The Political Vine

Preface

In an attempt to be as fair and balanced as half...ummm....1/3....umm....0.001% of the so-called "news outlets" advertise themselves to be, we at the Political Vine wish to put our two cents worth into the rumors and innuendoes frequently bandied about as though they were absolute fact.

Now, in the past, we've taken a no-holds barred style of writing. Our thinking is, "Why not?" After all, to most of the inside-baseball players of the Georgia political league, there are very few "rules of engagement" that are defined, much less followed. We merely interpret what goes on in our own special, unique style.

Our goal is to inform you of the issues with the use of facts, opinion, sarcasm, and satire all bundled-up into one package. Our method of presentation may appear to be a bit of the "smash-mouth" style, but if we didn't jazz-up the presentation, it would be quite boring. After all, we're talking about the world of politics (gack!) and government (whoo-hoo! bring on the party!).

Most of the stuff we cover is Georgia-based, and most of it will be things we find to be of enough importance (or relevance) to other people. Some of it may not affect you directly, but you may walk away with learning a little piece of something you won't get anyplace else. Of course, if you are on the receiving end of our blistering speech, you will likely walk away with a whole lot of heartburn.

If you have ever seen the movie Gross Pointe Blank, you may remember the line from the main character in the film, Martin Blank, when he justifies his job by telling people "If I show up at your door, chances are you've done something wrong to bring me there." This is pretty much our motto.

We don't pick fights with people unless they've bullied someone else unfairly. For those of you who have been onboard since 2002, the best example of this would be when former Cobb GOP Chair Marilyn Gilhuly accused the Cobb Republican Women's club of being the "Al-Quaida" of Cobb County. From that day forward, we hammered Gilhuly's reign.

We don't usually attack people unless they've unnecessarily screwed someone else, either by lying about them, or just up and doing something flat-out unfair.

Many people do not understand why we dare attack fellow Republicans. In the simplest terms, the reason is usually because they are not acting in the best interest of Republican Party principles. If you make yourself out to be some holier-than-thou Republican "god," you're gonna be slapped around a bit here. If you violate our sense of justice and fairness in your particular primary battle, we will be there to make sure that field is made level.

And, of course, if you happen to be a Democrat, you shouldn't ever wonder why we put you through the meat grinder.

Everybody with us so far? If you are not, and you do not wish to continue receiving the Vine, scroll down to the end of this newsletter where you can click a link to Unsubscribe your e-mail address. Remember to unsubscribe from all three publications, not just the top one.

Oh, yeah...we forgot to mention that there are three different publications. There is this edition, which is titled Political Boxers; there is a regular edition that has not been too regular as of late. You will recognize that one by the "Volume X, Issue Y" denotion in the subject heading; and the third edition is a Special Alert that will usually be news of some immediate importance (especially if we happen to out-scoop the AJC's Jim Galloway and/or Tom Baxter. It's rare, but it happens on occasion).

One final comment...this publication costs nothing to subscribe or keep receiving. However, we do take kindly contributions of cash or check (and we thank all of our previous donors) to help pay for the monthly maintenance of the site. (Click here for info on helping us directly.)

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Speaking of Blatant Unfairness, Let's Turn Our Attention To Gwinnett County's District One Commission Race

Rumors have it that AJC reporter Doug Nurse has his nose buried so far up Mark Rountree's rear-end that the only thing you can see is the back of his head; and when he speaks, he sounds like Kenny on South Park.

PV Explains: Prior to Nurse's article in last Sunday's Gwinnett Metro section, we had a decent amount of respect for him. After reading that article, along with some previous related articles, we've come to the conclusion that Nurse may be the most biased "journalist" (sic) since Dan Rather. The only feeling we have now is a strong urge to personally give him a well-deserved swirly.

But, we will take a moment to describe the players in this race: District One of the Gwinnett County Commission includes Suwanee, Duluth, a piece of Lawrenceville and a smattering of other gerrymandered pieces of Gwinnett County real estate. There are four district commissioners and one commission chairman who is elected countywide.

