welcome to the lone a show where you get the real headlines with none of the mercy or do you live in washington d.c. now tonight we'll look at some new figures that show you just how much richer congress has gotten since the financial crash think about you know two billion dollars that's how much they're worth and we wonder why there are no hurry to create jobs or address occupy wall street's concerns how's the occupy movement in cities across the country showing us what restrictions there are on our freedom of speech and our freedom of assembly bill to exist the way they were meant to are these rights becoming an illusion and our troops might be leaving iraq but don't

worry the obama administration is going to be expanding our military presence in the rest of the persian gulf and apparently we're doing it to keep outside powers from interfering so i guess list includes everybody but us we're going to break down the double speak there we'll have all of that and more feet and i clearly does have happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. ari so it's now day three of the media's obsession for presidential candidate herman cain's maybe or maybe not sex scandal when you think of session i mean that every now work has been covering the story nonstop like full twenty four hour coverage devoted to it. well you're going to hear a lot more about herman cain today and those sexual harassment allegations we're talking about whether he's stoking the fire rather than putting it out the more interviews he does the more inconsistent his story about two sets of arrests validations against him in the ninety's we're talking about early cain changing his

story and that is probably not the story line the campaign wanted i've studied political scandals and press coverage old for decades and i can tell you her mccain is violated a couple of the key rules were herman cain's campaign is in full damage control mode right now aside from the allegations he is clearly guilty of running a bad campaign but if there is new information if it contradicts anything that herman cain has said this will become an issue again. if you think straight i mean i know that sex scandals are the mainstream media's bread and butter they live for this kind of stuff and for really is a scandal here if somebody who's running to be president of the united states doesn't need have a past sexual assault and that's very much worth knowing but the thing here is that well you know comes from anonymous sources about something which happened twelve years ago when well we don't know because the legal records are all sealed so there's no new information the women have come out to talk about it yet i guess they're trying to in court i know there's still going on and on and on and on and

on and on for twenty four freaking hours a day we seriously people enough now let's compare the incessant discussions over how herman cain's campaign is handling the scandal to coverage of another story that's out there pretty big what he asked me. it is at the troubled mortgage giants fannie mae and freddie mac. got nearly thirteen million dollars in bonuses they took wall street bonuses to. fish helm of to publish their government sponsored enterprises these are the same organizations that were approved for unlimited government funding back in july of two thousand and eight it's almost like a dumping ground of bad loans bad ideas but. that's right mortgage giants fannie and freddie both had to be bailed out or now are owned by you and i the taxpayers are giving out almost thirteen million dollars in bonuses to just a handful of executives and for doing what for not handling the housing crisis in

this country for failing to enact programs like camp properly only helping about one million people when there are ten million that are currently underwater in their homes i mean this is just about is that is wall street executives getting bailed out the american people and then raking in record bonuses let's not forget fannie and freddie that zeal in promoting homeownership the fact that they backed so many risky loans the reports have come out saying that they knew of problems way before the crash and never reported that but here it's not like the government and the obama administration can point fingers say those greedy fat cats should be rewarding themselves because it's a government agency that's approving these massive bonuses and so conveniently here the obama administration is staying silent is a perfect example of how the system is wrong all the way around because it doesn't matter if you're in the private sector or if you're working for the government as long as you're at the top then you're a ok enough exactly what my wall street is about but how much time to the mainstream media spend on this story today and i said we see none but spent a good three to four minutes for that clip that we showed you and that's only

because it's in their interest to make the government on fannie and freddie look bad but not because they actually care or think that it's a sign of greater problems in our society they still didn't connect it to wall street or to occupy wall street or the housing crisis that's going to continue to keep our economy down all. that so the mainstream media chooses to miss. well here's some news that should warm the heart of americans that already have an eighty nine percent distrust in our government only a nine percent approval of their congress an analysis by roll call is found from financial disclosure documents and members of congress have only gotten richer during the years since the financial collapse in two thousand and ten members of congress had a collective net worth of more than two billion dollars and that's a nearly twenty five percent increase over their two thousand and eight total but they weren't really doing all that bad in two thousand and eight either with the

