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CNN Sunday Morning
Occupy Portland Protesters; Emotional Day At Penn State; Blizzard Warning in Rockies; Standoff at Occupy Portland; Bachmann Campaign Snubbed; Perry Oops Moment; Getting Veterans Back to Work
Aired November 13, 2011 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
T.J. HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: Well, good Sunday morning to you all. It is 6:00 a.m. here in Atlanta, 3:00 a.m. in Portland, Oregon. And that's where we need to start with a live picture.
"Occupy" demonstrators are refusing to leave downtown parks, and they are now in a standoff with police. Police who are now in riot gear. The demonstrators were given a deadline of midnight local time, that was some three hours ago, to leave downtown parks that they had been occupying for weeks now. Well, the deadline has come and gone. The protesters have not gone anywhere.
A tense situation right now on the streets of Portland. We have reporters there. We'll check in with. We're also following the Twitter feeds of the reporters, getting a lot of details there. Also the Twitter feeds of Portland Police. We do have reports of at least one police officer that has been injured. Again, this is live, happening right now on the streets of Portland. We'll go back there in just a moment.
Also this morning, we have all done this -- you sent that unintended e-mail. You hit "reply all" and it went to an unintended recipient. Well, now this has happened to CBS. The unintended recipient, a Michele Bachmann staffer. We'll tell you what's in that e-mail that Bachmann's campaign says now is proof of media bias.
Also, 850,000 veterans unemployed right now. Another million expected to go back into civilian life by 2016. So who's helping them find jobs? We're getting into that question this morning.
But from the CNN Center, this is your CNN SUNDAY MORNING. I'm T.J. Holmes. And as always, a special good morning to our service men and women watching us right now this hour on the American Forces Network. Thank you for being here. Thank you for what you do.
But here we are, top of the hour, and we do need to start in Portland, Oregon, where this is happening live. It's 3:00 a.m., just after 3:00 a.m. on the streets of Portland, Oregon, downtown. You see what continues to go on. Police are standing by in riot gear as we speak. They were given a midnight deadline, these protesters and demonstrators were, to leave many of these downtown parks that they had been occupying for the past several weeks.
Well, that deadline has come and gone. Many of them are ignoring the warnings that they are getting from police to disperse. The mayor and police officers there saying this is a dangerous situation. It's a safety issue and people need to finally leave.
But that is not happening. In fact, we've even seen some of these crowds grow. Let me check in with one reporter we have on the ground there from our affiliate KPTV. We do have Nicole Doll who is there.
Nicole, this is a tense situation. Is there any sign that some of these protesters and demonstrators are starting to finally disperse and leave like police are telling them to do?
NICOLE DOLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No. In fact, we're not seeing that at all. For about the last 30 minutes or so, there's been a standoff between Portland Police in riot gear and about 2,000 people, we're being told by Occupy Portland organizers down here. Let me step out of the way so you can get a better idea, T.J. of what's going on.
At 3rd and Madison in downtown Portland, as you said, protesters were given a 12:00 midnight deadline to get out of the parks. And Portland Police were very encouraged because today they saw a lot of those people leaving the parks. And that 12:00 midnight deadline came and went. And to be honest with you, there was a celebratory mood in the camp and everything seemed to be peaceful.
Then, oh, about an hour ago or so, we had a police officer who was hit by a projectile. He was at 3rd and Main Street here in downtown Portland. And he was hit by a projectile by a protester. At that point, things got very, very tense. And we had a man who was arrested in the street.
At that point we saw the mounted police come out. We saw a line of officers in riot gear with their night sticks at the ready, who were preventing people from going into the street. And at this point they have moved -- they have taken over an entire city block. Police officers are lining that street.
We have, again, about 2,000 people, according to organizers, that are on both sides of the street. A very, very tense situation at this point. And we're kind of in a holding pattern to see what happens next.
I've been in constant communication overnight with the police and have not been able to get anything out of them for about the last 20 minutes or so.
T.J.
HOMES: And that was my next question. What is the plan for police now? It looks like a standoff where they're just facing each other down. But do police have a plan for when they might move? Are they just monitoring this situation or do they plan to force these people out?
DOLL: Well, that's been the big question. I mean they set this deadline on Thursday. They came out and said, you know what, we've got safety concerns in the park. We had a couple of heroin overdoses. We had a Molotov cocktail that was thrown at the World Trade Center here last week. And they said, we've got to clear this camp out at this point. They set this deadline, 12:01 Sunday morning. That deadline came and went and no movement. And we pressed them on that. We said, you know, a deadline's a deadline and we have not seen any movement. And then this happened.
At this point, I cannot get anybody on the phone to find out. I mean there are certain things, T.J., you know they would not talk to us about anyway because it's tactical information. But at this point, you know, we just see these officers in riot gear. We've got some mounted officers as well.
