Republicans in Minnesota’s 7th Congressional District have a new party chair. It’s Bret Bussman! Here’s the part of his CV that he shares with the citizens.
Terri and I live in Browerville and have since 2016. We have 3 grown sons.
I am a 20-year Active Army retiree & a life member of the VFW and DAV.
I am a Christian and attend St. John’s Lutheran Church in Motley. Terri attends Catholic Church. Yes, Catholics & Lutherans can coexist.
I have a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Northwestern University in St. Paul and an MBA from Globe University/MN School of Business.
That’s all fine. But there’s more!
He has posted about “satanic chemtrails” in the skies above Minnesota.
He has argued that the collapse of a World Trade Center building during the 9/11 terror attacks was the result of a “controlled demolition,” and that a “cruise missile,” rather than American Airlines Flight 77, struck the Pentagon that day.
He has shared multiple videos arguing that the moon landings were faked, and that more recent footage of astronauts aboard the International Space Station was faked as well.
He has shared with followers a video entitled “5 Reasons Why I BELIEVE in the Flat Earth (And You Should Too!),” as well as numerous other videos claiming that the earth is flat.
Bussman’s Facebook posts demonstrate a longstanding interest in multiple extreme fringe theories. On May 8, 2023, he posted a video purporting to show “leaked footage of our flat earth from 1977,” showing an obviously computer-generated animation of a dim sun traversing flat icy terrain.
A year later he shared a video stating that a pilot “proved” the earth is flat because the sun and the moon were visible in the sky at the same time, a phenomenon which occurs on most days.
And on August 14, 2024, he posted the “5 Reasons Why” video about flat earth, which asks, among other things, that if the Earth is actually spinning, “why aren’t we all being flung out into space?”
Bussman has similarly posted multiple videos purporting to prove that the moon landings and other parts of the U.S. space program have been “faked.” He has shared video of an actor pretending to be film director Stanley Kubrick admitting that “he was responsible for faking the US Moon Program,” as well as a lengthy video claiming the landings were a “hoax” based on various false and spurious claims about film footage of them.
He has repeatedly suggested that a celestial structure called “the firmament” prevents space travel, which is a common trope among many flat-earthers.
Bussman’s conspiracy theorizing extends to world events like the 9/11 attacks as well. On March 22, 2024, he posted a conspiracy video and asked a skeptical follower “Have you seen the video of building 7 collapsing and the cruise missle [sic] hit the pentagon? I had a friend invomved [sic] in the clean up of the towers- no plane wreckage.” He has posted several other videos containing similar sentiments.
Some have noticed that there might be some damage to the reputation of the party in future elections.
Bussman’s elevation to a leadership position is part of a statewide pattern that alarms longtime Republican activists: The party is allowing itself to be taken over by the fringe, lowering the odds of victory in future statewide elections.
“It’s bad for Republicans who want to win,” said Michael Brodkorb, former deputy chair of the Minnesota GOP who has vehemently opposed the party’s embrace of Donald Trump and figures like him, going so far as to publicly endorse Kamala Harris last year. “This is what happens when party leadership opens the gates of the insane asylum, and people come in off the streets and the inmates run it.”
Republicans: You elected Donald Trump and every demented loon who conspired with him. Own it. The damage is done, you’re already run by the asylum inmates.
NASA hired Kubrick to fake the Moon landings, but in typical Kubrick fashion, he insisted on filming on location.
We are indeed being pushed out by the Earth’s centrifugal force, but the pulling in of Earth’s gravity happens to be over 300 times stronger.
Not to be confused with any other Northwestern University you may be familiar with. Northwestern University in St. Paul is a Christian school and has a doctrinal statement:
That means that the university and its faculty are not free to pursue and teach truth.
on a side note… looked up his church and its Missouri Synod Lutheran, so I honestly don’t expect him to be tolerant of Catholicism for long… or guessing he already makes “humorous” remarks to his spouse’s annoyance. (just going off what I saw growing up RC in a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran town…)
And Globe University was a rinky-dink for-profit school that was permanently closed in 2017 for wrongful business practices.
imback @2.
Yup! It’s a WGS84 thing. A handy alternative to ‘flat’ or even ‘spherical’. Get it on your phone now… oh, everyone already has.
if the earth is flat, then why are there still apes?
checkmate!!11!1!1!!!111
Actually, NASA admitted a few years ago that they hired Kubrick to fake the Moon landings. Alas, he insisted on filming on location, so it cost a fortune.
imback @2, astringer @6
“The standard is published and maintained by the United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.” I wonder how long before this gets defunded and dismantled by the doge boys.
That idiot can’t even wear a proper MAGA hat! Blue? WTF?
If the Earth were flat, the cats would have pushed everything off the edges by now.
kukulkan @10:
Oh, dear!
I have a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap that I really like. I’ve been thinking of getting a blue one so that folks who don’t see the STL monogram on the front won’t think that I want to make America hate again; but I guess that option is now off the table.
@kukulkan #10:
The blue MAGA hats are made in the USA. China holds the copyright for the red MAGA hats and Trump’s tariffs have made them unaffordable to the average mouth-breather with an MBA awarded by crooks.
(No, of course that’s not true. Probably. Yet.)
I’d like to refute every point made by Mr. Bussman. But, why bother? It’s like trying to argue with someone from the year 1200.
So the “firmament” prevents space travel. That’s scary. The first person to poke a hole in the firmament was Giordano Bruno and he met a very nasty end at the hands of religious loons. Although they were Catholic loons not loopy Lutheran ones.
