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."