Thursday Roundup

Its been a quite week. We didn't comment on the debate last week or the Vice Presidential debate this week. With all the comments by the media and the blogs, it was kind of "why bother" since others did a better job then we (or at least I) could have.

If you haven't already checked out the last entry, please do so, SpaceShipOne has won the X Prize. They took a privately funded space ship into space (not orbit but above 60 miles) twice with in a two week period. Incredible.

And finally, before we get to the news, had an interesting lesson in local government last night. I went to the Planning Commission meeting in Torrance (the folks who need to approve before one can add an addition or put up a new house) because of a proposed new development on my street.

I think I surprised some of the members of the commission. The development was proposed and the City staff recommended the plan be approved. They then opened the floor up to any comments by the public. I was the only person who stood up and I'm sure the developer and the commission thought I had come to oppose the project. After all people rarely show up at these meetings unless they either oppose or are presenting a project. I only spoke for 30 seconds, if that, saying I supported the plan and urged the commission to accept it as presented.

The chair of the commission had a look of total surprise (as I'm sure the developer did) by my comments. Afterwards a short recess was called and as my wife and I left, the developer stopped us and thank up for showing up to support the project. So hopefully since Torrance approved the project, the City of Lomita will as well (the project straddles both cities) and the apartment complex will be replaced by a townhouse complex which will help ease the parking situation on the street.

Now on to the news.

George Will has a column on why the Democrats hate Bush so much. If 9-11 had not occurred, they would still hate him because of the Republican try to change the society from Democratic views to Republican ones economically.

The latest report about WMD in Iraq says Saddam did not have a nuclear program at the time of the war nor did he have large stockpiles of chemical or biological shells. The US and UK (and the French and German and Israeli and the Russian) were wrong. All of the above thought Iraq had these weapons.

HOWEVER, the report goes on to say (and it will be interesting to see if this part is even mentioned in the MSM) is that Saddam was trying to get these programs restarted and if 9-11 had not happened he would have been able to circumvent the sanctions to restart projection soon. So Iraq didn't have the weapons YET. They still had the desire and the knowledge to produce them. President Bush said we cannot wait for someone to become an imminent threat but remove them before they can become one. So this report still justifies the war as far as I can tell.

US and Iraqi operations catch a large amount of weapons. Each weapon captured is one less IED and one less RPG the security forces have to worry about.