The seat for District One is open because its' current office-holder, Marcia Neaton has decided to run for county commission chairman.

Two candidates have announced for the seat: Lorraine Green and George Thorndyke. Green currently sits on the Gwinnett planning commission board as a political appointee of Neaton's, and Thorndyke is a successful businessman who has never held a political position.

Mark Rountree is a Republican political consultant who lives in DeKalb County, but works in Gwinnett County (this seemingly minor fact will become quite relevant to the story as we progress). Rountree is Green's paid political consultant. He is paid by Green to give her campaign advice, research the opposition, develop a campaign message, and produce and mail slick sheets that paint Green as Mother Teresa and Thorndyke as an ogre. That is what he is paid to do.

Now, we are not trying to detract anything from Rountree's capabilities. Rountree is a very smart and capable consultant, and a person with whom we've been allied with in past races. However, with the help of Doug Nurse, he has stepped from out of the role of being a behind-the-scenes consultant to being a public spokesman, not only for Green, but to also assume to speak on behalf of the entire Republican Party. (Baaaad move, Mark. You just made yourself a very legitimate target for us.)

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In last Sunday's Gwinnett AJC, Nurse had an article published that was titled in this manner: "Thorndyke backs Dems, irks GOP." Now, you can go read the entire article for yourself, and then come back here for the analysis if you wish, or you can read the analysis first, and then read the article here. Either way, the article stinks to high heaven and it has Nurse's breath all over it.

The very first statement in the article reads as follows: "Republican political consultant Mark Rountree says Republican County Commission candidate George Thorndyke has committed the unpardonable sin --- he supported Democrat Al Gore for president over George W. Bush."

Now, a few paragraphs down, Nurse informs the reader that Rountree is a political consultant being paid by Lorraine Green, Thorndyke's opponent. However, in the original print version of the article, the one that the majority of Gwinnettians read because they get the paper delivered at home, Nurse didn't point out the fact that Rountree was a paid political consultant of Green's until much later in the article...after the reader had already started forming an opinion based on the biased input from Mark Rountree.

So, back to the article's opening statement: "Rountree says Thorndyke has committed the unpardonble sin -- he supported Al Gore over Bush." Who the heck is Rountree to decide what an "unpardonable sin" is? Rountree is Green's paid political consultant, so of course he's gonna have an opinion against Thorndyke. In this whole race, you can consider Rountree to be nothing by a highly-paid political operative who will do anything and say anything that allows his candidate to win! It doesn't matter what Rountree's "opinion" is on this race...he's not a neutral party! (And, as an unrelated aside, whatever Rountree says about the District 3 race will also be irrelevant as he is, yet again, a paid political consultant in that race as well.)

And, by the way, Rountree's not even a Gwinnett party "activist." Again, he lives in DeKalb, and has not paid any dues to the Gwinnett Party. And, we could be wrong, but in the past six years, we can find no instance of Mark Rountree ever serving in a political party officer position ANYWHERE! In fact, Rountree has a rule in his company: no one can work there who holds a party position. They have to remain completely detached from any "activist" role in the party.

And, speaking of the Website OpenSecrets.org, a search on that site for supposed-Republican-supporter-and-Republican-spokesman-Mark Rountree's contributions to any Republican candidates reveals that Rountree has never given one dime to any federal candidates. Nada! ZERO! Thorndyke has given money to President Bush...Rountree hasn't.

In fact, we could find no record of Rountree's star candidate, Lorraine Green, EVER giving money to a federal candidate. And, a quick review of 900 some-odd Georgia state legislative disclosures (covering the 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002 cycles) shows that Green has never given money of any reportable amount to any Georgia state legislator. (However, if Landmark can identify a legislative contribution, or any contribution to local races, that Green has made in any of these cycles, we will publish those for you).

