You know you're incompetent when...

You're getting pilloried from both sides. George Tenet's memoir and the obligatory "60 Minutes" interview are the target of much criticism, not just from the hard-core Bushies as it were. He's also gotten clobbered today from some hard-core anti-Bushies as well.

First things first though. Bill Kristol fires an opening salvo about a purported exchange between Tenet and widely-hated neocon Richard Perle on September 12th 2001. Tenet's biggest problem here is the simple fact that Perle was out of the country on that date. Oops.

NRO is full of fine prose today devoted to Tenet's tome. The Editors speak here, Andy McCarthy blasts away here and Victor Davis Hanson's thoughts from Saturday are here.

The best part of this whole attempt at CYA at the CIA is hearing what former CIA types think of the former Director and Medal of Freedom winner. They published their thoughts here.

Strange bedfellows Victor Davis Hanson, Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson are. The fact that such disparate minds can find common ground on the subject of George Tenet's tenure speaks volumes about just what kind of job Tenet did at CIA.

Movie Review

More like a constant bore.

Question of the Day

Has Bill Belichick lost his mind?

Ode to Harry

Harry Reid, pilloried in prose yesterday:

Would Rockne be remembered
If the towel he had tossed?
Forget about the Gipper, boys
This game’s already lost.

Would Lincoln be a hero
And on pennies be embossed
If he announced that, after Shiloh
This Union, friends, is lost.

Would Caesar have surrendered
Before the Rubicon was crossed?
Did Ulysses pull the plug
When his barque was tempest-tossed?

Would Perry’s flag be flying
Would hist’ry gip a rip
If, on it, he embroidered“Do give up the ship!”

If we’d been bowed by setbacks
Or our opponents’ fury
Nothing would have happened
On the deck of the Missouri

So in the battle of our lifetime
If I can be the chooser
I’d rather keep on fighting
Than declare myself the loser.

A master-work from the pen of Tarzana Joe!

It makes one wonder

Brian Williams' question to the Democratic candidates during Thursday night's debate about their response to the destruction of two American cities has caught the attention of at least one or two folks on the right. One would think the answer to Williams' question is fairly obvious and straight-forward.

Not for the left however...or at least it appears that way. Both Dean and Byron rightly note the hesitancy of presumed presidential heavy-weights like Obama and Edwards to "get military" in response to the proposed hypothetical.

I'm left wondering what--if as apparently this scenario wouldn't--exactly would wake the Left from it's anti-Bush, anti-war, everything-but-anti-terrorist stupor and force them to get serious.

When is a civil war not a civil war?

Michael Novak explains:

Two false assertions are being made these days about the Sunnis and the Shiites in Iraq. The first is that they have been fighting one another for ages. The second is that they are currently waging civil war upon one another.

Shiites and Sunnis have lived in rather remarkable proximity in many cities of Iraq, with not a few intermarriages, and for many generations. They have often boasted of being Iraqis first, before being Sunnis and Shiites.

The most influential Shiite Imam, Ayatollah Sistani, has been amazing for his peacekeeping and calming effect, urging the Shiites not to seek revenge and, instead, to turn to democracy and peaceful ways, rather than futile combat. In fact, Imam Sistani has been so successful at this preaching that, in desperation, al Qaeda dramatically changed strategy during 2005. They viciously destroyed the old, revered, beautiful “golden dome” of the mosque in Samarra. They stepped up their campaign to terrorize other Shiite mosques and the worshipers attending them.

Al Qaeda members are virtually all Sunnis, from foreign countries, and they care not a whit either for Iraqi Shiites or Iraqi Sunnis. Their strategy for 2006 was to commit horrible atrocities against Iraqi Shiites, so that the hotheads among them would unleash death squads against the Sunnis in retaliation. Then the Sunnis would retaliate against the Shiites. This was not real civil war. It was a contrived and phony ploy to bait each side into fighting the other, while the foreigners waited to pick up the spoils.

One has to remember that the foreigners who make up both al Qaeda and nearly all the (self-immolating) bombers are motivated by politics, not by faith in Islam. They have no hesitation about bombing mosques, murdering imams, or destroying hundreds of worshipers. They regard anyone who does not join their war of terror, even if they are Muslims, as infidels worthy of death. They will use any means necessary to keep their toehold in Iraq and to work to eventually take over Iraq for their own political purposes.

