Sunday Funnies

Plutocracy is not a planet.

Ben Hall and Steven Hotze

A person only casually interested in the Houston mayor's contest might ask oneself why a candidate who claims to be a Democrat would be accepting large donations from the Republican kingmaker of Harris County, especially when there are two Republicans in the race.  But municipal elections are non-partisan, so if you're a virulent homophobe in either one of those two parties, you probably won't be asking yourself anything.

Via Kris Banks (from Facebook)

Via Charles Kuffner (from Facebook)

Can't remember exactly who Hotze is?  Here you go.

A prominent Houston Republican activist is making some strong assertions about same-sex marriage. Among them: that anal sex will be pushed on kindergarteners following the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage across the country.

Dr. Steven Hotze, president of Conservative Republicans of Texas and Houston talk radio host, articulated that thought yesterday in Dallas while speaking at a kick-off for a new anti-gay marriage organization, the Texas Observer reported. He was joining conservative allies in founding "Real Marriage: One Man/One Woman for Life," a group he said will campaign against the cultural influence of "homo-fascists" in Texas and beyond.

[...]

"They want to intimidate individuals, churches, schools and families to celebrate those that participate in anal sex. That's what they love and enjoy: anal sex. And that's bad, that's evil. It's a terrible thing to try to do and they want to try to teach it to kids in schools," he said. "Kids will be encouraged to practice sodomy in kindergarten."

Real Marriage, he said, will target and influences businesses that don't resist "the homosexual political movement."

Hall polled 3% in the KHOU/HPM survey three weeks ago, ahead of the two actual Republicans, Bill King and Steven Costello, who earned 3% and 2% respectively.  It's going to take a hell of a lot more gay bashing than accepting ten large from the Hotze family -- and loaning himself $850,000 -- for Hall to get some traction in this race.

Maybe he could hire James O'Keefe and heavily edit a clandestine video of someone posing as a transitioning person in a bathroom assaulting a child.  Or something.

Bernie Sanders schedules Texas stops this weekend

Dallas and Houston on Sunday, July 19.

-- The Big D details (Sunday afternoon at 1 p.m. at the downtown Sheraton ballroom)

-- University of Houston's Cullen Performance Hall Hofheinz Pavilion (larger venue needed; see revised map) at 7 p.m. that evening.

(Reports here from the scene.)

And there are seventeen additional organizing meetings scheduled in a 100-mile radius around Houston -- including Beaumont, Katy, The Woodlands, Conroe, and even Edna (!) -- during the month of July.

Update: Sanders and Martin O'Malley will share the stage at Netroots Nation on Saturday morning, at the presidential town hall forum there.  Hillary Clinton, you may recall, had a scheduling conflict.

Texans get to #FeelTheBern first-hand.  I'm going to go see what the fuss is all about... as if I didn't know already.

Update: More from Culturemap, and from HuffPo.

"The other thing I want to do is to take these debates into the so-called red areas of the country," Sanders told The Nation's John Nichols. "I think it is insane that the Democrats do not have a 50-state strategy [along the lines championed by Howard Dean]. How is it that, if you are the party of working people, supposedly, you abdicate your responsibility in some of the poorest states of America? Where are you in Mississippi? Where are you in South Carolina? Where are you in Alabama? Where are you in other low-income states? If you don’t get started now, you will never advance. So I intend in this campaign to go to states that many Democratic candidates don’t usually visit."

Touch and go scattershooting

-- Last night's mayoral forum turned into a cage match.  While Stephen Costello got the piñata treatment from pretty much everybody else, it was Chris Bell's cross-ex of Adrian Garcia that got my attention.

Bell inquired about when Garcia initially found out that a mentally ill inmate was being held in squalid conditions in the Harris County Jail, under his watch.

Garcia did not directly answer whether his former chief deputy had indeed told him about the case a year before it became public last fall, saying instead, "when I found out about this issue, I took action." 

Same old dodge.  Doesn't seem to be hurting him any yet.

