Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said Tuesday night on MSNBC's The Ed Show that it was "beyond his comprehension" how not even one Republican voted for Barack Obama's American Jobs Act in the midst of the "economic crisis" facing the country. The added that, if anything, the bill did not go far enough to promote job growth, and that more money needed to be put into rebuilding U.S. infrastructure.
Comedian Bill Maher said Tuesday night on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show that the "Occupy Wall Street" movement could be "the wind at the back" of Barack Obama and other Democrats, who tend to lapse into "centrism."
"And this could be it," he said. "So what that there message is a little vague? I kind of like it that they’re sort of militantly vague at this point, because they are in a lot of ways the opposite of the tea party movement."
"Although that is sort of weird also, because the tea party movement, lets remember, started out protesting some of the same things. Remember the bailouts and the banks, they didn't like the big banks. It just shows how easily the people in the tea party can be herded to something else."
Texas Gov. Rick Perry tried to score a few points on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's health care reforms during Tuesday's The Washington Post/Bloomberg Republican presidential debate, but the plan quickly backfired.
"Gov. Romney, your chief economic advisor, Glenn Hubbard, who you know well -- he said that Romneycare was Obamacare," Perry charged. "And Romneycare has driven the cost of small business insurance premiums up by 14 percent over the national average in Massachusetts. So, my question for you would be, how would you respond to his criticism of your signature legislative achievement?"
"I'm proud of the fact that we took on a major problem in our state," Romney argued. "We had a lot of kids without insurance, a lot of adults without insurance, but it added up to about eight percent of our population. And we said, 'You know what, we want to find a way to get those folks insured but we don't change anything for the 92 percent of people that already have insurance.' And so our plan dealt with those eight percent, not the 92."
"I'll tell you this though, we have the lowest number of kids as a percentage of any state in America. You have the highest... We have less than one percent of our kids that are uninsured. You have a million kids uninsured in Texas. A million kids."
Watch this video from Bloomberg TV, broadcast Oct. 11, 2011.
The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur on Tuesday slammed Erick Erickson, founder of RedState.org, for the "We are the 53 percent" website he helped create.
The "53 percent" is a reference to the 53 percent of Americans who pay federal income taxes. The other 46 percent don’t pay federal income taxes because their incomes are too low or because of tax breaks, but still pay other taxes.
Targeting the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, the Tumblr site says it is for "those of us who pay for those of you who whine."
"Suck it up you whiners," Erickson wrote at the site. "I am the 53 percent subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain."
At Tuesday's The Washington Post/Bloomberg Republican presidential debate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum declared that he actually wanted "to go to war with China."
Fellow candidate Mitt Romney promised that if elected, he would immediately label China as a currency manipulator, but added, "I don't want a trade war with anybody."
"You know, Mitt, I don't want to go to a trade war," Santorum remarked. "I want to beat China. I want to go to war with China and make America the most attractive place in the world to do business."
Watch this video from Bloomberg TV, broadcast Oct. 11, 2011.
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Tuesday that Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) should be in jail instead of the bankers responsible for the financial meltdown.
"I think the people who are protesting on Wall Street break into two groups," Gingrich told an audience at The Washington Post/Bloomberg debate. "One is left-wing agitators who would be happy to show up next week on any other topic, and the other are sincere middle-class people who are, frankly, close to the tea party people and actually care. You can tell which group are which. The people who are decent and responsible citizens pick up after themselves. The people who are just out there as activist trashed the place and walk off and are proud of having trashed it."
"I think it's perfectly reasonable for people to be angry, but let's be clear who put the fix in. The fix was put in by the federal government. If you want to put people in jail, I'll second what [Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN)] said. Start with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and let's look at the politicians who created the environment."
"Clearly, you're not saying they should go to jail?" Bloomberg TV's Charlie Rose asked.
"Well in Chris Dodd's case, go back and look at the Countryside deals," Gingrich insisted. "In Barney Frank's case, go back and look at the lobbyists he was close to at Freddie Mac. All I'm saying is that everybody in the media who wants to go after the business community ought to start to go after the politicians who have been at the heart of the sickness which is weakening this country."
Watch this video from Bloomberg TV, broadcast Oct. 11, 2011.
Dale Sky Clare, executive chancellor of the Oaksterdam University in California, on Tuesday warned that the federal government's crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries could prevent thousands of qualified patients from having safe access to their medicine.
In letters received by 16 licensed California dispensaries and their landlords last week, and seize the properties if they didn’t close up shop within 45 days. The move comes in the same week that the Internal Revenue Service took steps that may force Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, the nation’s largest medical marijuana dispensary, .
"What they are doing, for the most part, is actually going after very small businesses," Clare said on Fox Business. "They like to pretend its these giant facilities, we'll there might be one or two of those out there, but for the most part we are talking about small businesses that have been taxpayers for years -- in many cases over a decade. These folks have been members of their community providing safe access."
"The federal government would have you believe this is not an attack on patients," she continued. "Make no mistake, these sick patients cannot necessarily grow their own medication. Where are they supposed to find it? The back alley? The black market?"
Clare described the crackdown as a "war on patients."
In an interview with MoveOn.org, former Obama adviser Van Jones said that "Occupy Wall Street" may lack message clarity but had great moral clarity.
"They've got moral clarity," Jones, leader of the , said "They're as clear as a bell, and that's what's been missing. You should not ask folks who have been hurting, sitting on a white hot stove for three years -- some as long as ten years, thirty years -- to holler properly."
He said the demonstrators didn't need to have specific policy demands on technical economic issues like derivatives. "Their proposal is to keep the consciousness of the country focused on the real issues, not the distractions on TV."
