There’s a must-read piece about Christian rocker and gay-bashing minister, Bradlee Dean posted at The Awl. Dean is a member of the group, Junkyard Messiah, a Christian Constitutionalist radio host and the founder of “You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International,” an anti-homosexual “ministry” who have been allowed to take their hateful bullshit into 330 classrooms around the country.

This guy even wrote a book called My War (ring any bells?) and has had his “ministry” not only endorsed, but prayed for, by Rep. Michele Bachmann, one of the dumbest people ever to hold national elected office in this country. Listen here:
 

 
My War is also the title of a documentary film about YCRBUCHI and Dean, which will be premiering Thursday, October 21, in Plymouth, Minnesota.

Here’s one excerpt from piece, where the author, Abe Sauer, asks The Awl’s readers if they can tell the difference between Dean’s supposedly Christian utterings and things Hitler said. Betcha can’t tell them apart. Think about the 330 classrooms full of impressionable children being spoon-fed this garbage by someone they might perceive as an authority figure. No, of course there would be no connection between the propagation of such quasi-fascist garbage and the recent wave of gay bullying and suicides:

It’s understandable that the Bradlee-Adolf comparison might be dismissed as a lark, a Godwin’s Nazi Law meta-enablement.

So take the below selection of Bradlee Dean and Adolf Hitler quotes and try to correctly attribute them:

1) It’s time for everyone in this country to return to God and engage in His battles to take back the land that was entrusted to us.
2) We want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess.
3) It’s time to turn back to the One who gave us this blessed nation.
4) We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit.
5) It is plain to see that the judgments of God are upon our country.
6) How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.
7) Government is to be the force of law, ruling in the positive, by bringing a negative to crime. The whole purpose of government is to maintain peace in the land with righteous judgment.
8) My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers,
9) As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.
10) Christian men and women, in this fight for right you are fighting for your nation, for your liberties, your happiness, and your peace; for unless Christ and His commandments are maintained, these will most certainly be destroyed
11) I felt condemned at every step that I took, and at times, I would even try to ignore my own conscience because it was so overwhelming.
12) In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders.
13) The Jews, who heard and rejected Christ, were destroyed by Titus, and Vespasian his father.
14) They play the victim when they are, in fact, the predator.
15) All at once the Jew also becomes liberal and begins to rave about the necessary progress of mankind.
16) In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections.
17) They know homosexuality is an abomination.

1 Dean; 2 Hitler; 3 Dean; 4 Hitler; 5 Dean; 6 Hitler; 7 Dean; 8 Hitler; 9 Hitler; 10 Dean; 11 Dean; 12 Hitler; 13 Dean; 14 Dean; 15 Hitler; 16 Hitler; 17 Dean

This doesn’t mean Bradlee Dean is just like Hitler. That impossible. Hitler didn’t have children. Dean has three.

Here’s a particularly ridiculous YCRBUCHI video featuring Dean’s radio compadre, Jake McMillian. Quoting Abe Sauer, writing at The Awl again: Take Hitler’s comment on Jews as criminals and his reasoning that “Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord” and compare it to the following You Can Run But You Can’t Hide Ministry video reasoning on homosexuals.
 

 
Note that this dufus never lets anyone else get a word in edgewise, even when they are seen talking on camera! McMillian doesn’t have much of a career on-camera ahead of him, does he?

Read all of ‘My War’: Bradlee Dean’s Popular Struggle Against Those Criminal, Child-Molesting Gays (The Awl)

You can also follow Bradlee Dean’s “antics” at The Dump Bachmann Blog

 
This year, incoming Taliban freshmen at Bob Jones University were given special pins that would indicate that they were in their 1st week around the campus. Take a close look at the pin. Genius!!!

Via Stuff Fundies Like

 
There is no schadenfreude quite like Republican schadenfreude, especially when there is a male prostitute, hooker or “Nazi hobby” in the mix (note CNN’s lower third text in the video. Superb!).  Far be from me to stick up for the sole Jewish Republican in the House—I think Eric Cantor is a complete idiot—WHAT did Rich Iott, the Republican Congressional candidate from Ohio’s 9th District, EXPECT would happen once this particular GOOSE-STEPPING SKELETON fell out of his closest?

This guy is the best candidate the Ohio Republicans could come up with in this entire district??? Apparently so!

Via TPM

 
Via Above the Chatter

Byron Williams prison mug shot.
 
“I would have never started watching Fox News if it wasn’t for the fact that Beck was on there. And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind.” - Byron Williams

Chilling, must-read article from Media Matters about the toxic influence paranoid wingnuts like Michele Bachmann and Glenn Beck have on gullible, unstable—and potentially violent—people:

Byron Williams, a 45-year-old ex-felon, exploded onto the national stage in the early morning hours of July 18.

According to a police investigation, Williams opened fire on California Highway Patrol officers who had stopped him on an Oakland freeway for driving erratically. For 12 frantic minutes, Williams traded shots with the police, employing three firearms and a small arsenal of ammunition, including armor-piercing rounds fired from a .308-caliber rifle.

When the smoke cleared, Williams surrendered; the ballistic body armor he was wearing had saved his life. Miraculously, only two of the 10 CHP officers involved in the shootout were injured.

