but then I get my Austin news from TexasKaos these days.
What Noriega actually said (and it was a prepared speech, so if this so-called reporter passed this off as happening in an interview, the so-called reporter is even less credible) is here . Be sure you follow down and read boadicea’s commentary!
UPDATE: Charles Kuffner at Off The Kuff has more on this, and is still backing Noriega.
I like Noriega myself — Cornyn is a disgrace!

NO RENDIRSE, MUCHACHOS! — William Barrett Travis, 1836

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!— Xan

thanks. like i said, i have no dog in this hunt, and i hope people consider this a safe space to make any argument about it.

He’s a veteran, and pro-choice.

But I’d argue that as long as Kay Bailey Hutchison and John KKKornyn are in the Senate, you do have a dog in this fight.
Every Democrat — hell, every American in the world — has a dog in this fight.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!— Xan

I know more about Texas weather systems (because that’s where TN weather comes from pretty much, most years) than I do TX politix. I saw only the name “Noriega” and thought WTF? has the old Panamanian dude done this time, professed a love of heavy metal rock ’n’ roll and endorsed the new Metallica tour?

Look at the post again and pretend somebody else wrote it. Does it tell you enough to even make you want to click on the links? Alas, for me it does not.

I hate to pick on this one because I see it often, we probably all are prone to this style when there’s a lot of information to convey and we don’t want to take up a lot of space here. But if it’s worth posting to our (ahem) national audience it’s worth giving a couple of lines of background beyond “link”, “link” and “link”.

kthksbaii… :)

Especially paragraph 2. There needs to be a Strunk and White for web writing, alas. If it’s the Crack Den where I can scroll up and down for comments, and the various key words and issues are “in the air” like a cocktail party, then maybe, but a standalone post needs the content.

I thought, just like Xan did, Noriega? Didn’t he get extradited recently?

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

The only “texan” left alive inside the Alamo on march 7, 1836 who was also inside the Alamo the previous day was Travis’ slave.
He was liberated by the Mexican army, emancipated you might say.
he Texans were what were in the time called ’filibusters’ in the original sense of the word, the Spanish word meaining “pirate.” They weren’t about ’freeing’ Texas from mexico any more than Bush is about ’freeing’ Iraq.
just sayin.

Rick Noriega is a member of the 80th Texas Legislature. He represents a district out of Houston and would probably have a sinecure for life there if he wanted to stay.
His campaign site is here: Noriega for Texas.
His legislative record is here: Texas Legislature.

Synopsis: He’s a dad, a soldier, a legislator, and the Texas netroots succeeded in drafting him to challenge Cornyn. Richard Joel Noriega is all the things W is not — born and raised in Texas, he graduated from the University of Houston and Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government; he’s also a combat vet and a CURRENT serving officer in the Texas National Guard, whose Army experience goes back to 1979. Noriega is the guy Houston’s excellent mayor tapped to run the city’s George R. Brown Convention Center shelter operations after Hurricane Katrina — and the GRBCC shelter ops are a paragon of lessons learned in how to do it right, in the world of public health.

Okay, that, in a nutshell, is everything I know, including the links to the parts where you can learn more than I know.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!— Xan

i’m busy today and can only just check in now and again. i don’t really have the background, i was hoping texans would chime in.

I’d like to dismiss you with an expletive, but you’re not even really a commenter, eh?

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!— Xan

so use whatsoever expletive you like, sugar lips…

won’t change the facts…
travis, houston, bowie and the rest wanted to annex texas as a slave territory.
this was opposed by the mexicans who, in 1820, had signed on to the international anti-slavery treaty…
deal widdit…
.

I am sick to death of hearing how Awful Everything And Everyone Southern Was, and How The ONLY Thing They Cared About Was Slavery, The Evil Bastards.

It’s as full of bullshit as every oversimplifying generalization ever is.

Deal with that.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!— Xan

but facts are facts.
It isn’t I who belabors the South for it’s excesses. I merely recount the documentary history of theera.
Travis, Bowie, Houston, Crockett, all the stalwarts of “Texas Independence” were devout pro-slavers. All of ’em except crockett owned slaves and imported ’em into texas, which was against the law (since the universwal anti-slavery treaty of 1824—i missed the date originally; so sue me). Houston had previously led the long march of the Cherokee from Carolina to the Territories. He was no friend of the oppressed, unless there was a buck to be made.
The whole alamo mythology has been assmembled fro a whole cloth of lies, misinterpretations, and out-right fabrications.