congressional total of one point six five billion so this is help put it into perspective for us as to why there is no rush to pass jobs bills or here occupy wall street's demands were discussed as a senior reporter and blogger for think progress to or said thanks so much for joining us tonight so two billion dollars plus collective worth of the members of congress here and is that even include everything or there are some things that are there off the books we have to see where there could be hundreds of millions of dollars more right walls so under the current disclosure rules they're sort of required to disclose their personal assets but they can exclude certain home values and they're also reporting within ranges so the. net worth of x. the net worth is so typically the sort of it's calculations we use like a median age though so i actually don't know exactly where they sit we have a fairly good estimate and here's what i find interesting too within their analysis here decided to kind of compare this to the occupy wall street movement it's

a you know they're so unhappy with the consolidation of wealth in so few hands in this country and congress is just the same way because the top fifty richest members of congress hold eighty percent of the wealth but i think that's giving congress you know that's letting them off a little too easy and the congress is still by far the average member of congress as much. richer i'd say the average american is natural as exactly true and sixty percent of the senate's composition are millionaires and if you actually look at the median sort of net worth of a member of congress is something like half a million dollars whereas the median net worth of like an american household american family is a little bit under a hundred thousand dollars like ninety six thousand dollars so we're already seeing is that the media member of congress actually earns five times as much five times the net worth me than five times as wealthy as sort of the average or the median american family so you know if we're talking about you know a country it's was a democratic legislature in a representative democracy or seeing is not only is it is sort of our wider wealth and income being skewed but also sort of representation is being skewed as well

because i mean part of the problem right is in order to get elected need to have a lot of financial backing from a lot of wealthy people maybe some big corporations maybe some big unions but to even jump in the race you have to have a number of us finances yourself i guess right after the show can't really be a member of politics unless maybe it's a local council i mean that's a huge problem and even if you're a member of congress who isn't wealthy i mean the max baucus is of the world are not wealthy people but they have to and lizzie what does it mean to be able number congress that isn't wealthy making two hundred thousand two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year. is actually fairly middle class is like below six figures even but the problem with people like him even is that they have to list the help of both the people to be able to get where they are so for example you know he's from montana because one of his largest campaign contributors are from new york from wall street right because he figured that the only way you can get to the head of the finance committee is that people like that so even with people who are not wealthy you may not you may have more natural empathy for working class people middle class people

they have to enlist the help of very wealthy people to get elected and that's really a sign of a really corrosive and decayed campaign finance system i want to ask you what you think about for example eleanor holmes who is the representative here in washington d.c. of course i'm going to congress but that's a whole other. very now she's taking part in this thing where the religious organizations have asked her to see what it's like to live off of the amount of money that food stamps if you so that gives you what is it thirty dollars a week and food out or is it a month it's something like four fifty a day. to day do you think that those are sincere attempt is it being done to highlight the fact that there might be cuts right now that americans that need those food programs the most are the ones that are going to be hurt or when you still see members of congress you could have to you know when they're doing well i would lean toward saying it's here because really it's actually only like a dozen members of congress to do you know really four to thirty five members of congress and we have a dozen doing that so i would hope that the few that are doing are actually really

sincere in this effort it's something is that every year and if you go online you can actually find it sort of the recommended sort of budget if you want to do it yourself i mean you see if you can live on for fifty days see if this is maybe the far right likes to like to complain for fifty days now i don't know how anybody could live on you know for fifty a day specially if you're working right here in downtown d.c. even with the incredibly credibly hard thing to do now well i also find interesting is that congress got richer since two thousand and eight so in two thousand and ten they are richer and they were in two thousand and eight meanwhile the rest of the country is suffering because unemployment is going up because we're in a recession because businesses aren't hiring so how is it if they manage to get richer or a lot of it is actually. the upper echelon of the american society. even though they lost wealth and they lost income during the recession they're sort of loss of income while there's nothing like we have to the rest of the country i mean so when i actually did some research and found that their incomes rebounded about fifty percent faster than the rest of the american people and

