When it was his turn to speak at the Cinco de Mayo political rally in San Antonio’s Rosedale Park, Mike Collier hopped off the stage to get closer to the audience. The event, hosted by the Bexar County Democratic Party, had drawn a thousand or so attendees, most of whom had come to see gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke. Preceding O’Rourke, however, was a parade of down-ballot candidates. Each had exactly three minutes to give a short campaign pitch. The 61-year-old Collier, who is running for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor in the May 24 runoff election, paced back and forth before the crowd like a talk-show host. With his neatly parted white hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and pleasantly bland demeanor, he was a dead ringer for daytime-television personality Phil Donahue.

“I’ll tell you a fun story about being on the campaign trail,” said a revved-up Collier. He recounted a visit to San Angelo, during which he gave a speech to a group of Republicans at a cattle auction. “I had to get their attention, so I look around and see this great big pile of dirt—or so I thought—and I jumped up on that. I started to speak, and I realized what I had done. It smelled terrible!” After delivering his speech atop a pile of manure, he said, an audience member approached him. “ ‘You know, Mike, I never thought I would listen to a Democrat make a stump speech.’ And I said, ‘I never thought I’d give one from a Republican platform.’ ”

Collier has been telling versions of this anecdote since 2014, when, as a political novice, he won the Democratic nomination for state comptroller before losing to Republican Glenn Hegar by more than twenty points in the general election. He told the story during his 2018 campaign for lieutenant governor, when he came within five points of unseating incumbent Republican Dan Patrick. And he’s kept telling it this year as he seeks a rematch with Patrick.

As Collier acknowledges in his 2017 campaign memoir, Out of Comptrol—“the tale of my excellent political adventure,” as he describes it—he pinched the anecdote from Ronald Reagan and simply reversed the political parties in the punch line. That’s no accident: Collier, who grew up north of Austin in Georgetown, spent the first fifty years of his life as a Republican. Reagan was an early political hero. Since switching parties around 2010, Collier has positioned himself as a candidate who can uniquely appeal across party lines. He talks frequently about removing partisanship from government, and he campaigns extensively in rural parts of the state where Democrats seldom venture. In 2018, when they were last on the ballot, O’Rourke, running against Senator Ted Cruz, outperformed Collier in big cities, but Collier outperformed O’Rourke in rural areas.

Read more: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/mike-collier-lieutenant-governor-race/

If case anyone's still unclear on just how much lower Gov. Greg Abbott is prepared to go in his pursuit of a third term, it should be apparent by now that there is no bottom.

Need more proof? Abbott's rhetorical response last week to the infant formula shortage gripping the United States was not to urge calm, explain what he was doing to shore up supplies or unveil a plan for needy Texans to gain access.

Instead, the Republican governor issued a statement with National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd accusing the Biden Administration of turning a "blind eye to parents across America" by feeding "critical supplies to illegal immigrants before the very people he took an oath to serve."

Abbott was not alone in sharing his outrage that the federal government had the gall to supply formula to infants in immigration detention centers rather than letting them succumb to malnutrition so that red-blooded American babies could be prioritized. GOP fringe players including Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene have also worked themselves into a tizzy over the past few days over the notion that immigrant babies are less worthy of being kept alive.

Read more: https://www.sacurrent.com/news/assclown-alert-gov-greg-abbotts-deafening-whistle-is-impossible-to-ignore-28912211

A Republican governor (Gov. Stitt, OK) just got confronted with pro-choice polling TO HIS FACE on Fox.

Brian interviews Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill Johnson about to extent to which abortion bans actually stop abortion, how those same Republicans who wail about the sanctity of life fare when it comes to maternal mortality rates in red states, and what Planned Parenthood is doing to help.

by Abby Livingston, Texas Tribune


WASHINGTON — A political knife fight in the streets of Laredo. An ambitious challenger with powerful allies and formidable fundraising. A longtime congressman who once coasted to reelection facing an existential test amid redistricting in a Democratic primary.

The year was 2004, and it was the last year any Texas Democratic congressmen would lose reelection in a primary.

And in that Laredo race, the challenger was Henry Cuellar.

Eighteen years later, the tables have turned on the now-senior Democrat. He faces a bonafide threat to his political livelihood in the form of attorney Jessica Cisneros, a progressive darling, fellow Laredo native and former intern in Cuellar’s congressional office.

The May 24 primary runoff election is a rematch from two years ago, when Cisneros fell just short of pushing Cuellar to a runoff in 2020. She is challenging him again, and once more, liberal groups are solidly consolidated behind her. Cuellar is undoubtedly formidable, with the backing of some of the party’s top national leaders.

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/17/jessica-cisneros-henry-cuellar-texas-runoff-election/

The Munk Debate - The Russia Ukraine War, Toronto, 12.05.2022

Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer v Michael McFaul, Radosław Sikorski

By any measure, the Russian invasion of Ukraine represents a profound security risk for the world. It raises fundamental issues about the basic principles that underwrite the current international order and it threatens the specter of an entrenched, high-risk Great Power conflict. How is this fast-evolving crisis best addressed? Does it demand a resolute and relentless push by the West to punish, isolate and degrade Putin’s Russia economically, politically and militarily? Or is a solution to be found in acknowledging Russia’s security needs and finding ways to mutually de-escalate the war, sooner not later? Which of these different strategies stand the best chance of success? And how ultimately is this conflict best resolved?

The video is long, but informative.