-- Republicans are having such a terrible month that they had to play the "killing babies" card way too soon, and they used a James O'Keefe-styled, redacted, clandestine video to light the fire under their freak base.

(A)n eight-minute “undercover” video surfaced purporting to show Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services talking about selling the body parts of aborted human fetuses for the non-profit’s financial gain. Which would be shocking, certainly—if any of it were true.

Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, and Greg Abbott -- the latter taking a break from monitoring Operation Jade Helm, starting today -- have all weighed in with a "Kill Planned Parenthood" diatribe already.  It's a full-blown prairie fire on conservative media, but is barely a blip so far elsewhere.

Let's be candid: conservatives will not rest until Planned Parenthood goes the way of ACORN.  They hate women having birth control just as much as they do abortions.  Essentially, you broads are simply disallowed from having sex at all until you meet a nice Christian man and get married.

With 95% of women holding no regrets at all about their choice, I see another electoral demographic -- women -- ready to explode in Republicans' faces.  But hey, I thought Wendy Davis had sufficiently motivated that voting bloc in 2014, so I could still be wrong.

PP is at a real crossroads with this latest attack.  More from Amanda Marcotte.

-- Have you heard?  Donald Trump is "really rich", and he's going to prove it to you.

The celebrity businessman's campaign is expected to reveal details Wednesday of his fortune, which he estimated last month at nearly $9 billion when announcing his Republican presidential candidacy.

If accurate, that number would make Trump the wealthiest person to ever run for president, far surpassing previous magnates like Ross Perot, business heirs like Steve Forbes or private-equity investors like Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee.

"I have a Gucci store worth more than Romney," Trump told the Des Moines Register last month, referring to the fashion company's flagship store in New York's Trump Tower.

The GOP is now officially concerned about plutocracy.

Concerns are mounting among top donors and party elites that an influx of huge checks into the GOP primary will hurt the party’s chances of retaking the White House. Long-shot candidates propped up by super PACs and other big-money groups will be able to linger for months throwing damaging barbs at establishment favorites who offer a better chance of victory, the thinking goes. Already, big-money groups have raised about $86 million to support a handful of second- and third-tier candidates.

Poor them.

El Chapo vs. The Donald

The Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin Guzman -- known as 'El Chapo', and who escaped a second time from a maximum security facility in Mexico over the weekend -- is now tweeting threats at Donald Trump.

Sigue chingando y voy hacer que te tragues todas tus putas palabras pinche guero cagaleche @realDonaldTrump

— Joaquín Guzmán Loera (@ElChap0Guzman) July 12, 2015

Translated:

"Keep f***ing around and I'm gonna make you swallow your bitch words you f***ing whitey milks***tter (that's a homophobic slur)." 

Trump notified the FBI after that.

Even with all the money Trump has (though he's about $50 million poorer of late) and all of the conservative political power he's amassing -- certainly the Operation Jade Helm 15 observers would be willing to divert some of their crack troops to his security detail if Trump requested -- I'm not so sure I would bet against Shorty here.

Since I grew so tired of the Texas DPS officers and their expenses for keeping our former governor of Texas safe -- whatever has happened to his indictments, by the way? -- I doubt whether increased Secret Service platoons for political candidates who shoot their mouths off is something I, as a taxpayer, want to see increased.  We're still a few months away from having to make a decision about who gets protected, by the way.

If it comes down to a choice between Jeb Bush and Trump next March, I might just have to cross party lines and vote in the GOP primary (and not for Pee's dad, either).  There's a small chance my vote might be offset by all of the Republicans voting for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic one, thinking that beating a "soshulist" is going to be easy for any one of their clowns.  I am starting to have some doubts about that as well.

Bloom County returns

Thank goodness.  The thought of having to go through the 2016 election without Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann, and "The Real" Stephen Colbert was making me feel depressed.

Click it to big it.

The Weekly Wrangle

On July 13, 1992, US Rep. Barbara Jordan gave a keynote address on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention.

