could have handled it better, they sniff. He didnt follow Washington political protocol.

Are you freaking kidding me? It all starts with charges of high crimes and misdemeanors impeachment imminent and when it all turns out to be fake news these people walk away grumbling about how Mr. Trump could have handled it better?

Just look at this latest Watergate scandal.

The upshot is that Mr. Trump finally fired a man who every single person in all of Washington, except perhaps James B. Comeys wife, has said at one time or another in the past year should have been fired.

Why was he fired? For all the reasons every single person in Washington has stated at one point or another during the past year.

But if you are among the legions around here suffering from Donald Trump Derangement Syndrome, it is always much more sinister.

Russia!

The FBI was closing in on Donald Trumps sordid connections to the Russians! (Minus the laughably debunked Moscow hotel room scandal that was one of Mr. Trumps previous Watergate scandals.)

The FBI had just asked for more money to pursue the Trump-Russia connection, we were breathlessly told. Subpoenas were just being issued to known associates of known associates of President Trump!

So incensed by the lies of the scandals coverup, it was reported, that a top official in the Justice Department was threatening to quit in protest rather than carry on working for such a criminal in the White House.

And then inconvenient reality unfolds again.

One by one, each of these blockbusters came under clouds of scrutiny. Nobody quits in protest.

By Thursday morning, the whole scandal had substantially come unraveled.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Chairman Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, said he and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the committee, had recently met with Mr. Comey and came away with the clear impression that, in fact, Mr. Trump is not a target of any investigation by the FBI.

Sen. Feinstein and I heard nothing that contradicted the presidents statement, he said.

And in a stunning display of nonpartisanship, Mrs. Feinstein agreed.

Well, OK. But the White House should have handled it better.

Charles Hurt can be reached at churt@washingtontimes.com; follow him on Twitter via @charleshurt.

Read more here:
Anatomy of Fake News - Washington Times - Washington Times

Each one greater and more terrible than thelast.

An important thing to know about me is that I own and cherish a 16 oz plastic wine glass that reads recently divorced. Ive never been divorced(let alone married), but I relish the premise: the simple pleasure of beingblissful, enthusiasticallyalone. To me, it isa triumphant vision: lounging in asilk bathrobe, in proximity to chardonnay, perusing the obits section.

In film, spinsterhood tends tofigure as an inscrutable, and distinctly feminine, brokenness. Plenty of moviessee hersolitude as something the plot must overcometo achieve ahappy ending: in Cactus Flower, the rakish Julian makes the once-prickly Miss Dickinson bloom; The Doctor Takes a Wife stages a similar scenario, as does The African Queen, Now Voyager, and Quality Street.In this way, the spinster hasno truemale peer. The staunchbachelor may be unwed, but he is never demonized for his singlehood; never dismissed asself-absorbed, unfulfilled,orabnormalfor choosing not to marry. The bacheloris regular, every day; he can never sublimate into myth.

I wontdenythat the cinematic spinster is wrought with problematic and negative connotations but Ireject them in favor of a more celebratory reading. Below, I have assembled a cohort of fictional women who sought definition outside of matrimony, who achieved the eternal joyofbeing left the fuck alone.

Because the spinster requires adegree of financial independence, youll find the list below runs fairly rich (and consequently, fairly white). Youll also note that, while at odds with my beloved wine glass, Ive disqualifiedfilms concerning liberateddivorcees (e.g. Auntie Mame, Living Out Loud, and An Unmarried Woman). These are not quite spinsters, but soft, milquetoast shades of the real deal.

Speaking of which

Top: (L) Katharine Hepburn as Jane Hudson; (R) Maggie Smith as Jean Brodie Bottom: Judy Davis as Sybylla Melvyn.

Jane is an Ohio elementary school secretary fulfilling her lifelong dream of vacationing alone in Venice. Along the way she has a fling with thirsty stereotype Renato, and observes the fragility of her fellow travellers marriages. Jane enjoys the affair, but knows nothing can come of it. Peacefully waving goodbye to mediocrity, she abandons her emotionally distraughtfuckboy at atrain station after which she presumably moves to Tuscany, buys a vineyard, and lives out her life as a legendary hermit.

