are they. going to be alone a show where you get the real headlines with none of the mersey are going to live in washington d.c. now that we look at some new figures that show you just how much richer congress has gotten since the financial crash thinking well you know two billion dollars is how much they're worth and we wonder why there are no hurry to create jobs or address occupy wall street concerns then it how's the occupy movement cities across the country showing us what restrictions there are on our freedom of speech and our freedom of assembly going to exist the way they were meant to or 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 that list well includes everybody but us we're going to break down the double speak there will have all of that and more fear and i believe it does have happy hour but first take a look at what the mainstream media has decided to miss. our it's now day three of the media's obsession for presidential candidate herman cain's maybe or maybe not sex scandal but i think obsession i mean that every network has been covering the story nonstop like full twenty four hour coverage devoted to it. but you're going to hear a lot more about herman cain today in those social harassment allegations we're talking about whether he's stoking the fire rather than putting it out there more interviews he does the more inconsistences story about two sets of arrests validations against him in the ninety's we're talking about herman cain changing

his story and that is probably not the story line the campaign wanted i've studied political scandals or the press coverage for decades and i can tell you her mccain is violating the couple of the key rules with 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. and i have to 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 if there 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 we go comes from anonymous sources about something which happened twelve years ago what 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 have they're still going on and on and on and on and on and on for

twenty or pricking hours a day but seriously people i know now 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 when he asked me. com executives at the troubled mortgage giants fannie mae and freddie mac. got nearly thirteen million dollars in bonuses wall street bonuses to. its helm of companies that are 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 are now our own 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 can't 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 as bad as wall street executives getting bailed out the american people and then raking in record bonuses let's not forget that he and freddie 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 them and here it's not like the government and the obama administration can point fingers say those greedy fat cats shouldn't 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 it's 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 and that's exactly what wall street is about but how much time to the mainstream media spend on this story today and i said we see none fox 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 the 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

a congressional total of one point six five billion so this is help put it into perspective for us as to why there are no rush to pass jobs bills are here occupy wall street's demands were discussed this with me as i had to lonnie senior reporter and blogger for think progress to or 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 are there some things that are there off the books we have to assume there could be hundreds of millions of dollars more right 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 they had their board of minimal net worth and actually that was so typically the sort of calculations we use like a median or an average so so i actually don't know exactly where they said we have a fairly good estimate and here's what i find interesting to within their analysis here rocco 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 easily in the congress is still by far the average member of congress as much. richer i'd say the average american is natural has exactly truman 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 where the median net worth of like an american household american family is a little bit under one hundred thousand dollars ninety six thousand dollars so we're already seeing as the media member of congress are experience five times as much five times the net worth mean to 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 a democratic legislature in or a percentage democracy what we're seeing is not only 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 we 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 those finances yourself i guess right after the show can't really be a member of politics unless maybe it's at a local council you know 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 unless he was only to deal with them for congress that isn't wealthy making two hundred thousand two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year because this case is actually fairly below six figures even but the problem with people like him even is that they have to list the help of wealthy people to be able to get where they are so for example you know he's from montana one of his largest can be 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 if you live people like that so even with people who are not wealthy 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 you don't get a vote in congress but that's a whole other. ory now she's taking part in this thing where the religious organizations have asked her if you see what it's like to live off of the amount of money that food stamps would give you so that gives you what is it thirty dollars a week and food out or is it a month it's something like for fifty days. a day do you think if those are sincere attempts this is being done to highlight the fact that there might be budget cuts right now that americans that need those programs the most are the ones that are going to be hurt or when you still see members of congress have to be skeptical you know an argument that well i would lean toward saying it's here because really it's actually like a dozen members of congress to do really border thirty five members of congress and we have a dozen doing this so i would hope that the few that are doing are actually really sincere this effort is something that is. every year and if you go online you can

actually find 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 a day and see if. maybe the far right likes to like to complain for fifty a day is not i don't know how anybody could live on you know for fifty days especially if you're working right here in downtown d.c. even it would be incredibly credibly hard thing to do now what i also find interesting is that congress got richer since two thousand and eight so in two thousand and ten they are richer than they were in two thousand and eight meanwhile the rest of the country is suffering because unemployment's going out because we're in a recession because businesses aren't hiring so housing. 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 a loss of income while there's nothing like what happened to the rest of the country i mean so when i actually did some research and found their incomes rebounded about fifty percent faster than the rest of the american people and

a lot of this has to come from the fact that they are from a national on america's idea that really hasn't felt this recession in the same way . everyone lost well you know when stocks plunged 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 did and more and more importantly they didn't lose their jobs they have their jobs available many people are out of work so that you know that sixty years on top of whatever else they're doing that 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 a company 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 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 capitol hill needs to be examined more yeah i mean there were actually a number of stories that came out as a two thousand and nine members of congress for example investing in the big banks

and a lot of the same ones that you know demanded the 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 you can actually go online and find out. each member's sort of assets are sort of required to report them to the public and yeah there's a lot of definitely a lot of nations like that and we've seen members drop you know sort of stocks before big boats or big i mean there's this is definitely how it 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 show that d.c. is the wealthiest metropolitan area or metro area in the united states it's 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 found that are they actually lawyers are they lobbyists or are they working for all the lobbyists that you think that works it's remarkable d.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 city of new york you know most of them are within political law and they're doing things that relate to lobbying or or law firms that were for political candidates or even foreign countries so you know that's a pretty remarkable statistic go along with being the. well the as much area we also have the lowest party 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 in any major area that's right poverty here is runs deepest on 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 an even society here is that thanks so much for joining us tonight thank you. so to come tonight ten years and counting mark a dark and still open chapter in american history when it comes to human rights abuses and the obama administration says all the troops in iraq are leaving how

much are we shifting soldiers and military might around in the area instead of really coming out of that topic interest. was. there the police corruption. like what a protest nobody seems to know. but never a proper straight face but hard to be argument that they're being overly dramatic. you know sometimes you see

a story and it seems so for things you understand it and then something else you hear sees some other part of it and realize that everything is ok. i'm charging welcome to the big picture.

