“Eating more flavonols, antioxidants found in many vegetables, fruits, tea and wine, may slow your rate of memory loss, a new study finds”

 

The cognitive score of people in the study who ate the most flavonols declined 0.4 units per decade more slowly than those who ate the fewest flavonols. The results held even after adjusting for other factors that can affect memory, such as age, sex and smoking, according to the study recently published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

…One of the most common flavonols, quercetin, has shown promise in reducing the onset of colorectal cancer and other cancers, according to studies. Onions contain the highest levels — lower levels can be found in broccoli, blueberries, cauliflower, curly kale, leeks, spinach and strawberries.

Another common flavonol, kaempferol, appears to inhibit the growth of cancer cells while preserving and protecting normal cells. Good sources of kaempferol are onions, asparagus and berries, but the richest plant sources are spinach, kale and other green leafy vegetables, as well as herbs such as chives, dill and tarragon.

A third major player is myricetin, which has been studied in rodents for blood sugar control and the reduction of tau, a protein that causes the hallmark tangles of Alzheimer’s and other dementia. Spinach and strawberries contain high levels of myricetin, but honey, black currants, grapes and other fruits, berries, vegetables, nuts and tea are also good sources.

The last group of flavonols, isorhamnetin, may protect against cardiovascular and neurovascular disease in addition to anti-tumor and anti-inflammatory benefits. Good sources of isorhamnetin are pears, olive oil, wine and tomato sauce.

You can find a full list of the flavonoid content of various fruits and vegetables here...

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/28/health/flavonols-memory-boost-wellness/index.html

 
 

Uneven Praying Field by James Underdown

 

  If the U.S. Supreme Court is honest with themselves about their Kennedy v. Bremerton School District [June 27, 2022] school prayer decision, they’ll admit that this case was not about the right of free religious expression. It’s about religious power: members of one particular faith wielding power over everyone else.

   At issue in the Kennedy case was whether a public high school employee—in this case a football coach—can be permitted to gather players and other students on the fifty-yard line after a game to lead them in prayer. Joe Kennedy, the coach in question, said that forbidding this publicly organized prayer, the lower court forced him to “hide [his] faith” and sent a message of hostility toward religion.

   On the contrary, allowing such an overt endorsement of one religion is what sends a message of hostility—to non-religious players, players of other religions, and our democracy itself.

   First, let’s remember that silent, personal prayer has always been allowed in schools, public or otherwise. Those who believe in an all-powerful, omniscient god need only think to communicate with their maker, and therefore may pray quietly anytime they like.

   Indeed, the Bible itself urges this very approach to prayer in Matthew 6:5, saying, “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.” Maybe the coach, who wants to be seen with his flock of pious players on the fifty-yard line, hasn’t read that part yet.

   More to the point: Do players find this kind of prayer session coercive? Absolutely. Having played four years of both high school and college football and coached for a season, I know how small gestures affect the time a plyer is given on the field. Of course, a fervently religious coach would consider whether a player is on the right religious’ “team” when deciding who plays and who doesn’t. I certainly wouldn’t want to be the only guy sitting out the post-game prayer if it might mean sitting on the bench.

   As an atheist, I always felt a bit alienated when my teams prayed before or after games. Praying divided us. We, the team, became you, the ones praying and whomever else. On some teams, players and coaches say things such as “in Jesus’s name” during the prayer, which also excludes Muslim, Jewish, and other non-Christian team members. This pointedly sectarian preaching has no place on the gridiron or any other sports facility. No one ever ask us players if we wanted to pray. And a smart coach finds ways to unite players, not create sects among them.

   The entire enterprise of Christianizing public schools serves to create animosity where before there was none. In Bremerton, the post-game public prayer display got so out of hand at homecoming that TV stations arrived and religious zealots. Satan worshippers and an elected official were all praying (on camera) “that they may be seen by others.” The school principal called the whole scene “a zoo.”

