Daily Bread for 4.8.21

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of 64.  Sunrise is 6:22 AM and sunset 7:30 PM, for 13h 07m 22s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 12.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1820, the Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Milos.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham report White Evangelical Resistance Is Obstacle in Vaccination Effort:

The opposition is rooted in a mix of religious faith and a longstanding wariness of mainstream science, and it is fueled by broader cultural distrust of institutions and gravitation to online conspiracy theories. The sheer size of the community poses a major problem for the country’s ability to recover from a pandemic that has resulted in the deaths of half a million Americans. And evangelical ideas and instincts have a way of spreading, even internationally.

There are about 41 million white evangelical adults in the U.S. About 45 percent said in late February that they would not get vaccinated against Covid-19, making them among the least likely demographic groups to do so, according to the Pew Research Center.

“If we can’t get a significant number of white evangelicals to come around on this, the pandemic is going to last much longer than it needs to,” said Jamie Aten, founder and executive director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College, an evangelical institution in Illinois.

As vaccines become more widely available, and as worrisome virus variants develop, the problem takes on new urgency.

 Tom Hamburger reports NRA chief Wayne LaPierre acknowledges he did not disclose bankruptcy plans or luxury yacht trips to other top officials:

Wayne LaPierre, who positioned the National Rifle Association as an uncompromising lobbying powerhouse over the past three decades, admitted Wednesday that he did not disclose free trips he took on a luxury yacht and acknowledged that some top NRA officials were not informed in advance of his plan to seek bankruptcy protection for the group.

Under questioning on the third day of a federal bankruptcy hearing, LaPierre defended his leadership of the gun rights group and the benefits he and his family received from NRA contractors.

But his testimony undercut arguments by NRA lawyers this week that LaPierre has effectively cleaned up ethical and governance problems since 2018, when the organization was first alerted by New York state officials of possible fiscal mismanagement.

Last year, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) sued the NRA, alleging that LaPierre and three other top officials used the group’s resources for their own personal benefit. She has sought to dissolve the organization.

(No group has done more harm to legitimate Second Amendment rights than LaPierre’s NRA.)

 Shamane Mills reports Feds Paying $1M To Settle Case of VA Patient Who Died from Exposure to Frigid Temperatures:

Vance E. Perry, 57, was released from the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital on Dec. 30, 2017, following treatment for ongoing health problems, including a mental illness known to cause confusion and disorientation. Perry had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was at the hospital for a medication check, according to the family’s attorney.

The Army veteran never made it home. Perry was found dead a day later in a parking garage.

“He couldn’t care for himself. He couldn’t remember anything you told him from one minute to the next. If you told him, ‘Wait here for the cab,’ he wouldn’t remember that you told him that two minutes later,” said attorney Terrence Polich who represented Perry’s family in a lawsuit against the Veterans Affairs Hospital.

SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Nails Landing on Drone Ship at Sea: