THE OVERTON WINDOW (41 page)

See also:
Barbara Hollingsworth, “Barbara Hollingsworth: Fannie Mae Owns Patent on Residential ‘Cap and Trade’ Exchange,”
The Washington Examiner,
April 20, 2010,
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Fannie-Mae-owns -patent-on-residential-_cap-and-trade_-exchange-91532109 .html

In Chapter 20 we get a chance to hear Molly begin to state her case, and she focuses on the economy. If you were still doubting that both political parties are driving us toward the same place at different speeds, the first statistic she cites is pretty eye-opening:

National debt has doubled since 2000: Mark Knoller,
“National Debt Up $2 Trillion on Obama’s Watch,”
CBSNews.com
,
March 16, 2010,
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20000576503544.html

Bailout money going overseas: Eamon Javers,
“AIG Ships Billions in Bailout Abroad,”
Politico,
March 15, 2009,
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20039.html

See also:
Sharyl Attkisson,
“Following Bailout Money to Tax Havens,”
CBSNews.com,
February 23, 2009,
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/23/eveningnews/main4822689.shtml

In Chapter 21: Ragnar Benson, whose books we hear about here, is the pen name of a survivalist author who has written some pretty edgy books over the years. (The story goes that the pseudonym
Ragnar Benson
was originally borrowed from the name of a construction company
outside Chicago.) Benson’s book
Mantrapping
(which is actually available on Amazon.com) opens with the line: “Without question, man can be the most difficult animal on earth to trap …” But, as Molly tells Noah, “he’s mellowed out since then” and his more recent books deal with survival and self-sufficiency techniques.

Ragnar Benson:
Mary Roach, “The Survivalist’s Guide to Do-it-Yourself Medicine,” December 17, 1999,
http://www.salon.com/health/col/roac/1999/12/17/survivalists

See also:
Paladin Press’s list of books by Benson:
http://www.paladin-press.com/category/Ragnar_Benson

More from Chapter 21:

“Cherish, therefore, the spirit …”:
Thomas Jefferson, Merrill D. Peterson, The Political Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Jefferson Foundation, 1996),
http://books.google.com/books?id=MlhB2iCTq60C

Washington, wooden dentures and the cherry tree:
“Facts and Falsehoods about George Washington,”
http://www.mountvernon.org/visit/plan/index.cfm/pid/808/

“These are the times that try men’s souls.”
Thomas Paine,
The American Crisis,
http://books.google.com/books?id=vDq6AAAAIAAJ

Many in Washington want us to start looking at regulation as a good thing, but here’s an example of what can happen when government gets to regulate existing law. Sure, the Second Amendment says that you are allowed to own a gun, but it doesn’t say that it has to be easy! In New
York City they’ve taken that to the extreme by crafting an application process that can take well over six months and cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.

Obtaining a gun permit in New York City:
NYPD Handgun Licensing Information,
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/permits/handgun_licensing_information.shtml

See also:
NYPD Licensing FAQ,
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/permits/gun_licensing_faq.shtml

See also:
A first-person account of the licensing process: Glenn Beck,
Arguing with Idiots
(New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2009): 49.

See also:
An internet account of the licensing process:
http://angrynyer.com/?p=422

The militia was every citizen:
Jonathan Elliott,
The Debates in the Several State Conventions of the Adoption of the Federal Constitution 425
(2nd ed., J. B. Lippincott 1836).

See also:
James Madison, “The Federalist Number 46,” in
The Federalist Papers,
eds. George W. Carey and James McClellan (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2001): 244.

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again”:
Thomas Paine,
Common Sense,
http://books.google.com/books?id=e0oqAAAAYAAJ

Jonathan Mayhew “No taxation without representation”:
Raja Mishra and LeMont Calloway, “Vandals Tear a Bible in Half,
Ransack Old West Church,”
Boston Globe,
August 12, 2006,
http://
www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/08/12/vandals_tear_a_bible_in_half_ransack_old_west_church/

In Chapter 22:

Nuclear materials flown from Minot to Barksdale Air Force Base:
Michael Hoffman, “Commander Disciplined for Nuclear Mistake,”
Military Times,
September 5, 2007,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2007-09-05-b-52_N.htm

In Chapter 23:

For entertainment purposes only we present the
Orange-box hacker tool:
http://www.artofhacking.com/files/ob-faq.htm

In Chapter 27 we reference John O’Neill, the former FBI antiterrorism expert who had been sounding alarm bells on al Qaeda. O’Neill began his new job at the World Trade Center in New York City on August 23, 2001.

John O’Neill and al Qaeda:
“The Man Who Knew,”
Frontline,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/

In Chapter 31:

“A Republic, if you can keep it”:
Michael Richards,
A Republic If You Can Keep It: The Foundation of the American Presidency
(Westport, CT: Greenport Press, 1987),
http://books.google.com/
books?id=ItOARcaN54sC

“Turkish girl, 16, buried alive for talking to boys”:
Robert Tait, “Turkish Girl, 16, Buried Alive for ‘Talking to Boys,’”
The
Guardian,
February 4, 2010,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/04/girl-buried-alive-turkey

“… the useless eaters on the savage side of the bell curve”:
This quote is modeled after many of the real life arguments in favor of eugenics, in all of its many faces and forms.

