What people don't understand about Sarah Palin is that she is a rancher's wife. From Alberta down to Texas I've known women like that: good common sense bright and vilified by city people.

Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state it is an army with banners.

Southern political personalities like sweet corn travel badly. They lose flavor with every hundred yards away from the patch. By the time they reach New York they are like Golden Bantam that has been trucked up from Texas - stale and unprofitable. The consumer forgets that the corn tastes different where it grows.

Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States please pay attention.

Advancements in technology have become so commonplace that sometimes we forget to stop and think about how incredible it is that a girl on her laptop in Texas can see photos and cell phone video in real time that a young college student has posted of a rally he's at in Iran.

I want to clear up a few myths about myself. People have written that I was a kindergarten teacher and a former Miss Texas and neither is true.

I just think Texas and that whole Bible Belt section is so like corporate. And I don't agree with organized religion in that respect.

The attacks of September 11 - and subsequent acts of terror from London to Madrid to Fort Hood Texas - embody the most repulsive of human instincts the will to power at the price of the lives of others.

I think Karl Rove saw that in George W. Bush early on and understood the impact that he could have on Texas politics and probably on national politics.

I never saw anything funnier than Texas politics.

Good thing we've still got politics in Texas - finest form of free entertainment ever invented.

In my case I was covering politics in Texas as a newspaper man in the 1960's.

Maybe I'm genetically more inclined to music - but the music I make is so far removed from Indian classical music. I grew up in Texas!

When I moved to New York I fell head over heels back into country music and probably 'cause I missed something about Texas.

There was this mountain village in Russia where my music was getting in on some German radio station. I remember this because music used to get up to Saskatchewan from Texas. Late at night after the local station closed down.

I started playing poker in 2003 during my pregnancy to distract myself from my awful morning sickness. For months all I did was cry and play Texas Hold'em.

I don't have to get up in the morning and go beat up my body like I used to. I don't have to be out there in August in 108 degree weather down in Texas.

As they say around the Texas Legislature if you can't drink their whiskey screw their women take their money and vote against 'em anyway you don't belong in office.

I was born in Texas and I lived there 'till I was 8. Then I moved to the Dominican Republic with my mom lived there for two years and forgot every word of English I knew.

There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud.

I stand before you as the governor of Texas but also stand before you the son of two tenant farmers. Ray Perry who came home after 35 bombing missions over Europe to work his little corner of land out there and Amelia who made sure that my sister Milla and I had everything that we needed included hand sewing my clothes until I went off to college.

I'm always going to live in Texas. Texas is my home - it'll be my home forever.

Texas was such a welcoming place and with its unbelievable history and tradition it's extra special to be a part of that.

The people of South and Central Texas and the Coastal Bend need jobs they need health care they need water infrastructure improvements they need a quality education and they need the resources to keep our borders safe and secure.