(Jordan) was raised in Houston and attended Phillis Wheatley High School in the Fifth Ward. She had a gift for public speaking and was a champion debater in high school. She graduated from Boston University School of Law in 1959, and six years later she won a seat in the Texas Senate, becoming the first black woman to do so.

In 1972, she was elected as pro tempore by her peers, which meant she would serve as governor if both the governor and the lieutenant governor were out of state. On June 10, 1972, she was actually the governor of Texas.

After she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, she was known as an effective legislator. She gave the opening televised remarks demanding the impeachment of President Nixon and blew away constituents with her eloquent reasoning and influential speech.

And again, Barbara Jordan made history becoming the first African-American woman to deliver the keynote address at the 1976 Democratic National Convention. Sadly, two years after she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in ’94, Jordan passed away after a long battle with leukemia.

 
The Texas Progressive Alliance doffs its collective hat to the legacy of a true progressive in bringing you the best lefty blog posts from last week.

Off the Kuff notes the first appearance of lawyers bound and determined to help a few recalcitrant county clerks deny marriage licenses to same sex couples in Texas.

Horwitz at Texpatriate says farewell as he enters the next chapter of his life.

Lightseeker at Texas Kaos exposes Rick Perry and Greg Abbott's myth that tort reform ensures more public access to affordable healthcare. In GOP Texas tort reform means insurance companies and corporations are the winners while real people pay the price. Abbott and Perry: Tort Reform as a Trojan Horse.

SocraticGadfly discusses the decline and fall of Walmart, especially in small towns and rural areas.

Should Sen. Bernie Sanders ultimately be eliminated from contention for the Democratic nomination, what's the best choice for progressives moving forward, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs asks.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants everyone to know that Jeb Bush's son is following the GOP anti-environment playbook in ploy to kill songbirds. The apple didn't fall too far from the tree.

Neil at All People Have Value posted a number of interesting pictures from his trip this past week to beautiful Cincinnati, Ohio. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

2012 saw the Republican Party lose the presidency once again, mostly because of their complete refusal to learn from their mistakes, and evolve. As we inch closer to 2016, Texas Leftist is left to wonder if the GOP learned anything from the last cycle. Given the dominance of media harlot Donald Trump, the answer is a likely "no".

===========================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Prairie Weather doesn't consider it very presidential that a former president took a large speaking fee from a disabled veterans' group.

Texas Election Law Blog celebrates its second birthday.

As their staff exits en masse, the Texas Observer asks: whither Battleground Texas.

Gilbert Garcia takes note of state Sen. Donna Campbell's Alamo histrionics that is fueling the World Heritage truther paranoia that the UN is taking over Texas' most sacred shrine.

Mike Tolson hears the echoes of Loving v. Virginia in the arguments made by same-sex marriage opponents.

Paradise in Hell counts down the last days of freedom in Bastrop until the inevitable Obama/UN takeover of Texas.

Charlotte Coyle confesses her reluctant patriotism.

jobsanger posits that Nikki Haley might be the GOP's antidote for Donald Trump.

Texas Clean Air Matters envisions Houston as a leader in zero-emission cargo transport technologies.

Better Texas Blog celebrates beautiful, messy democracy.

Grits for Breakfast analyzes Rick Perry's speech on race relations and criminal justice reform in the context of his time as governor.

Carol Morgan says it's time to stop asking (petitioning, calling) our lawmakers and to start making demands of them.

And Facist Dyke Motors has a short story entitled "Castle Katy and the Flying Buttresses".

Sunday Funnies

Battleground Texas struggles to maintain relevance

If you're still wondering why Democrats in Texas cannot seem to find any traction despite the fact that the world's worst conservatives run this state lock. stock, and Jade Helm gun barrel... look no further than here.

It’s mid-summer, after the legislative session and before the proper start of next year’s election cycle, which means the state’s political organizations are in full churn. Politicos of all stripes are leaving politics for policy or vice versa, getting fired and promoted, and maybe leaving the game—or the state—altogether. That’s a normal part of life in politics, where jobs are often short-term and so is loyalty.