   The early American colonies endured this same “zoo” when Quakers, Catholics, Anglicans, Puritans, and others fought constantly with one another over whose religion would be reflected in law. Our secular Constitution—respecting all religions but endorsing none—was the only solution. It made us the first explicitly secular government in Western history.

   Letting a group of Christians, led by a public-school employee, hold a religious prayer session on school property during a school event is a clear endorsement of religion. If you think such prayer is not an endorsement of religion, or it is simply harmless and inoffensive, try replacing those who are praying with Satanists, Jews, or Muslims. Or how about using school time or employees to lead a bunch of atheists affirming that there are no gods? Is it still okay to spend your tax dollars to give a forum to someone else’s beliefs?

   And for those who argue that the prayers are nonsectarian, think again. For one, there really is no such thing as a truly nonsectarian prayer. The very act of praying to a god implies a category of religious belief that excludes atheists, agnostics, and strict deists. By praying to one god, you exclude Hindus, pantheists, Wiccans, Buddhists, pagans, and countless others.

   No, this about one set of believers seeking to take over a public venue and turn it into their church. It’s divisive and counterproductive to school spirit and the spirit of athletic competition. Team unity and school pride aren’t built by separating students or mixing athletics with belief systems about the supernatural.   

   The solution is simple in a pluralistic, secular democracy. Those who wish to pray to anyone or anything for any reason may do so on their own time, in their own place, or silently to themselves. Their needs are met, and unnecessary religious strife is averted.

 

James Underdown is executive director of the Center for Inquiry West in Los Angeles. He was also a starting defensive end on the 9^th ranked (Div. III) 1981 DePauw University football team, which was inducted into the school’s athletic hall of fame in 2016. This OP-ED was published in Free Inquiry, Volume 43, Issue No. 1, December 2022/January 2023.

 

 

French lawmakers voted on Thursday to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution, with MPs on the left and centre saying the US Supreme Court's overturning of a landmark ruling in June showed the need for new steps

 

The vote in the National Assembly, France's lower house of parliament, marks only the first step on the path to enshrining the right to abortion in the constitution. In order to change the constitution, a bill must be voted on in the same terms by the lower house and the Senate. The latter is controlled by the right and last month rejected a cross-party bill aimed at constitutionalising the right to abortion and contraception.

On Thursday, MPs from the left-wing party La France insoumise (France Unbowed) party and the ruling centrist coalition struck a deal on the wording of the new clause, which passed with a huge majority. "The law guarantees the effectiveness and equal access to the right to voluntarily end a pregnancy," reads the proposed constitutional addition to article 66.

It was approved with 337 votes for and 32 against. 

"The assembly is speaking to the world, our country is speaking to the world," said jubilant left-wing lawmaker Mathilde Panot, dedicating the vote to women in Hungary, Poland and the United States. Panot, who spearheaded the legislation along with a member of President Emmanuel Macron's party, said the move was necessary in France to protect "against a regression".

Legal for 48 years

Women have had a legal right to abortion in France since a law adopted in 1974, and updated several times since, with the latest modification in February extending access to abortion to 14 weeks of pregnancy from 12. Adding it to the constitution would further protect this right and make it harder to overturn in France, said Panot. "It aims to prevent any regression," she told parliament. "We don't want to give any chance to people hostile to abortion and contraception rights."

Abortion rights are more widely accepted in France than in the United States or some fellow EU countries. Some 83% of French people are happy with the fact that abortion is legal, an Ifop poll showed in July, 16 percentage points more than about 30 years ago. The same poll showed 81% back adding the right to abortion in the constitution.

Many conservative and Catholic politicians had announced their misgivings about the abortion change, seeing it as unnecessary given the legal protections already in place. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, whose National Rally is the biggest single opposition party in parliament, had called it "totally misplaced" earlier this week because abortion rights were not under threat in France. She missed the vote on Thursday "for medical reasons", a spokesperson said.

