The government didn't shut down.
Both chambers of Congress passed a bill that will keep the U.S. government open and Planned Parenthood funded...for a couple more weeks. The stop-gap will keep things running until December 11 of this year, meaning we'll get to restart America's dumbest political game all over again around Thanksgiving. (USA Today)
Three more women have come forward and accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault.
The list of women who have publicly accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault and/or rape continues to expand as attorney Gloria Allred, who already represents 17 alleged victims, held a news conference for three new women to come forward and share their accounts. The allegations come from a former American Airlines flight attendant and two actresses who met the comedian on different sets. (USA Today)
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County clerk Kim Davis and the Pope secretly met in D.C.; everyone else who doesn’t do their job is left to wonder when they’ll get to meet a famous person.
The Vatican has confirmed that Kim Davis, Kentucky’s most controversial clerk, and her husband had a private meeting with Pope Francis shortly before his address to Congress. “Just knowing the pope is on track with what we’re doing, and agreeing, you know, kind of validates everything,” Davis, who was in the capital to receive the Family Research Council’s “Cost of Discipleship” award, said. “I’ve weighed the cost and I’m prepared to do whatever it takes.” (NPR)
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the U.N. that he is no longer bound by his country’s agreements with Israel.
In a shocking announcement before the U.N. General Assembly, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas renounced the tentative agreements laid out in the Oslo Accords that have governed Palestine’s relations with Israel since 1993. “We cannot continue to be bound by these signed agreements with Israel,” Abbas declared in his speech. “And Israel must assume fully all its responsibility as an occupying power.” The powerful repudiation was made shortly after the U.N. raised the Palestinian flag outside of its New York headquarters for the first time. (New York Times)
It’s only October and L.L. Bean is already running out of duck boots because everyone secretly wants to look like Elmer Fudd.
If you were planning on pairing your stylish autumnal layers with a pair of L.L. Bean’s popular duck boots, you may be out of luck: despite the company’s prescient strategy to handle demand that included adding 100 new boot-makers and installing a second million-dollar molding injection machine, multiple styles of the boot are already backordered. If you’re unable to procure a pair of duck boots this season, just do what we do to palliate our disappointment and stare at everyone’s cute Instagram pics of their boots covered in fallen leaves, their boots near a pumpkin, their boots running through a corn maze... (Refinery29)
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Jeb Bush isn't at all offended by the Washington Redskins’ name. If they were called the Washington Marriage Equalities, it would be a whole different story.
Shockingly, a member of a wealthy American political dynasty is unable to identify or sympathize with an oppressed minority. While speaking on SiriusXM’s The Arena, GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush expressed his confusion over the Washington Redskins’ name controversy, telling the hosts, “I don’t think they should change it...I don’t find it offensive. Native American tribes generally don’t find it offensive.” Guess Jeb hasn’t been on Google lately. (Washington Post)
Indiana’s House Majority Leader resigned after an explicit video was sent out from his phone.
Representative Jud McMillin is Indiana’s House Majority Leader no longer, thanks to a sexually explicit video that was somehow sent out from his cell phone to a group of his acquaintances. The supporter of “traditional marriage” and co-sponsor of Indiana’s “religious freedom law” resigned from his seat in the House after messaging recipients of the video claiming his phone “was stolen in Canada” and apologizing for “anything offensive.” There is no word yet as to what the video contained. House Republicans will soon hold a caucus to find McMillin’s replacement. (Chicago Tribune)
Blake Lively’s lifestyle site, Preserve, is shutting down; somewhere Martha Stewart is smiling and pouring herself another celebratory apricot-cayenne fizz
In case you only know of Preserve as something you had to do to your meats on the Oregon Trail, here’s a primer: launched by Blake Lively in the summer of 2014, Preserve.us is a bohemian blog-meets-Etsy that focuses on “artisans and products” and living a “very one-of-a-kind, curated life.” And now it’s gone, because we RUINED IT WITH OUR SNARK. “We launched the site before it was ready, and it never caught up to its original mission,” Lively told Vogue. “It’s not making a difference in people’s lives, whether superficially or in a meaningful way.” The site will go dark on October 9, but that’s not the end of Preserve — Lively plans on relaunching the site eventually, focusing on something “very simple,” “very clean,” and “very direct.” (Refinery29)