Covid Safety for Halloween

A New York pediatrician, Dr. Arunima Agarwal, offered Forbes the following lst of things to do to keep kids COVID safe during trick or treating or gathering for Halloween parties.

Stay outdoors when at all possible

All kids should wear a cloth mask while out and about

Adults are, as ever, recommended to be vaccinated and wear a mask

Offer hand sanitizer to all

Go out with a group of people you normally socialize with

It’s important to note that costume masks and cloth masks should not be worn together

The Facebook Papers

New documents --the Facebook papers -- are bringing more clarity to the social media giant's problems and reinforcing a whistleblower's claim that the platform profited off the spread of false information and relies on an algorithm that pushes fake news like drugs. Facebook allowed misinformation to be pushed before the 2020 election and may have helped spark the January 6 insurrection, and whose profit motive is directly tied to keeping people engaged on its site, even when the content is dangerous.

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Tickets for the Nov. 6 event start at $175, but because Greene has declined to share her COVID-19 vaccination status with the SF GOP (or anyone, for that matter), the event cannot be hosted in San Francisco, which has a proof-of-vaccination requirement for large indoor events. Instead, the event will be held somewhere in northern San Mateo County, with the specific venue being announced 48 hours in advance of the event.

SF GOP chairman John Dennis told SFGATE that Greene was not the party's first choice to speak at the event. According to Dennis, organizers originally considered former California gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder, the Hoover Institution's Victor Davis Hanson and the Washington Examiner's Byron York.

After the aforementioned three figures were unable to attend, Greene's team got in touch with party officials and they decided to move forward with bringing Greene to San Francisco — but not without "internal dissension" among committee members, Dennis said.

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California braced for winter storms and flash floods on Monday as meteorologists warned of a “bomb cyclone” and an “atmospheric river,” a convergence of storms that unleashed heavy rain to parts of the Bay Area, along with high winds, flash floods and the potential for heavy snow in the Sierra Nevada.

From Marin County to the area just south of Big Sur along the Pacific Coast, flash flood watches were in effect until late Sunday night and, in some areas, early Monday morning, including parts of the San Francisco Peninsula. The system was so vast that it was expected to reach souther BC on Monday, where it was set to bring rain and strong winds.The National Weather Service issued a winter weather warning on Monday with heavy snow in the Sierra Nevada through Tuesday morning. The convergence of storms comes at a challenging time for California, which has been besieged by wildfires and drought, the result of extreme weather brought on by climate change.

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Great Sports Movies

1) Back to School - Diving

2)  I Tonya - skating

3) Million Dollar Baby - boxing

4) the way back - basketball

5) Bull Durham - baseball

6)  Concussion - football

7)  Pride of the Yankees

8)  Ford vs Ferrari - car racing

9)  Chariots of Fire - Track

10)  Field of Dreams - Baseball

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to review a controversial Texas abortion law on Nov. 1 but refused to block the law while it examines the state's unusual enforcement scheme and whether the Department of Justice has the right to sue to block the law.

The court will not directly consider the constitutionality of the law. Instead, the court said it would consider the following questions:

whether "the state can insulate from federal-court review a law that prohibits the exercise of a constitutional right by delegating to the general public the authority to enforce that prohibition through civil action";

and can "the United States bring suit in federal court and obtain injunctive or declaratory relief against the State, state court judges, state court clerks, other state officials, or all private parties to prohibit S.B. 8 from being enforced."

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented with keeping the law in place.

"The promise of future adjudication offers cold comfort, however, for Texas women seeking abortion care, who are entitled to relief now," she wrote. "These women will suffer personal harm from delaying their medical care, and as their pregnancies progress, they may even be unable to obtain abortion care altogether."

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The Supreme Court today accelerated the country’s debate over reproductive rights, leaving in place Texas’s most-restrictive-in-the-nation abortion law but scheduling a hearing in just 10 days to consider its future. The court granted an expedited review of what is called S.B. 8, and juggled its docket to hear arguments Nov. 1. The Biden administration in a filing Friday said the law “has virtually eliminated abortion in Texas after six weeks of pregnancy.”

The court’s action sets up a momentous term for abortion rights. The justices on Dec. 1 will consider a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks, far earlier than the court’s precedents currently allow. Justice Dept. asks Supreme Court to halt Texas abortion law Abortion opponents have urged the court to use that case to loosen precedents that say states may not prohibit abortion before fetal viability, generally thought to be around 22 to 24 weeks.

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The book is “The Last Liberal Republican: An Insider’s Perspective on Nixon’s Surprising Social Policy”

The Last Liberal Republican is a memoir from one of Nixon’s senior domestic policy advisors. John Roy Price—a member of the moderate wing of the Republican Party, a cofounder of the Ripon Society, and an employee on Nelson Rockefeller’s campaigns—joined Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and later John D. Ehrlichman, in the Nixon White House to develop domestic policies, especially on welfare, hunger, and health. Based on those policies, and the internal White House struggles around them, Price places Nixon firmly in the liberal Republican tradition of President Theodore Roosevelt, New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, and President Eisenhower.

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday announced a crackdown on oil and gas wells, a long-awaited move to protect public health that sets up a fight between environmentalists and labor unions allied with industry.

The governor's proposal — which comes just weeks after an offshore oil spill that fouled stretches of the Southern California coast — would require new wells to be more than half a mile away from neighborhoods, schools and other public areas. Officials said the policy would give California the strictest environmental standards in the country for fossil fuel extraction.

As the United States and nations around the world struggle to blunt the effects of rising temperatures and extreme weather, sweeping assessments released Thursday by the White House, the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon conclude that climate change will exacerbate long-standing threats to global security.

Together, the reports show a deepening concern within the U.S. security establishment that the shifts unleashed by climate change can reshape U.S. strategic interests, offer new opportunities to rivals such as China, and increase instability in nuclear states such as North Korea and Pakistan.

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The House voted today to hold former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon in criminal contempt of Congress for his refusal to comply with a subpoena issued by the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

The measure was approved on a 229-to-202 vote, with nine Republicans joining all Democrats present in voting “yes.” Thursday’s full House vote comes days after the members of the bipartisan select committee voted unanimously in favor of the resolution.

Bannon has previously argued through his attorney that he can’t respond to the subpoena because of executive privilege asserted by former president Donald Trump.

The matter now goes to the Justice Department, which will decide whether to pursue the contempt referral. Contempt of Congress is a misdemeanor criminal offense that can result in up to one year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.

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The Biden administration released several reports Thursday about climate change and national security, laying out in stark terms the ways in which the warming world is beginning to significantly challenge stability worldwide.

The documents, issued by the departments of Homeland Security and Defense as well as the National Security Council and director of national intelligence, mark the first time that the nation’s security agencies collectively communicated the climate risks they face.

The reports include warnings from the intelligence community about how climate change can work on numerous levels to sap the strength of a nation. For example, countries like Iraq and Algeria could be hit by lost revenue from fossil fuels, even as their region faces worsening heat and drought. The Pentagon warned that food shortages could lead to unrest, along with fights between countries over water.

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