Progressive News Feeds

Having fun yet, Mitt? If you thought Mitt Romney had a hard time appeasing all the Republican factions and egos with his pick for vice president , just think about what a nightmare he’s got with the convention. Do you actually expose Michele Bachmann to a national audience

Tags: #Zombie, economy, environment, feeds, media, newt gingrich, politics, religion, sarah-palin, war, white house

Former presidential candidate and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich At a Romney campaign event in Virginia on Monday, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich took questions over his weekend op-ed defending the practice of questioning prominent Muslims in government jobs over alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Tags: author, clinton, congress, media, muslim-brotherhood, newt gingrich, olympics, politico, virginia, yahoo

If Newt Gingrich were @freepaulcollier sitting in his living room during the first Florida debate, this is how he should have addressed Romney’s onslaught of demonizing, personal attacks- the fight defined- Conservative Republicans versus the progressive, moderate, libertarian coalition in the Republican Party

Tags: Florida Debate, Florida Primary, gop primary, mitt-romney, newt gingrich

A “massive” aerial and naval blockade of Iran is the only thing that prevent Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons, says Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz. Steinitz warned Bloomberg news on Wednesday that economic sanctions “might not be sufficient” to deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions and that a blockade similar to that imposed by President John F. Kennedy on Cuba in 1962 should be imposed. Appearing on Fox Business on Tuesday, Steinitz welcomed the announcement of the new E.U. ban on Iranian oil but warned that a “more complete economic blockade” might be necessary. Watch it:

Tags: election-2012, european union, iraq, islamophobia, media, newt gingrich, security, united nations, var-jplayerswf, war

A new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that three in four Americans believe that Supreme Court justices “sometimes let their own ideological views influence their decisions”:

Tags: africa, author, donate, drives-supreme, economy, health, immigration, mitt-romney, newt gingrich, security, war

Quotes from retired Israeli intelligence chiefs Ephraim Halevy and Meier Dagan, former Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, and Middle East adviser to six U.S. Secretaries of State Aaron David Miller, are highlighted in a new video challenging the “facile assumptions and rhetoric of those arguing for war” with Iran. The video, released yesterday by J Street, the “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” organization,” emphasizes that “a military strike on Iran would fail to stop its nuclear program, provide the Iranian regime with additional impetus to pursue a nuclear weapon, and risk igniting a regional war that would expose Israeli citizens and even Americans to devastating retaliation.” Watch it:

Tags: author, health, islamophobia, lgbt, newt gingrich, security, tweets, united nations

Apple, Inc. is undoubtedly one of the most powerful and profitable companies worldwide. Last quarter, Apple made $13.1 billion , it’s highest profits yet and a 117 percent jump from last year. Apple’s current CEO Tim Cook has increased his salary by six-fold and could very well be the highest paid CEO of 2011 . But as TP Economy editor Pat Garofalo notes, that profit is earned on the backs of Chinese workers who “continue to toil in tough conditions .” Apple contracts with companies in China to ensure swift and cheap production of a new product. But rather than put a percentage of those billions into improving working conditions for the people who make the iPad and iPhone, the company sits by and allows its manufacturers to maintain disastrous working conditions. In fact, as the New York Times reported, according to employees, advocates, and Apple itself, these suppliers force workers — including child laborers — to toil in hazardous working environments: Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records , according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors. More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning. One of these suppliers, Foxconn, saw so many workers committing suicide at its factories that it instituted a no-suicide pact for employment and installed nets on factory roofs to prevent workers from jumping to their death. A former management employee at this company said , “Apple never cared about anything other than increasing product quality and decreasing production cost.” “Workers’ welfare has nothing to do with their interests,” he added. “We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on,” said a former Apple executive who spoke to the New York Times on the condition of anonymity. “Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.” With total cash holdings of $97.6 billion , Apple could cover Greece’s debt repayments for two years or buy 2,000 tons of gold. Or, Apple could simply put a portion of that profit towards enforcing its supplier code of conduct or finding manufacturers that will abide by it. Instead, Apple allows suppliers to subordinate their workers’ welfare for the sake of a cheaper iPad.