The same holds true at the high-profile organizing group Battleground Texas, where political director Cliff Walker will be stepping down next week. It’s the latest of a number of departures by Battleground senior staff since last year’s crushing electoral defeats. Walker, who had been with the organization since the beginning in 2013, was the highest-profile Texan in the group. As the relationship between Battleground and other parts of the Democratic coalition suffered during last year’s election due to mutual distrust, it fell to Walker, respected by other Texas Dems, to try to repair things.

But since November, a lot of Battleground’s founding notables have been looking for other work. A number of Obama campaign veterans have left for greener pastures in other states, including former Campaigns Director Ramsey Reid, former Communications Director Erica Sackin, and former Field Director Victoria Zyp. Former Digital Director Christina Oliver left the organization for a job at an Austin consulting firm owned by Republican U.S. Senator John Cornyn’s former campaign manager. The departure of Walker means that a large part of the original Battleground brain trust is now gone.

That italic emphasis at the end there is mine.  I'm sure Ms Oliver is wonderful person with a fine family, as Ross Perot used to 'compliment' his political opponents.  Bless her heart (as the good Christians say), she just needs to put food on her family.

As wildly successful as BGTX was in the 2014 cycle, this self-implosion may not be a bad thing.  Texas is a goddamned tough state to be a liberal in, has been for almost a generation now.  I feel sure that wide-eyed Team Bluers think they can conquer it with the tools that work in places like Chicago or Los Angeles or New York, and then watch in horror as their battleships get sunk.

Political organizations like Battleground experience a high rate of turnover naturally. And for years, there’s been something of a conveyor belt taking talented Democratic political staffers away from Texas, or out of politics altogether—options that offer more rewarding work, and usually, bigger paychecks. Former Texas Democratic Party chief Will Hailer, who party leaders expected to stay for longer than one election cycle, jumped ship shortly after last year’s election for a Washington, D.C. consulting firm.

So Battleground’s staffing issues aren’t unique—a statement from the group called them “really normal transitions,” and pointed to the continuity of Executive Director Jenn Brown’s leadership—but they could pose a greater threat to the organization than progressive groups with deeper roots in Texas. One of the talking points when the group launched concerned Battleground’s ability to attract top talent from across the nation and fuse it with in-state know-how, helped along by a dedicated source of donor money. But it will most likely be harder for Battleground to recruit top talent now.

Whatever is left of the organization should probably be leveraged by the last of the deep-pocketed, legal eagle, azure-blue activist Mohicans, Steve Mostyn.  He's got a real good thing going with the Texas Organizing Project, so perhaps he can simply consolidate one outfit with the other, despite their somewhat divergent efforts (TOP is minority-focused while BGTX has been decidedly Anglo, IMHO).

Jeff Rotkoff, who represents one of Battleground’s largest backers, Houston mega-donor Steve Mostyn, praised Walker’s work and career and predicted he would “continue to be an important member of [the] community in whatever comes next for him.”

[...]

Brown is currently developing what a statement from the group called a new “strategic plan for the organization.” In it, she’ll need to come up with fixes for a host of unresolved issues regarding Battleground’s place in the Democratic coalition. In particular, some Texas Democrats worried that Battleground would turn into an adjunct of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, to the detriment of efforts in local and legislative races. That has echoes of one of the major conflicts of the 2014 cycle—some candidates felt that Battleground’s focus on a divisive top-ticket candidate, Wendy Davis, hurt down-ballot efforts.

First question: Does anybody know who Mostyn is supporting for president?  Second question: with Clinton's new point person's boots on the ground here, and a promise to roll out a 50-state strategy and build the Democratic bench and all that, who's going to be held accountable if/when a Clinton-Castro ticket still can't carry Texas against the likes of, say... Donald Trump?

Ultimately, Hillary Clinton is going to use Texas the way every other Democratic presidential nominee has used us for the past twenty years: as an ATM plugged into the elites, and as a farm system for fresh-faced young people who are willing to work for nothing, subsist on pizza for a year, and walk lots of blocks and make hundreds of phones calls in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Nevada, and Colorado.

