i'm sam saxon per tom foreman in washington d.c. here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture yesterday's day of action across the nation was a resoundingly success for the occupy wall street movement to happen we build on that moving forward and everybody's working for the weekend everybody on the so-called congressional super committee at least the latest on the fiasco that is the gang of twelve and later in our second half hour we'll take a look back at the prophetic conversations with great minds that predicted the rise of occupy wall street.

you need to know this as the dust settles on occupy wall street today of action across the nation yesterday the numbers are coming in a new york city alone there are estimates that somewhere between thirty five thousand and fifty thousand patriots took part in the demonstrations from the march to wall street to the occupation of foley square to the march across the brooklyn bridge so now how does the movement build off yesterday successes moving forward well into the question in just a moment but first today the guardian newspaper released this video from oakland shot back on november second the day of the occupy oakland general strike showing a demonstrator peacefully protesting by standing in front of a line of riot police look at what happens next.

robert. notice the guns that maimed just like scott olsen who was nearly killed by oakland police last month is an iraq war veteran and he suffered a ruptured spleen as a result of the beat down unfortunately there were similar assaults during yesterday's demonstrations to join me now as one of the three hundred plus people who were arrested in new york city's they have action thursday ok meyerson is a demonstrator with the occupy wall street movement and a contributor to truthout a welcome. describe what happened to you

yesterday. jay i think we have a we have a problem there's something wrong with the skype we can't hear you unfortunately. i want to take it to new york let's let's bring in sara jaffe here she is she's an associate editor with alter net and she joins me now from new york sorry about that ok sarah welcome to the show ok thanks for having me so what was let's start with what was your take on on yesterday's actions. oh yesterday it was amazing i was up at five in the morning to be down at liberty plaza to meet the morning march on wall street itself and was home by midnight or so after a really long day of running around the city looking at different actions it was really amazing to see how many people came out after you know tuesday felt like

a kind of in the end for a little bit and it just came back ten times stronger. it certainly did so it's been two months now it's clear that occupy wall street shows no signs of slowing down but it's also getting pretty cold it was cold today in washington d.c. it's cold in a new york city. how does the movement sustain itself through winter i mean just logistically it's hard to keep warm when you're camping outside and also people tended to know during the holidays how do you keep people's attention moving forward you know it's become a cliche this week that bloomberg give them a favor by taking away the tents in the sleeping bags and everything this week but . there is there are all sorts of movements within the greater occupy wall street movement that are looking at all different solutions for getting through that winter one thing that i'm really interested in is occupying foreclosed homes or

occupying as a home defense to try to save the homes of people who are being foreclosed upon probably illegally. churches around here have actually taken on some of the purchasers. and the thing is that a lot of the working groups were not necessarily made up entirely of people who were sleeping in the park people are still coming out there's been talk of people doing shifts in the park because they're not allowed to the police are not letting you lay down to sleep so people are going to sign up to do for hours at a time maybe just make sure the park is continuously occupied it's going to be a struggle but. it certainly the support that came out yesterday certainly seems like it's possible to keep this going yeah definitely i mean the site of zuccotti park. was so powerful i mean it was it was the perfect we society over me society it was free healthcare free food and i think there are a lot of worries that once you write that out once you got rid of that it be a pretty big blow to the movement. but as we saw yesterday and as we're seeing with

these offshoots like you talked about occupying homes. it then it just it just keeps going there's a new poll out from public policy polling and it shows that occupy wall street's favor ability has decreased to thirty three percent and those opposed to it have increased from thirty six to forty five percent since october and i'm not saying that and there's polls that are all over the place and i'm not saying that occupy wall street should be paying attention to polls. this movement's bigger than what polls are saying but i think it raises a question of what what can the movement do to appeal to the general public to appeal to a broader base of people including the tea party including others who. you know kind of are a little bit worried from the way the media is projecting occupy wall street and stuff like that. you know i would say that thirty two thousand people at the that's the n.y.p.d. usually conservative estimate last night in new york alone that says we're not

having a problem getting through to the general public one of the fascinating things that they did yesterday here in new york was these subway speak outs and mayor bloomberg and the n.y.p.d. were trying to paint these as you know they are going to try to shut down the subways and what they actually did was they had little gatherings in different subway stations around the city in the outer boroughs in the bronx way out in brooklyn. reaching people that have not probably been to zuccotti park and they were telling their people telling their stories they were handing out copies of the occupy wall street journal handing out flyers and actually getting on the subway themselves and people's miking stories doing like you know basically doing outreach to people who may not have heard or may not have experienced what's going down on going on down in the park. things like that i think person to person contact is a real hallmark of this movement and any way that you can do that person to person mediated or a mainstream media because we know that there's

a difference. is going to have a positive impact on how the public use this movement yeah and i think you know i don't need to give their employees they're doing a great job on their own and you doing a great job report it thanks for coming on to your share thanks for having me. this morning fox so-called news was quick to spoil occupy wall street's big day yesterday and they did in their usual what in their usual way misinformation and outright lies here's how the gaggle of talking heads that talks and friends reported on the so-called connection between the white house shooter and the occupy wall street movement. and looks like this white house shooting suspect may have tried to blend in with the occupy protesters in d.c. when he came from out west so i pose this question to you this morning what would have happened if a team party person had tried to do that. well i think it's pretty predictable what would have happened i've talked actually no no not at all there's no connection at

all the white house shooter had absolutely nothing to do with the occupy d.c. it's completely made up the washington post yesterday but parks went ahead and aired it today anyway and soon enough the zombies who watch will run out until everyone who occupy d.c. is connected to an assassination plot that's how the spin machine works but we're dreamers here at the big picture and tom recently gave his take on what a world without fox so-called news would be like take a look. imagine i can't say some of the tribe. did a world without fox news it's easy if you try. to hacktivist group anonymous is allegedly planning to launch an attack on the fox so-called news website taking it down on november fifth there's a video supposedly released but none of us are getting their latest operation. for

defense of the world and the internet we are anonymous fox news is now a target of anonymous because of their continued propaganda against the occupation a monolith introduces operation. anonymous intent on destroying the fox news website because their continued right wing conservative propaganda can no longer be tolerated they use words and filthy kids gasping and dirty to describe the protesters since they will not stop the labeling the occupier we will findley shut them down on nov fifth we are but we can't know for sure if this is really anonymous or if the fox so-called news website will really be taken down but we can imagine your magic what it would be like if there was no fox news in the world what

it would be like if millions of americans went to work in the morning without listening to carlson kilmeade to see millions of americans beginning their days without fear of shari'a law and the new black panther party or the muslim brotherhood or the millions more going to sleep without fear that president obama's proud shirts are coming to get them as sean hannity is war if there was no fox news millionaires would just be called millionaires and not job creators christmas will come and go without anyone saying a war has been declared on it and a world without fox news ron paul might actually have a chance to win the republican nomination so fox news means no job for sarah palin and he's no jobs right around the country an american dream flag draped across. without fox news the price of gold plummets as new sales of survival kits as does

tea party rally attendance is already down pretty bad dropping from about four people maybe down to two because without fox news there really isn't a tea party imagine there's no fox news and suddenly occupy wall street is a legitimate organization with a clear goals and grassroots support. john lennon says imagine there's no war. without action is constant drumbeat there may not be a war after a world without fox news is a world that is clearly warming up as a result of manmade carbon pollution and a world where america is leading the way and doing something about it it's a world free from government death panels and it's a world where wall street is to blame for the fourth financial crisis by fox news means by by two rows of obama czars and by by slanderous scandals and by by to bill

ayres no fox news means no t.v. shows for future republican presidential candidates or cheating governors or aloof obsessed egomaniacs or watergate felons or gambling addicted or allies or. the fox news means no g.o.p. t.v. the name the roger and ailes and vision when he wrote a memo to richard nixon nixon's chief of staff in the release seventies suggesting the administration invest in creating a television channel to put forward republican talking points under the guise of new is a world without fox news is frankly a better world it's a world where voters will hit the polls next year without being frightened by spin doctors like frank luntz unfortunately that's not the world we live it. even if anonymous shuts down five so called is this rub site on november fifth it will only

be temporary and the t.v. talking heads will continue anyway but for one day maybe just one day a fox news less world could exist and will remember what it was like before bill o'reilly told us how to think before fights and friends thought was what to be afraid of and before hannity told us what it means to be an american and will wake up on november sixth right back into a world with news that decided turn the channel some may say i'm a dreamer but i'm not the only one. a mix who wins who loses if the deficit reduction supercommittee fails there's a hint we all could lose. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to

break through get through to be made who can you trust no one who is human view with the global machinery see where we had a state controlled capitalism and school factions when nobody dares to ask we do you are t. question more. if.