Jeans not a regular boarding school teacher, shes a cool boarding school teacher. She strays from the curriculum, takes her students on unconventional field trips, and is transparently, enthusiastically, unwed. Unswayed by insipid marriage proposals to lackluster suitors who will never be enough, Jean is devoted, a-line collars and all, to tuning her students to her independent streakfor better or worse.

Sybylla wants two things: to write for a living, and to not marry Sam Neill. Filled with determination to get to know herself, Sybylla eludes monogamy, perfects her messy bun, and gleefully disappoints her parents. Presumably her Brilliant Career was finding creative ways to get men to go fuck themselves.

Top: Lillian Gish as Rachel Cooper Bottom: (L) Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest as Frances and Jet Owens; (R) Colleen Dewhurst as Marilla Cuthbert.

Rachel Cooper has no time for Reverend Harry Powells charismatic serial killer nonsense. Shes a tough old broad-armed with the fear of God and a Remington Model 10. Shes get off my lawn personified. While she considers children the best of humanity, men are shit in the wind to Rachel. And shell be there, alone, shotgun in hand, a strong tree with branches for many birds.

Witchy aunts Frances and Jet Owens are subject to a family curse: any man they fall in love with dies. Theyve had heartache in the past but have found unconquerable happinessin each others company; in midnight margarita parties, in floppy garden hats, and in mentoring the next generation of hermetical Massachusetts witches.

Marilla lives in rural P.E.I. and has no interest in being a mother but she does need some child labor to help with farm chores. Cool, formidable, and crisp were it not for her softy brother, Marilla would 100% have sent Anne packing. Fortunately, Marilla clocked a kinship with Anne a fierce desire for independence most properly edified by an elder spinster.

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Originally posted here:
Anatomy of a Spinster: 6 Species of Cinematic Old Maids - Film School Rejects

Organized by CHS anatomy students, the blood drive will be held from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Friday, May 12 at Cloquet High School. The morning of the blood drive there will be a pancake breakfast, while snacks and drinks will be offered during the donation.

If you are interested in donating or would like more information, contact Tim Anderson as soon as possible at tanders1@isd94.org or 218-879-3393, ext 1004.

More:
Anatomy students hold blood drive - Pine Journal

The river

From its terminus at Montreal, with tributaries that reach deep into the heart of central Canada, the Ottawa River drains more than 146,000 square kilometres a larger footprint than many European countries, including Ireland, Hungary andGreece.

Yet the river is also one of Canadas most regulated waterways, with 13 major reservoirs and more than 50 major dams and hydroelectric generating stations along thesystem.

So how can a river with so many controls still manage to flood its banks, causing loss of life and what will almost certainly turn out to be many millions of dollars in property damage? The answer is that most of the controls and all of the reservoirs are on the upper third of the riverbasin.

Ile Mercier covered in floodwater is seen on the Riviere des Prairies on the north part of Montreal, on May 8,2017.

PAUL CHIASSON/THE CANADIANPRESS

The southern two thirds of the basin essentially has no substantial storage on it, says Michael Sarich, a senior water-resources engineer with the Ottawa River Regulation Secretariat, which oversees procedures related to water levels on theriver.

This means once water gets beyond the reservoirs and is running freely through the most populated regions of the Ottawa Valley, regulators have no capacity to hold water back at times when flows are unusually large or respond to rising levels due to precipitation that falls below thereservoirs.

Spring is normally a high water season because of snow melt that feeds the Ottawa River at this time of year. On top of that, accumulated rainfall in April was at its highest in at least two decades throughout the Ottawa Valley region inundating the river basin with more than double the amount of precipitation that falls in average years. Most of this rain fell in areas below the reservoirs, creating a growing and effectively uncontrolled potential for flooding that set the stage for what happenednext.

In the first week of May, two more bouts of heavy rain added still more water to the swollen rivers. At the same time, reservoirs upstream were already at capacity and discharging large volumes of water a necessary measure to avoid dams being overtopped anddamaged.

Data from Canadas RADARSAT-2 satellite was used to construct this view of flooding around Lac des Deux-Montagne in Quebec, where the Ottawa River encounters the island of Montreal. The blue in the image shows the extent of open water on May 7, 2017, while the outlines of flooded lands appear in lighterblue.