This is not civil war in Iraq; it is a limited, strategic, and tactical ploy whereby foreigners try desperately to inflame Iraqis against one another. The aim of these foreigners is to bring about such a cataclysm of murder and insecurity and fear that their tiny, tiny minority can then capture total power — just as the small minority of Bolsheviks did in the early rise of the Soviet Empire; just as the tiny bands of ruthless black shirts and brown shirts under Mussolini and Hitler spread social paralysis to launch the rise of Fascism. Mayhem requires only a ruthless few.

Those who falsely call this a “civil war” in Iraq are conferring on al Qaeda a success that al Qaeda has not been able to bring about itself. They are puffing up a phony, contrived civil war far beyond the bounds of reality.

I'm not 100% convinced that he's wholly right but the highlighting of Al Qaeda in Iraq's changed strategy is a marvelous point and one that is either glossed over or ignored completely when pundits gather to discuss the situation.

Breakfast at the Village Coffee Stop Cafe

Yum...there are worse ways to start your Saturday.

Priceless

Did somebody say "mouth-breather"...


Subject: Comments Sectino
To: pundit

So, did you eliminate the comments section because you were tired of having us Libs hand you your anti-intellectual ass, or were you just trying to hide the fact that your fans are drooling mouth-breathers?

Given that I've never had a comment section -- or even a "comments sectino" -- I have no idea what provokes emails like this. But they certainly don't encourage me to add one, if this is the kind of person who's, er, drooling at the prospect of posting on my site.

The Paul Wolfowitz Controversy in Perspective

Imagine that a top civil servant at a major multinational institution arranges a job for a fortysomething female colleague that comes with a $45,000 raise and brings her yearly salary to about $190,000, tax free. Now imagine that the couple has been photographed at a nudist beach--him wearing nothing but a baseball cap.

The latest sordid twist in l'affaire Wolfowitz? Not at all. This is the story of Günter Verheugen, first vice president of the European Commission in Brussels.

The Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens compares and contrasts the facts and responses surrounding the Wolfowitz and Verheugen scandals. Clearly, Mr. Verheugen is neither an American nor a neoconservative.

Who is Mike Gravel and why is he running for President?

I certainly don't have the answer to either of those but Instapundit rounds up reaction to Gravel and the other seven dwarfs in the wake of last night's Democratic Presidential debate.

Good Reasons and Bad

Last fall's decision by the previous owner of Avenue Flower Shop to sell the building to a management firm who in-turn has arranged for a Detox center in the old heart of town continues to rankle some. The latest rankling wrinkle involves a grant that Good Samaritan Shelter Inc. has applied for:

Fueling the complaints is a request for a $1 million grant that Good Samaritan Shelter, Inc., submitted to the state Emergency Housing Assistance Program (EHAP). The state grant requires that the center be used to help the homeless, opponents said.

Good Samaritan responds with what strikes me as a reasonable clarification: Sylvia Barnard, Good Samaritan services director, said the grant will indeed help some homeless people - those who are trying to recovery from substance abuse - but that the criticism is unfounded.

Barnard said the EHAP money is for the “already homeless, formerly homeless and those at risk for homelessness,” which she said are categories that most of the clients who will use the facility will fall under.

“It's an easy argument that anyone with addiction is at risk for homelessness, which falls under the category to receive this money,” Barnard said. “The national statistics show that 80 percent of chronically homeless people are substance abusers.”

Meanwhile, local activists continue pining for their lost downtown:

“I had heard that the EHAP money was for the homeless and Good Samaritan did not submit an application for a homeless shelter. They submitted it for a detox center, so I'm concerned,” said Alice Milligan, a leading critic of the project.

“We already have one homeless center, the Bridgehouse on Sweeney Road. This is not what we would like to see on Ocean Avenue in our downtown area,” she said.

In a chance encounter over the weekend, we happened to speak with a representative of Trinity Management, the firm that bought the building. She confirmed our suspicions that much of what opponents have said about Good Samaritan and the Center has been distorted or simply wrong. Yet the effort continues.

I don't have a problem with NIMBYs on this...I'm not sure I'd want to live nearby in all honesty. But for critics to say the Center will create problems that don't already exist in the area is an exaggeration. And frankly, not overly truthful.

