Texas Campaign Diary: Views on Iraq

The day was spent south of Houston, near NASA, taking my Mom to vote and visiting Armand Bayou and the parks with picnicking veterans. Here’s some e-mails I’ve received. I enjoy corresponding with folks, and the tech folks say I’ve exchanged over 100,000 personal e mails with my campaign blackberries over the last three years, excluding the e-blasts we send.

Country people are wonderful. Direct, intelligent, hard working, they’ve educated me that a bushel of wheat goes for about what it did in the late ’40s, while diesel and tractors are hugely expensive. Horse owners face theft of horses for markets for slaughter for human consumption, as the horse slaughter prohibition stagnates in committee along with Agricultural Relief Legislation.

Today I received waves of complaints about the Trans Texas Corridor and its proposed taking, by eminent domain, of the finest agricultural land this country knows. And this buoying letter:

“Five of us walked in Bonham this morning. We got some very positive feedback. Several people indicated that they voted straight Democratic. The most interesting comment came from a man who stated that he usually voted split tickets, but that he and his wife had talked it over and decided to vote straight Democratic. They had discussed this with their two sons and encouraged them to do the same. My comment was that there is a need to restore democracy in the United States. He agreed.”

“The creation of good jobs in this country was one of his concerns.”

“We noted that the cost of labor in China has gotten so high in places that they are outsourcing work to Vietnam and Cambodia. There is no question that China will become a more powerful economic power than the U.S. if the U.S. continues it’s present economic policies. The question is: when? The building boom in China has already had an effect on the price of steel and iron ore. What next?”

“We need to get you in the Senate and KBH as a permanent resident in Virginia or anyplace other than Texas. There’s been a record turnout for early voting in Fannin County – 925 at 4:20 yesterday afternoon. They were hoping for 950 by five o’clock.