THOMAS FUCKING JEFFERSON OWNED SLAVES.
If you are going to define all things by slavery, stick that in your blunt and smoke it.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!— Xan

in a class with Jefferson, dahlin.
Like comparing Bush to FDR: they’re both presidents.
Face it: the legend of texas ’freedom’ is a propaganda fable created to justify, after the fact, the out-right theft of a significant part of mexico from the Mexicans.
Sure, it happened all the time…
But it hardly qualifies as a shining example of the ’spirit of democracy.’
but Jefferson at least BOUGHT Louisiana…
as to your staying in texas: Please do. New Mexico dont want or need y’all…

I think we should trash-talk Utah more than we do, but that’s just me.

++++

Hey, you know what I found out? None of these artificial constructions known as “states” existed until the white folks showed up in the New World and started grabbing everything. There was no such thing as Texas a short time ago (in the geologic scheme of time, that is) and when the cockroaches turn our bones into condos no one will be left to give a rat’s ass about Texas or California or Mayor’s Income, Tennessee (nee Tom Waits). To take this stuff seriously is like getting one’s panties in a twist over the twist in one’s panties—a feedback loop of nonsense.

If we can learn from Narcissus, when we look too longingly in the mirror we start to believe the reflection and lose the reflectee, regardless of whether or not we think we are of a so-called state or of the ether. Like a dysfunctional family that fights itself endlessly, all that it takes to stop them from their internecine warfare is to point this out from an outsider position. They will cease to beat on each other (for a time) and will quickly and reflexively turn on you.

It’s probably part of our psychological makeup that we need utter nonsense in our lives to keep from losing all balance, but it can also be part of our makeup to not be ignorant of this truth, so as to not succumb to the vast, swirling hole of man-made myths that lead only to worms and silence.

++++

Woody, a little rich of you to be throwing stones at Texans for stealing (winning?) territory from Mexico whilst enjoying the fruits of living in a state called “New Mexico”. At least the Texans had the decency and imagination to come up with a new name.

Lots of skeletons, so to speak, in every closet. Mexico “stole” territory from Spain, who “stole” it from indigenous peoples, who had been “stealing” land from and enlaving each other for thousands of years without the White Man to show them how. Appears to be a human thing.

Seems to me less than productive and more than a little unfair to be questioning and passing judgement upon the motives of people long dead who cannot defend themselves or explain their behaviors, complex behaviors that arose in complex times. Better, IMHO, to find common ground with good people of today and secure productive means of moving civilization forward.

as a slave state in the civil war has to do with this discussion?

Because off-topic Texas bashing says a whole lot more about you than it says about Texas.

As for Rick Noriega, Sarah gives a good brief background on him. He’s formed an exploratory committee and it’s my sincere hope that he will declare formally in the not distant future.

I was quoted in the article R.G. did, and to have myself juxtaposed with what looked like a slam against bloggers felt like a smack in the face.

FTR, I was one of the early bloggers involved in the Draft Rick Noriega movement, and still cover what I can keep up with from Draft Rick Noriega.

Some of us Texas bloggers had a conf call with Rick today, and I believe he understands exactly why that quote engendered the strong reaction it did.

The first thing he did in our call was acknowledge that it was the Texas and National netroots that raised the profile of the campaign to the level it’s at now.

Even more importantly, his campaign plans on tightening the communication loop with bloggers so there are no repeats of this kind of misunderstanding.

I encourage all of you, if you can, to stop by the FDL chat and see what he has to say directly.

Fwiw: Bashing Texas is NOT “OT” for New Mexicans; it has a long and glorious tradition. I myself created the New Mexico Undevelopment Commission bumper sticker: Texas: Lubbock or Leave It!
And in any case, originally i was replying to Sarah’s invocation of the “Alamo hero” Travis, whose black slave was the only man alive inside the Alamo on the morning of March 7, 1936 who had been inside the Alamo the previous day, in a way that I suppose belittled, in some way, the contributions of that great Murkin as those of just your average prairie pillager.
It was an aside, which drew a wrathful reply, to which i replied in kind. I apologize for nothing, including my innate skepticism of all things Texan.
And that would include Mr. Noriega, who imho suffers yet another liability, in addition to his state citizenship: being lifer military. As a one-termer who got out as fast as his honorable discharge would let him, lifer-dom is equivalent to GOPism.

thank you for the good information about LC Noriega, too.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!— Xan

Never Give Up. Never Surrender.