(FRANCE 24 with Reuters)

 

A Sharp Turn to the Right by Abby Zimet

 

Taking a break from his busy schedule of stripping half the American populace of bodily autonomy, Justice Samuel Alito, the smug, sneering, imperious face of a fundamentalist SCOTUS supermajority "redefining the Constitutional landscape, and not to Americans' liking," got a standing ovation last week from the swanky zealots of the Federalist Society who in large part made it possible - thus proving again, despite Barack's best intentions, we are not really all one country.

There is no fouler proof of our divisions than the six, Catholic, extremist justices who now make up the majority of the Supreme Court - though the presidents who chose them have lost 7 of the last 8 popular votes - and who are resolutely driving the country's laws "sharply to the right" of mainstream public opinion. Alito, of course, wrote the opinion overturning Roe v Wade, though he had to stoop to misquoting a 12-century Christian crank in his abject effort to justify revoking a right that two-thirds of the country supports.

Amid heavy security, he was joined by three of his accomplices - Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh - at the Federalist Society's 40th anniversary gala, where 2,000 aging, fearful, sectarian dinosaurs in tuxes and ball gowns applauded their sordid work holding back the tides of change and time. Roberts had hedged on Dobbs, calling the ruling "a jolt to the legal system." Only Clarence Thomas of the Hard-Core Four stayed home, likely plotting the next coup with his lovely "terrorist-in-pearls" wife Ginni, God love 'em both 'cause who else would?

Founded in 1982 by Yale Law School students to provide a voice for conservatives on the mostly liberal campus, the Federalist Society, now with chapters at 200 law schools, has long, laughably billed itself as non-partisan; because denial is the right's super-power, the Society dismisses the notion they have "captured" the federal judiciary.

But over time, and especially during the Orange Reign, it grew into a sort of "farm team" for extremist federal judges, with Trump outsourcing his selection of judicial nominees to them and they, in turn, literally handing him lists of those, who would advance their agenda. "We're going to have great judges, conservative, all picked by the Federalist Society," he obliviously boasted in 2016, and so they were.

Over half his judicial nominees came from the Society, 15 of his appeals court judges spoke at the conference, and their "well-oiled machine" ultimately, lethally gave him three SCOTUS picks, more than any modern president - Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, all members of the Society. The invidious Barrett was cheered when she spoke; she said she had "benefitted immensely" from her ties to the Society, and it was "really nice to have a lot of noise made not by protesters outside my house." Leonard Leo, mastermind of the group's grip on judicial selections, also got a standing ovation when he told the crowd, “Our movement has grown by leaps and bounds, and so has our impact." "And boy, is your work needed today,” said nobody ever. No, wait. Alito said it.

That impact, of course, goes far beyond abortion access. After mid-terms, many noted the Federalist-packed SCOTUS had "helped the GOP gerrymander its way" into control of the House, thanks to a 2019 SCOTUS ruling rejecting claims GOP maps in Louisiana and Alabama constituted racial gerrymandering that diluted black votes. The maps stayed; in this election, the GOP won five of its six races in Louisiana, and six of its seven in Alabama, leading to what one sage called, "The House that Alito built."

The Federalist gala was held before all the votes had been tallied, but still members were palpably grateful for all Alito and his henchmen (and woman) had done. The crowd cheered when one speaker crowed "the Dobbs decision will be forever an indelible part of Justice Alito's legacy." They rose to their feet, turned to their hero, and stood triumphantly clapping after former Michigan Supreme Court justice

Stephen Markman said, "I do not know of any decision on any court by any judge of which that judge could be more proud," never mind all four perps lied in their confirmation hearings that they considered Roe settled law - Alito said he was "a believer in precedents" - and their ruling obliterated all their self-righteous pretense of caring about morality, legal principle, the Constitution or anything other than furthering the fundamentalist GOP agenda they were fast-tracked onto the court to boost. But no, said an aggrieved Barrett, they are "not a bunch of partisan hacks." As to their very presence at the Federalist fete, said one ethics expert, "The appearances are awful."

