and a look at how the wealth of those who serve in congress has risen by twenty five percent since the start of the financial crisis. welcome to the loaner show we'll get the real headlines with none of the mercy we're going live to washington d.c. now that i had a 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 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 to the 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 we'll have all of that and more food and i clean your dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. all right so it's now day three of the media's obsession with presidential candidate herman cain's maybe or maybe not sex scandal when i say obsession i mean that every network has been covering this story nonstop like full twenty four hour coverage

devoted to it. but 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 herman cain changing his story and that is probably not the story line the campaign wanted studied political scandals and press coverage of them for decades and i can tell you her mccain is violating 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. i ask 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 while we know 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 and yet they're still going on and on and on and on and on and on for twenty four freaking hours a day and 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 one if you ask me. top executives at the troubled mortgage giants fannie mae and freddie mac. got nearly thirteen million dollars in bonuses they took wall street bonuses to. helm of two 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 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 as bad as wall street executives getting bailed out the american people and then raking in record bonuses let's not forget fannie and freddie's zeal in promoting homeownership the fact that they backed so many risky loans the reports of 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 occupy wall street is about but how much time to the mainstream media spend on this story today c.n.n. m.s.n. b.c. 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 is what 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 their government only a nine percent approval of their congress an analysis by roll calls 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 working with a congressional total of one point six five billion so does this help put it into perspective for us as to why there are no rush to pass jobs bills or here occupy wall street's demands we discuss this with me is a senior reporter and blogger for think progress to or so 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 that are 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 report a minimum net worth in

a maximum that was so typically the sort of calculations we use like a median or so so actually we don't know exactly where they said well we have a fairly good estimate and here's what i find interesting to within their analysis here we're all called decided to kind of compare this to the occupy wall street movement it's a you know they are 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 congress is still by far the average member of congress as much. richer i'd say the average american is not trail as exactly true a 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 members of congress are actually five times as much. as high of

a net worth mean they're 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 democratic legislature and are represented democracy what we're seeing is not only is it is sort of our wider wealth and income being skewed but also sort of a representation is being skewed as well yeah because i mean part of the problem right is in order to get elected you 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 you know number of those finances yourself i guess right the average joe can't really be a member of politics unless maybe it's at a local council right now i mean that's a huge problem and even if you're a member of congress who isn't wealthy i mean max baucus is of the world are not wealthy people but they have to in lives what does it mean to be a with member of congress that isn't wealthy making two hundred thousand two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year in boxes cases actually fairly well 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 it's one of his largest can't think of triggers it from new york from wall street right because he figured that the only way you're going to get to the head of the finance committee is if people like that even with people who are not wealthy who 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 norton 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 a few religious organizations have asked her to 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 what about or is it a month it's something like four fifty a day so if it were a day do you think that those are sincere attempts right because it's being done to highlight the fact that there might be budget cuts right now that americans that need those for the programs the most are the ones that are going to be hurt or when

you still see members of congress do you have to be skeptical you know when they're doing that well i would lean toward saying it's sincere because really it's actually like a dozen members of congress to do it really four to thirty five members of congress and we have a dozen doing this so i would hope of the few that are doing actually really sincere this effort if something is done every year and if you go online you can actually find a 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 a day is not i don't know how anybody could live on you know for fifty a day especially if you're working right here in downtown d.c. even it would be incredibly incredibly 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 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 that 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 their sort of 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 peoples and a lot of that just 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 you know the everyone lost well you know when stocks plunged when 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 importantly they didn't lose their jobs they have their jobs well many people were out of work so that you know that six figures 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 election that's because the tea partiers decided 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. two thousand and nine about 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. each member's sort of assets or sort of 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 or big boats i mean there's the definitely happens that is that it shouldn't surprise anyone now what other things 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 down to the 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 in new york by like a factor and you know it's like ten times more than even new york the state of new york you know most of them are within political law and they're doing things like related to lobbying or or law firms that were for political candidates or even foreign countries so you know that's a pretty remarkable as they go along with d.c. being the. at this metro area we also have the lowest poverty 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 where all the political sort of influential people work in this city it's mostly in the north west 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 metro area that's right poverty here is runs deepest when those 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 a society here is that thanks so much for joining us tonight thank you. 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 but how much are we shifting soldiers and military might around in the area instead of really getting out of that topic interests of the.