I spoke with the organizers and they said -- their understanding, and of course this just coming from "Occupy" organizers, that when they see the mounted police head out, that's when they think that the police are going to turn to some sort of chemicals. Whether it be pepper spray, tear gas, that kind of thing.
We have seen folks within the crowd with their gas masks. We had a run on gas masks here in Portland at some of our army surplus stores. We've seen them donning these gas masks.
But a lot of these people, to be honest with you, aren't even protesters. We've seen people coming down all night long, spectators, who just want to see what's going on. We've got a sea of cell phone cameras up in the air of people just wanting to document this. At this point, we are just in a standoff between about 100 at least police officers in riot gear and at least 1,000, possibly 2,000 people in the streets. And I wish I could tell you what's going to happen next, but at this point we don't know.
HOLMES: All right, Nicole Doll, who is down there on the street covering this. We hope we can check back in with you. It doesn't look like this is going to wrap up any time soon. But, Nicole, thank you so much.
And I want to remind our viewers, what you're seeing is a live picture. This is not video from earlier. This is happening just after 3:00 a.m. local time there in Portland, Oregon, where, as you heard, the estimates are some 2,000 at least people are still gathered, ignoring the order of the police and the mayor to leave these "Occupy" encampments at midnight. That deadline is now three hours past.
Also, we've been getting -- she was just mentioning there, the reporter, that she hasn't been able to get a hold of Portland Police here in the past 20, 30 minutes or so. But that Portland Police have been pretty diligent about putting information out. You're seeing their Twitter feed here. And they've been using this to really tamp down a lot of rumors that have been out there.
There are several of these that are saying not true, the media's being encouraged to stay. There are others where you see the police responding to other people who are tweeting saying, "go home."
They gave updates about the officer was has been injured. We're told that he was hit by a projectile. He was not on a horse. You're seeing it right there in the middle of your screen. They also said that officer was going to be OK.
But we are monitoring this Portland Police feed. This is where a lot of information is coming. So the Portland Police certainly tweeting this morning.
We will keep a close eye, and we do have these live pictures of Portland that all of our folks are monitoring right now and we'll continue to give you updates. But that's a live picture, folks, just after 3:00 a.m. local time, Portland, Oregon, where thousands of people have ignored a deadline from police to leave one of these "Occupy" encampments. We're keeping a close eye there.
But Portland is not the only city that is trying to evict "Occupy" protesters these days. We've got a map to show you, really from Albany to Salt Lake City, all over the country, you've seen some of the biggest clashes between police and protesters. In fact, in Oakland and Denver. Now the same kind of thing has been happening as well in Atlanta and St. Louis. But again, we will not go too far away from this story. Give you updates throughout CNN SUNDAY MORNING on what's happening right now in Portland.
We turn to some politics now and national security. That was the focus of last night's Republican presidential debate in South Carolina. Each of the eight candidates trying to set themselves apart in the minds of voters with just two months to go until the first votes are cast.
I'm going to take you through some of the highlights last night and one moment that people will be talking about today and throughout this week. The issue of torture came up. Torture or enhanced interrogation techniques, depending on who you're talking to. And that old issue of waterboarding came up. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MICHELE BACHMANN (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If I were president, I would be willing to use waterboarding. I think it was very effective and gained information for our country.
JON HUNTSMAN (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Waterboarding is torture. We dilute ourselves down like a whole lot of other countries and we lose that ability to project values.
HERMAN CAIN (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I would return to that policy. I don't see it as torture. I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique.
REP. RON PAUL (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Torture is illegal and -- by our laws. It's illegal by international laws.
GOV. RICK PERRY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And I am for using the techniques, not torture, but using those techniques that we know will extract the information to save young American lives. And I will be for it until I die.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HOLMES: But also last night, some ideas came up among some of the candidates about what to do about the $50 billion in foreign aid that this country gives out. Listen to some of these disagreements.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. RICK PERRY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The foreign aid budget, in my administration, for every country, is going to start at zero dollars. Zero dollars. And then we'll have a conversation. Then we'll have a conversation in this country about whether or not a penny of our taxpayer dollars needs to go into those countries.
NEWT GINGRICH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You ought to start off at zero and say, explain to me why I should give you a penny.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: Well, also last night, Michele Bachmann's campaign got a little hot over the debates because it has nothing really do here, let me explain, with what she said, but how much she was allowed to say. There was an e-mail chain. Now we've all had those moments where you hit "reply all" and you didn't really mean to and the e-mail went to somebody you didn't intend for it to go to.
This is the kind of moment we're talking about. And it happened with CBS' political director John Dickerson. In a larger e-mail about post debate interviews, he had this to say about Bachmann's role in the debate itself. And I quote, "she's not going to get many questions, and she's nearly off the charts."
Well, the Bachmann campaign certainly didn't appreciate that. It inadvertently went to one of Michele Bachmann's staffers. Now the campaign manager said Dickerson should now be fired. CBS basically said, hey, it wasn't meant for you, but let's be honest here, she's at 4 percent in the polls. Let's be realistic. We'll have much more on this coming up at the bottom of the hour.