Equally awful, and unsurprising, is the key role of Alito, the "Patron Saint of Persecution Complexes," an "angry man" known to have only two modes: "sneering defiance" and "bleating indignation." Alito inhabits a world where white Christian men are under siege, anyone criticizing his beliefs is "bullying the court" or making him and his colleagues "targets for assassination," a black pastor who spoke up for his rights "threatened a race riot," he himself is free to play a rude, contemptuous, "nakedly unjudicial" buffoon in response to female colleagues, and the state's most vital task is punitive; in 2016, when SCOTUS rejected Florida's death penalty, only Alito dissented. 

So, a grotesque human being who likely kicks puppies in his free time, and who in a 1985 job application for Reagan's Justice Department pointedly declared, "I personally believe very strongly the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion," though, again, the Constitution doesn't mention it. In a rabid 2020 speech to the Federalist Society blasted as "befitting a Trump rally," Alito raged about the threats posed by liberals - same-sex marriage and cakes for them, gun control and religious liberty as "second-tier" rights, COVID's "previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty" - and, oof, quoted Dylan: "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there." Most offensive is a brazen, disingenuous arrogance, from proclaiming, "Congress has no right to interfere with (our) work" to dismissing the impact of his Dobbs ruling on women. "We do not pretend to know" how they will respond, he intones, but regardless, we can't "let that knowledge influence our decision." Aka, fuck 'em. 

Thus spoke a guy holding lifelong, unimaginable, unaccountable power that protects him from the consequences of his actions, no matter how devastating. The history of that power goes back to 1925, writes Linda Greenhouse, when Congress gave the Court the power to select cases it wanted to decide, thus transforming it from a "solver of disputes" to a creator of laws shaping both its own and the country's agenda - now, toward an agenda far to the right of most Americans.

For the right, Dobbs is the product of a political project that goes back decades whose "one common aspiration (was) the capture of the Supreme Court" - and with it, the reversal of Roe. In a country where support for abortion rights has only grown over time, she notes, "Getting the Court was not simply the obvious choice; it was the only choice." Now, she writes, "The justices who make up the majority have nothing in their way - that is the nature of a supermajority.

(They), or more accurately the forces that propelled them to the Court, have been waiting a long time for this moment." The Dobbs decision, says one Court scholar, "may be the most legitimacy-threatening decision since the 1930s." Along with other liberal judges, Justice Elena Kagan likewise argues the right-wing majority has broken the Court's historical bond with the public and "is abusing its power...they undermine their legitimacy when they stray into places where they're imposing their own personal preferences." "The Court has great power," she says, "but it seems to have lost any sense of its great responsibility."

And so we fight back. With Congressional action: Having arduously negotiated bipartisan support, Democrats shepherded through a Respect for Marriage Act to protect same-sex and interracial marriage under federal law, and yes we should recognize the insanity of a SCOTUS so extreme that Congress must act to protect interracial marriage from it even as one justice they're protecting it from is in an interracial marriage. Clear? We can still use the courts, sometimes. Affirming an appeals court ruling, the Supreme Court refused to halt a Jan. 6 subpoena for Arizona's GOP chair Kelli Ward's phone records to see if she'd been talking with insurrection fan-girl Ginni Thomas: "What an awkward coincidence - they should invent a phrase for that, something like 'conflict of interest.'" (The only dissents: Thomas and Alito.)

And a judge in Georgia struck down the state's six-week abortion ban in a fiery decision trashing a "frothy" Dobbs ruling that "does not retroactively revoke the force or legitimacy of the decisions it overruled." Dobbs' authority "flows not from some mystical higher wisdom" or "its special insight into historical 'facts'” but from "basic math." Justice Thurgood Marshall: "Power, not reason, is the currency of this new Court's decision making." Still, warns Elie Mystal, no illusions about "who these people are...

They are trying to usher in a fundamentalist Christian theocracy and force the rest of us to live in it," and they will gladly destroy a federal law protecting abortion rights unless the political winds are blowing hard enough against them to hurt the GOP - or provoke an expanded Court. To make that political will known, stay loud. Our fave signs from protests: "Abort the Patriarchy" and "Ruth Sent Us." Per Raymond Carver's "A Small, Good Thing": She's not here to see this. 

