January 4, 2018 Page 3
Politically Speaking
One Man’s Opinion Another Man’s Opinion
Trump a Benefit to
Real Reporting
By Cristian Vasquez
Thanks in part to the 24-hour news cycle
and propaganda networks such as Fox News
and MSNBC disguised as news outlets,
President Trump was able to make it to the
White House. While the 2016 Presidential
campaign highlighted the evident dismissal
of serious news reporting by most Americans,
the Trump presidency is having the opposite
effect. Whether it be the desire to take down
the sitting President or the will To defend
him, investigative reporting is receiving more
attention by the mainstream media outlets
(Fox News included even if to debunk these
reports). Newspapers are again being looked
to for reliable information because of the
quality of their reporting.
From the Russian investigations to Roy
Moore’s pedophile-tendencies tainted past,
it has been investigative reporters from
different newspapers that have given a new
life and meaning to the mundane news
cycle. Of course these serious reports will
be used by one network as “the nail in the
coffin” against the Trump Administration
and his army of evil destroying America.
Meanwhile, the other network will dismiss
them as nothing more than a witch
hunt funded by Soros and remind us that
Hillary somehow still matters. Regardless
of the freak show on television, people are
finally paying attention to newspapers and
the investigative pieces that come from
said sources.
The reason this trend is refreshing isn’t
based on the slight upswing in newspaper
subscriptions, but rather that we are finally
getting solid reporting. It is this type of
reporting we, as a nation, will need when
Special Counsel Robert Mueller finishes his
probe into the Russian interference case. We
can’t say with certainty how the propaganda
machines MSNBC and Fox News will present
the findings of Mueller’s investigation,
but we have a pretty good idea. However,
for full details and accuracy we’re going to
have to rely on print journalism. Yes, the
Internet can provide us up-to-the-minute
information, but the rabbit hole of absurdity,
lies and distortion that has become the Web
is a nightmare.
Don’t forget it was newspapers that broke
the Pentagon Papers and Watergate--not
television, not radio. While we can criticize
reporters, columnists or entire newspapers
for displaying bias, their record for accuracy
when printing investigative pieces is strong.
Furthermore, they are more effective than
what we see on cable news.
We don’t know what Mueller will find.
Maybe there was no collusion between
Trump’s campaign and the Russians, but the
Russians interfered in our election on their
own. That possibility is more than enough of
a reason for an investigation. We don’t know
what journalists will find when they dig--and
as of late, there have been some interesting
discoveries. Maybe investigative reporting is
up because journalism became complacent
during the Obama years. Maybe journalists
are fueled by the desire to destroyor topple
President Trump. Or maybe we as media
consumers are simply paying attention to
more reliable sources. •
Intense Methane Rainstorms Hit Saturn’s Largest Moon, Titan
Based on a Press Release from UCLA,
Provided by Bob Eklund
Titan, the largest of Saturn’s more than 60
moons, has surprisingly intense rainstorms,
according to research by a team of UCLA
planetary scientists and geologists. Although
the storms are relatively rare—they occur less
than once per Titan year, which is 29 and a half
Earth years—they occur much more frequently
than the scientists expected.
“I would have thought these would be
once-a-millennium events, if even that,” said
Jonathan Mitchell, UCLA associate professor
of planetary science and a senior author of the
research, which was published in the journal
Nature Geoscience. “So this is quite a surprise.”
The storms create massive floods in terrain that
are otherwise very cold deserts. Titan’s surface
is strikingly similar to Earth’s, with flowing
rivers that spill into great lakes and seas, and
the moon has storm clouds that bring seasonal,
monsoon-like downpours, Mitchell said. But
Titan’s precipitation is liquid methane, not water.
“The most intense methane storms in our
climate model dump at least a foot of rain a day,
which comes close to what we saw in Houston
from Hurricane Harvey this summer,” said
Mitchell, the principal investigator of UCLA’s
Titan climate modeling research group.
Sean Faulk, a UCLA graduate student and
the study’s lead author, said the study also
found that the extreme methane rainstorms
may imprint that moon’s icy surface in much
the same way that extreme rainstorms shape
Earth’s rocky surface.
On Earth, intense storms can trigger large
flows of sediment that spread into lowlands and
form cone-shaped features called alluvial fans.
In the new study, the UCLA scientists found
that regional patterns of extreme rainfall on
Titan are correlated with recent detections of
alluvial fans, suggesting that they were formed
by intense rainstorms.