Also coming up at 6:30, we'll take a closer look at the upper tier of candidates, how they did last night. Also going to check out their prospects heading into Iowa. Stay with us for that.
Well, we're about 12 minutes past the hour. Let's turn to some other news.
And it was a football game, but it seemed pretty difficult to focus on football when you were watching the Penn State/Nebraska game yesterday. So much more was going on in that stadium, on the campus and, yes, in the headlines as well. Students came out to support their team, but also to remember the alleged victims of the sexual abuse scandal that has shocked the campus and also shocked the country.
And also look at this. This was really a nice moment before the game. Both teams came together on the field in prayer. Penn State ended up losing the game, 17-14. And then after the game, Jay Paterno, who's a current assistant coach and also son of the former head coach Joe Paterno, well, listen to him. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAY PATERNO, PENN STATE ASSISTANT COACH: And Joe has always taught us about the blue line of practice. When you cross the blue line, the only thing you can control is what you're doing rights there. So we just had to imagine there was a blue line coming into this stadium. And once we were here, we were focused on the task at hand and just a little short. Dad, I wish you were here. We love you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: This was the first game without Paterno as head coach in 46 years. He was fired Wednesday. Still, some fans gathered at the Paterno home to pay tribute to the man they say they'll always call coach.
For more on the day that was at Penn State and what comes next, our Mike Galanos, who is there at University Park.
Mike, hello to you.
We were talking about there yesterday before the game, trying to get a feel of the mood of everybody and what to expect at the game. So, once it started, did it feel like football?
MIKE GALANOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: To a point, T.J. And you and I -- yes, we said it, we didn't know what to expect. I mean I'll say emotions ruled the day. And in a good way. And I know you showed the prayer. It was so -- it was just a beautiful picture to see both teams come together. And the prayer was about, hey, let's show any little boy out there watching that this is what manhood looks like. Men coming together to compete fiercely and be all they can be. Not a lot about what we've been hearing throughout this scandal. And there you're hearing some of that prayer right now.
You know, you look at this and, again, back to the emotions, the student body coming together. They sang that alma mater together. There was the moment of silence. I think someone said it -- a huge crowd like this, have you ever heard complete silence? And that set the tone that we put the victims first. Over $20,000 raised to help prevent child abuse in Pennsylvania and beyond. So that was a good thing.
But then you talk about football and you have the emotions. Penn State gets down 17-0. You're figuring they're emotionally shot. They have nothing left. Yet they come back, make a game of it. Almost come all the way back. Lose 17-14. But you know these players are emotionally drained. I mean 18 to 22, 23-year-old young adults who had to deal with this through a week. And, you know, they talked about their emotions afterward.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four and a half years playing for that man and I don't get the opportunity to shake his hand, hug him, go on the field and to thank him for all the things he's done to create me as a man. (END VIDEO CLIP)
GALANOS: You know, and many -- T.J., I think you mentioned it as well, so many wondering, what about Joe Paterno. What did he go through. He's been head coach since 1966. First time not on the sidelines or part of a game like that. Well, we know what the players did to honor him. Number one, there's a seat on the bus -- seat number one on bus number one. They left vacant in honor of Joe Paterno.
He sent a message to his team basically saying, I'm with you in spirit. Don't focus on me, focus on the game. And they tried to do that. Came up short. But I am sure he is proud of the way his team fought and almost came back.
T.J.
HOLMES: All right, Mike Galanos there for us. Mike, we appreciate you being with us this weekend.
We're at 16 minutes past the hour. Also some soul searching going on at the Citadel. University officials there admit that they should have done more when allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct surfaced there a few years ago. A former cadet and camp counselor, you're seeing him there, Louis ReVille, was arrested last month on charges of criminal sexual conduct and attempted lewd acts with a child. But it was back in 2007 that a red flag was raised about his conduct at the Citadel. The university stopped investigating after their attorney said they couldn't confirm any acts of abuse had taken place.
Turn to Italy now. Certainly on a new path this morning. What you're seeing here are people in the streets celebrating the resignation of their controversial, now-former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. He stepped down shortly after parliament approved ways to cut spending and hopefully help the struggling economy. We're watching to see how his resignation plays out with the world markets.
Also, President Obama says America has gotten lazy? Those were his words. The president was talking about efforts to get foreign investors interested in doing business here. He says he's trying to turn that around. International trade is the focus of the APEC Summit in Honolulu today. President Obama will be talking trade today with world leaders from China and Russia, among others.
Well, at 16 minutes past the hour, the Rockies still being hit by a blizzard. Reynolds Wolf has our first check of the weather.
Good morning, Reynolds.
REYNOLDS WOLF, AMS METEOROLOGIST: T.J., they are just getting pummeled. And they're going to get pummeled for the rest of the day, through the afternoon, through the evening, and into our morning. It looks like it's going to start moving on into parts of the central plains.
