Shifting Winds - Globally and Locally. DeLay v. Lampson style

The winds of change have been blowing. After 7 years of avoiding the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the President is embracing it . The stagnation of the peace process has fueled the extremist elements, so it is a step in the right direction even if it's late in the day.

And change was evident when I attended my first town meeting last night in Nassau Bay hosted by new Congressman Nick Lampson in CD22 -- Tom DeLay's former district.

What a change that was.

My last town meeting when DeLay was in office was in Rosenberg (Ft. Bend) in 2004 in an auditorium of 1,000 teachers, upset over the cutting of their benefits. Mr. DeLay started the meeting by saying "I am right and you are wrong." It went downhill from there. He engaged as if it were a fight with voters sitting there.

In contrast, Mr. Lampson told the group last night: "You are the boss; you have solutions to these problems. I am here because I want to hear them."

And he did listen. And he bought the FBI to talk about mortgage fraud and a realtor to talk about the present situation in our area (a mix).

I heard very interesting, good ideas from people (and some good intentions even when they missed the mark).

From Mr. Lampson I found out that NASA is in a tough situation -- it is being underfunded $3 billion from what it is ordered to do and what it has been budgeted by the administration. We spend that in a week in Iraq. It means that science or hardware development will suffer along with our future technology leadership at a time that China, Korea, Japan and others are shooting for the moon. Rep. Lampson is trying to get them the $3 billion.

Pakistan's Musharraff has stepped out of his military uniform, to rule as a civilian. It's nukes are now under the control of a new military man. Russia now has more billionaires than any other country and Mr. Putin is the new iron man of the one country with nuclear power equal to our own.

It's clear that our representatives in Congress and the next President will need the experience and advisers necessary to deal with all of these issues, as well as jobs, immigration, terrorism--all with causes and effects that are global. More on that soon...