mr. ten years ago this month then president george w. bush signed an executive order authorizing the creation of military tribunals for the detention a treatment and trial of certain non-citizens in the war against terrorism at the u.s. base in guantanamo he what that's right and i 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 guantanamo bay is still home to one hundred seventy one detainees detained deprived of any normal legal protections and sort of mark the 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 the former chief prosecutor at one time a baby 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 but eventually he was seen as a symbol of us human rights abuses around the world and i didn't ridge has simply never gone away and it's 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 a definite 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. i've said repeatedly but

i'm going to close guantanamo and i will follow through on i've said repeatedly that america doesn't torture and i'm going to make sure that we don't torture those are. those are part and parcel of an effort to gain 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 within the year yet here we are nearly three years into obama's first term and get mo is still open for business and when asked about him in the 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 captured the circumstances right after nine eleven in which they are terribly that it becomes difficult to try them whether article three court or in

a. military commission. releasing them at this stage could potentially create greater danger for the broken. nice try president obama yes the way in which they were captured was wrong but like the economy you now own it get mo so under the obama administration some detainees being held have been declared undriveable because they've been tortured he's signed an official order for indefinite detention which means that they're not going to see it in court they're going to remain locked up indefinitely and they also given up on pursuing civilian trials for nine eleven suspects another broken promise by the obama white house or 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 mark the tenth anniversary of good motive here is that the facility is here to say 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 i'll be able to just update this mark the eleventh

anniversary of get most building open sadly i'm betting yes. now was 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 this move will likely be viewed as a strategic victory by our enemies but don't you worry cording to report in the new york times from this weekend we're not minimizing our presence in the region at all quite the opposite 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 as they're calling it expanding ties with saudi arabia kuwait bahrain qatar u.a.e. and oman but integrating air and neighbor patrols and missile defense now why on

earth we do that well apparently it's because iran still poses such a great threat so let's just face it the tentacles of the u.s. empire are still expanding you and me to discuss this is jack rice former cia officer and criminal defense attorney chuck i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight and letting 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 this was a predictable move. yeah it's exactly what i expected in fact it's one big game of the street of any major city in america you know where's the peace you keep moving it around but you know it's someplace in this case yes they're moving out of iraq but they really are moving out of the region if you look at it it's going to 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 we have built the sort of typical 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 as the really does can stay away i think you know because obviously we have a lot of people that 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 pakistan 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 capability 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 or 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 a new security shift as we continue to support the saudis and others one of the things that we saw happen just this summer was as we considered can continue to

support the saudis in places like bahrain we found that the saudis were more than 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 democracy and the need for people to have a voice to turn around and do things just like this which undercuts that very same claim and you can really highlights this question of america if you talk or see certainly true the unfortunate i think of us 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 are going to a quote from secretary of state hillary clinton in regards to this and she said that 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. do you find bad 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. yeah it is fascinating is that it takes me back i recall being in kosovo and camp bondsteel is a very large base that the americans built in the region and many even in the region were talking to me about this back then about this was really a jumping off point that allowed for the americans to leap into the middle east for 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 give tara 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 he says 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 their actions really speak much much louder than their words and again which takes us back to this for the better question when we have these many troops this much capability this much air power and all of the other issues that are exacerbating your problems those that actually make things more unstable and stable inseparably in many of these parts of the world it actually goes out thing is that i think hillary clinton is an incredibly intelligent woman 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 collar out on 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 a chance that and how it doesn't make sense. i think one of the problems that i've

seen is that in the world journalism is that irrational journalists myself you get i've been throughout the middle east multiple iraq afghanistan africa and elsewhere and what i frequently find is is as journalist will end up going you see news to where you'll go in and say well one person says this will go to the other side but the other person says that and sometimes you don't even bother going together so i think you know you don't bother to analyze what it is that 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 the question how is it that the americans simply stayed in the region provides more stability by the way this is really harkens back to after the fall don't work with the americans did is they pulled back from iraq he stayed in kuwait in substantial numbers and they also moved into saudi arabia so we see this we back eighty's i think you know you saw her construe the point i was making earlier in your our conversation when the americans ruled in places like

saudi arabia that's one of the things that produce other interesting individual named osama bin ladin to actually fight the west again this question of bringing stability which results in instability. 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 two thousand and fourteen do you think that that's that's a good sign like you're asking them for a plan in terms of how things will get out or they're asking them for a plan in terms of how much he or how many people can we keep it. both and let's face it everything has to do with politics right now everything is driven with

trying to pay or to the left one side and the placate the right on the other and i think i've said this before and i've spent a lot of time talking to a lot of people in afghanistan or what we're doing in kabul being in kandahar and herat and other places as well the problem is the ok or how you should assume the end we will not win we can't win in afghanistan we don't know who the good 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. 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 failure is that we've already had in the past and sadly i think continue to look well to do in the future and partially all the thousands that we're going to have a military presence in the region for a long time to come they haven't announced yet 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 intel and we've seen arrests violence by police at several occupy protests around the country those legislators passing a last minute last try to outlaw the occupation so said i want to ask you for freedom of speech and assembly are becoming allusions here in the us. into it and we're mechanisms to do the work to bring justice for. all i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i pay taxes. but i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so sorely sleep you think you understand it.