But today is the day where they could see several feet of snowfall. Not only that, some wind gusts that could be topping, say, 60, maybe even 70 miles an hour. So, I mean, we've got a full wintery blast that's going to be making a bulls-eye on parts of the Rockies.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the country, including here in Atlanta, conditions look picture perfect. We're going to talk more about your forecast coming up. You're watching CNN SUNDAY MORNING. See you in a few.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HOLMES: And you are looking at live pictures. It's 3:18 in the morning local time that in Portland, Oregon, where now "Occupy" demonstrators are in a standoff with police. They had a midnight local time deadline. So just about three hours and 20 minutes ago. A deadline to leave the "Occupy" encampment that they have been occupying for the past several weeks.
Well, that deadline has come and gone. Many people have refused to leave. In fact, some of our reporters there in Portland say that after the midnight deadline, it actually attracted more people to the area. The estimates are that a couple thousand people may still be down there.
You see some police. They are, of course, on their horses. They are also in riot gear. But they have yet to move in, if you will, and force the protesters to leave.
Now, we have been watching these live feeds. Again, these are live pictures, folks. We're not showing you some video from earlier. This is happening right now on the streets of Portland, Oregon. The local affiliates are in rolling coverage at this hour showing their local people what's happening in the streets. But the demonstrators clearly have refused to leave.
Now, again, our people have been watching these live feeds and we have seen some people taken into custody by police now. But there is essentially a standoff. We're told by our reporters there that there may be a couple hundred police officers, but those couple hundred police officers are up against possibly a couple thousand demonstrators.
We have seen similar scenes around the country where patience, frankly, has been running thin with some of the "Occupy" protesters and demonstrators who have defied the orders of local police, defied the orders of mayors to leave some of these parks. They say there's a safety issue involved in some of these. In fact, there have been issues and particularly there in Portland where there have been drug overdoses at some of these encampments. There are others issues where people were shot close to encampments. Not to say necessarily it was related, but there have been incidents, if you will, across the country. And now mayors are getting fed up and police officers saying, hey, this is a safety issue and we need you to now leave.
That deadline there in Portland is now three hours and 20 minutes past and people still refuse to leave. One police officer has been injured, according to Portland Police, hit by a projectile of some kind but we're told he's going to be OK. Not necessarily outbreaks of violence that we have been seeing or herring. but there on the right side of your screen, you see picture -- a picture of people at this hour still chanting, singing, dancing, holding their signs.
Many of them certainly aware that right now they are getting live coverage locally. They're getting live coverage now nationally. Maybe they're getting a little more excited. We've been watching this feed since we came into work here several hours ago and it seems like things are -- they're getting even more animated as time goes on.
But police, as you see on the left side of your screen, are prepared. But we haven't gotten word from them exactly what they're prepared to do. If they are going to physically start removing these people from these encampments.
But, again, these are scenes we're seeing playing out in several cities, not just Portland. But right now, in Portland, a tense situation. A standoff taking place, but no word on what either side is going to do. Either side. I mean the one side being the police officers, the other side the "Occupy" protesters. We're keeping a close eye on this situation.
I'm just told by my producer they continue to tweet. My executive producer telling me the Portland Police, which we have been unable to get on the phone. Local affiliates have been trying to get them. Said they haven't heard back in the past half hour or so. But they have been tweeting and giving information out this way.
And they have been using this really to tamp down a lot of rumors that are out there. You know sometimes these rumors start to fly. Someone says, hey, police are about to use these chemical agents or this is going on. They're telling us to do this. Well, police are using this as their P.R. machine to get their message out.
And they're trying to tell people -- I believe -- Tanisha (ph), help me here. You said in that last tweet they're telling people to stay on the sidewalks and to get off the streets. We did get reports from our affiliate reporters that several streets were blocked by protesters who were just right there in the middle of the street blocking things, holding things up.
Now, not a lot of traffic maybe at 3:00 a.m., but, still, they're trying to get people out of the middle of the streets. Police getting their message out that way. But still, there have been so many reporter and so many rumors. we've been monitoring these Twitter feeds ourselves this morning. This is the way of the world these days and that's how you get -- get information out instantly. But so many rumors out there about what is happening, what's going to happen, what the police intentions are. So police are trying to battle back the best way they know how, which is on Twitter, as well.
I'm told by our Reynolds Wolf that -- it's Portland. It's, what, it's November. It's 3:00 in the morning. Weatherwise, these people have stayed out here for the past several weeks. It's about 50 degrees out there right now. So not too brutal weatherwise. But, still, that's a factor sometimes. Maybe people can't stand the conditions and they want to go home.
Well, it seems that more people are showing up on the streets of Portland right now and don't have any intention of going anywhere despite what the police and the mayor have now -- not just told them or asked them politely to do, but have ordered them to do. But that deadline to leave was three, almost three and a half hours ago. And you're seeing from live pictures that they are not listening.