Please, someone make a case for how I am wrong.

Alan Grayson bids to replace Rubio in US Senate

Another Sanders Democrat steps up.

I announced today that I’m running for the Senate. If you read these e-mails, then there’s a good chance that you and I think alike. We are kindred spirits. We see things the same way.

So in a way, it’s sort of like you’re running for the Senate. I’m just doing it for you.

Think about it. You and I have a lot of shared beliefs, a lot of shared values. You and I see what needs to be done, and how to do it. If I make it to the Senate, there’s a good chance that I’ll do that job just as you would.

And one thing is for sure: You deserve your support. As the Jewish scholar Hillel asked, “If I will not be for myself, who will be for me?” 

A little heavy on the ask, but he's certainly going to to need all the help he can get in Florida.  Grayson is the toughest Democrat I've ever seen, and that includes Bernie Sanders and David Van Os.  He's a 1940s-style, FDR, New Deal Democrat.  He and Elizabeth Warren together would slay.

Do you know what I really like the best of all about him?  He calls out the Democratic Party on its own bullshit.

As you may have heard, Democratic turnout dropped off a cliff again last year, just like it did in 2010. I was wondering why, so I asked. I polled Florida non-voters. I found that the main reason why they didn't vote last year was simple: They couldn't see any difference between the candidates. When there is no difference between the candidates, Democrats don't vote, and Democrats lose. 

Couldn't see any difference between the candidates.  And Democratic activists keep saying there is, and pointing to the various statistics that demonstrate what a fabulous president Barack Obama has been, or mention something about Obamacare or the stock market or jobs reports or even the Supreme Court.  Activist Democrats -- the kind that read blogs -- don't seem to get that inactive Democrats -- the ones that don't -- are in fundamental disagreement with their primary selling point.

The customer ain't buyin' what you're sellin', guys.  Whose fault is that?

By way of background, the top race in Florida last year was the race for Governor. The Republican incumbent was Rick Scott, whose hospital chain perpetrated the largest Medicare fraud in history. (That is not a misprint.) Nevertheless, because he had an (R) next to his name on the 2010 ballot, he won. He has been a horrible governor, easily one of the worst in the country. Everyone knew that the Democrats had a chance to bring him down last year, especially since our Democratic President had carried Florida twice in a row. There are 500,000 more registered Democrats than registered Republicans in Florida.

The Democratic nominee was Charlie Crist, a REPUBLICAN former governor. Crist was so far to the right that he was known as "Chain-Gang Charlie." In 2010, when Scott was first elected, Crist killed the Democrat's chances for a US Senate seat from Florida by dropping out of his own Republican primary, where he was 25 points down, and running as an "independent." That "stinking maneuver" (as Yitzhak Rabin would have put it) made Marco Rubio the junior senator from Florida.

Rather than shunning Crist for blowing that 2010 Senate race for the Democrats, the Democrats actually recruited him. They crowned someone who was a Republican just a few years earlier, and a conservative Republican at that, as the "Democratic" nominee for governor.

Political strategists called this a brilliant move by the Democratic Party. And Democratic voters were appalled, as my own little poll showed. Democratic voters stayed home in droves, and the Democrats lost. 

This is legacy now in Florida.  As we have been continually reminded, here most recently, Florida Democrats will not vote for a conservative Democrat.  And if you think Florida is the only state where this happens... then I have some prime South Florida real estate you orthodox Democrats may be interested in.  You're already standing in it, in fact.

Getting back to our poll, we focused on people who actually could have voted, not permanent residents, convicted felons whose rights had not been restored or children. We offered the non-voters 12 different reasons to explain why they hadn't voted. Reason #1, the most "popular," was that "people did not like either choice for Governor." Forty-one percent of the Democratic non-voters said that this was the main reason why people didn't vote.

By the way, the non-voters were overwhelmingly Democratic, whether or not they were registered as such. When asked whom they had had favored in the 2012 Presidential race, they chose Obama over Romney by 17 points. President Obama won Florida -- among the actual voters -- by less than one point.

