Dean phrases his post as a question ("Did we really go to the moon? Really. Your thoughts....") but his belief in the no-moon-landing conspiracy theory is nothing new. In the May 15, 2006 Weekly Standard article, What Would Jesus Rap?, Matt Labash wrote:
. . . He is also a gold-plated conspiracy theorist who will readily hold forth on the mysterious plane crashes of Paul Wellstone and John Kennedy Jr., how Oswald didn't act alone, how O.J. Simpson might've been framed ("He's driving down the freeway, all of the sudden there's this helicopter on his truck--how convenient!"), and how the moon-landing was faked in a television studio. We disagree so vehemently on this last point that he starts polling his assemblies on the subject just to settle the dispute. To what should be the chagrin of us all, apparently about 35 percent of public school students and teachers believe Neil Armstrong deserves an Oscar for his star turn in that NASA movie. . . .
Good times.
It has been reported that Dean's ministry is no more, but he bravely carries on with a crew of at least two staffers. Dean gained national attention in 2011 when a prayer he gave as chaplain for the day at the Minnesota House was redacted after he questioned President Obama's faith and when he filed a lawsuit suing Rachel Maddow and others for reporting what he said on The Sons of Liberty Radio show.
Screenshot: Bradlee Dean trolling Facebook about the moon landing.
Note: The conspiracy theory that Senator Wellstone's plane crash was no accident is shared by people across the political spectrum. Bluestem Prairie does not share this notion.
If you enjoyed reading this post, consider giving a donation via mail (P.O. Box 108, Maynard MN 56260) or paypal:
Inspired by Bradlee Dean's melodramatic flag-waving photos, a modest Bluestem Prairie reader submitted the meme above.
As readers know, Dean gained national attention for a prayer, redacted by the Republican-controlled Minnesota House, delivered in 2011 when the toxic metal preacher, serving as chaplain of the day, questioned President Obama's faith. He stayed on the national radar when he tried suing Rachel Maddow for defamation when she ran a clip from his radio show.
There's more, of course, and liberals are always to blame for everything.
Image: A reader prepared this satiric meme. We're waiting for Bradlee Dean to blame the cold snap on Mayor Betsy Hodges' One Minneapolis as a climate control conspiracy (no temperatures above 1 degree), rather than a call for unity. (Ok, we stole the One Minneapolis joke from Stacey Burns' Facebook page).
If you enjoyed reading this post, consider giving a donation via mail (P.O. Box 108, Maynard MN 56260) or paypal:
Detached from all context, the meme has spread widely across the Internet. On the Sons of Liberty Facebook, 572 people liked the image, and 709 fans shared it.
The SOLR caption: "Right on. Look at what America has tolerated."
The blurb for American Fascists at Amazon Books suggests that Dean's fans might gain new understanding if they read the tome:
Twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists first spoke of the United States becoming a Christian nation that would build a global Christian empire, it was hard to take such hyperbolic rhetoric seriously. Today, such language no longer sounds like hyperbole but poses, instead, a very real threat to our freedom and our way of life. In American Fascists, Chris Hedges, veteran journalist and author of the National Book Award finalist War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, challenges the Christian Right's religious legitimacy and argues that at its core it is a mass movement fueled by unbridled nationalism and a hatred for the open society.
Hedges, who grew up in rural parishes in upstate New York where his father was a Presbyterian pastor, attacks the movement as someone steeped in the Bible and Christian tradition. He points to the hundreds of senators and members of Congress who have earned between 80 and 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups as one of many signs that the movement is burrowing deep inside the American government to subvert it. The movement's call to dismantle the wall between church and state and the intolerance it preaches against all who do not conform to its warped vision of a Christian America are pumped into tens of millions of American homes through Christian television and radio stations, as well as reinforced through the curriculum in Christian schools. The movement's yearning for apocalyptic violence and its assault on dispassionate, intellectual inquiry are laying the foundation for a new, frightening America.
American Fascists, which includes interviews and coverage of events such as pro-life rallies and weeklong classes on conversion techniques, examines the movement's origins, its driving motivations and its dark ideological underpinnings. Hedges argues that the movement currently resembles the young fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s, movements that often masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and were willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power. The Christian Right, like these early fascist movements, does not openly call for dictatorship, nor does it use physical violence to suppress opposition. In short, the movement is not yet revolutionary. But the ideological architecture of a Christian fascism is being cemented in place. The movement has roused its followers to a fever pitch of despair and fury. All it will take, Hedges writes, is one more national crisis on the order of September 11 for the Christian Right to make a concerted drive to destroy American democracy. The movement awaits a crisis. At that moment they will reveal themselves for what they truly are -- the American heirs to fascism. Hedges issues a potent, impassioned warning. We face an imminent threat. His book reminds us of the dangers liberal, democratic societies face when they tolerate the intolerant.
Here's the speech from which the quotation in the meme is drawn; you'll hear the remarks beginning at 12:11:
Screenshot: Conservative Christian Bradlee Dean's Sons of Liberty Radio, which opposes the separation of church and state, posted this Chris Hedges meme.
