Progressive News Feeds

What a sorry spectacle it has been in Washington, DC these last few weeks. Our political leaders failed to meet their self-imposed deadline for dealing with the deficit in a manner that doesn’t mean austerity-driven recession . And while it looks like they do have a bipartisan deal — assuming it can pass the House after winning easy Senate approval — the plan avoids many of the toughest choices (details  here ).

Tags: deficit, energy, feeds, politics, progressive news, science, war, weather

A recent World Bank report warned that we are on the path to a world “marked by extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise.” Yet The Los Angeles Times , CNN and Fox News ignored the report entirely, continuing a pattern of deficient climate coverage. In November 2012, a World Bank report concluded that a 4 degree Celsius ( 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) worldwide temperature increase by the year 2100, of which there is approximately a 20 percent likelihood even assuming current commitments to greenhouse gas reduction are honored, would lead to “unprecedented heat waves, severe drought, and major floods in many regions” and the “regional extinction of entire coral reef species” that provide “food, income, tourism, and shoreline protection” for many communities. It also determined that the consequences of climate change would most adversely affect “many of the world’s poorest regions,” which have contributed among the least to climate change and have the least ability to adapt

Tags: articles, author, cnn, daily beast, economy, environment, health, media matters, report, social security, war, world

Ten undocumented immigrants were arrested on Tuesday afternoon outside the Democratic National Convention, amid chants of “Undocumented, unafraid!” and “No papers, no fear!” Around 3:30pm, several dozen activists marched to the corner of East 5th and College Street in Charlotte, North Carolina, just blocks from where the DNC was being held, and blocked the intersection to protest President Obama’s deportation policy.

Tags: afghanistan, arizona, article, author, cnn, culture, environment, food, media, planned parenthood, progressive news, video

“As goes the South, so goes the nation.” – W.E.B. DuBois With the nation’s eyes on party conventions in Tampa and Charlotte, the media is cramming to get a handle on the Southern political landscape. The resulting punditry has ranged from thoughtful analysis of changes in the South to rants blaming the region for all (or most) of the nation’s ills

Tags: afghanistan, article, environment, florida, gender, health, planned parenthood, politics, progressive news, video, war

The following story first appeared on Jezebel.com. It’s enraging how mainstream media outlets like  Today  and  People  treat the Duggars as though they’re just an ordinary family with an extraordinary amount of children — and aren’t they so cute! — when in fact, they are not. Yes, they’re  bigots  and  anti-choice and weird  and they subscribe to the kind of traditional gender roles that most educated people would consider “sexist.” But all of those things, however detestable, are essentially personal opinions

Tags: books, education, elections, environment, health, planned parenthood, relationships

It’s too bad he’s such a successful journalist, because it looks like Matt Taibbi would have made an incredible banker.

Tags: author, books, economy, environment, gender, health, obama, video

  As a scientist who studies sex, and as a sex educator (I teach college-level human sexuality classes at Indiana University and have written  the Kinsey Institute’s  sex information column, and other sex columns, for the past decade), it’s my job to puzzle over sex and to find answers. Among the numerous questions about desire/libido, penis size, lasting longer and the many variations of “am I ______” (fill in the blank with: pregnant, “normal,” bisexual, doomed to a life without sex), some of the most commonly asked questions have to do with women’s orgasm. Although orgasm isn’t everything, it’s important to most people at least some of the time.

Tags: article, author, education, environment, health, planned parenthood, political, politics, progressive news, relationships, video

In what may prove to be one of the great blunders of the 2012 campaign, the Romney camp spent the past weeks elevating Bill Clinton’s status as a means of attacking Barack Obama. In an interview with CNN this week, vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan said, “Bill Clinton was a different kind of Democrat than Barack Obama…

Tags: activism, afghanistan, alternet, article, author, clinton, feeds, peace, planned parenthood, war

It’s a day before the Democratic National Convention and Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry has packed her bags in preparation for what will likely be the turning point of the 2012 race to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Her New Orleans home has been destroyed by Hurricane Isaac, and her veneer of calm was pushed to the breaking point over the weekend by a guest on her eponymous MSNBC show who dared to endorse the merits of a trickle-down economy in which corporations are rewarded for the “risks” they take

Tags: afghanistan, civil-rights, culture, feeds, headlines, progressive news, science, white house

  Conservative media figures have spent the past four years smearing, attacking, and hurling insults at Michelle Obama. Media Matters  details the right-wing media’s Michelle Obama derangement syndrome.

Tags: barack-obama, conspiracy, culture, economy, food, headlines, health, media, obama