Ocelopotamus

News, culture, and politics. Not necessarily in that order.

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Entries Tagged as 'News'

Daily Kos Diary: Gonzales Doesn’t Recall Resigning

August 27th, 2007 · Comments Off on Daily Kos Diary: Gonzales Doesn’t Recall Resigning · Blogs, Comedy, Culture, News, Politics

Perfect. Just go read it. When you rip off this joke later you can always claim you didn’t recall reading it on Daily Kos first. ****** UPDATE: On a more serious note — on the front page of Daily Kos, Trapper John spells out what needs to not happen next: The Gonzales Justice Department was […]

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Video: Fox’s War Drums, Colbert’s Water Fight, and Stewart on Bush’s Magical History Tour

August 26th, 2007 · 1 Comment · Comedy, Culture, Foreign Policy, History, Journalism, Media, News, Peace, Pets, Politics, TV, Video

A few video clips from the past week: First up, here’s a scary video compiled by documentarian Robert Greenwald showing how Fox “News” is beating the drum for war with Iran … watch them repeatedly engaging in the same kind of propaganda and scaremongering they used during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in […]

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Saturday 8/25: Grigsby Award Ceremony for David Kodeski and Edward Thomas-Herrera

August 24th, 2007 · 3 Comments · Chicago, Culture, Fringe, Neo-Futurists, News, Performance, The Partly Dave Show, Theater

If you’re here in Chicago and looking for something fun to do tomorrow evening, I’ll be participating in an award ceremony and “gentle roast” (in the words of Live Bait Theater) for those stalwarts of the Chicago solo performance scene — and my fellow Pansy Kings — David Kodeski and Edward Thomas-Herrera. The ceremony is […]

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Roundup: Fantasy History Edition

August 23rd, 2007 · 1 Comment · Apple, Blogs, Books, Business, Climate Change, Comics, Culture, Energy, Food, Foreign Policy, Health, History, LGBT, Macintosh, Media, Nature, News, Peace, Pets, Politics, Racism, Roundup, Science, Tech, TV

Bush has suddenly decided that the Iraq occupation is kinda like Vietnam after all, but of course he’s careful to draw the wrong conclusions from the comparison. The article quotes American University historian Allan Lichtman as saying that Bush’s spin on the situation “is not revisionist history. It is fantasy history.” On a related note, […]

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Jerome a Paris on the Politics of the Market Crash

August 22nd, 2007 · 1 Comment · Activism, Blogs, Fair Trade, Infrastructure, Media, News, Politics, The Economy, Stupid, Trade

I’ve been meaning to point out this excellent diary Jerome a Paris posted on Daily Kos last Friday, entitled “Politics of the Market Crash.” Jerome is one of my favorite posters at DKos (and at the European Tribune), and when he’s on, he’s really on. So even though I’m nearly a week late mentioning this, […]

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Uganda Burning: Anti-Gay Bigots Rally to Keep Hatred Alive

August 21st, 2007 · 2 Comments · Culture, Human Rights, Journalism, LGBT, Media, News, Politics, Religion

Anti-gay bigots in Uganda rallied today in support of the country’s draconic anti-gay laws (which punish “sodomy” with life imprisonment), carrying signs saying charming things like “Arrest all homos.” They also howled for the firing of a reporter who dared to write an objective story about the experiences of gay people in Uganda, calling her […]

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Roundup: Skydiving Baby Giraffe Edition

August 15th, 2007 · Comments Off on Roundup: Skydiving Baby Giraffe Edition · Activism, Apple, Books, Chicago, Comics, Culture, Death Penalty, Fantasy, Fiction, Film, Food, Health, Human Rights, Internet, iTunes, Journalism, Lit, Media, Meta, Nature, News, Politics, Roundup, TV, Ursula K. Le Guin

Out, damned spot! Fox News caught red-handed, laundering entries on Wikipedia. Keep on scrubbing, Lady MacFox, but those stains belong to you always. The GOP’s California strategy: winning the 2008 election by undoing California’s winner-take-all electoral system. Once the state goes piecemeal, the Repubs gain at least 20 electoral votes from safe GOP districts. Arianna […]

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Roundup: Ronald Reagan Memorial Bridge Edition

August 9th, 2007 · 1 Comment · Activism, Apple, Comics, Culture, Human Rights, Infrastructure, Journalism, LGBT, Lit, Macintosh, Media, Nature, News, Poetry, Politics, Religion, Roundup, Science, Tech, Torture

This is brilliant. Peter Smith at the Huffington Post has a proposal for renaming the new I-35W bridge in Minneapolis that will replace the one that collapsed: “For a while there, back when the Republicans held the White House and both houses of Congress, they were naming things after Ronald Reagan everywhere. Airports. Aircraft carriers. […]

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Bridge to the 21st Century

August 6th, 2007 · 2 Comments · Culture, Infrastructure, Media, News, Politics, Public Transportation, TV, Video

Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow say pretty much what I’ve been wanting to say about the Minneapolis bridge collapse story.   I hate to say it, but I feel like we’ve just had a “welcome to the 21st century” kind of moment, and this isn’t going to be the last time this kind of preventable […]

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B-52’s Update: New Album, Cindy & Fred Interviews, and “Glove Slap,” Baby

August 6th, 2007 · 2 Comments · Culture, Music, New Wave, News, TV, Video

Yet another piece about the new B-52’s album, all recorded now with 12 shiny new songs, and just waiting for the right record deal to bring it to the public. The super-lucky-ducky writer of the piece got to sit around and listen to the new album with Cindy Wilson in her basement, and offers this […]

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The Money Power: Clinton, Edwards, and Obama at Yearly Kos

August 5th, 2007 · 1 Comment · Activism, Blogs, Chicago, Culture, Media, News, Politics, Video

From a story in the Washington Post on the Yearly Kos convention taking place in Chicago this weekend… I can’t believe Hillary actually said this out loud. Clinton came under attack for declining to join former senator John Edwards (N.C.), who is quite popular with bloggers, and Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) in pledging not to […]

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A Message from Ian McKellen

August 1st, 2007 · 5 Comments · Activism, Culture, Film, Human Rights, LGBT, Media, News, Politics, Theater, Video

… to the people of Singapore.  

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Yvonne Zipter: “A Canine Metaphysics”

August 1st, 2007 · 3 Comments · Books, Chicago, Culture, Lit, Nature, News, Pets, Poetry, Spirituality

As a sort of spiritual antidote to the horrible Michael Vicks dogfighting story, here’s a lovely poem by Chicago poet Yvonne Zipter (shared here with her permission). It’s from Yvonne’s most recent chapbook, Like Some Bookie God, which came out last year. A Canine Metaphysics In his meditative moments — nose to the air or […]

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Good Morning, Day 14

July 31st, 2007 · Comments Off on Good Morning, Day 14 · Activism, Culture, Essays, HCC-DDT, Health, Healthcare Crisis, Human Rights, Media, News, Politics, The Economy, Stupid

So I’ve been slammed with work for the last week or so, and I haven’t had a chance to update this count in a full seven days. During that time, about 350 more Americans have died because they couldn’t afford health care. That brings the total count to approximately 700 people who have died just […]

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