George Bernard Shaw:
“I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly appointed board just as he might come before the income tax commissioner… . Just put them there and say ‘sir,’ or madam, ‘now will you be kind enough to justify your existence. If you can’t justify your existence, if you’re not pulling your weight in the social group, if you’re not producing what you consume, or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.’”

—From Shaw’s speech as shown in Glenn Beck’s
“The Revolutionary Holocaust: Live Free or Die,”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583732,00.html

Theodore Roosevelt:
“Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind… . Some day we will realize that the prime duty, the inescapable duty, of the good citizen of the right type is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world; and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type.”

—From a letter to Charles Benedict Davenport on January 3, 1913

Margaret Sanger:
“The mating of the moron with a person of sound stock may … gradually disseminate this trait far and wide
until it undermines the vigor and efficiency of an entire nation and an entire race. This is no idle fancy. We must take it into account if we wish to escape the fate that has befallen so many civilizations in the past.”

—From Sanger’s book “The Pivot of Civilization,” page 176

In Chapter 34:

Paraquat:
“Facts about Paraquat,” U.S. Centers for Disease Control,
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/paraquat/basics/facts.asp

In Chapter 36 we use some dramatic license to show how the other half flies when they’re forced to travel commercially. And who knows, Natalie Portman might even be able to actually fly without an ID if she found the right TSA agent:

Airline VIP liaisons:
Gabe Weisert, “How the celebrities fly,”
Forbes Traveler,
October 11, 2006,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15133601

In Chapter 37:

“I have sworn upon the altar of God …”: Thomas Jefferson, John P. Foley,
The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia: A Comprehensive Collection of the Views Of
(Funk & Wagnalls, 1900),
http://books.google.com/books?id=ZTIoAAAAYAAJ

“I shall now enter on the duties to which my fellow-citizens …”: Thomas Jefferson, John P. Foley,
The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia: a comprehensive collection of the views of
(Funk & Wagnalls, 1900),
http://books.google.com/books?id=ZTIoAAAAYAAJ

In Chapter 38, we again see Danny Bailey’s conspiratorial side come out. He mentions, for example, that there was a training exercise going on in London on the morning of the 7/7 bombings. That is completely true, but this is a good example of the difference between something being a fact and an assumption that is
based
on fact.

The facts of this incident in London on 7/7 are hardly in doubt: A crisis management company, run by a man with Scotland Yard ties, held a terror-drill exercise on the morning of July 7 involving multiple subway bombings. Later that day, the drill played out in real life in almost exactly the same way and in almost exactly the same locations.

No one disagrees on those events, yet those facts are interpreted in widely varying ways. For example, Danny Bailey recounts those events to FBI Agent Kearns as though the corporate drill might’ve been some kind of “cover story” for the British government’s own role in the real bombings. But slightly more research into the exercises held that morning reveals why the mainstream media didn’t find that to be such a plausible scenario.

In a Channel 4 News article titled “Coincidence of bomb exercises?” (see:
http://www.channel4.com/news/article.jsp?id=109010
), Nicholas Glass points out that the bombing scenario that morning was one of three that the company was working on. More important, there were no physical resources deployed anywhere in the city, and the drill involved a few people sitting around a conference table talking about how they would respond. In other words, if this drill was supposed to be the government’s alibi, the perpetrators would probably be serving life in prison right now.

In response to the 7/7 conspiracies, Peter Power, the crisis management executive who ran the drills, issued a fairly clear-cut statement in which he responded to what he called the “inaccurate/naïve/ignorant/ hostile” accusations being made. Of course, no matter how persuasive his statement was, conspiracy theories always have the same convenient
response to fall back on:
Of course he said that, he’s probably a government agent.

My point is that there is great danger in the way facts can be spun or strung together to give credibility to what is otherwise a wild-eyed conspiracy theory. It is our responsibility to look at everything with a skeptical eye, and also to be aware that many will try to twist reality to serve their own agenda or reinforce their worldview.

Terrorism drills run in London on morning of 7/7 bombings: Judi McLeod,
“Business Exec Confirms Same-Time-as-Attack Underground Bombing Exercise,”
Canada Free Press,
July 14, 2005,
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2005/cover071405.htm

See also:
Peter Power interview on
ITV News
July 7, 2005:
http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKvkhe3rqtc

Haroon Rashid Aswat tried to set up terrorist training camp in Oregon:
Alan Cowell, “Briton Sought on U.S. Terror Charges Appears in London Court,”
New York Times,
August 9, 2005,
http://
www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/international/europe/09london.html

Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta:
Terry McDermott, “Seeing What We Want to See; How Could It Be That, Despite the Facts, People—and Computers—Place One of the Sept. 11 Hijackers in Places He Probably Wasn’t?”
Los Angeles Times,
August 26, 2005.

In Chapter 39:

“We have no choice” on the financial bailouts:
There are many great examples of panicked reaction from our leaders as the
financial crisis unfolded and wore on. For example, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said: “If we don’t do this, we may not have an economy on Monday.”

See also:
Joe Nocera, “36 Hours of Alarm and Action as Crisis Spiraled,”
New York Times,
October 2, 2008,
http://www.newsweek.com/id/197810/page/1

Bailout recipients:
“Tracking the $700 Billion Bailout,”
The New York Times,
http://projects.nytimes.com/creditcrisis/recipients/table

“Let justice be done, though the heavens fall”:
“The States: Though the Heavens Fall,” October 12, 1962,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,829233,00.html