As the year closes its accounts, Bluestem thinks it's time to call the roll on the survivors of Bradlee Dean's You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International/Sons of Liberty Radio Ministry.
Jake McMillian MacAulay continues to work at the Institute on the Constitution, which is run by white supremacist Michael Peroutka. He still looks back fondly though, posting old photos of himself with Famous Faces in an album created December 19 from the salad days of YCR. The photo of MacAulay and former governor Tim Pawlenty is drawn from this Facebook album.
Well said: Think again about our national problems. We are astronomically in debt, plagued with floods, droughts, fires, hurricanes, and tornadoes. Cancer is killing millions. Mass shootings are commonplace. Our prisons are full to overflowing. Millions have lost their homes and are unemployed. Disease is in our soil and food. We are fighting wars we cannot win, have sleeper-cell terrorists, illegal aliens, bugs in our beds, bus [sic] in baby food, and wood-eating bus [sic] destroying our homes. Bees are disappearing. Wild animals attack people, and national TV has become one big advertisement for drug companies, revealing how sick this nation has become. The churches are filled with adulterers, pedophiles and hypocrites, and businesses are filled with corruption.
All these things are the result of a nation that has turned its back on God. We have lost His blessing. Calls for political change are nothing but a blunt axe. We need to stop as a nation, and sharpen the axe by turning to God--through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.
Photos: Former Governor Tim Pawlenty and Jake MacAulay (above, via Facebook); A bear in the Kashmir Valley, India where wild animal attacks are up. Bluestem can't blame Jesus for that (below, via the India Times).
If you enjoyed reading this post, consider giving a donation via mail (P.O. Box 108, Maynard MN 56260) or paypal:
Article II of the United States Constitution outlines the powers that give rise to the use of the phrase "Commander in Chief" as a synonym for the President. Cornell's Legal Information Institute explains:
Article II Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, the Commander in Chief clause, states that "[t]he President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States." . . .
It's the sort of delusion that caused then-Speaker Kurt Zellers to order Dean's morning prayer questioning Obama's faith redacted from the Minnesota House record, while calling in another chaplain for the do over.
If you thought the U.N. International Baccalaureate and federal No Child Left Behind educational schemes were bad enough, you might want to look a little deeper.
In light of the 9/11 attacks, you would think the current administration would use a little prudence if it were sincerely concerned about a radical Muslim threat. When Obama took his oath of office, he instead defied America in numerous ways. He has given $1.5 billion to Muslim-led Egypt in foreign aid, shortly after the Muslim Brotherhood declared war on the United States. This is the same man that said America is “no longer a Christian nation,” followed by a reference that America may be described as a Muslim nation.
Interestingly enough, in recent years American public schools have been indoctrinated with the Muslim religion. Studies have shown over 500 historical errors in public school textbooks, giving an Islamic slant to our youth. . . .
Dean claims that public school children are taught to fast for Ramadan, memorize verses of the Quran, made to adopt a Muslim name and stage a jihad. We're bracing for a rash of mailbox baseball jihads out here in sunny Chippewa County, by golly.
He continues, citing Islamophobe Brigitte Gabriel as a source; we're surprised he didn't use the National Report satire as well:
How did this happen? The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Muslim Council, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Clinton administration (much of what surrounds this current administration) joined together to create an environment that opened the door to Muslim teaching, while attacking anyone who speaks of the Christian religion in public schools.
In addition, there are over 225 Muslim schools in the Untied States of America – about 50,000 children who are being taught to, and I quote Brigitte Gabriel with ACT for America, “foster an environment of hate, loathing, and resentment toward Western culture, Jews, Shiites, secular Muslims and non-Muslims.”
No religious freedom or school choice for you, Muslims! As for the American Civil Liberties Union fostering Islamic indoctrination in public schools, that should come as cold comfort for the folks who ran the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy charter school, commonly known as TiZA, which closed its doors in 2011 following a legal battle with the American Civil Liberties Union over misuse of public funding for Islamic religious education.
. . . Sitting in his cluttered office behind scattered papers and folders, [Minnesota ACLU Director Chuck] Samuelson says he never expected the lawsuit to become the biggest in the Minnesota ACLU's history. The suit, filed in January 2009, continues on and contains 700 filings at last count. It names Islamic Relief and the Department of Education as co-defendants. It has cost the ACLU more than $300,000, and that's with pro bono legal representation.
"This is more than we've spent on all of our previous cases in the last 60 years combined," Samuelson says.
The complaint accuses TiZA of violating the separation of church and state. It also claims that the school has a secrecy oath mandating "that information about the operations of TiZA be withheld from the public."
Other than that, maybe Dean is on to something.
Image: Dean's new meme about President Obama being a secret Muslim.
If you enjoyed reading this post, consider giving a donation via mail (P.O. Box 108, Maynard MN 56260) or paypal:
A community group in St. Cloud has applied for a low-power FM radio license from the FCC that would allow them to broadcast news and music for Somali-Americans in and around St. Cloud.
