Hasta La Gadget!

Republicans dropped their anti-Obamacare efforts in exchange for the totally reasonable, commonsense request that we decimate the social safety net in time for Thanksgiving. Harry Reid won’t negotiate the debt ceiling until the government is reopened, meaning he is either playing hardball are dying to visit Mount Vernon. And a new report finds the current administration’s crackdown on whistleblowers rivals that of the Nixon administration. When reached for a comment, an administration official began to softly weep and mutter something about the safety of his family before hanging up. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Thursday, October 10th, 2013:

OBAMA REJECTS GOP SHORT-TERM DEBT PROPOSAL – Times: “President Obama on Thursday rejected a proposal from politically besieged House Republican leaders to extend the nation’s borrowing authority for six weeks because it would not also reopen the government. Yet both parties saw it as the first break in Republicans’ brinkmanship and a step toward a fiscal truce. Twenty Republicans, led by Speaker John A. Boehner, went to the White House at Mr. Obama’s invitation after a day of fine-tuning their offer to increase the Treasury Department’s authority to borrow money to pay existing obligations through Nov. 22. In exchange, they sought the president’s commitment to negotiate a deal for long-term deficit reduction and a tax overhaul…Still, the House Republican offer represented a significant breakthrough. Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, said Republicans were now willing to go to formal negotiations with Senate Democrats over a long-term, comprehensive budget framework, a move Republicans have resisted since April. And while House Republicans are divided over even a short-term increase in the debt ceiling, Representative Tim Griffin, Republican of Arkansas, said the proposal would pass with Republican and Democratic votes.” [NYT]

RT @AP: BREAKING: Majority Leader Cantor: White House meeting useful, ‘we expect further conversations tonight’

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The Harvey Milk Foundation confirmed Oct. 10 that the U.S. Postal Service would honor gay rights icon Harvey Milk with a stamp in honor of his memory and legacy.

Milk, the first openly gay man to hold political office in California, will break new ground once again as the first openly LGBT political official to be featured on a postage stamp.

Stuart Milk, Harvey’s nephew, broke the news on Twitter:

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Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) hammered the “knuckleheads” in Congress over the federal government shutdown on Thursday, citing the devastating effects it is having on the state’s flood victims who are still trying to get their lives back together.

“We just had the worst floods we’ve had in the history of the state, so we’ve had issues like 20 million gallons of raw sewage got dumped into our river systems,” Hickenlooper said to ABC News’ Rick Klein. “And so we’ve had flood water — we have E. coli at high, dangerously high levels in many, many places,” said Hickenlooper. “In many ways you couldn’t have a worse time to have a shutdown. I mean it really is a tragic failing on many, many levels.”

After Colorado’s historic flooding which resulted in the deaths of nine people and over $2 billion in damages, much attention was focused on spills from the state’s oil and gas operations — one of the most densely drilled regions of the U.S. — which were inundated by floodwaters last month. But a recent report from the state health department found no evidence of oil pollutants in some of Colorado’s rivers and streams. Instead, they found a tremendous amount of E. coli.

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In his recent column defending the name of the Washington Redskins, ESPN columnist Rick Reilly highlighted the opinion of his father-in-law. As portrayed by Reilly, his wife’s father, Bob Burns, was a bundle holder in the Blackfeet Tribe who didn’t find the nickname of Dan Snyder’s football team offensive. Rather, he found, according to Reilly, the entire controversy swirling around the moniker to be “silly.” Less than a month later, Burns set the record straight, claiming that he’d been misquoted and making it clear that he would like to see the team’s “damaging and racist” name changed.

“Let me be clear: The racial slur “redskins” is not okay with me,” Burns, who is a Blackfeet elder, wrote in a response published by Indian Country Today Media Network on Oct. 10. “It’s never going to be okay with me. It’s inappropriate, damaging and racist.”

Such a stance is at odds with the way that the 11-time National Sportswriter of the Year portrayed Burns in his ESPN.com column dated Sept. 18.

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Chad Bosquez wears a Pokemon belt to work.

The 24-year-old Starbucks supervisor keeps the fun and eccentric belt on while he makes drinks, oversees employees, and operates the drive-through at a Seattle store. Sometimes, he forgets he’s wearing it — until a customer points it out.

Nic Hartmann complimented the Pokeball-festooned belt while he and his wife, Jessie, were waiting in their car for their order one afternoon in September.

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