News bits: Christian ‘charity’; Vitamin & mineral science bit; Gutless Democrats; Etc.

A newspaper in Spokane Washington reports:

More than 200 Spokane churches were asked to open their doors to 

homeless people during dangerously cold weather — four agreed

It’s the same every year.

A dangerous cold snap is forecast. Hundreds of unhoused people are in danger of freezing to death, and there isn’t a clear plan to keep them warm. With the clock ticking, the city scrambles.

Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown criticized the city’s perpetual lack of planning during her run for office last year, and pledged to put a better system in place. But when a blast of arctic air descended on Spokane and brought temperatures below zero during her second week in office, she, too, was forced to scramble at the last minute.

The city’s efforts this year were also aided by a small group of volunteers and homeless service providers who had spent months working behind the scenes on an ambitious project to keep people from freezing.

The plan was simple: Open the churches.

The idea of using churches to house homeless people during cold weather has been long in the making. In theory, it makes sense: Hundreds of Spokane churches sit empty every night. With city shelter space consistently below what's needed, why not ask the faith community to help?

But making that vision a reality has been an uphill battle.

That speaks for itself. Repeal tax break privileges for churches. 

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The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reports on some new data from people who participated in this 2 year COSMOS study (COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study):

Abstract

Background

Longer effects of multivitamin-mineral (MVM) supplementation on late-life cognitive function remain untested using in-person, detailed neuropsychologic assessments. Furthermore, insufficient evidence exists for healthcare providers to recommend daily MVM supplements to prevent cognitive decline.

Conclusions

In COSMOS-Clinic, daily MVM supplementation leads to a significantly more favorable 2 year change in episodic memory. The meta-analysis within COSMOS cognitive substudies indicates that daily MVM significantly benefits both global cognition and episodic memory. These findings within the COSMOS trial support the benefits of a daily MVM in preventing cognitive decline among older adults.

That's interesting. Maybe there is something good about taking daily vitamins and minerals. All this time and there has been insufficient research to get this information.

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Gutless Democrats: A sickening WaPo opinion describes the cowardice of Senate Democrats:

This country has no more devoted a public servant than Judge Todd Edelman of the D.C. Superior Court. While other law graduates joined white-shoe firms, Edelman, a friend of mine since college, spent years as a public defender, as a labor union lawyer and, for the last 14 years, on the D.C. bench, where he is now presiding judge of the civil division.

President Barack Obama nominated him in 2016 to fill a vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. But this was during then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s blockade of Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, and Edelman, caught up like other nominees in the Republicans’ refusal to move Obama’s judicial picks, never got a vote, or even a hearing.

President Biden nominated Edelman to the same court in 2022. Republicans struck again, this time with an ugly, Willie-Horton style smear campaign. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) fabricated an outrageous lie, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that a man Edelman released in a pretrial hearing “went on to murder — to murder — an 11-year-old.” In reality, the man in question hadn’t murdered anyone, but Blackburn badly distorted the facts of a case to suggest that Edelman was to blame for a child’s death.

This time, Democrats controlled the Senate. They could have, and should have, called out Blackburn’s nonsense and confirmed Edelman. Instead, they cowered. They shied from defending Edelman, or even pointing out the facts; .... The months dragged on, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) refused to schedule a vote before the Senate recessed for Christmas break. Two weeks ago, the White House pulled the plug rather than resubmit the nomination for the new session of Congress.  

We live in a world in which MAGA types such as Blackburn use disinformation as a matter of course. That’s a given. But if Democrats are so cowardly that they won’t fight back and won’t answer the lies with truth, then the battle to preserve our democracy is already lost no matter who wins at the polls.

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Jamelle Bouie writes an opinion for the NYT (whole opinion is here not behind a paywall):

Jan. 6 Cannot Go Down the Memory Hole

Letting Trump Off the Hook Will Change the Shape of History 

But despite this unambiguous evidence of insurrection, there is a concerted effort — either out of skepticism or denial — to present the events of Jan. 6, including the schemes that led up to the attack on the Capitol, as something else. The legitimate protest of an exuberantly disappointed group of ordinary American voters, perhaps, or — in the rendering of Trump’s most devoted apologists — a last-ditch effort to save the Republic itself from the illegitimate grasp of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.

It is tempting to say that the facts contained in the Jan. 6 committee report will stand on their own, that the body of evidence is simply too great to sustain a posture of skepticism and denial. But facts are mediated to us through our beliefs, experiences and interests. Most people do not and will not believe facts that cut against those beliefs, experiences and interests.

In the case of the Ku Klux Klan testimony,** it was in the political, social or ideological interests of many Americans — from partisans of the Democratic Party to leading members of the national press — to downplay the significance of the testimony. The same is true today of the facts gathered by the Jan. 6 committee.

** From the Senate Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, an 1871 investigation of reports of vigilante violence against freed people and their white allies in the states of the former Confederacy. The committee released its report as an 8,000 page, 13-volume collection of testimony from 600 witnesses.

In other words, the world in which the attack on the Capitol of the United States by the vengeful followers of a defeated president is just ordinary politics gone a little wild is a world in which Trump and his rioters eventually won.

In my opinion, Mr. Bouie understands the human condition and our political situation pretty well. 

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