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Passing through San Saba, Texas (aka “The Pecan Capital of the World”), home of 2,637 people in the middle of the Texas wilderness, and there’s a local coffee shop that offers free wifi and a decent cup of joe. It’s across the street from the town’s feed store, which has seen a steady stream of ranchers filling up their trucks since I’ve been here.
What a wondrous age we live in.
Apollo posted this at 2:05 PM EDT on Friday, August 27th, 2010 as Amer-I-Can!, Deep in the Heart of Texas
So the Governor of Arizona may have exaggerated stories of drug violence in her state. Because the entire nation now believes that Arizona’s business is our business, this is the subject of a Dana Milbank column in the Washington Post. Being the ass he is, Milbank can’t resist this bit of facetiousness:
Ay, caramba! Those dark-skinned foreigners are now severing the heads of fair-haired Americans? Maybe they’re also scalping them or shrinking them or putting them on a spike.
There was, of course, nothing about hair or skin color in what the governor said.* If Milbank would get out of his Beltway bubble, where most “Mexicans” are in fact Guatamalans or Salvadorans with very dark skin, he’d know what those of us in the southwest know, which is that a very large number of Mexicans are not dark-skinned at all. A couple of hours watching Telemundo would leave you to believe that Mexicans are as white as the king of Spain. Certainly there are tons of Mexicans here in Austin who, at the end of a Texas summer, are whiter than me.
Mexico is a racially diverse country, ranging from tall and pale people of pure Spanish decent to short, dark people of unbroken Mayan lineage. Arizona and Texas border the northern, whiter regions of Mexico – except for their, um, different driving style, it is difficult to tell these people from native Texans. In large part, because there’s very little difference. Those of us who have daily interaction with actual Mexicans fully understand this, and don’t stereotypically think of them as “dark-skinned.”
That’s just the editorial overlay of a jackass east coaster who thinks so poorly of his countrymen that he believes opposition to illegal immigration simply must come from a bunch of racist bumpkins. Few things so greatly display one’s ignorance as to incorrectly presume the ignorance of others.
*Indeed, she claimed that bodies were being found without heads, so we would have no clue what color hair they had. But a good journalist should never let details get in the way of a race mongering cheap shot.
Apollo posted this at 1:51 PM EDT on Sunday, July 11th, 2010 as Buffoon Watch, Deep in the Heart of Texas, Denizens of DC, Race, The Melting Pot Boils Over
Just spent a while standing in my driveway, watching the neighbors’ kids shoot off fireworks (illegal here in the city limits) as the neighbors sat on their porch blasting that Mexican polka-style music. It’s Independence Day!
Apollo posted this at 9:43 PM EDT on Sunday, July 4th, 2010 as Deep in the Heart of Texas
Ann Althouse provides a very good takedown WaPo’s coverage of Texas’s new school standards.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Texas in the two and a half years I’ve lived here, it’s that this is one of the very few places in the country that everyone has an opinion about. And if there’s two things I’ve learned, the second is to never believe news stories about Texas from sources outside of the state. The second observation is more or less a direct result of the first.
Apollo posted this at 6:29 PM EDT on Sunday, May 23rd, 2010 as Deep in the Heart of Texas, Journalism
A dinner menu that went over quite well this evening:
Appetizer:
Main Course
Desert
Granted, the Dobos torte doesn’t intuitively follow, but I’ve never found anyone who complained about receiving a slice. To drink, we had a Texas pinot grigio (the ‘08, not the ‘07), and then a white Rias Baixas, which I wasn’t familiar with before tonight, but enjoyed quite a bit.
Apollo posted this at 1:03 AM EDT on Sunday, April 11th, 2010 as Deep in the Heart of Texas, Ourselves
Three cheers for the residents of Texas’s State Board of Education, District 9 for tossing Creationist and Christian Revisionist Don McLeroy out of office in Tuesday’s primary (the man who beat him, a moderate on these issues, faces no opposition in the general election).
Due to its size — and the way California’s persnickety standards and budget woes have removed it from the process — Texas’s standards are extremely influential nationwide. Getting a confirmed crazy loon like McLeroy off the board is an important victory.
Tom posted this at 9:39 AM EST on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 as Deep in the Heart of Texas, Politics, Science & Evolution
One of the amazing things about Texas is how diverse the place is. I don’t mean diverse in the trite racial sense, but in terms of real differences in peoples and cultures. The Hispanics of El Paso bear little resemblence to the Hispanics of the Rio Grande Valley.
How distinct is the Rio Grande Valley from the rest of the state? In Michael Barone’s write up of Texas’s Republican primary yesterday, he says: “I didn’t separate out the heavily Hispanic counties along the Rio Grande Valley, because they cast relatively few (in some cases zero) votes in the Republican primary.”
I knew it was heavily Democratic down there, but zero Republicans? Sure enough: Zapata County, with 7,153 registered voters: 3,194 votes in the Democrat primary, 0 votes in the Republican primary.
Zapata County is 85% Hispanic. Let’s compare that to El Paso County, which is almost as Hispanic at 78%. In El Paso, there were 34,237 Democratic primary voters, and 15,372 Republican primary voters. That’s still more than twice as many Democrats, but those numbers just reflect a county with lopsided partisan numbers, not, like in the Valley, where one party – the majority party for the state at large – basically doesn’t exist (Hidalgo: 7 times more Democrats than Republicans; Willacy: 27 times more Democrats than Republicans)
Update: The Starr County returns are now online. 28,421 registered voters. 4,355 Democratic primary voters, 31 Republicans.