Organizers said they expect to receive approval from the FCC as soon as this week, and that they hope to start broadcasting on the air by spring.
For more than a year, KVSC-FM at St. Cloud State University and the nonprofit St. Cloud Area Somali Salvation Organization worked together to create St. Cloud Somali Radio. In a project funded partially by a state Legacy grant, community members launched a 24-hour webstream of Somali music and news in March.
Mohamoud Mohamed, executive director of SASSO, said expanding to the airwaves was the next logical step. He said the radio station will serve the estimated 13,000 Somali-American immigrants who live in the area, many of whom speak primarily Somali.
Collins reports that the project will educate its listeners about their own history, civic engagement, the United States Constitution and other topics. The project initially faced distrust by some within the Somali community, but won over skeptics who had feared mischief; now it anticipates some resistance from those who fear or resent Somalis living in the area.
Greater Minnesota Worker Center established in St. Cloud
Protesters gathered Tuesday outside a St. Cloud temporary employment agency to decry what they call its shoddy treatment of workers.
At least 60 protesters lined 25th Avenue South outside the St. Cloud office of The Work Connection, a St. Paul-based agency. They criticized the agency’s use of a pay-card method to disburse workers’ wages, said the agency has fired workers unfairly and treats many workers, particularly Somali workers, with disrespect.
Protesters also called on St. Cloud-based GNP Company, which contracts with The Work Connection to fill jobs at its Cold Spring processing facility, to hire workers directly.
The event was organized by the Greater Minnesota Worker Center, a new St. Cloud-based group that aims to help low-wage workers get better pay and working conditions.
One of the workers Sommerhauser interviewed told the Times that The Work Connection singles out Somali workers for exploitation:
[Mustafe] Abdulahi said some of what he describes as poor treatment of workers by The Work Connection seems to be directed at Somalis and other immigrants.
He said people who don’t speak flawless English face curt treatment from its staff and sometimes are unfairly eliminated from consideration for job placement.
“We are expecting that they will treat us equally and also that they will treat our community as other agencies do,” Abdulahi said.
The Labor Education Service at the U documents the action in this video:
. . .Last night—Worker Center Watch, a new website dedicated to attacking labor-affiliated activist groups like OUR Walmart, Restaurant Opportunities Center, and Fast Food Forward—began sponsoring advertisements on Twitter to promote smears against the protests planned for Black Friday. In one video sponsored by the group, activists demanding a living wage and better working conditions for workers are portrayed as lazy “professional protesters” who “haven’t bothered to get jobs themselves.” . . .
TheNation.com has discovered that Worker Center Watch was registered by the former head lobbyist for Walmart. Parquet Public Affairs, a Florida-based government relations and crisis management firm for retailers and fast food companies, registered the Worker Center Watch website. ..
Check it out.
Estar in el Prairie in Stevens County
Over in Stevens County, the organizers of the Estar in el Prairie have launched a Facebook page to get the word out for an innovative project in the West Central county that's home to the University of Minnesota- Morris campus.
Portraits of Western Minnesota’s Emerging Latino Community Retratos de nuestra nueva comunidad latina
Description
From 2000 to 2010, the Latino population in Steven’s County increased by 234%. In order to put faces and stories to this number, we are pairing photographers in the Morris area with Latino members of the community. There are two goals associated with this project.
1. Document this migration. We ask participants to share positive experiences in the community and write about them in both English and Spanish. Photographers then take photos of the participants holding a white board with each phrase.
2.Create a space for communication. Given the cultural and language barriers many new immigrants face, connection between established communities and new groups is often difficult. We hope that this project can begin to create relationships between photographers and participants that extend into the greater community and future.
We have already paired six photographers with participants and received eight pairs of photos (examples attached). At this phase of our project, we are seeking funds to professionally print 20 photos (10 pairs.) We plan to showcase the prints in prominent locations around Morris such as the PRCA, Common Cup, and the library. We have also been approached by CURE in Montevideo concerning a travelling exhibit throughout Western Minnesota.
Check out and like the Facebook page. The photos are gorgeous.
Photos: Yusuf and Prchal talk in a studio at St. Cloud State University’s KVSC 88.1 FM in Stewart Hall 9middle, via Kismaayo Daily).Workers in St. Cloud (middle) via MN AFL-CIO ; a photo from the Estar in el Prairie (below) Paul Cortes and Keni Zenner as part of the portrait project. Copyright 2013, Nic McPhee. Please credit the photographer and better yet, like the page on Facebook.
If you enjoyed reading this post, consider giving a donation via mail (P.O. Box 108, Maynard MN 56260) or paypal:
All of the statements, opinions, and views expressed on this site by Sally Jo Sorensen are solely her own, save when she attributes them to other sources.
The opinions, statements, and views of contributing writers are their own.
Sorensen, editor and proprietor of Bluestem Prairie, serves clients in the business and nonprofit sectors. While progressive in outlook, she does not caucus with any political party.
Recent Comments