We'll keep a close eye on what's happening on the streets of Portland. We'll check in with our Reynolds Wolf, keeping an eye on the Rockies right now and the mess that's happening there.
Stay with us on this CNN SUNDAY MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HOLMES: All right, it's getting close to the bottom of the hour. Say good morning again to Reynolds Wolf.
The Rockies. You've been talking about it all weekend.
WOLF: Oh, man, it's going to be insane up there. You know, a lot of people think of this situation, they go, oh, man, this is going to be perfect for skiers.
HOLMES: No.
WOLF: No, not at all. You don't want to ski in this kind of stuff. I can tell you, last year I was up in Steamboat Springs, went up to about 10,000 feet. The cloud deck was around 9,000 feet up in the mountains going skiing. Got to whiteout conditions where I could -- I'm not kidding you -- could hold my hand in front of my face, couldn't see. Could not see it, the clouds were so --
HOLMES: Yes, that's not good.
WOLF: You don't want to deal with that kind of thing. The problem is, that's talking about high up. Even down in part of the interstates, like on say parts of I-70, where you have a lot of trucks that are going to try and force their way through the mountain passes, they're not going to be able to do that either because you're going to have winds that are going to be up to 60, maybe even 70 miles an hour. So you get the snow and the wind at the same time.
HOLMES: How much longer are they going to be dealing with this?
WOLF: It should be come -- it should come to a screeching halt as we get into Monday.
HOLMES: Monday.
WOLF: But that's Monday. You get a lot of people that normally count on a day like today to try to get ahead of the early morning crowds. Well, the problem is, say on Monday morning, when you have people that are trying to make that drive say going from the Great Basin back over to Denver, Colorado, the moving into the central plain. Anyone driving a high transfer truck is going will have a really difficult time moving through those mountain passes. Case in point, take a look at what we've got here. We're going to zoom in just a little bit on radar. And for the time being, it looks pretty innocent. You see some rainfall down in Salt Lake City, in the higher elevations down near Snowbird. You've got the snow coming down.
But what we have going in motion right now in the atmosphere is we've got this area of low pressure that's going to be pulling off to the northeast. At the same time, you've got this area of low pressure that's going to be pulling off to the southeast. The combination of these two are almost like fly wheels in a machine. If this is your conveyor belt, it's going to be pulling those winds through anywhere from 60 to 70 miles per hour. I wouldn't be surprised if you have some actually top hurricane-force winds getting to about 74 miles an hour. Maybe even a bit stronger. So true whiteout conditions you might be dealing with in parts of the central Rockies.
The situation for the central and southern plains, pure bliss. We're talking about highs going, you know, pretty nice. Pretty -- into the 60s and 70s in a lot of places. As we wrap things up, you're going to see those high temperatures. It's 83 in Dallas. 80 in Houston, 61 in Kansas City, 61 in New York, 70 in Atlanta with plenty of sunshine, 65 in San Francisco. The rain's moving out. And 69 in Los Angeles and 48 in Salt Lake City.
All right, T.J., let's pitch it right back to you.
HOLMES: Reynolds, thank you. We, of course, will check in with Reynolds plenty throughout the morning.
Coming up next, we'll be talking about Michele Bachmann. There was a moment after the debate last night. It was a moment that you and I have all the time. You accidently hit "reply all" and it went to somebody you didn't want it to go to. Well, this e-mail went to one of Michele Bachmann's staff members and they're using it now, they say, as evidence of media bias. We'll get into that next in a live report.
But also want to remind you, we're keeping an eye on the streets of Portland, Oregon. A tense situation. A live picture you're seeing as "Occupy" demonstrators, they refuse to leave despite the orders and the deadline given to them by police. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HOLMES: We're at the bottom of the hour on this CNN SUNDAY MORNING.
What you are seeing are live pictures. We are monitoring the situation on the streets of Portland. This is where police are standing by in riot gear, and they are trying to evict Occupy demonstrators who have been in an encampment in downtown Portland for the past several weeks. The police and the mayor gave these Occupy protesters, these demonstrators, a midnight local time deadline. That's some 3-1/2 hours ago to leave these encampments. They say it's a safety issue.
Well, so far they have refused to leave and you have a couple of thousand people gathered on the streets of Portland right now. Police are there, you see them on the right side of your screen in riot gear, standing by. We don't know what their next move will be.
We have been talking to reporters - local reporters, some of the local stations are in local - rolling coverage covering this. But some perspective on what you're seeing. We noticed that crowds were beginning to actually grow over the past several hours. So after the deadline crowds were starting to grow.
But one reporter we talked to who actually said he had to go to his car because of a safety issue, it was getting a little too frantic out there, a little too shaky. So he had to go to his car for protection. But says what has happened now is that much of what you're seeing may not necessarily be Occupy demonstrators and protesters.