Apollo posted this at 12:10 PM EST on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 as Deep in the Heart of Texas
I learn from Reuters:
Electricity usage in Texas rose Friday as arctic air covered most of the state, hitting another winter power record after setting one just the night before, according to initial data from the state grid operator.
I’ve never been to the arctic, but I was in Austin last night, and I think it got down to around 20 degrees. That’s definitely the coldest it’s been since I’ve been here, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it’s not really “arctic” around here.
Yes, perhaps this air was once over the arctic (the planet’s only so big – the air I’m breathing has probably been in most areas). But before it got here it warmed up considerably at the expense of other locations. At most it should be said that we have “Dakota air” covering the state, or “Montana air.” Texans don’t need Reuters’s help in exaggerating how cold it is here.
Apollo posted this at 1:20 PM EST on Saturday, January 9th, 2010 as Deep in the Heart of Texas, Journalism
I don’t normally inflict my legal interests on readers here, but while doing some research recently I came across an unusually action-packed case that I thought was worth sharing.
It involves a guy and his buddy stealing a bag of clothes irons (!?!?) from a JC Penny in El Paso. There’s a seven-person brawl on the side of a freeway off-ramp involving some extremely dedicated store security personnel (”Appellant rose from the pavement, and he stomped on Carreno’s testicles-causing Carreno considerable pain . . . Both loss prevention officers denied kicking Appellant in the face or head during the confrontation, but they acknowledged that Appellant may have sustained injuries.”). There’s gang threats, a random appearance by the Border Patrol, and some “enormously high” levels of methamphetamine.
And then the guy who stole the irons testifies, and he tells a radically different but equally riveting story (”Appellant stated that Hernandez punched him [in] the stomach, and he vomited on the floor. He was then told to mop the floor with his pants.”)
The full facts of the case are below the jump. Legal pervs can read the full case here, but I don’t think, aside from the facts, that there’s anything interesting about the case.
Apollo posted this at 8:47 PM EST on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 as Deep in the Heart of Texas
Bad news: Our government thinks it has created 30 jobs in Texas’s 91st Congressional District.
Possible Good News: Does this mean Texas gets [at least] 93 electoral votes? That’s change I can believe in.
Apollo posted this at 12:33 AM EST on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 as CHANGE!, Deep in the Heart of Texas
Cowboy boots. They’re comfortable and all-purpose. Jeans and a t-shirt? Wear your boots. Wearing a suit? Pair it with your boots and you won’t even have to worry about matching socks. Ladies (or not), wearing a dress? Every season is boot season in Texas. They make you 2 inches taller and the improved posture they force you into makes you look 10 pounds slimmer. And if it turns out there’s a horse that needs to be rode, a field of cow patties that needs to be traversed, or an ass that needs to be kicked, you’ll be prepared.
Apollo posted this at 5:48 PM EST on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 as Deep in the Heart of Texas
These comparisons are worth noting. In my mind, these states have for a while been the pole stars of American politics, and the fact that one of them is doing well while the other is failing spectacularly should – but won’t — mean something. Having lived in both of the states, I’ve not a moment’s hesitation in saying that Texans definitely get more for their tax dollars than do Californians. Compared to freeways in the major Texas cities, Los Angeles seems like a third world country.
I particularly like the end bit about how all of California’s tax dollars are simply padding the retirement funds of government employees. If I were given the chance to pass a single law, I think I’d use it to bar government employees from unionizing. It’s hard to think of another reform that would bring about such immediate benefits without negative repercussions (except to government employees).
Apollo posted this at 12:09 AM EST on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 as Deep in the Heart of Texas
Man, if you leave an Austin apartment vacant for five weeks, you encounter a lot of wildlife when you move back in. Not just insects, but there are some lizards that move too fast for me to catch. It’s like an episode of Life After People.
Earlier in the summer, we were away for three weeks and came back to hundreds of fruit flies in the fridge. It was completely unclear what they’d hatched in or what they’d eaten over that time. Indeed, I didn’t realize fruit flies could live in a refrigerator for that long.
When we were away for a mere week in the spring, we found what I thought were worms, but after looking at them closely, I’m pretty sure they were snake hatchlings.
You can spray and seal all you want, but at the end of the day, it requires constant vigilance to keep Texas outside. Leave the homestead unwatched for but a short while, and you won’t be living alone.
Apollo posted this at 1:03 AM EDT on Thursday, August 6th, 2009 as Animal Kingdom Strikes Back, Deep in the Heart of Texas
“I heard Samantha left town.”
“Yeah, she moved about a year ago.”
“You know where?”
“Somewhere up north where it snows a lot.”
“With her family in Dallas?”
“No, I think it was Lubbock.”
Apollo posted this at 2:05 PM EDT on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 as Deep in the Heart of Texas, Vignettes
We went on a lengthy drive to celebrate Independence Day. Nothing makes me feel as free as driving through the desolate West. If one man’s liberty to swing his fist ends where another man’s nose begins, then people in the desolate West are a lot freer to swing their fists than the rest of us: the sparcer the population, the farther away is the next man’s nose.
Today’s drive took us through through central and west Texas. Here’s a snapshot from Schleicher County (population 2,935):
We have here the three essential forms of Texas energy. Windmills to power our homes, oil to power our cars, and beef to power our people.
Apollo posted this at 1:48 AM EDT on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 as Deep in the Heart of Texas