a lot of that just has to come from the fact that they are from the national on america's side that really hasn't felt this recession in the same way you know the everyone lost well you know when stocks when their assets devalued and so on and so forth but really when you're wealthy you just don't feel as much as the rest of america. and they and more importantly they didn't lose their jobs they have their jobs well many people were out of work so you know that sixty years but whatever else they're doing that they kept them afloat well some people obviously lost their jobs but that's you know that's because of elections that's because the tea partiers i had to come into town but you know one of the things that i feel like it's never fully just explored are these connections these in this insider information that members of congress might have when it comes to what companies are going to do well right i mean the average congressional portfolio must look a lot higher do you think that this kind of insider trading i guess you could call it on you know on capitol hill needs to be examined more yeah i mean there were actually a number of stories that came out. late two thousand and nine about members of

congress for example investing in the big banks and one of the same ones that you know demanded the banking industry wall also sort of blasting stronger regulations on the banking industry were heavily heavily invested. in the very same base they were defending if you can actually go online and find. each member's sort of assets there are required to report them to the public and yeah there's a lot of definitely a lot of connections like that and we've seen members drop you know sort of stocks before big boats or pick up stocks i mean there's this is definitely happens that is that it should be a surprise to anyone now one of the things that we've seen recently are figures that came out that showed that d.c. is the wealthiest metropolitan area metro area in the united states now overtaken silicon valley and one of the stats that came out of there also shows that one in twelve people are lawyers and it's time out of that are they actually lawyers are they lobbyists or are they working for all the lobbyists it's remarkable b.c. actually has the largest proportion of lawyers in the entire country it beats new

york by like a factor i mean it's like ten times more than even new york the state of new york you know most of them are within political law if they're doing things that relate to lobbying or were law firms that were for political candidates or even foreign countries so you know that's a pretty remarkable this is they go along with being the. yes metro area we also have the lowest priority of any metro areas i mean that we don't have a lot of extreme poverty particularly in the eastern half of the city but as far as we're all the political sort of influential people work in the city it's mostly in the north was or in the western half of the city which is one of the most prosperous areas in the entire country certainly has the lowest unemployment rate and any metro area that's right poverty here is runs deepest when us figures came out we found out as well as the fact that it's now the richest area so it just shows you how uneven the society here is that thanks so much for joining us tonight thank you. and years and counting mark a dark and still open chapter in american history when it comes to human rights and he says the obama administration says all the troops in iraq are leaving but how

much are we shipping soldiers and military might around the area instead of really getting out that top they can just go. to the police corruption. test nobody seems to know. that never a pepper sprayed the face right part of the argument that they're being overly dramatic.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for you think you understand it and then something else you hear sees some other part of it and realize that everything is ok. welcome to the big picture.

mr. ten years ago this month president george w. bush signed an executive order authorizing the creation of military tribunals for the detention treatments and trials of certain non-citizens in the war against terrorism at the u.s. base in guantanamo cuba that's right tonight remarking an important chapter of american history that most people don't like to talk about because it's still going on ten years after president bush signed the order one time obey is still home to one hundred seventy one detainee detained deprived of any normal legal protections

and sort of mark a tenth anniversary of this executive order which created the military tribunals to get my retired air force colonel morris davis is speaking out about the conditions there davis was a former chief prosecutor at guantanamo bay he resigned in two thousand and seven and he now says the u.s. has set up a law free zone at the camp speaking to a conference on human rights law in new york davis said that america was great at preaching to others but not so good at practicing what we preach there's a point when enough is enough and you have to look at yourself in the mirror torture has no place in american courts well i have to agree with him there and the center of it so he is seen as a symbol of us human rights abuses around the world and that image has simply never gone away in its ten years of existence now we reported as recently as this july and the international red cross had concerns about waterboarding sleep deprivation beatings and indefinite detention still going on at the facility one office the bush administration refused to discuss the reports of abuse because of national security issues but then when he was running for office back in two thousand and eight then senator obama promised to shut down the facility.