Nice to come out of lurkerdom a bit.

And Woody, as an Arizonan, who loves New Mexico as well as her adopted Texas home, I say this with utter cordiality.

Fuck. You.

Cordially.

[Dodges zucchinni.]

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

I shall only remark, in all my high (heh) hauteur, that one almost never hears of New Mexicans going to Texas for holiday, or to retire, or for the art and culture. Folks from Oklahoma or Arkansas, Nebraska, etc, they go to Texas for the ’culture.’
Texans go to New Mexico!
We have to go to—well, through—Dallas to get anywhere not-west of here, it is true.
But we almost NEVER stay.
and a nonnie, nonnie, nonnie!
(as i cannot resist a snark, no matter how much the circumstances seem to compel me to it: if yer gonna quote spanish in the context of resistance, then emiliano zapata’s yer guy: “Prefiero morir ne pie que vivir de rodillas.”

cado—avocation, i mean—in retirement (as in my professional life, actually; i just do it pro bono these days) the debunking of such propaganda tropes—on the matter especially of American Exceptionalism—as present themselves in everyday speech. My original discourse with Sarah was no more than an effort to call attention the the provenance of her epigraph. I was born a skeptic, and raised an iconoclast, and have not improved with age. Perhaps my manner was brusque.

Hell, I’m not insensitive to the ironies implicated in “New (Nuevo) Mexico.” Or being a gabacho here. I’ve known & studied ’em pretty much all my life. And I wasn’t even born here (though my dad was, and I graduated from St. Mike’s in Santa Fe; my ssn bears the New Mexico code; and a chicana in Santa Fe bestowed on me my very first piece, when I was 17. Chuy, meng, I even speak a lil spanish).

Ruidoso’s overpriced; Santa Fe is a tourist trap. Espanola is squalid in a way that makes Ciudad Juarez look like a shining city on a hill. The WIPP is in New Mexico for a reason, Woody.
Zapata? I’ll give you Zapata, if you want him; but you surprise me, because I’d expect you to defend Bolivar.

was gonna say “Yeah, it sucks today. But y’shoulda been here yesterday. It was awesome, man, shoulder-high and fassst…”

I’ll grant that NM’s not what it was 50 years ago when the family moved back here from the East. You’re too right about much of what you have observed.

pachucos chased me down the acequia madre when i was a kid. my first ’real’ job was as a set-builder/stage hand at the santa fe opera, summer of 62. my next (still in high school) I did Santa Fe’s first rock’n’roll radio program. i hiked and camped all over the Sangres. what can i say? my life was good. that’s what i still see when i look today…

with my Eagle Scout husband and cub-scout sons.

The magic names are Truchas Peak and Angostura Meadows, IIRC.

They took the Pecos Packer hikes in later seasons. It is an article of their faith that if you lead a good life you need hope for no salvation greater than Philmont.

I bought a tire iron in White Rock, in the summer of 2003. That was the year my kid got a summer job between Espanola and Chimayo, and the water pump went out on his vehicle.

Chuy, indeed…I’d never met “rental tools” before the parts store next door to the casino…

active machine-gun guard-posts on the roads, and i think it mighta still been called ’piedra blanca’. Tres Ritos is real pretty country. me and a buddy spent easter break cutting and splitting cedar fence posts up there in junior year. first time i ever smoked weed.

the superiority of MI forests over those in OH? or IL parks over IN? WI beaches over MN?

i can do any other those, if you’re interested. otherwise, frankly, i find the whole “my state is better than your state with respect to X” conversations rather…boring.

what is the point here, sarah and woody? that there are different cultures in your home/adopted states? well, of course.

this thread was meant to address the question: did noriega blow his creds with the netroots? i don’t know, and i’d like someone who does to contribute.

/end pedantic nanny/

i suppose i’m bitter only because U0fM is 0-2 against “minor” programs and heading into an ugly contest in south bend this weekend. but then again, chicago plays in Div III, so i remember that i don’t really care about all of that, now that i’m a pointy headed blogger intellectual for pay who is above intrastate rivalries and suchlike. ;-)