elite. ten years ago this month then president george w. bush signed an executive order authorizing the creation of military tribunals for the detention treatment and trial of certain non-citizens in the war against terrorism at the u.s. base in guantanamo q but that's right and i were marking 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 want to obey is still home to one hundred seventy one detainees detained deprived of any normal legal protections

and so to 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 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 them there but essentially it is seen as a symbol of us human rights abuses around the world and i didn't ridge has simply never gone away in its ten years of existence now we reported as recently as this july at 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 intend to close guantanamo and i will follow through on that 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 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 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 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 captured the circumstances right after nine eleven in which they are interrogated it becomes difficult to try them whether in a article three court or in

a. military commission. releasing them. at this stage could potentially create greater danger for the american. 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 a day in court they're going to remain locked up indefinitely and they'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 to mark the tenth anniversary of good motive here is that the facility is here to stay a 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 will be able

to just update this script mark the eleventh anniversary of get most ill being open sadly i'm betting yes. now is 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 that 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 in 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 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 to kuwait by fostering a new security architecture as they're calling it expanding ties of 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 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 on the 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 yes they're moving out of iraq but they really are moving out of the region if you look at afghanistan 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 and thought if we have built these sort of tentacles around the middle east already so we have troops stationed in many many different places and

we 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 that think that iran is a huge threat to the united states 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 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 than that there are so many other places where we have the strategic capabilities and it doesn't take long to surface around the sea there's a broader question here in the broader question is is that 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 but you know here's a perfect example of this we continue now to support these operations and 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 down against demonstrators from this sort of arab spring so the idea that we talk about democracy in the need for people to have a voice we turn around and do things just like this which undercuts that very same claim and you can really highlights this question of american hypocrisy sadly but true we unfortunate think of. probably makes it very clear where we stand in terms of democratic uprisings and supporting them in bahrain and 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 you since you're talking about the way the way that we try to sell this 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. do you find that just a little bit odd 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 from that corner 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 terror what it is that the secretary of state says with what we heard from the former national security adviser general jones who was actually talking about the instability in parts of the middle east after the americans call for democracy in places like

egypt and it's almost as if this was a really bad thing which frankly is more consistent with what we're seeing from secretary of state now 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 fundamental question when we have these many troops this much keep ability this much air power and all of the other issues that are exacerbating many problems does it actually make things more unstable unstable inseparably in many of these parts of the world it actually does now thing is that i 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 call around 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 the 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 you get i've been throughout the middle east multiple times in iraq afghanistan africa and elsewhere and what i frequently find is is a journalist will end up going and you've seen as 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 to the other side and you don't even bother to analyze what it is that's being said that'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 was it that the americans simply stayed in the region provides more stability by the way this is really harkens back though after the first gulf war with the americans did is they pull back from iraq they stated kuwait in substantial numbers but they also moved into saudi arabia so we see this point way back in the eighty's but you know you saw harkens to the point that i was making earlier in your our conversation when the americans rolled into places like saudi

arabia that's one of the things that drove this other interesting individual named osama bin ladin to actually reach out and fight the west again this question of bringing stability which results in instability. 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 inside on it like we're just trying to keep others from interfering and help the spread of democracy i want to switch here is 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's that's a good sign like they're asking them for a plan in terms of how soon can we 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 but let's face it everything has to do with politics right. everything is driven with trying

to pander to the left of one side and to placate the right on the other and i think it 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 and other places as well the problem is is that the care how you shot in the sim 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. 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 this tells us 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

i'm going to stay on it jack thanks so much for joining us tonight. thank you very much. i still have we have our tuesday edition of shell intel and we've seen arrests of violence by police at several occupy protests around the country saw as legislators passing a last minute last try to outlaw the occupations so tonight when asked if the freedom of speech and assembly are becoming allusions here in the u.s. .

and broadcasting live and direct from the heart of most of this is our t.v. on sean thomson in the piece i read. ahead of the g. twenty summit in cannes thousands take to the streets in the french riviera to express their anger at the state of the world economy occupy movement activists from around the globe are taking part in the protest amid a heavy police presence the current state of the eurozone is likely to take center stage at the meeting of the world's twenty largest economies. the u.n. says it has uncovered a previously unknown nuclear program in syria according to the i am i excuse me documents were found linking the project to the so-called father of the pakistan nuclear bomb the discovery comes as the damascus claims it has reached an agreement with the arab league and the deadly crackdown on anti-government protesters in. israel reportedly approves of military action including the use of ground forces against gaza after a wave of rocket attacks over the last week.