repeatedly but the calls wrong side of what i will follow through on. repeated leave that america doesn't torture but i'm going to make sure that we don't torture those are. those are part and parcel of an effort to regain america's moral stature in the world. now on january twenty second two thousand and nine president obama signed an executive order mandating the closure of guantanamo bay we in the year yep here we are nearly three years into obama's first term and get no it's still open for business when asked about chemo this summer obama tried to hit the president bush was to blame for the facility still being open. but because of the manner in which they were originally capture the circumstances right after nine eleven in which they are tearing it it becomes difficult to try them whether in a article three court or in

a. military commission. releasing them at this stage potentially create greater danger for the american people. nice try president obama yes the way in which they were captured was wrong but like the economy you now own it hit mo under the obama administration some detainees being held have been declared on trial because they've been tortured he signed an official order for indefinite detention which means that they're not going to see a day in court they're going to remain locked up indefinitely and we've also given up on pursuing civilian trials for nine eleven suspects another broken promise by the obama white house and congress has made it pretty hard for the president blocking the transfer of detainees onto u.s. soil but a lot of the legal experts out there would agree that there is a lot more that he could have done so as the markets have anniversary of give here's a facility is here to stay prime example of america's human rights abuses and the obama administration's eventual embrace of the bush war on terror we have to wonder

next year we'll be able to just update this script mark the eleventh anniversary of get most ill being open soundly i'm betting yes. now it's just a little over a week ago that president obama announced that all u.s. troops would be leaving iraq at the end of two thousand and eleven as of course doesn't mean we won't still have contractors or u.s. troops integrated into nato troops in the country but hasn't stopped military analysts and mostly republican lawmakers from crying out and fact twelve members of congress have written a letter saying of this move will likely be viewed as a strategic victory by our enemies but i'm sure we're courting to report in the new york times and this weekend we're not minimizing our presence in the region at all it's quite obvious that actually the obama administration reportedly is going to bolster the american military presence in the persian gulf by sending more troops in kuwait by fostering a new security architecture is they're calling it expanding ties with saudi arabia kuwait reign qatar u.a.e. and oman but integrating air and neighbor patrols and missile defense why on earth

we do that well apparently it's because iran still poses such a great threat let's just face it the tentacles of the us empire are still expanding joining me to discuss this is jack rice former cia officer and criminal defense attorney jack i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight and what do you know so we're taking the troops out of iraq that war is going to be over but now we're just expanding our presence everywhere else around iraq and around iran do you think that this was a predictable move. yeah it's exactly what i expected in fact it's like a game of street of any major city in america you know where's the p.c. keep moving it around but you know it's someplace in this case yesterday moving out of iraq but they really are moving out of the region if you look at the industry and down the road trust me the very same thing is going to happen there they'll just move to the north because we already have bases established there too so we have seen this before but we have the sort of tentacles around the middle east already so we have troops stationed in many many different places and you continue

to do this this is not going to change after we leave iraq this is not going to change after we leave afghanistan what do you think you know because obviously we have a lot of people who think that iran is a huge threat to the united states and iran getting nuclear weapons but at this point don't we essentially have iran surrounded by our troops by certain military operations be they in pakistan in afghanistan or even you know bahrain is on the border but it's pretty close by we have our fifth fleet there. oh it's more that there are so many other places where we have the strategic capabilities and it doesn't take long to sort of surround the sea there's a broader question here in the broader question is is it we have these many troops on the ground if we have this capability on the ground are we providing stability are we actually exacerbating instability so that's one major question because you know here's a perfect example of this we continue down to support these are regimes that we need security share as we continue to support the saudis and others one of the

things that we saw happen just this summer was as we consider can continue to support the saudis and places like bahrain we found that the saudis were more to willing to send their own troops into bahrain to actually push against demonstrators from this sort of arab spring so the idea that we talk about the mark we see the need for people to have a poor race we turn around and do things just like this which undercuts that very same claim and it really highlights this question of america to talk or see certainly true we are in part and i think it is probably makes it very clear where we stand and terms of democratic uprisings and supporting them in bahrain now that we're just going to continue working with them militarily and only strengthen those ties or saudi arabia as well but you know i want to read to you since you're talking about the way the way that we try to sell this i want to read you a quote from secretary of state hillary clinton in regards to this and she said we will have a robust continuing presence throughout the region which is proof of our ongoing commitment to iraq and the future of that region which holds such promise and