Natural Resources Canada, Canadian SpaceAgency

For example, on May 5, the Timiskaming Reservoir was effectively at its maximum level and discharging close to 1,900 cubic metres per second, far more than the entire Ottawa River at periods of low flow. A few days later, on May 8, outflow at the Carillon Dam at the bottom of the river had reached a record high of nearly 9,000 cubic metres per second. What happened between the top and bottom of the river during those three days is something that system managers say they were helpless to prevent ormitigate.

Its just an unprecedented event, says Mr. Sarich. So then it becomes a problem of people in the floodplain, and thats just a more difficultquestion.

As unprecedented as the rainfall was, scientists say residents can expect more of the same in the years ahead and its unlikely the outcome will be any different from a water management point ofview.

These are the types of events brought by climate change that climatologists have been predicting for 30 years theyre just starting to show themselves now, says Adam Fenech, who heads the University of Prince Edward Islands climatelab.

Flooded homes are seen on Monday, May 8, 2017 in Rigaud, Que., west ofMontreal.

PAUL CHIASSON/THE CANADIANPRESS

The thermodynamics behind the trend are well-established: for every degree Celsius that a parcel of air warms, the amount of moisture the air can hold rises by about 7 per cent. Average annual temperatures in parts of the Ottawa River basin have already increased by close to one degree in the past 60 years and the warming trend is only projected to accelerate due to greenhouse-gasemissions.

That means more water is being ferried up to the region when weather patterns carry moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, and the potential for periods of high precipitation is greater now than in thepast.

An additional factor may be the jet stream that some scientists say is more likely to take on a meandering pattern rather than a straight west-to-east flow as the Arctic warms. The bends in the jet stream can act as roadblocks that tend to keep weather patterns in place over a given region for longer stretches of time. In other words, when it rains it rains longer, putting more pressure onwatersheds.

As to whether this past weeks flooding can be attributed to climate change, Blair Feltmate, who heads the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo, compares the situation to that of a baseball player onsteroids.

You cant say any single home run is due to the steroids, said Dr. Feltmate. But as the players total home run count starts to climb, its increasingly obvious that the drugs are having aneffect.

Patrice Pepin walks along a barrier of sandbags holding back the Ottawa Rivers waters at the home of his brother Christian Pepin and wife Marie-Pierre Chalifoux on Fournier street in the municipality of Saint-Andre-dArgenteuil, on May 9,2017.

Dario Ayala/The Globe andMail

If major floods cant be prevented and also show every sign of increasing in frequency in the coming decades, what does that mean for property owners and theirinsurers?

In a word, it means morerisk.

Flooding is the elephant in the room for Canada, says Dr. Feltmate. That is the most challenging aspect of climate change and the most costly to thecountry.

And increased flooding is not just a problem that will be restricted to major waterways like the Ottawa River. The phenomenon of microbursts sudden downpours that can overwhelm storm drains and sewer systems when they strike in a geographically localized area can affect homes and neighbourhoods that are far from any natural shoreline. In areas where drainage systems converge, some homes that never knew flooding are now in a position to be struck by repeated events, to the point where they become uninsurable. The problem, says Dr. Feltmate, is that both governments and homeowners are still very much in the mode of management by disaster, which means they tend to pay attention to the flooding problem only while a flood is underway.

Meanwhile, there is plenty of work that homeowners can do, starting with making sure that their homes are covered by the different kinds of flooding overland and sewer backup that can occur. To the extent possible, homes should be protected with features such as plastic covers over basement window wells and sump pumps with backup generators so that they dont shut down when the power goesout.

Municipalities, meanwhile, need to generate accurate flood maps so that high-risk areas can be identified ahead oftime.

And if theres one message that Canadians should be taking away from the Ottawa River flood of 2017 its this, Dr. Feltmatesaid:

These floods were realizing now are small compared to whatscoming.

FLOODS IN QUEBEC: MORE FROM THE GLOBE ANDMAIL

See the original post:
Anatomy of a deluge - The Globe and Mail