Tags: apple, child labor, economy, environment, green, lgbt, newt gingrich, science, security, war

During Monday’s GOP debate in Florida, Mitt Romney advocated for a policy of “self-deportation” for undocumented immigrants — a policy borrowed from the anti-immigrant hate group NumbersUSA. As one of his advisers admitted several months ago, Romney’s hard-line approach to the undocumented population consists of making immigrants’ lives so unbearable that they voluntarily choose to leave the country. Today fellow GOP contender Newt Gingrich condemned Romney’s idea as “inhumane” during an interview with Univision: Republican Newt Gingrich says Mitt Romney’s call for self-deportation of illegal immigrants is an “Obama-level” fantasy that is inhumane to long-established families living in America . The former House speaker ridiculed that part of Romney’s immigration policy during a forum Wednesday with the Spanish-language network Univision. Gingrich laughed at the idea and said it wouldn’t work. Romney said during a recent debate that he favors what he calls “self-deportation” over policies that require the federal government to round up illegal immigrants and send them back to their home countries. Gingrich has embraced a more moderate approach to immigration than Romney and was recently endorsed by Somos Republicans, the nation’s largest Hispanic Republican group. Romney, facing criticism for not being conservative enough, has tried to outflank many of his opponents on the right when it comes to immigration. Yet surprisingly, his harsh stance has been largely overlooked by many voters. The Obama campaign recently dubbed Romney the most extreme GOP candidate on immigration — a claim borne out by a comparison of the candidates’ positions .

Tags: articles, donate, economy, green, health, home page, immigration, january-2012, marie-diamond, newt gingrich, politics, tweets

Yesterday during a speech in Fort Myers, FL, a protester interrupted Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign stump speech to press the now-GOP frontrunner on whether he would start a war with Iran as president: Q: Are you going to send our children to Iran? … Are you going to send us to war in Iran? GINGRICH: I hope not. That’s a legitimate question . My goal would be to apply the same strategy that Reagan, Thatcher and Pope John Paul II used to undermine and defeat the Soviet empire without a general war. But my goal would be to do everything we could to replace the Ahmadinejad dictatorship in a peaceful way using all the different tools that we have, tools that were used very effectively against the Soviet empire, which was a lot bigger and a lot more difficult challenge. On the other hand, I will tell all of you, I think we have a very great reason to not want the Iranians to get nuclear weapons and I think they are a direct threat to our cities if they end up getting nuclear weapons. Watch it: While Gingrich says he hopes he doesn’t have to start a war with Iran, he has an odd way of showing it. Back in 2003, the former House Speaker argued that the United States should develop and use nuclear bunker busters against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “This would be a weapon designed to be used,” he wrote in a 2003 USA Today op-ed. “It would not simply be a weapon of deterrence, as current nuclear weapons are.” IAEA director general Yukiya Amano recently issued a warning about Iran’s nuclear program. “What we know suggests the development of nuclear weapons,” he said. And the U.N. nuclear watchdog is heading to Iran at the end of the month to seek answers on its nuclear program’s military dimension. While Iran’s nuclear program is a serious concern, Republicans on the campaign trail, including Gingrich, focus on war, rather than diplomacy, to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. “I agree entirely with Governor Romney,” Gingrich said in a recent debate referring to Romney’s assertion that he’d use military action to stop Iran’s nuclear program. “If in the end, despite all of those things, the dictatorship persists, you have to take whatever steps are necessary to break its capacity to have a nuclear weapon,” he said.

Tags: economy, gingrich-stump, iran, iraq, newt gingrich, security, tweets, var-jplayerswf, war

Echoing offensive remarks made by the American Family Association earlier today, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council claimed today that Indiana’s new license plates promote a “ homosexual recruitment group .” In reality, benefits from the plates’ sale goes to the  Indiana Youth Group , which supports LGBT youth through career and leadership development. It has been almost 40 years since the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental illness, and yet hate groups like Perkins’ continue to promote the myth that it is somehow a threat to children. Listen to it (via Right Wing Watch ):

Tags: health, lgbt, marriage-equality, newt gingrich, plates-promote, thinkprogress, thinks-license, tweets, zack-ford