You see right now, even though you're watching CNN SUNDAY MORNING, it's essentially still Saturday night in Portland. Bars close down at 2:00 A.M. in Portland. That was just an hour and a half ago. So what is happening, according to this reporter, is many people leave the bars and they came out a little inebriated and they just kind of joined in. They're standing around spectating, and some of them may be causing some of the problems, some of those knuckleheads out coming from the bars and not necessarily some of the Occupy demonstrators and protesters.
So that is some information and maybe some good perspective we're getting that maybe some of the chaos, maybe some of the arrests, we have even seen some people taken into custody who may not necessarily be affiliated with the Occupy demonstrations.
Either way, we are still keeping an eye. The estimates are that some 2,000 people are still gathered downtown, but police are standing by right now and they standoff with some of the Occupy protesters and other people of Portland. We wouldn't go too far away from that story. Keeping a close eye on that.
Well, turning back to politics and the e-mail that has Michele Bachmann's campaign hot this morning. Give you a little snippet of it. This is from CBS' John Dickerson. He admits in an e-mail that Bachmann wouldn't get many questions in the debate from last night because of her poor standing in the polls. This was an e-mail that probably should not have been sent to a Bachmann staffer. It was one of those "Reply All" moments.
Joining me now on the phone from Columbia, South Carolina, is CNN Political Producer Shawna Shepherd. Shawna, good morning to you.
And are they really upset about this e-mail, really surprised by this e-mail? Or are they trying to use this now to get a little attention and also maybe raise some money?
SHAWNA SHEPHERD, CNN POLITICAL PRODUCER (via telephone): Well, T.J., it was an unusual move, and the Bachmann camp is definitely upset.
Less than two minutes after last night's debate, our colleague Peter Hamby received a press release from Michele Bachmann's team and included that internal e-mail from John Dickerson. He's the new CBS Political Director and he expressed his lack of interest in conducting a post-debate interview with Bachmann.
In the e-mail sent hours before the debate, Dickerson said, quote, "She's not going to get many questions, and she's nearly off the charts," referring to her low poll numbers that he mentioned. Bachmann's spokesperson, Alice Stewart, was copied on the e-mail exchange and needless to say her and her team, they were furious. Her campaign manager using expletives to tell CNN - when they told CNN that Dickerson should be fired.
Bachmann came into the post-debate spin room to address the controversy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MICHELE BACHMANN (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't know if it targets anyone else. But each of the candidates are invited to come and each of the candidates have something to say. And I have something to say about foreign policy, as well. And I think it's only respectful to allow the candidates to be able to speak and not intentionally ahead of time make a decision to limit candidates' opportunity to speak to the American people.
This isn't about - this shouldn't be about media bias. Clearly, this was an example of media bias. This should be about an effort to get all of the information on the table.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SHEPHERD: Now last night, CNN contacted CBS News to get their side of the story. And in a statement they described the e-mail as a, quote, "candidate exchange adding, that Bachmann will remain at four percent in the polls to justify their position."
Debate moderator and CBS' Evening News host Scott Pelley was asked about points of bias, he said he didn't know about the e-mails, that was last night, but tried to be fair to all the candidates - T.J.
HOLMES: And Shawna, last thing, for a little perspective, maybe this is a little embarrassing, but did he really say anything that's out really there? Because this is what happens in the debate, those who have been polling well, they get the prime spots in the middle. They get the first questions. They get to mix it up. And then you have the people on the outsides who are polling low and don't get as many questions.
Now, it might be unfortunate, they might not like that it got out and it got to them. But quite frankly, isn't it understandable, the point he was making?
SHEPHERD: Well, what the Bachmann camp is concerned about is - they're focusing on the fact that he stressed she's not getting many questions, which - which implies that there was a concerted effort to - to keep questions going to her. Even though she's low in the poll numbers, Scott Pelley even mentioned last night, that Governor Jon Huntsman, who's polling at one percent, said that he appreciated his effort to - to call him out and ask him a lot of questions. So you're right, you know, it is often a complaint for these candidates who are polling low. But the fact that you have a CBS employee in an internal e-mail saying that she's not going to get many questions is what's raising the eyebrows -
HOLMES: All right.
SHEPHERD: -- to the Bachmann camp.
HOLMES: Shawna Shepherd, with the politics of debates. Thank you so much.
And Rick Perry, he was trying to avoid any big mistakes or maybe any embarrassing moments last night. Seemed like a victory maybe given what happened the last debate. You remember this, don't you -
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GOV. RICK PERRY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And I will tell you it's three agencies of government when I get there that are gone. Commerce, Education, and the - What's the third one there? Let's see.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You need five.
PERRY: Oh, five. OK. So commerce, education, and the -
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: EPA?