During our discussion with the Trinity representative on Sunday, we learned that the Center has been vandalized and has had cause to alert police to drug deals going down in the back alley...all well before any struggling drug addicts or homeless have moved in.

As to the future of 'downtown' Lompoc, I must again respectfully disagree. Aside from some select restaurants along Ocean Avenue there is no compelling reason these days for people to make H Street and Ocean a destination. The commercial heart of the city has long since moved north along H Street and that ought to be obvious to anyone who drives down either of these streets on a given day.

Critics of Good Samaritan have good reasons not to welcome the Detox Center. Opposing it on the grounds that it will transform the area into something it isn't and that we don't want or to say it somehow hurts a thriving part of the city don't qualify.

The Securing Defeat in Iraq Act of 2007

It passed the House late yesterday and in the Senate early today. The President will veto it.

He has said he'll veto it and the Democrats have known that he'll veto it. Meanwhile, the very troops these same politicians go out of their way to say they support now face the risk of material shortages due to lack of funds.

And the posturing continues.

Despicable.

Didn't see it coming

There is a gathering storm around Harry Reid and his comments last week about Iraq. Three more Senators went public with criticism of their leader and two went so far as to call for his resignation.

Now certainly there is a political element to all this, especially when you consider that two of the three Senators are Republican presidential candidates. At the same time however, Reid's comments have struck a chord in some circles and angered many. Frankly, I didn't see it coming.

I didn't think America cared at this point. That is the media's tale: we're all tired of Iraq and want to come home. Well, apparently there are still folks out there who get it and care enough to push back.

And in the credit-where-credit-is-due department, kudos to Senator McCain. He's right:

"...Presidents don't lose wars.
Political parties don't lose wars.
Nations lose wars.
And, when nations lose wars, nations suffer."

Who Lied and People Died?

K-Lo posted this earlier today over at the Corner. It comes courtesy of an unnamed Republican on the Hill and it exposes Dick Durbin as a hypocrite of the highest order:

SAY WHAT? DID SEN. DURBIN RUN THIS PAST HIS COLLEAGUES?

DURBIN SAYS INTEL COMMITTEE MEMBERS WERE AWARE THAT IRAQ INTEL DID NOT SUPPORT THE RHETORIC IN RUN-UP TO IRAQ WAR

“I was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and I would read the headlines in the paper in the morning and I'd watch the television newscast and I'd shake my head. …[T]he information we had in the Intelligence Committee was not the same information being given to the American people. I couldn't believe it.” (Sen. Dick Durbin, Floor Speech, 04/25/07)

“You see, in the Intelligence Committee, we're sworn to secrecy. We can't walk outside the door and say, ‘The statement made yesterday by the White House is in direct contradiction to classified information that's being given to this Congress.’” (Sen. Dick Durbin, Floor Speech, 04/25/07)

“And so in my frustration, I sat here on the floor of the Senate and listened to this heated debate about invading Iraq thinking the American people are being misled. They are not being told the truth.” (Sen. Dick Durbin, Floor Speech, 04/25/07)

IS SENATOR DURBIN SAYING THAT DEMOCRAT INTEL COMMITTEE MEMBERS WILLFULLY MISLED THE PUBLIC?

SEN. CARL LEVIN (D-MI): “[Saddam] has ignored the mandates of the United Nations, is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.” (Committee On Armed Services, U.S. Senate, Hearing, 09/19/02)

SEN. JOHN ROCKFELLER (D-WV): “There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons. And will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years.” (Sen. John Rockefeller, Congressional Record, 10/10/02, p.S10306)

SEN. EVAN BAYH (D-IN): “Bill, I support the president's efforts to disarm Saddam Hussein. I think he was right on in his speech tonight. The lessons we learned following September 11 were that we can't wait to be attacked again, particularly when it involves weapons of mass destruction. So regrettably, Saddam has not done the right thing, which is to disarm, and we're left with no alternative but to take action.” (Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor," 03/17/03)

AND THE CURRENT SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID?

SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV): “Saddam Hussein, in effect, has thumbed his nose at the world community. And I think that the President's approaching this in the right fashion.” (CNN's "Inside Politics," 09/18/02)

All posturing, all the time. The Dems have tried to wash their hands of Iraq for years now, and it doesn't work. These statement are too readily available and they can not run far or fast enough away.