-Abby Zimet

 

New Memo Details Legal Case to Indict Trump Over Mar-a-Lago Documents

 

November 17, 2022

“A model prosecution memorandum published Thursday by a team of U.S. legal experts lays out potential charges against Donald Trump related to the former Republican president and 2024 presidential candidate's handling of classified government documents since he left office last year.

“The memo, which is based on publicly available information, was authored by a group of former federal prosecutors, defense attorneys, and other legal experts and published at Just Security.

“Before issuing an indictment, prosecutors compile a pros memo listing admissible evidence, possible charges, and legal issues pertaining to the case. According to the experts, that document subsequently ‘provides a basis for prosecutors and their supervisors to assess whether the case meets the standard set forth in the Federal Principles of Prosecution, which permit prosecution only when there is sufficient evidence to obtain and sustain a prosecution.’

“Ryan Goodman, a former Pentagon special counsel, current New York University law professor, and co-author of the new memo, said the team's ‘exhaustive analysis of all prior prosecutions brought under the same criminal statute that most directly applies to Trump shows how difficult it will be for the Justice Department to decline to issue an indictment here.’

“‘Trump's conduct is indeed much worse than most of those prior cases and involves a host of aggravating factors that one seldom sees in cases brought under the Espionage Act's retention clause,’ Goodman added…

“The memo analyzes six federal crimes:

• Retention of national defense information (18 USC § 793(e));
• Concealing government records (18 USC § 2071);
• Conversion of government property (18 USC § 641);
• Obstruction of justice (18 USC § 1519);
• Criminal contempt (18 USC § 402); and
• False statements to federal investigators (18 USC § 1001)

“‘Based on the publicly available information to date, a powerful case exists for charging Trump under several of these federal criminal statutes,’ the memo argues...” (Common Dreams).

 

 

Gordon Lightfoot is 84 today

 

All you need is time
All you need is time, time,
Time to make me bend

Give it a try, don't be rude
Put it to the test and
I'll give it right back to you

It's cold on the shoulder
And you know that we get
A little older every day

Kick it around, take it to town
Try to defy what you feel inside
You better be strong
Your love belongs to us

It's cold on the shoulder
And you know that we get
A little older every day

All I need is trust
All I need is trust, trust,

I don't want to know everything you done
If you get a tip then tell it to the Eskimos

It's cold on the shoulder
And you know that we get
A little older every day

It's cold on the shoulder
And you know that we get
A little older every day

All we need is faith
All we need is faith, faith,
Faith to make it nice

Kick it around, don't be rude
If you're gonna make a mistake
Don't you make it twice

It's cold on the shoulder
And you know that we get
A little older every day...

 

“Gordon Lightfoot is perhaps the most accomplished and well-known singer/songwriter to ever come out of Canada. He is internationally known for such monumental folk/pop/rock hits as ‘Sundown’, ‘If You Could Read My Mind’, ‘Early Morning Rain’, ‘Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald’ and many more. His songs have been covered by such music giants as Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Barbra Streisand, Glen Campbell and Don Williams. Lightfoot began his music career fronting a variety of rock n roll bands around Toronto while still in his teens. In 1958, he relocated to Los Angeles where he found work writing jingles for TV commercials but returned to Toronto in 1962 where he rapidly became a fixture in the city's burgeoning folk music scene. He made his first records for a local Toronto label in 1963, but it wasn't until he signed a major record deal and released his first album in 1966 that he became widely known. In 1970, he scored his first top ten hit with ‘If You Could Read My Mind’ beginning a decade of chart-topping albums and hit songs highlighted by his #1 hit in 1974 with ‘Sundown’…” -Fred Haber, IMBd.

 

Better Slumber Equals Better Brain Health

 

What time you go to bed, and how much time you spend in bed, may be tied to your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new report. The findings add to growing evidence linking sleep patterns with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

The study looked at 1,982 older adults living in rural China who were part of an ongoing study of aging and brain health. Their average age was around 70. All were free of dementia at the study’s start.