In an affidavit, an Oakland police investigator reported that during an interview at the hospital, Williams “stated that his intention was to start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU.”

Fifteen years after militia-movement-inspired bombers killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City federal building, right-wing domestic terror plots are a fact of life in America. Since 2008, violent extremists—many of whom subscribe to the hate speech and conspiratorial fantasies of the conservative media—have murdered churchgoers in Knoxville, police officers in Pittsburgh, and an abortion provider in Wichita.

Conspiracy theory-fueled extremism has long been a reaction to progressive government in the United States. Half a century ago, historian Richard Hofstadter wrote that right-wing thought had come to be dominated by the belief that Communist agents had infiltrated all levels of American government and society. The right, he explained, had identified a “sustained conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in Roosevelt’s New Deal, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or communism.”

In a 2009 report, the Southern Poverty Law Center found that the anti-government militia movement—which had risen to prominence during the Clinton administration and faded away during the Bush years—has returned. According to the SPLC, the anti-government resurgence has been buttressed by paranoid rhetoric from public officials like Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and media figures like Fox News’ Glenn Beck.

Just last month, Gregory Giusti pleaded guilty to repeatedly threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—including threatening to destroy her California home—because he was “upset with her passing the health care law.” His mother told a local news station that he “frequently gets in with a group of people that have really radical ideas,” adding, “I’d say Fox News or all of those that are really radical, and he—that’s where he comes from.”

Read “Progressive Hunter”: Jailhouse Confession: How the right-wing media and Glenn Beck’s chalkboard drove Byron Williams to plot assassination (Media Matters)
 

Above, Iott and pals indulging in some good clean Third Reich fun!
 
Rich Iott, the Tea party favored Republican candidate for Ohio’s 9th Congressional district, found himself in the unenvious position yesterday of having to defend himself against The Atlantic’s revelation that he—get this—donned a NAZI UNIFORM to play act in WWII recreations a few years back. Not to fear, Iott’s got a whole mess of rightwing blowhards blogging in his defense, because, as Charles Johnson writes at Little Green Footballs,  “this kind of thing really isn’t a problem for them.”

No, but it might be a problem for, I dunno, Jewish voters in his district and, let’s face it, anyone WITH HALF A BRAIN who MIGHT BE UNCOMFORTABLE voting for a politician whose judgement is so incredibly poor that he CHOSE to wear, and be photographed in, a Nazi uniform, for any reason whatsoever (professional actors aside).

It’s simply amazing to me how many skeletons (and now Nazi uniforms) are falling out of the Tea party candidate’s closets as we get closer to election day. To me, this idiot Iott and his NAZI UNIFORM are a STRIKING REMINDER OF WHAT WE ARE DEALING WITH IN THIS COUNTRY.

Tea baggers, I ask you: Do you see yourself in the below clip (taken from UK sketch comedy series That Mitchell and Webb Look)? And if so, which character do you most identify with?
 

 
Sweet Jesus is this funny!

 
Thirty years ago this month, a new play opened in London’s National Theater that was to change legal and theatrical history. Howard Brenton’s The Romans in Britain contrasted Julius Caesar’s Roman invasion of Celtic Britain with the Saxon invasion of Romano-Celtic Britain, and finally Britain’s involvement in Northern Ireland during The Troubles of the late 20th century. Epic in scale, Brenton’s intelligent analysis of the effects of imperialism was sidelined when The Romans in Britain became center of a farcical court trial over a simulated act of buggery.

The son of a Methodist minister, Howard Brenton was born in Porstmouth in 1942, educated at Chichester High School, and at Cambridge University, where he won the Chancellor’s Gold Medal for poetry. In 1965, he wrote his first play Ladder of Fools, described as an “Actable, gripping, murky and moody: how often can you say that of the average new play tried out in London, let alone of an undergraduate’s work.”

A highly talented and original writer, Brenton quickly proved he was unafraid to investigate controversial or contentious political subjects.  His first big success as a playwright was Christie in Love (1969), which examined the public’s fascination with murderers through the life of John Christie, who had murdered at least 6 women at his home, 10 Rillington Place. The play opened with a monster-like Christie rising from beneath a grave of torn newspapers, and then masturbating in front of the audience. His next Brassneck (1973) followed the rise of an inner city family over thirty years, from radical politics to drug dealing. While The Churchill Play (1974) questioned the rise of state security against individual liberty, and opened with a dead Churchill rising from his catafalque in Westminster.  The play briefly caused a national scandal, as it questioned Churchill’s actions as a political leader. Brenton followed this with Weapons of Happiness, an examination of a factory strike in London. In 1977, he was then commissioned to write The Romans in Britain.

Commissioned by Sir Peter Hall, director of the National Theater, a key establishment figure and founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, who formed an odd collaboration with the left-leaning, libertarian Brenton. The key to their relationship was Hall’s genuine respect for Brenton, and his belief that playwrights should deal with contemporary political issues, in particular, at that time, the situation in Northern Ireland. To direct the production, Hall brought in Michael Bogdanov, a young, imaginative director, known for his acrobatic and physical productions for the RSC.