Now, had Nurse/Rountree even bothered doing any REAL research on Thorndyke, they would have discovered that George has made the following contributions to Republicans over the years:

May 15, 1998: Contributed $1000 to Senator Eric Johnson
June 3, 1998: Contributed $1000 to Clint Day, Candidate for Lieutenant Governor
June 29, 1998: Contributed $4000 to Clint Day, Candidate for Lieutenant Governor, thus making a total of $5000 in contributions to Republican Clint Day. (as an aside to our readers, anyone want to take a guess as to who Clint Day's political consultant was on his race? C'mon...just take a wild guess...)

The fact is, Mark Rountree's contributions to the Republican party have only been to try to get Republicans who pay him money elected to public office. That's his role. That's his contribution to our cause. He contributes because he is paid to contribute. Nothing personal here, but these are the unvarnished facts.

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So, the fact that Doug Nurse has decided to elevate Rountree and his opinion to some sort of representation of the GOP being "irked" by Thorndyke's supposed "unpardonable sin" (which we will directly address shortly...don't go away...it's going to be interesting) shows, at the very least, incredibly poor judgement on Nurse's part. More likely, it demonstrates to us that there is too tight of a relationship between Rountree and Nurse for Thorndyke, or anyone in the future, to get an objective article written about him. Heck, we wouldn't be a bit surprised to find out that Rountree wrote the article and e-mailed it to Nurse for him to put his name on it.

So, back to Thorndyke's "unpardonable sin." Thorndyke admits in the article that he did give to Dem candidates. And, he has also given to Republican candidates.

But, as Republican activist B.J. Van Gundy pointed out (a person who does pay dues to the Gwinnett GOP, and who has served as chairman of the Gwinnett GOP and the 6th District, as well as served the GOP as a volunteer in many other roles -- unlike Mark Rountree or Lorraine Green), Thorndyke made those contributions because he was a businessman and he did it without thinking about it in a political sense. He was politically naive. If being politically naive is a sin (and an "unpardonable" one at that) then there is a whole mess of sinners in the world of politics. Puh-leeze.

Furthermore, if it is an unpardonable sin for someone who has given money and supported Democrats in either 2000 or in 2002 to run as a Republican and carry the Republican flag, then we suppose Mark Rountree (the exalted judge of who is unpardonable and who is "okay" in his book) has decreed that the following individuals are not fit to be Republicans:

- State Senator Rooney Bowen (R) - Chairman of Public Safety & Homeland Security.

- State Senator Don Cheeks (R) - Chairman of Banking and Financial Institutions.

- State Senator Jack Hill (R) - Chairman of Appropriations

- State Senator Dan Lee (R) - Chairman of Reapportionment and Redistricting.

Who are these four state senators? They were all longtime Democrats before Election Night 2002. After Election Night 2002, when Sonny Perdue won the governorship, these four supporters of the Democratic Party switched to the Republican Party, and gave us control of the State Senate. AND, they were immediately given significant positions of leadership as committee chairs.

They all supported Bill Clinton. They all supported Al Gore. They all supported Max Cleland. They all supported Roy Barnes. They supported all of these Democrat icons, and to a much higher degree than anyone in George Thorndyke's position could have ever done so, and yet, Mark Rountree isn't calling for them to be cast out of the party, is he? (Well, actually, we don't know if Rountree is working for any of the primary candidates who will challenge the party-switchers. Though, we wouldn't be a bit surprised to hear that Rountree is actually working for one of these sinners trying to make sure they don't get beaten in their primary.)

In an earlier article written by Nurse on this race, we can see that Nurse's rendition of this article is not the first time he demonstrated extreme bias in the Thorndyke vs. Green race.

A few weeks ago, he wrote an article that accused Thorndyke of sitting at the bar at the 1818 Club in Gwinnett watching who showed-up at Lorraine Green's fundraiser. Funny thing is that he only interviewed Lorraine Green for what happened. He didn't BOTHER to call George Thorndyke for a response.