PERRY: The EPA. There you go. No, again.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Seriously?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: Now Perry made fun of himself the next night with his appearance on "Late Night with Dave Letterman."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PERRY: Actually there were three reasons I messed up last night. One was the nerves, and two was the headache. And three -
DAVE LETTERMAN, HOST, "LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN": That's all right. Don't worry about it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: And you just know "Saturday Night Live" was going to have a blast with this one.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Governor Perry, we're still waiting for the third department. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey! Leave him alone! Look, I tell you about the women. I tell you all the vivid details, and there are a lot. Just leave this poor man alone. Look at him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can't. I can't say stuff good. The words don't - they don't talk right. I don't --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come here, come here. It's OK. It's OK. Come here. It's all right.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not going to be president, am I?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. No, you're not.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: Rick Perry talk about his oops moment again at last night's debate. Got a little bit of laugh out of it. We'll tell you what he said next.
Stay with us on this CNN SUNDAY MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HOLMES: About 43 minutes past the hour.
We're going to get to some politics here in a moment. Have a guest, Patricia Murphy. You know her well. We'll chat with her in just a second.
But I want to remind you about what we're keeping an eye on out in Portland right now, this Occupy movement. These are live pictures we can show you. This is happening right now. It's about 3:43 in the morning there local time where police gave these protesters a deadline of midnight local time to leave the Occupy encampment where they have been for the past several weeks.
Well, that deadline has come and gone. People are still in the street. We have police there in riot gear, standing by. Not sure what their move will be. We have seen a couple people taken away, have been taken into custody by police. But for the most part, police are standing by at this point.
We're keeping a close eye on the streets of - excuse me - of Portland this time.
Let's move back to politics now. We were talking about Rick Perry and that oops moment heard around the world he had last week. Well, this was last night, an exchange between Governor Perry and Scott Pelley of CBS News at last night's Republican debate.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SCOTT PELLEY, "CBS EVENING NEWS" ANCHOR": Governor Perry, you advocate the elimination of the Department of Energy. If you eliminate the Department of Energy - PERRY: Glad you remembered it.
PELLEY: I've had some time to think about it, sir.
PERRY: Me, too.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: OK. You got to give the guy credit and he's having a little fun there. Everybody's had that brain freeze. But people are saying this could actually do him in.
Patricia Murphy here with me now. Founder and editor of "Citizen Jane Politics." Good to have you here in studio.
PATRICIA MURPHY, FOUNDER, CITIZEN JANE POLITICS: Good morning. It's wonderful to be here in studio. What a treat.
HOLMES: Tell me - well, you know what? We have actually been working together it seems like for years and this is the first time we've actually met.
MURPHY: Yes. Isn't that crazy? But I feel like I know you.
HOLMES: We certainly know you. Good to have you here with us.
MURPHY: Thank you.
HOLMES: We're going to have you here all the time now that you're -
MURPHY: Great.
HOLMES: -- close by.
MURPHY: SUNDAY MORNING is my time to shine.
HOLMES: It is. OK.
MURPHY: Well, apparently.
HOLMES: Well, Perry, was this his time to shine last night? Is he putting this behind him? Does he need to stop making jokes about it or do people appreciate, you know, that kind of self-deprecating humor?
MURPHY: Well, I think the humor after a disaster like that in the -
HOLMES: Yes.
MURPHY: -- immediately the hours following, it's good to just defuse the situation with a - with a little bit of little humor. But the problem that Rick Perry has - and I've talked to a lot of voters about this - they are wondering why are you running for president.
You cannot even name - this was not a trick question. This was not who was the president of whatever, whatever. This was nothing obscure. No pop quiz. This is what are your core values, who are you.
And to not be able to name the three agencies that he would eliminate, was it a brain freeze or do you not know what you believe?
HOLMES: But the problem there is and we all have these moments. But the problem here is if Newt Gingrich have had that moment -
MURPHY: Yes.
HOLMES: -- it wouldn't have been the same thing.
MURPHY: It would not because Newt Gingrich is a superb debater and this would look like an isolated incident. We all know who Newt Gingrich is and what he stands for.
Rick Perry is new on the scene. He's done very, very poorly in all of these debates. Some are a little bit better than others. But when you have a really rocky background, when you have a very pock-marked report card and then you have a moment like this, he needed to be doing everything right to be getting up in the polls. And this was just something we don't think he can really recover from.
HOLMES: We're going to move to Michele Bachmann and that e-mail controversy if you want to call it where she's stirring up one about the e-mail. But let me at least talk about Herman Cain for just a second.
MURPHY: Yes.
HOLMES: This is not supposed to be his strong suit, foreign policy.
MURPHY: Yes.
HOLMES: Did he come across as knowing what he's talking about last night?
HOLMES: I think he struggled last night. We saw him answer question after question by deflecting the answer to who his advisers would be. And saying, would you take the trips out of Afghanistan, and his answer was, well, it really depends on what the generals on the ground tell me.