so you've got any big plans this weekend well if you're one of the gang of twelve on the so-called super committee you don't because you'll be working all weekend that's right the congressional supercommittee committee comprised of six democrats and six republicans in charge of finding one point two trillion dollars in savings is running out of time and after tonight they'll have just four days to come up with a deal or else the sword of damocles will fall on both parties that sword is a one point two trillion is one point two trillion dollars in automatic and painful cuts to programs that both democrats and republicans hold dear cuts to social welfare programs that help poor people and cuts the military programs that help billionaire defense contractors it's called the trigger and it was only supposed to be pulled at the supercommittee couldn't come up with

a deal it was supposed to be an incentive to force members to compromise as in come up with a deal or else but as we've learned over the last year at least on the rights compromise is a bad word and it's hard to find compromise on capitol hill no matter how hard the consequences my pate. and based on reporting today by the wall street journal the super committee is deadlocked right now over what to do with the bush tax cuts set to expire at the end of next year yeah this guy three years later is still hurting us so with four days to go it's looking more and more likely that there will be no compromise but the trigger will be pulled and the sword of damocles will fall. knowing this both parties are scrambling to handle the political fail out of a super committee failure for more on exactly how they're doing that and what to expect moving forward i want to welcome travis waldron he's

a reporter and blogger with think progress travis welcome to the show thanks for having me so as the wall street journal is just reporting. they're deadlocked over what to do with the bush tax cuts based on what we've learned we shouldn't expect any compromise there so let's assume that this is going to fail t.p.m. is reporting that republicans are to have a backup plan they're going to bring legislation to the floor to amend the debt limit deal in strip out those defense cuts that i was just talking about kind of strip out the part they didn't like is that how they're going to walk away from this with a win and kind of work well i think that's that's obviously what they're going to try to do what you have to look at though is it's really a simple choice do you care so much about preventing defense cuts that you can't raise taxes on the wealthiest americans that there are i mean this is you know raising ending the bush tax cuts at least for the wealthy is something that's popular among americans and yet the republicans is even millionaires have come to

washington this week to say we want you to do this and yet you have the republicans prioritizing defense cuts over a simple solution like this yeah and i think you know the most glaring example of that other than the millionaires coming to capitol hill this week and saying please tax us was when they had that republican debate a few weeks ago by bloomberg and on the day of the bloomberg debate bloomberg released a poll showing like two thirds of americans support raising taxes on the rich and yet none of the candidates on stage even bothered with it but picking up on what you said how this is a choice between the republicans essentially have a choice either they're going to let these defense cuts happen or they can raise taxes on millionaires with people one. speaker of the house nancy pelosi said something today that i think can capsule its message she said. if you refuse to take one red cent from the wealthiest people in our country and the price we have to pay is the diminished the pence and diminished strength of our country that just isn't right so is is how do democrats take that message to i mean how do they

resonate that message with the people who seem to be in paper of it but it's not translating into legislation i think it's exactly what i said you paint the the easy contrast of on one hand you say we absolutely cannot afford to cut defense on the other hand you're unwilling the one thing that democrats are going into this asking for is a little bit higher taxes on the wealthiest americans to help balance out this deal between cuts and revenues. it's a simple choice between those two which is more important because if you don't do that if you don't raise revenues on the richest americans the most the wealthiest americans then defense cuts are going to go through and it's really a choice i guess between what the american people want and what grover norquist and i'm saying on the republican side but let's look at this from what will what could happen with democrats here they've already put on the table bunch of cuts to medicare and medicaid. for progressives would almost be better if

if the deal falls through if there is no deal i think so you know it's hard to say that it would be good if we go into the sequester ation. but it's also hard to say at this point that any deal that could possibly get done is going to be good for progress is the real message here that progressives that they actually argued and that we've now seen economists come forward this week i wrote a there was the thing this week from a conservative economists from the american enterprise institute that we shouldn't even be talking about austerity right now we shouldn't be talking about massive budget cuts so in that vein neither one of the options for progressives is really that good but when you look at. going forward the potential of of defense cuts mates potentially the seaquest race in a little bit better than a bad deal just to avoid yeah i mean this whole this whole idea of

a committee looking for austerity is insane i think is the center for american progress they put a report out there and you know we don't even need to look at a report we can just look at what's going on in europe where they're at where they're trying to do austerity they're trying to do austerity in greece we're going to trying to study in italy now we'll see what happens there and they did austerity in london the you know in the u.k. and their economy has not grown in the last year and they've had complete civil unrest so you have to wonder why republicans want to bring that here why they insist on this are they trying to crush the economy. i don't know if i can go as far to say that they're trying to crash the economy but it really is it's amazing that we have all of these examples in europe of how austerity has failed these countries and they're you know they're not growing the european economy is not growing we're seeing like you said italy france and greece they're being pushed closer and closer to crisis and that's what these economists are warning us is if