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney Tuesday called on fellow candidate Rick Perry to renounce an anti-Mormon Dallas pastor who he had chosen to introduce him at last week's Values Voter Summit.
In his introduction, Dr. Robert Jeffress as "a genuine follower of Jesus Christ." Jeffress has said that Romney was not qualified to be president because "Mormonism is a cult."
"Gov. Perry selected an individual to introduce him who then used religion as a basis for which he said he would endorse Gov. Perry, and a reason not to support me," Romney explained at a news conference ahead of Tuesday's debate.
"I just don't believe that kind of divisiveness based on religion has a place in this country... I would call on Gov. Perry to repudiate the sentiment and the remarks made by that pastor."
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), who was on hand at the news conference to announce his support of Romney, agreed that religious bigotry had no place in the presidential race.
"These type of religious matters have nothing to do with the quality of somebody's ability to lead," Christie said. "Any campaign that associates itself with that type of conduct is beneath the office of the president of the United States."
Within moments of the conclusion of that news conference, a Perry spokesman told The Associated Press that the Texas governor was refusing to disassociate himself with Jeffress.
Watch this video from CNN, broadcast Oct. 11, 2011.
Residents of a small Arkansas community say that the toxic pollutants being dumped for years by a Koch Industries plant is killing them.
Only 15 families reside around Penn Road and already 11 people have died of cancer. Even more are sick.
In a new documentary by Brave New Foundation, several of them explain that the problem can be traced to a series of canals where Koch-owned Georgia-Pacific has been dumping chemicals for years.
USA Todayrecently found that schools in the city of Crossett ranked the highest in the nation for exposure to cancer-causing toxins.
"They have cut this huge channel and it is like an open sewer line," activist Cheryl Slavant told Brave New Foundation. "If you could follow it in a straight line, you would be right at Georgia-Pacific's plant, owned by Koch Industries... Once I saw this, I knew that Koch Industries were the culprits. They know that these people are sick."
Penn Road resident David Bouie has invited billionaire David Koch to his home to "see for yourself- the fog- and smell for yourself- the rotten air- that I live with every day."
"I pray that I might be able to convince you to clean up this mess and relocate us like Georgia-Pacific did for other communities like ours," he wrote. "I can't afford to relocate on my own, and who would want to buy my home with the smell here?"
As the Senate appears set for a vote Tuesday afternoon on President Barack Obama's jobs plan, one "centrist" senator has already decided to cast a "No" vote.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) appeared on Fox and Friends and told co-host Gretchen Carlson why he doesn't support the bill, centering on how he wants to focus more on "the debt."
"To me, the number one thing we should be doing is to deal with the debt," he said. "The President's jobs bill costs almost a half of trillion dollars. I much rather save it for a real genuine debt reduction program. To me, the most important thing you can do is to restore confidence to the people who manage corporations and invest in our economy. I don't think this bill does enough to be worth spending half a trillion dollars."
Noticing the tone of his statements, Carlson said, "Senator, you're sounding like a Republican."
Lieberman laughed and replied, "No, I'm an independent."
"But I think any Republican in the Senate would say exactly what you just said," Carlson said.
"Well, as an independent, I have the freedom to say what I think," Lieberman said.
With no Republican senators showing any signs of voting "Yes," the bill looks certain to fail in the Senate, which was expected to take a vote on the measure later today.
WATCH: Video from Fox News, which was broadcasted on October 11, 2011.
Conservative columnist Ann Coulter is so upset at Fox News host Chris Wallace for asking Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum about gays in the military that she is advocating violence.
In asking Santorum about the military's now-repealed gay ban Sunday, Wallace had compared the integration of blacks to the integration of gays.
"It is a behavioral issue as opposed to a color of the skin issue," . "And that makes it all the difference when it comes to serving in the military."
Guest hosting for Fox News' Bill O'Reilly Monday, Laura Ingraham asked Coulter to respond, not to Santorum's view of gays in the military but to the appropriateness of Wallace's question.
"I thought it was an outrageous question," Coulter declared. "First of all, I thought Juan Williams should have punched Chris Wallace for saying that when he came on the second half of the program. I'm sick of people comparing gays to blacks. No, it's very different. What Santorum said is true."
"You can see someone is black. You can't see someone is gay. And the precise policy we're talking about is whether someone can go around announcing they are gay. I mean, it's not just being gay. Obviously, [Bradley Manning] can be listening to Lady Gaga while downloading files he's about to give to Wikipedia in the greatest betrayal of his country anyone has ever committed in the military and he was gay. Pretending to listen to Lady Gaga, that's not enough."
It's should be no surprise that Coulter agrees with Santorum that homosexuality is a "behavioral issue" because she has also said that she believes in the gay conversion therapy offered by Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-MN) clinic.
Watch this video from Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, broadcast Oct. 10, 2011.
Former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, arguably one of the most progressive members the Senate has seen in decades, joined Current TV's liberal news host Keith Olbermann on Monday night to encourage more Democrats to support the "Occupy" protests sweeping the country.
"My sense is that there's great fear that this sweet deal that a lot of people have in Washington and New York, this unholy alliance between our government and our media, the financial markets and the financial businesses, that this unholy alliance is finally being threatened and challenged. It is a threat and an attack on every working American, and it's time that we upset the apple cart. I think they are nervous, and I know this has great potential."
He went on to say that one of the goals of the "Occupy" movement should be , which allows unlimited, anonymous corporate donations to groups seeking to influence the American electorate through the media.
"This is what's destroying our democracy..." he concluded. "Unlimited corporate contributions have to be stopped."
The video below is from Current TV's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, broadcast Monday, Oct. 10, 2011.