The follow-up question is, what if you disagree with the generals on the ground, what is your core position? And voters again, they're fine disagreeing with candidates but they want to know who these candidates are at their core. They want to trust them. And Herman Cain doesn't give us a good direction of exactly who he is on foreign policy. He needs to tighten that up significantly.
HOLMES: All right. Last thing, Michele Bachmann, is this a real controversy or something she is stirring up to maybe get herself back in the, you know, headlines? But this controversy over the e-mail that was intercepted or inadvertently sent to a staffer that said she wasn't going to get many questions. But you're not going to get many questions if you're at four percent. MURPHY: You're not going to get many questions. My question if I was on her campaign and my question today is were they saying the same thing about Jon Huntsman. He's at zero percent in some polls, literally zero percent. Why is she getting fewer questions than him? Are they saying this is about everybody who is in single digits or it's just Michele Bachmann? I think it's a fair question for her.
HOLMES: And you said, right before we came on, she is stabilizing the campaign. She's in a freefall there for a while.
MURPHY: I think she's stabilizing. I think even Herman Cain is stabilizing a little bit. He did not have as bad a week as he did before, and that's a good week for Herman Cain.
HOLMES: Patricia Murphy, it is so good -
MURPHY: Thank you.
HOLMES: -- to have you here with us.
MURPHY: My pleasure.
HOLMES: We will have you back plenty.
MURPHY: I appreciate it.
HOLMES: Thanks so much.
MURPHY: Thank you.
HOLMES: We're about 13 minutes off the top of the hour now.
And America's jobs crisis goes from bad to worse for many military veterans. We'll tell you, though, what the president wants to do about it. We'll talk live with an advocate for veterans and find out what he thinks about the president's plan.
Stay with us on this CNN SUNDAY MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HOLMES: As we get close to the top of the hour now, right now more than 850,000 veterans are unemployed and a million military service members are going to be needing jobs over the next few years. So something's got to give here.
Tom Tarantino is an Iraq War veteran and legislative associate for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. He's with us this morning from D.C. Sir, thank you for being here.
The president, what do you think about the new plan now that the Senate just approved that would give a tax credit to businesses who hire veterans? Is that going to help up a lot?
TOM TARANTINO, IRAQ WAR VETERAN AND LEGISLATIVE ASSOCIATE, IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN VETERANS OF AMERICA: Well, yes. The tax credit's a great thing. But I think it's really important to note that the tax credit's actually a very small part of a comprehensive package.
This bill, the Vow to Hire Heroes Act, is really the result of what we would see as uncommon cooperation between Republican Congressman Jeff Miller and Democratic Senator Patty Murray. They've put together a large package and they spent the last year working very hard on trying to solve some of the systemic problems with veterans' unemployment.
HOLMES: Well, I hope that's a good sign of things to come. This Democratic and Republican cooperation here. But help people understand - it seems as if it would be kind of a natural thing. Employers should be jumping at the chance to hire a U.S. vet. Is that not the case?
TARANTINO: Well, what we're seeing right now is this is the first generation of business leaders that has largely never served in the military. So while the - while the business community wants to hire veterans, they don't necessarily have an understanding of what they bring to the table.
So one of the things this bill does is that it seeks to translate military skills. We've never done the analysis on what a military medic, truck driver or a mechanic really means in the civilian world. So this will start to do that.
You know, right now if you're a combat medic, you have 10 years of service, you get out of the military - in most states you can't even drive an ambulance and we just think that's wrong. So what this does is seeks to translate those hard skills and then seeks to provide some sort of understanding for the softer skills, the more leadership-type skills so that employers have something that they can understand when a vet applies for a job.
HOLMES: But, Tom, you said translate, but don't you have a tough task that's going to take some time to also educate those employers? You got to get that word out.
TARANTINO: Right. And, you know, we just haven't done this. You know, 30 years ago, if you were going in front of an employer, chances are that employer spent a couple of years toting a machine gun around and understood what military skills bring to the table. That's not just the case anymore.
So this bill - and what we're hoping it's going to pass the House this week, and I'm very confident it will. It will actually step back and look at some of these more - the more cultural and systemic problems that we have with veteran unemployment and seek to remedy them so we can get veterans back to work.
HOLMES: All right. And like we said, there are going to be a whole lot more vets as we wrap up a couple of wars in the next several years, according to the president. Another million are going to be joining civilian life.
Tom, we appreciate you taking the time this morning and highlighting this issue. I know we heard a lot of this and a lot of talk around Veterans Day. But we certainly - I think you agree, need to be talking about our veterans every single day.
TARANTINO: Thanks for having me.
HOLMES: All right. We're about five minutes off the top of the hour now.
And did you see that yesterday, it was a football game but it didn't seem to really focus on a lot of football. We're talking about at Penn State. They're trying to move forward from the child rape scandals. An emotional scene at their final home game yesterday, the first since the allegations exploded there on campus.
Stay with us on this CNN SUNDAY MORNING.
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