we make massive budget cuts across the board that's what's going to happen here you're just going to push the country closer and closer to another recession and i don't think that's you know i don't know if anyone wants that but i couldn't imagine that anyone could want better you're right but you know considering that no president has other than roosevelt has ever been elected or reelected with unemployment above seven percent. and unemployment right now is at nine percent you could see politically why republicans would want that to happen but we're out of time here travis thanks a lot for coming on thanks for having great insight. with the gang of twelve super committee destined for failure or at least it looks like it is it makes you wonder who came up with this bright idea to begin with. and you should ask this guy that's because the gang of twelve was a spawn of the debt limit deal reached a few months ago you might remember that deal it was the one that was struck at the last minute on august second to prevent our nation from defaulting on its that he

was the one that speaker of the house john boehner gave in to his tea party wing and fought tooth and nail to make sure millionaires and billionaires could keep their generous tax breaks but corporate janitor corporate jet owners could keep their tax loopholes and that billion dollar trans national oil corporations could keep their subsidies remember that little deal but also included a provision to create this super committee to find extra savings that couldn't be agreed to before the debt limit deadline democrats called the debt limit deal a quote satan sandwich but john boehner he loved it. and when you look at the final agreement that we came to with the white house and i got ninety eight percent of what i wanted i'm pretty happy folks at home and so john boehner and the republicans getting ninety eight percent of they want what they wanted has brought us to this point this points on the verge of a supercommittee failure on the verge of heavy handed cuts to the social safety net

and on the verge perhaps of another credit rating downgrade as they win tails we lose of course we should have never gotten to this point to begin with because government by gang is notoriously a bad idea and tom expose this bad idea for what it is recently and one of his rants take a look. no one is likely to be happy with what comes out of the gang of twelve but what else should be expected from a government again so i mean gang government doesn't work gang government just has never worked the founders of the framers didn't have gang government in mind it's not in a constitution and it's frankly unconstitutional as roger just pointed out it's really just a way to pass the buck for example be the base closure commission congress knew this was this is back you know most of the decade ago it seems the congress knew there with all these military bases around the country and because there were so

many of them in so many congressional districts they couldn't get enough congress members to say ok let's close even the totally useless ones the ones that are just a total waste of time so they outsourced it to again the reason they had to do this was because defense contractors got really really slick they put a small facility in every congressional district in the country and by the way it's still that way so if anybody talks about cutting any of their budgets they can threaten any member of congress with add say pay back the allies the way people of his own district now they're trying to do the same thing with the budget they're saying oh oh we've got to cut the budget well we can't cut the budget will out source of this gang right real bright here's the problem if we simply and this is really a simple solution you know before reagan all the way from george washington to ronald reagan if you add up all of the debt that was that was accumulated by all of those presidents from george washington to jimmy carter ronald reagan ran up more

debt than all of them combined. by his massive tax cuts we took the top rate on millionaires and billionaires and dropped it from seventy four percent down to twenty percent if we simply roll back the reagan tax cut it would solve everything . but even the gang's own have the courage for that as long as the supreme court says money is speech one literally one cranky billionaire just thrown a few few million bucks out can take down dozen members of congress i mean you know a couple hundred thousand dollars is big money to congressional race so what we're seeing with this game government the reason why congress is having to defer to gangs or that was that old commissioner whether it's the gang of twelve right now is a symptom of a broken system it's a fundamentally broken system and this is why congress is popularity ratings are in the tank americans know it's broken and it's the only way to get out of this thing is to get money out of government we've got to get money out of government and one

of the best ways to do that is to a member constitution to say sorry corporations are people money is not speech for more information go to move to amend dot org. coming out and intruding in prophetic conversations with great minds with journalist and author person which is. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to put through good food if you've made who can you trust no one who is you view with a global admission receipt where we had a state controlled capitalism and school fashions when nobody dares to ask we do you are t. question more.

they'll. for this half hour we're going to revisit a conversation that i had way back in december of last year with journalist and author christopher hedges and then it you'll see that the rise of occupy wall street was predicted more than nine months before it started and chris hedges has some lessons for the movement that are still important to that so enjoy.