A Flat Earther got a degree from Globe University?? WTF!
God Awful Movies has covered several Flat-Earth ‘documentaries’ but right now I feel so depressed I won’t bother with links.
Next step: the people who think you can get energy directly from the sun so you will not need food if you stare at it. They exist.
You can’t even satirize them any more. They’ve moved from the late night radio talk shows of the 70s and 80s to the mainstream republican circuit. Like a bad guy in a Dodge Hellcat outrunning Barney Fife in a 1960s Oldsmobile, there’s simply no way of overtaking them. Laying on ridicule simply rolls off their back. And you can’t even just lay it on guys like Bussman. He has a whole electorate of look-alikes ready to vote for him.
We’re doomed.
He should ask himself why rocket launches are done from as close to the equator as is practical and always toward the east. Also, the NASA moon missions might have been faked, but there’s no way Wallace and Gromit’s “A Grand Day Out” could have been.
Right. The school’s official name is University of Northwestern – St. Paul. Prior to that it was called Northwestern College, and before that, it was called Northwestern Theological Seminary and the Bible School. I’m sure that referring to it by the similar sounding name of a large and respected research institution was just a simple mistake on his part and not intended at all to lead people to think he graduated from that institution rather than from a bible school.
But seriously, flat earth? How do they explain time zones? These days, anyone can call someone on the other side of the planet and ask where the sun is in their sky and compare it to what the caller is seeing outside their window.
Hey, we all know the earth isn’t flat, it’s round like a pizza! And, as I wrote earlier, we know that if the earth was flat, cats would have pushed everything over the edge long ago!
It sounds like the foil in his magat hat is a little too tight!
But, all seriousness aside, it is as if every one of these rightwingnut xtian terrorists has decided that jebus has anointed them to run this country. And, they are right, they are running this country into the ground!
cue Martha and the Vandellas, ‘nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide’.
And, the Animals, ‘We gotta get out of this place’
Then there’s this uttter “charmer” Randy (not-so) Fine as discussed here by Owen Jones. (10 minutes long.)
@birgerjohansson #17:
But not for long.
Take II -willthsi work? Should do..
how, in any sense, does “Business Administration” constitute a ‘science’?
phillipbrown, I asked your question to my friendly freebie bubbly AI:
Quoth it: “Business Administration is often considered a science due to its reliance on systematic methods, data analysis, and evidence-based decision-making. It incorporates principles from disciplines like economics, psychology, and sociology to study and optimize business operations. The field uses quantitative techniques, such as statistical modeling and financial analysis, alongside qualitative approaches to understand organizational behavior and market dynamics. Ready.”
John Watts@14,
Sorry to be disagreeing with you on two successive posts, but in 1200, educated people in Christendom and Islam (I don’t know about other cultures) knew perfectly well that the Earth is spherical. That knowledge goes back at least to the ancient Greeks (Eratosthenes calculated a pretty good approximation to its circumference), and had not been lost. The “dumb medievals thought the Earth was flat, fnah, fnah” trope was apparently invented by Washington Irving as part of his hagiography of the murderer, slaver and rapist Christopher Columbus.
@ 36 Morales
Is your off-topic point that AI is idiotic, or was your comment intended to add some value?
“Ready” X-D
Interestingly, the beliefs of these kooks would fit well into the beliefs of fundamental muslims who insist every word of the holy book is correct (it clearly spells out a flat-Earth cosmogony).
We should ask them if they are muslims, and watch their heads explode.
Are we sure this guy actually exists? That head shot looks like it might be an AI rework of the father in The Incredibles movies.
You can pass through the Firmament if you can get Virgil to take you through the Inferno, crawl up the devil’s legs through the ice, then up to mount Purgatory and at the summit Beatrice picks you up and escorts you through the celestial spheres. Probably Catholics only though.
showing an obviously computer-generated animation of a dim sun traversing flat icy terrain.
I misread that as “dim sum” and was wondering if some goof had used a bao as a prop.
KG @27,
“Sorry to be disagreeing with you on two successive posts, but in 1200, educated people in Christendom and Islam (I don’t know about other cultures) knew perfectly well that the Earth is spherical.”
How did Hitchens put it? Paraphrased, you can only stand on the beach so often and see a ship’s mast disappear below the horizon before you figure it out.
@20, jimf: an interesting point! After all, intercontinental video calls have been something of an embarrassment for the flatties.
I did not delve too much as life is too short to shovel this much shit, but as I can understand there’s two possibilities:
a) the sun is graced & augmented by a biiiiig lampshade, which moves appropriately to generate the required time zones. Of course, astronomers know but they are part of the evil conspiracy.
b) the speed of light is way smaller than advertised, so the sun illuminates only the nearest part of the pizzalike Earth. The far part stays dark ‘cos the photons have not yet reached it. Of course, physicists know but see above.
I mean, if one has to be crazy why not do it all the way? And I do like the image of the sun with a cozy abat-jour around it.
@ #11 whheydt
“If the Earth were flat, the cats would have pushed everything off the edges by now.” You win the internet today.
“Republican activists: The party is allowing itself to be taken over by the fringe…” Except, the GOP has BEEN the fringe for years.
rorschach @33:
How often have you (or Hitchens, I wonder) seen that? I never have. But I did live on a hill near Lake Ontario, from which I could see the far shore. From the lakefront, you could only see lake and sky, even on the clearest day. Guess that will have to do.
This comic today fits the comments some of us dug up and wrote:
https://www.gocomics.com/rabbitsagainstmagic