Over the next four years, they were given medical checkups and regular assessments of memory and thinking skills. They also filled out detailed questionnaires about their sleep patterns. During that time, 97 were diagnosed with dementia, including 68 with Alzheimer’s disease.

The researchers found that the risk of Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia was 69 percent higher in people who slept more than eight hours a night compared to those who slept seven to eight hours a night. The dementia risk was twice as high in those who went to bed before 9 at night, compared to those who went to bed at 10 p.m. or later.

Even in those who did not develop dementia, spending many hours in bed was tied to an increased risk of declines in memory and thinking skills. This risk factor was noted in those ages 60 to 74 and in men. The study did not look at people younger than 60.

The researchers, from Shandong University, considered such factors as age, education level, body mass index, alcohol and smoking habits, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke and whether they carried the APOE-e4 genotype, all of which can affect Alzheimer’s risk.

They found that sleep problems were independently associated with “incident dementia” and Alzheimer’s disease. “This suggests that cognitive function should be monitored in older adults who report prolonged time in bed and advanced sleep timing,” they wrote.

They noted that “long sleep duration has been associated with global brain atrophy,” or brain wasting, as well as increase in the number of white matter hyperintensities, abnormal brain lesions picked up on MRI brain scans that are linked to an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease. 

Excessive sleep time has also been tied to “proinflammatory biomarkers, such as interleukin-6 and C-reactive protein, which may be the pathways linking long sleep duration to dementia,” the authors noted. Inflammation, and not only in the brain, is increasingly recognized as a risk factor for chronic diseases of aging, including dementia. The findings were published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

The findings add to growing research linking sleep disturbances with Alzheimer’s disease risk. Being excessively tired during the daytime and taking frequent naps in midlife has been associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Other research suggests that poor sleep may disrupt our circadian rhythms and impair the ability of immune cells to clear the brain of toxic beta-amyloid, the protein that clumps together to form the telltale plaques of Alzheimer’s disease.

Healthy older adults who sleep soundly tend to have less buildup of beta-amyloid in the brain. Deep sleep appears to act as a kind of cleaning system, ridding the brain of toxic debris. Other studies have shown that men and women who slept less than six hours a night in their 50s and 60s were also at increased risk of developing dementia when they were older. 

Similarly, sleep apnea, a common nighttime disorder marked by loud snoring and disrupted sleep, has been linked to memory decline and dementia. Sleep apnea may be particularly prevalent in people with Alzheimer’s disease. If you suspect that breathing problems during sleep may be contributing to memory and thinking problems, it is important to discuss this with your doctor.

Sleep problems generally increase with advancing age and, as these and other studies show, may be priming the brain for dementia. Sleeping pills, a common remedy, may only make matters worse, as they may interfere with our natural bodily rhythms. Indeed, the long-term use of some sleeping pills has been tied to an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Experts generally recommend cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, which teaches people to challenge negative thoughts at bedtime with positive thoughts that induce relaxation, as the first-line treatment for sleep problems.  

Other recommendations include avoiding coffee and other caffeine-rich beverages at least 10 hours before bedtime, and not drinking alcohol in the evening hours. Avoid phones and computers tablets near bedtime, since the light they emit can interfere with circadian rhythms. In addition, make the bed a sleep sanctuary, rather than a place to watch TV. Until more effective treatments or a cure for Alzheimer’s disease are found, getting better quality sleep may be one more way to help slow the onset of dementia as the years advance. 

 

By ALZinfo.org, The Alzheimer’s Information Site. Reviewed by Marc Flajolet, Ph.D., Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation at The Rockefeller University. 

Source: Rui Liu, MD; Yifei Ren MD; Tingting Hou, MD, PhD; et al: “Associations of sleep timing and time in bed with dementia and cognitive decline among Chinese older adults: A cohort study.” Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, September 21, 2022