should be freed from outside interference to continue on a pathway to democracy is. defined by just a little bit that we're talking about how we are going to interfere in the entire region to make sure that there is no outside interference in the region. you know if you specify what it is it takes me back i recall being in kosovo. camp bondsteel it was a very large base that the americans built in the region and maybe even in the region were talking with me about this back then about this was really a jumping off point that allowed for the americans to leap into the middle east from that quarter as well as so many others in the past i mean i come back to this concept of sort of hypocrisy for this region reason you have to sort of go tear it what it is that the secretary of state says with what we heard from the former national security advisor general jones who was actually talking about the instability in parts of the middle east after the americans called for democracy in places like egypt and almost as if this was

a really bad thing which frankly is more consistent with what we're seeing from secretary of state and so as the americans continue to make these claims they are actually really speak much much louder than their words and again which takes us back to this fundamental question when we have these many troops this much capability this much air power and all of the other issues that are exacerbating problems does it actually make things more unstable unstable inseparably in many of these parts of the world it actually goes out thing is that i think hillary clinton is an incredibly intelligent and i think hillary gets it she knows what she's saying and i think she knows that you know it sounds hypocritical but she also must know that people are really going to colorado don i'm really shocked by the fact the new york times and writing about this story i guess i shouldn't be shocked just wrote a quote but then didn't offer any analysis or didn't even question what it was that she had said and how it doesn't make sense. i think one of the problems i've seen

most of the world journalism is that irrational journalists myself we get i give throughout the middle east multiple times iraq it can stay in africa and elsewhere and what i frequently find is is as journalist will get going and you've seen as to where you'll go in and say well one person says this so you'll go to the other side but the other person says that and sometimes you don't even bother going to together so if you don't even bother to analyze what it is that's being said it's inconsistent and so we don't do that frankly that's lazy more than anything else because you do have to ask that question how is it that the americans simply stayed in the region provides more stability by the way this is really harkens back though after the full persian gulf war we could marry in students they pulled back from iraq the student in substantial numbers but they also moved into saudi arabia so we see this point in the eighty's we can know who saw her construe the point i was making earlier in your our conversation with the americans will be new places like

saudi arabia that's one of the things that produce other interesting individual who will solve a big wad to actually reach out and fight the west again this question of bringing stability which results in instead what. you know and it's interesting to see the way that you know that officials and pundits try to sell this to the american people because i one hand it's the constant fear mongering that iran is out there that al qaeda is out there but that it's also trying to put this fuzzy warm friendly side on it like we're just trying to keep others from interfering and help the spread of democracy i want to switch gears really quickly with you today it's been reported that the obama administration is now asking the pentagon for a plan in terms of a troop presence in afghanistan and twenty fourteen do you think that that's that's a good sign like you're asking them for a plan in terms of how soon can we get out other asking them for a plan and terms of how much or how many people can we keep it. both but let's face it everything has to do with politics right you know everything is true we try to

cater to the left and one side and the placate the right on the other and i think you know i've said this before and i've spent a lot of time talking to a lot of people in afghanistan i remember being in kabul being in kandahar herat other places as well the problem is this the ok or how you should this in the end they we will not win we can't win in afghanistan we don't know who the guys are we don't know who the bad guys are and sadly in many ways we funded both with the pakistani i.s.i. on one side and then the afghans on the other and since we can't figure that out since we expand our operations or shift our operations or change our operations it doesn't really address the fundamental failures that we have already had in the past and sadly i think continue to well do in the future and fortune all the thousands that we're going to have a military presence in the region for a long time to come they are now to have exactly how many more troops are going to go away they definitely haven't told us how much all this is going to cost or in this day on it jack thanks so much for joining us tonight. thank you very much. i

also have we have our tuesday edition of show and tell and we've seen arrests of violence by police at several occupy protests around the country so as legislators passing a last minute laws outlaw the occupations so i want to ask if the freedom of speech and assembly are becoming allusions here in the us. i'm sure that only the military mechanisms can do the work of supreme justice or accountability. i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i pay taxes. but i would characterize the bottom line as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so.