It was soon apparent that a key scene in the play would be troublesome. This scene centered on the anal rape of a native Celt called Marban, by a Roman centurion, played by actors Greg Hicks and Peter Sproule. The action was symbolic, but its effect was literal. Both actors bravely agreed to play the scene naked, and it was decided that Sproule, as the rapist centurion, would grasp his penis and extend his thumb to simulate an erection. He would then jab at Hicks’ behind in a simulation of sodomy. During rehearsals word went out that alleged hardcore sex was being performed by the actors under Bogdanov’s direction. This led to a planned boycott by the theater’s ushers. To stop this, Bogdanov invited the ushers, and any other concerned parties, to an open rehearsal. Beer was suppled and the audience gave the performers and their scene overwhelming approval - a literal thumbs up, one might say.

In October, The Romans in Britain opened to mixed reviews, ranging from a disparaging “These ignoble Romans are a national disgrace” in Now magazine, to discussions of the play’s political content. Only one thing remained constant, the shock of the rape scene. Its effect was later compared to that of the news of John F Kennedy’s assassination.

Tipped off by a journalist, Mary Whitehouse, a busy-body President of the National Viewers and Listeners Association, an unrelenting campaigner for censorship, who wanted anything distasteful (i.e. that she didn’t like) off TV screens, raised her concern that the play would “over stimulate” men and incite them to bugger young boys. Though she refused to see the play herself, as she was too frightened it would lead to the “corruption of her soul”, she requested the Metropolitan Police to examine whether the play was “an offence against the Theaters Act of 1968” which outlawed performances “likely to deprave or corrupt.” After a brief investigation, the Attorney General, Lord Havers, decided there was no case to answer. But Mrs. Whitehouse didn’t agree and discovered that a private prosecution could be brought against the director on grounds that he had “procured an act of gross indecency by Peter Sproule with Greg Hicks on the stage of the Olivier Theater,” a law intended to stop men wanking in lavatories.
 
More on ‘The Romans in Britain’ plus bonus clips after the jump…
 

“For Christians who really kind of read the Scriptures, and believe in them and believe in these prophecies, this is really wonderful stuff. But for people outside the Christian church, what you’re talking is really crazy stuff.”

NO SHIT!

It would be really, really difficult to come up with the definitive dumbest Fox News segment ever—anything with Steve Doocey would have to be a frontrunner, no matter what the topic might be—but I would nominate the above clip to be, at the very least, amongst the lowest depths of anti-intellectual foolishness that Fox has ever sunk.

Want proof positive that Rupert Murdoch is laughing in your face as he banks billions? Then watch in horror as Christian pinhead Dr. David Jeremiah—who obviously did his research looking through Chick Tracts and Left Behind novels—discusses how the current state of the economy indicates we’re in the “Endtimes” as foretold in the (batshit crazy, epically nonsensical) “Book of Revelations.” and that Obama, natch, is the Antichrist. Line up the rubes, Rupe!

Now consider the notion, just for a moment, it’s too painful, of Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Mike Pence or ___________,  (fill in the blank for the next Republican theocrat shit-for-brains who’ll throw their hat into the 2012 Presidential race) with their finger on the nuclear button. Laugh all you want, these clowns are going to kill us all. But that’s okay because Jesus will come back and take all the believers and Fox News viewers and teabaggers to Heaven to be with the invisible father figure in in the sky.

A sampling of the YouTube comments:

“That man is insane. The last 15 seconds are chilling, this asshole wants the world to end and sees it as the “ultimate solution”. If this clown is right and his Jesus comes back, billions will suffer and die and he calls it a message of “hope and joy.”

“You people who constantly bash people like David Jeremiah will be on the other side of the Rapture wishing you’d listened to him. Your fate in is your own hands.”

“The solution to Armageddon: Tell them to believe in a magic and big men in the sky instead of taking real action and trying to avoid it. Christians are so hell-bent on seeing the world end.”

Take one loony, give him a suit and tie, give him a hair cut, airbrush his face and VOILA a respectable looking loony.  How could we have been fooled by this?”

“Wait. His example for the evils of ‘consolidation’ is the use of the word ‘czar’ to describe administration positions? A word, a nickname, that has been used for years by both Republican and Democratic presidents? THAT’S your consolidation that’s a harbinger of Armageddon? Not corporate consolidation. Not the increasing merging of corporate and political interests, like, I dunno, say… FOX NEWS? Well for fuck’s sake. Looking for the hand of Satan in the world, it’s this guy.”

This is fucked up. Watching this clip, I felt violence welling up inside me.
 

 
Via Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs

 
Andrew Shirvell, Michigan Assistant Attorney General, has got to be one of the single most ridiculous people living in America today and that is REALLY SAYING SOMETHING. The guy is a fucking clown. It’s unbelievable that he’s still in his position. You can read the backstory here.

You have to hand it to Anderson Cooper, he’s really sticking it to some people who deserve it this week. This fellow is the very definition of “dickhead.” Watch it for the comedy of it all and laugh until you cry.

Previously on Dangerous Minds: Anderson Cooper vs. Islamphobic Hillbilly Republican congressional candidate