So, let's be honest. When we put up a pseudo-Democrat or a neo-Democrat or a quasi-Democrat or a semi-Democrat for Team Blue, our voters are not amused. They are not fooled. And we only hurt ourselves.

The voters deserve a choice. In fact, they insist on it. Or they simply won't vote. 

I hate to point this out -- well, not really -- but if you think Hillary Clinton is going to win the state of Florida against Jeb Bush in 2016, you might ought to think again.  That's one swing state already lost to the Freak Party.  How many more can you stand?

And are you sure you want to advance a primary attack where you insist Bernie Sanders is a socialist (and not a Democratic socialist in the EU model), AND is also using Republican talking points to describe the economy?  His FB settings may not let you see that, so here's the OP.

Bernie Sanders says that the "real unemployment rate" is 10.5 percent. In other news, my "real height" is 6'2'', my car's "real gas mileage" is 50 mpg and my "real GPA" is a 4.0. See how easy lying is, no wonder he does it!

Methinks thou doth project too much.  Anyways, Imma let Alan finish.

The net worth of the average American household dropped by more than one-third in ten years. The decline from the 2007 peak was almost 50 percent, in just six years. (Most of that loss was in the value of one’s home — home is where the heartache is.)

That’s why everyone is so angry.

The net worth decline of someone at the 25th percentile (meaning that three-quarters of all household are richer than you) was even more extreme — from $10,129 to $3200. And among the bottom five percent, whose net worth is negative, their debt tripled.

Only the top 10 percent of all Americans improved their standards of living during that decade. As the study summarized, “wealth inequality increased significantly from 2003 through 2013; by some metrics inequality roughly doubled.”

By the way, this is not an isolated study. Other studies have shown declining hourly wages going all the way back to 1974. That’s more than four decades of worse-and-worse.

Look at what’s been in the headlines lately: Fast Track. Obamacare. Power plant emissions. Marriage equality. Greece. Entirely absent from the airwaves is any discussion of what’s really on people’s minds, i.e., this.

So, to sum it up, people’s lives are circling the drain, and nobody’s even talking about it, much less doing something about it. That’s why everyone is so angry. And I’m hoping against hope that my party, the Democratic Party, wakes up and does something about it.  (My emphasis.)

Speaking for myself, I’ll try my best to do something about it. But you knew that already.

I can't be convinced that Alan Grayson was inspired to run for Marco Rubio's Senate seat because Hillary Clinton has indicated than when she is president, we're going to attack Iran.  Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars may believe that Clinton will build a Democratic bench but Sanders won't "because, well, he isn't a Democrat", but that's another laughable premise.  As far as bench depth goes, any Democrat elected in 2016 had better be running for something that has a four-year term, because two years from now they're going to get wiped out.  This is historical; it's also what happens in a Clinton presidential midterm (see 1994).

My personal, humble opinion is that Hillary Clinton supporters need to calm their asses down, because what I am seeing from them recently suggests widespread panic, fear, and loathing of another primary defeat at their own hands.  I have to think that outcome cannot be what they want, but their behavior suggests otherwise.

Old-school ad hominem isn't going to get it done this time, y'all.  Please remember that it didn't work out well for Clinton against Obama in 2008, either.  Sanders isn't going down that road, to his credit.  If you do and she does, there's going to be a cleaving of the Democratic Party that will be slow to heal once the primary dust is settled.

Hell, maybe Hillary Clinton snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in November, 2016 is just what has to happen, though.  I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to it.  Let the GOP screw things up so monstrously while they screw over everybody but the wealthiest, bring God into the Constitution and the Supreme Court while getting involved in a half a dozen fresh wars across the world, while the Earth cooks a little hotter in the climate oven and the robots take all our jobs and....

Maybe it has to all burn down before we go.

(Too dramatic?  If so, then you understand why I'm for Sanders until he's pushed out, and then for Jill Stein, and Alan Grayson.  And for every other Democrat like them, and against every Democrat that isn't.)