Elms Progressive Media

1:59 p.m. | Updated President Obama hailed the late-night budget deal that averted a government shutdown on Friday as “good news for the American people,” but members of his own party seemed less convinced. Hours after the spending crisis was averted with a series of handshakes just before midnight, some Democrats began complaining that their legislative leaders and Mr. Obama had given away too much in the bargain. Robert Reich , the former labor secretary under President Bill Clinton, wrote on Twitter: “The right held the U.S. govt hostage, and O paid most of the ransom — inviting more hostage-taking. Next is raising debt ceiling.” David Plouffe, a senior adviser to the president, dismissed the criticism. “I would ask Robert Reich and others to actually consume the details of this,” Mr. Plouffe said in an interview on Saturday. “There are some in our country who simply believe spending cuts are not required to help the economy. The president has made it very clear that we cannot...

Alerts have been issued on radiation levels in Japanese milk, spinach, leeks and tap water. Food shipments from four prefectures around the Fukushima nuclear power plant have been suspended . So how hazardous are the radiation levels found, and should people panic about what they're eating? Which goods have been contaminated? Today the Japanese government ordered four prefectures to stop selling spinach and leeks after levels of radiation above the legal limit were picked up in them. The affected prefectures were Fukushima, where the nuclear plant damaged by the tsunami is based, and the nearby Ibaraki, Tochigi and Gunma prefectures. Traces of radioactive iodine-131 were discovered in Tokyo tap water on Sunday . In Iiate, a village in Fukushima prefecture, there was so much in the water that the health ministry advised the village's 3700 residents not to drink it. The water here contained 965 becquerels of radiation per kilogram – treble the "safe" legal ...

FreedomWorks, a right-wing group bankrolling the Tea Party , has a new advertisement it is planning to run in Ohio supporting Gov. John Kasich’s union-busting efforts. The advertisement tries to paint union protesters in Ohio as violent thugs. One problem: the ad uses footage from an old union protest in California. How do we know? This is the same footage from California, which features palm trees, that was used by Bill O’Reilly just days ago. He used it to argue that the protesters in Wisconsin were violent thugs. Here’s the video evidence produced by TP’s Jeff Spross: Freedom Works Doen't Have Their Facts Rights