The finding demonstrates the role of extreme
precipitation in shaping Titan’s surface, said
Seulgi Moon, UCLA assistant professor of
geomorphology and a co-senior author of the
paper. Moon said the principle likely applies
to Mars, which has large alluvial fans of its
own, and to other planetary bodies. Greater
understanding of the relationship between
precipitation and the planetary surfaces could
Looking Up
lead to new insights about the impact of climate
change on Earth and other planets.
Titan’s alluvial fans were detected by a
radar instrument on the Cassini spacecraft,
which began orbiting Saturn in late 2004. The
Cassini mission ended in September 2017,
when NASA programmed it to plunge into
the planet’s atmosphere as a way to safely
destroy the spacecraft.
Juan Lora, a UCLA postdoctoral scholar
and a co-author of the paper, said Cassini has
revolutionized scientists’ understanding of Titan.
Although Titan’s alluvial fans are a new
discovery, scientists have had eyes on its surface
for years. Shortly after Cassini reached Saturn,
radar and other instruments showed that vast
sand dunes dominated Titan’s lower latitudes,
while lakes and seas dominated its higher
latitudes. The UCLA scientists found that the
alluvial fans are mostly located between 50
and 80 degrees latitude—close to the centers
of Titan’s northern and southern hemispheres,
but generally slightly closer to the poles than
to the equator.
Such variations in surface features suggest
Titan has corresponding regional variations in
precipitation, because rainfall and subsequent
runoff play a key role in eroding land and filling
lakes, while the absence of rainfall promotes
the formation of dunes. •
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Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, behind the planet’s rings. The much smaller moon Epimetheus is visible in the foreground. Photo Courtesy
of NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.
Triumphant Trump Continues to
Confound Critics, Skeptics. CNN
By Duane Plank
When billionaire business mogul Donald
Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency
on June 16, 2015, the wheeler-dealer/
turned reality television star knew his candidacy
was considered a dark-horse stab at best by
political pundits… and as a pathetic joke, by
many of those paid very handsomely to espouse
their view points on the body politic.
Trump joined a field of Republican presidential
wannabees that was bursting at the seams, featuring
nearly 20 candidates. While Trump had
the name recognition garnered from his success
in the boardroom, and his star turn on the popular
The Apprentice, he had no political gravitas.
He was considered an entitled tycoon who
would burn wads of his own Benjamins attempting
to nab the nomination and then flame
out/drop out to return to constructing behemoth
edifices, appear on TV and hobnob with Miss
America contestants.
The Republican field in the spring and summer
of 2016 included Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted
Cruz, Ben Carson, John Kasich, Chris Christie
and Rick Perry--all experienced politicians who
knew how to play the game inside and outside
the Washington, D.C. beltway. There were so
many pols crowding the field that the initial
debates had to be held in two sessions, with the
men (and woman, remember Carly Fiorina?)
who were polling the highest receiving a spot
in the main debate, while the candidates who
were invisible in the polls (think Jim Gilmore)
were banished to the kids’ table and forced to
take part in the “JV debates.”
Trump’s candidacy wasn’t given the proverbial
“snowball chance in hell” initially by the
entrenched media-ites. There may have been
a few on the Fox News Channel who championed
Trump, but who would fathom that the
Republican Party establishment would allow
such a political neophyte to somehow wrangle
the nomination from one-time frontrunner and
political royalty Jeb Bush?
Surely the GOP would not commit electoral
college suicide and send an overmatched
Trump out to confront Queen Hillary and her
well-honed cadre of hatchet-men and women
in the general election, which would surely
devolve into an apocalyptic meltdown for the
party and result in catastrophic “down-theticket”
losses—meaning the country would be
looking at another eight years of backpedaling
under Clinton.
And that is when it started. The Republican
establishment underestimated Trump. The media
paid him little positive heed. The Dems underestimated
Trump so much so that they didn’t
even prop Hillary up and campaign in key states
she lost when she was electorally steamrolled
as Americans watched the results confound the
so-called experts as the polls closed on that
fateful Tuesday evening in November 2016.
When the final votes were tallied, Trump
had an electoral landslide--and certain washedup,
big-mouth Libs (think Madonna), who
had threatened to leave the country should
Trump triumph, back-pedaled, saying they
were “just kidding.”
Two weeks after Trump’s big tax win, the
moral of the story is: Love Trump, hate Trump,
but don’t underestimate the man. He has bamboozled
a lot of people more than once. Why
should 2018 be any different? •