As I and others smarter than me or my dogs have said, this is not flattering stuff. Either the Dems, contrary to all the rhetoric, went along with the "lies" and voted for the war. Or, they disagreed but went along to get along out of political expedience.

Either way they don't look at all smart or honorable and given the posturing and rhetoric of the last few year, not at all principled.

Somewhat later in the day, colleague Stephen Spruiell posted a follow-up. The key quote here gives away the game:

Actually, Sen. Durbin’s been saying stuff like this for a few years now. When pressed to name what specifically Durbin saw in classified intel briefings that differed from what the administration was telling the country, a spokesman for Durbin cites one of the key judgments from the Oct. 2002 NIE (declassified on July 18, 2003):

Most agencies believe that Saddam's personal interest in and Iraq's aggressive attempts to obtain high-strength aluminum tubes for centrifuge rotors—as well as Iraq's attempts to acquire magnets, high-speed balancing machines, and machine tools—provide compelling evidence that Saddam is reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort for Baghdad's nuclear weapons program. ([The Department of Energy] agrees that reconstitution of the nuclear program is underway but assesses that the tubes probably are not part of the program.)

Durbin's spokesman argues that the administration, while "factually correct" when it told the press that most agencies believed the tubes were part of a reconstituted nuclear program, was not being totally honest because it omitted the "greater expertise" of the Department of Energy.

Blame, blame and blame again.

Bush as Puppeteer (Or, A great one-liner!)

The mastermind of last fall's Democratic take-over of Congress, Illinois Representative Rahm Ehmanuel will give a speech today at the Brookings Institution. According to this report in the Washington Post, the focus will be on the dark side of the Bush Administration.

When asked about the speech, Republican National Committee spokesman Tracey Schmitt answered with a question of his own:

"Talk about conspiracies. Is he arriving for his speech in a black helicopter?

After Florida 2000 and especially after the Iraq "lies" of 2002-2003, the story was all about Bush as evil-genius. As Jonathan Weisman points out, over the last two years the story has been all about the Administration's incompetence.

So, which is it? The Democrats don't seem to be too sure at this point, as if this is any indicator, they're shifting back to conspiracy models of Bush the malevolent Puppeteer.

The Bush Administration: the biggest collection of incompetent super-geniuses ever!

Heh.

Low-key Meltdown

It seems that the ever low-key Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader from Nevada finds himself in the middle of a bit of a meltdown. Like most everything else about him it is definitely low key; but a meltdown none the less.

First of course came the now-infamous proclamation that Iraq is lost. Then came the attempted clarification on the day-after.

In the days since he's endured many a call for apology at the very least and from some, a demand to step down. Now we're getting Act III in this interview where Reid insists that he will not believe any reports of progress from General Petraeus in his briefing to Congress this week. Rather odd then, as Jonah Goldberg points out, that Reid prefaces those remarks with comments attributed to Petraeus himself as though the "Lying General" and his words to the President can be believed while his report to Congress can not.

When the Senate Majority Leader says there can be no military solution in Iraq, he ignores the truth about what the surge is, what it's goals are and the strategy and tactics involved. On this point, based on watching this ridiculous video, I'm forced to believe that Reid and fellow Democrats who have postured on the Surge since the first discussions in January make a conscious choice to play dumb.

Anyone who looks at the surge, what it is designed to do and how it aims getting there, must conclude that it is not just a "military solution." Indeed, it is setting the table for just the solutions that Democrats are screaming for, namely political and economic reconciliation and reform.

For two years Democrats screamed that security was the primary issue in Iraq--and they were right. The poor security situation was allowing the insurgency and Al-Qaeda to create the mess we have found ourselves in.

Now that the President has, in essence, taken the Democrats advice and added troops in an effort to create the necessary conditions that will foster needed political progress, they complain and call the effort ineffectual.

The willfully obtuse act is not holding up. They're an odd bunch, these Democrats but they aint dumb. You can't be this dumb and win and keep your seat in the US Senate.

Though there are exceptions to every rule.

UPDATE: The Vice President on the good Senator, earlier today.

Five Reasons we're Winning

Think it sounds crazy? Read them, courtesy of NRO's W. Thomas Smith from Lt. Jason Nichols, USN:

Nichols and I discussed five primary reasons he and others in Iraq believe in the effort and want to see the war through to its completion.

First, aside from the complexities of establishing a working, unified government (not necessarily the task of the military), the U.S. military does have a sound plan for victory that is being implemented. The enemy does not. The U.S. plan is based on developing the Iraqi military and police forces to a point that they can independently assume most extra-national defense and all intranational defense/security operations in that country. This includes an improved Iraqi capability for logistics and command-and-control.

“It’s not enough just to have people in the security forces,” Nichols says. “You need to make sure they can lead, gather intelligence, and be resupplied effectively. And we are accomplishing those things.”

The enemy’s only plan for victory is to force the U.S. to leave before those things happen. Instead, the enemy is experiencing “a surge” of U.S. forces.


Second, the enemy — including the Iraqi insurgents and al Qaeda terrorists — is progressively splintering into smaller sub-groups.

“This is often reported in the media as a bad thing — an unknown force being broken up into many unknown forces,” says Nichols. “Fact is, breaking up a larger force into smaller ones is what you want to do.”

Breaking up forces is in fact a textbook means by which a superior military force destroys an inferior enemy force — dividing and conquering. And in Iraq, some of those splintering subgroups are now providing intelligence to — and cooperating with — coalition forces.

Third, an increasing number of Iraqi civilians are providing the U.S. military and Iraqi security forces with information about the enemy that is being processed into solid intelligence.

Fourth, Coalition forces are increasingly “driving a wedge” between the insurgents and the general population. And more and more insurgents are turning against the sectarian violence-instigating terrorists.

And lastly, as I discussed at National Review Online’s military blog, “The Tank,” while I was in Iraq, one of the most effective elements of General David Petraeus’s strategy is his approach to a given area of responsibility (AOR). Petraeus’s predecessor, General George Casey, would have his subordinate commanders move their forces into an AOR, kill, capture, or run the enemy out; bring in some infrastructure for the community; and then leave. It worked to be sure, but only temporarily. The enemy almost always came back.

Petraeus’s approach is to do those things, but never completely leave. His commanders are responsible for ensuring their AORs are progressing. And U.S. soldiers are staying. In Sadr City for instance — as dangerous as it is — U.S. soldiers are living there, bunking side-by-side with their Iraqi counterparts.

Oh, but to read such straight-forward and solid analysis in the NY Times...

Nichols goes on to make it clear that morale remains good in spite of Harry Reid's best-efforts to the contrary. He's not the first to suggest that the only thing needed to ultimately defeat the insurgency is time.

Who is Andy Ostroy?

And how did this Daily Kos-lite drivel get published at Abcnews.com?

It was Sunday after all...

And what is Sunday if it isn't Punk Juan Williams day over at Fox. This week was no different.

First this at the hands of Brit and Bill on the Supreme Court's Gonzalez v. Carhart ruling:

JUAN WILLIAMS, NPR: Well, I think that the difference here is you've got Hillary Clinton as a candidate. You've got a female candidate. And I think that it's very clear that she's making a concerted effort to try to stir women as part of her base, and I think this issue plays right into that hand.

I also think it plays into the hand of just changing the landscape, the political landscape in the country at the moment.

I think people are going to say that if the court is going to start intruding in this way, well, what are they going to do on affirmative action? What are they going to do on election law? What are they going to do about religion in the public space?

This court has now become a real political symbol of the right wing in the country, and I think it's scaring lots of people in the middle and the left.

KRISTOL: The court upheld legislation that was passed with 65 senators voting for it and, I think, about 290 House members. That's an intrusion in politics? That's deferring to the legislative branch.

If the Democratic Congress wants to repeal the legislation that was passed in 2003, they can do so. The court is not imposing anything on anyone.

They are saying that one does not have a constitutional right to a medically unnecessary partial-birth abortion.

WILLIAMS: You know what? I think this is an interesting argument, because to my mind, OK, let the states decide. But the court is involved.

And if the courts are involved, how can they say to a doctor, "No, you can't do this on this woman? It's a matter of saving her life? OK, you can do it. But if it's a matter of her health, no, you can't do it?"

As the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists...

HUME: The Congress did that.

WILLIAMS: No, the courts have also said...

HUME: I know that, but, Juan, this was not a ruling that the Constitution forbade partial birth abortion. This was a ruling that said that Congress has a right by its majority vote, representing the people, you may recall, to oppose such a ban. That's what happened here.

States 1, Juan 0.

Not to be outdone by his own ridiculous arguments, at the very end of the panel discussion he gets into it again with the dynamic duo, this time on who is doing all the killing of Americans in Iraq:

WILLIAMS: Wait a second. Brit says this is laughable. You say it's a disgrace. I think he simply said the truth. I mean, it's unavoidable.

How can you say, watching the kind of carnage that takes place there on a daily basis, that this is not an effort that is misbegotten at this point?

Most Americans think we should never have gone in there. So he's speaking in a voice that represents the majority of the American people.

Secondly, when he says that it's lost, he's talking about the idea that we need to have a diplomatic, economic, political solution. We're not seeing any political progress in the country.
In fact, the al-Maliki government looks to me to be weak and weaker, and getting weaker, with the withdrawal of people like al- Sadr's forces from the parliament, and from support of his government.

So what we have here is a civil war in which Americans are caught in the middle. So the idea of withdrawing -- it's not a strategy, as the president said. What Senator Reid is talking about, what most people are talking about, is trying to contain it.

I think that we have General Petraeus coming here this week. And the Republicans want to make the case that it's Senator Reid and the Democrats versus the troops, that the troops are standing tall and the Democrats aren't supporting them, or, as Brit said, it's pulling away from fighting Al Qaida.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. What we're doing here is we want to fight Al Qaida. We want to fight terrorists. We should have gone after them in Afghanistan.

Going into this war in Iraq -- well, we got rid of Saddam Hussein, but I don't know why we need to be there right now. What is the point?

HUME: Fighting Al Qaida. How about that? Do you like that idea?

WILLIAMS: Well, I'd love to fight Al Qaida. But do you believe that we're really fighting -- are our people dying because of Al Qaida? Or are we dying because of an intramural fight between three...

HUME: Well, they're connected, Juan, but Al Qaida is a very major actor in Iraq now. There is no doubt about that.

I mean, if you look at what we're now seeing from these spectacular -- we've done some good here in terms of the this terrible violence that was going on among the militias. That has subsided.

What we're getting are spectacular terrorist attacks by Al Qaida in Iraq.

WILLIAMS: I think you're getting spectacular attacks by Sunnis, by Shiites, against each other. We're trying to build walls to try to separate. Why do you think we're building -- we're not building walls to separate Al Qaida out. We're building walls to try to separate one warring faction from another.

And I think it's just like -- there's no end in sight to this. Of course we should pull out. Why shouldn't we pull -- what are we doing there?

LIASSON: What do we do after we pull out?

WILLIAMS: Well, we have to...

KRISTOL: We are fighting Al Qaida. Have you talked to a single person who's fought over there? Have you looked at one of their -- what do they do each day?

WILLIAMS: Yes?

KRISTOL: Do you think they just drive around aimlessly to get blown up randomly by Shia and Sunni? They are fighting Al Qaida in Iraq.

What is happening in Anbar province? What is happening in Fallujah? What are the Marines doing in Ramadi? They're fighting Al Qaida.

WILLIAMS: They're trying to stabilize the environment.

KRISTOL: They're fighting Al Qaida.

WILLIAMS: No. They're trying to stabilize an environment so that political progress can take place, and...

KRISTOL: And who is killing them? Whose bullets are killing these...

WILLIAMS: Both sides are -- everybody's.

KRISTOL: That's not true. Mostly it is Al Qaida.

WILLIAMS: Oh, you don't believe that there are Sunnis involved, there are Shiites involved in killing Americans?

KRISTOL: There are some Shiites involved in killing Americans.

WILLIAMS: OK. I'm just saying...

KRISTOL: But Al Qaida is the main enemy.

Big Cajones

Yesterday was an investment in the Flower Shop. We spent the day at the first-ever Best Bridal Faire in Santa Maria, sponsored by the Santa Maria Times.

For a small shop 20 miles south, it was not necessarily going to be a great day though we did talk with multiple couples who had come up from Lompoc and those connections may turn out to have been worth the effort. For the most part though, it was not a banner day.

We did alot of people watching...the young Hispanic girl trying on dresses in anticipation of her Quincineria...the creepy guy in his late 40's with his fiancee in her early 20's and everything in-between.

But the most audacious display of the day came from the only other Flower shop at the Faire, who early on in the day sent a youngish 20-something year old employ over to our booth to inquire about pricing and minimums.