Had he done so, he would have discovered that Thorndyke was home that evening and couldn't have been at Green's fundraiser, "spying" on them as Green claims.

When Nurse talked to Thorndyke about the article for last Sunday's paper, Thorndyke asked him why Nurse didn't call him for a response to Green's claim. Nurse's answer? "Because that's what they told me happened." (Yeah, nothing like printing one uncorroborated side of the story, eh, Doug? What a fine specimen of journalistic integrity you turned out to be.)

And, the fact that Lorraine Green lied to Doug Nurse about Thorndyke supposedly sitting there tells us all we need to know about Lorraine Green. Green just guaranteed herself to be a major target of the Political Vine in the 2004 primary elections.

PV's Final Words To The Green Party Team: Game ON!

Looking for a great Christmas/Hanukkah gift for your conservative friends? Look no further than conservative columnist Phil Kent's new book titled The Darker Side of Liberalism. Buy it today via his website!

Think The New Spam Law Will Shut The PV Down? Think Again

Rumors have it that some of our more notorious political targets of the past 3.5 years (we initiated publication in July 2000) are rubbing their hands gleefully and cheering that at last they will be able to "get" us shut down.

PV Examines The New Spam Law: Sorry to tell you the bad news (actually, we're not) but the law does not apply to e-mails sent by the Political Vine.

The new "CAN-SPAM" law requires the following: Unsolicited commercial e-mail messages must be labeled and must include opt-out instructions.

The law prohibits the use of deceptive subject lines and false headers in such messages. The FTC would be authorized (but not required) to establish a "do-not-email" registry.

Guess what? The Political Vine isn't "commercial e-mail." It's political speech and opinions. We're not assailing your senses by pushing Viagra or to refi your home.

True, some of you are being sent this "unsolicited" but it is because we feel this may interest you. If it doesn't, in every e-mail, you can unsubscribe yourself via the links at the bottom. Now, it is not like other unsubscribe mechanisms. You have to uncheck the boxes that signify the publication you want to be unsubscribed from.

Also, we do not falsify our header info. We state right up front what the contents of the e-mail are: "Rumors have it..." Can't get any more blatantly obvious than that, can we?

And, again, at the end of every e-mail we send out from the PoliticalVine.com Website we include an Unsubscribe option to "opt-out."

So, if you put your e-mail address on a national or even a state-based "do not e-mail registry," that will not stop you from receiving the Vine as we will not be comparing our e-mail list to that one. Nor will you ever see us on the news as being charged with spamming.

Cheers!

Looking to pay back the guy/girl who stabbed you in the back?

We are pleased to announce the official launch of BackStabbers - your source for Civilized (and fun) Revenge! Please take a moment to visit our site. If you like what you see we would appreciate it if you would forward this message to at least 10 friends and ask them to do the same.

Heck...think of the favor you're doing them...the perfect Christmas gift for the imperfect boss (or "friend" ) and you get to remain anonymous! Be the first to tell them about this - before you see us on CNN, in the NY Times or hear about us on your favorite talk radio show.

Georgia Lottery Proves More of A Headache Than People Realize

By Luke Boggs

THE GEORGIA Lottery is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year with a round of self-congratulatory radio and TV ads toasting a Decade of Dreams. Unfortunately, not all Georgia's lottery-inspired dreams have a happy ending. Not by a long shot.

Fact is, the lottery began with a pipe dream, with the mistaken notion that Georgia could improve education by throwing money at the problem. It hasn't worked out that way...

(This story was originally published in The Augusta Chronicle. To read the rest of Boggs' story, click here to go to their site).

PV Note: Last year, we compiled a list at the end of the year titled Heroes & Zeroes (Year 2002 Heroes & Zeroes). It listed mostly political figures and their impact on the Georgia political landscape.

We're thinking of compiling a similar one this year as well, and we need your input. An example of one we will be printing is Hero: Karen Handel, Zero: Karen Webster.

Not every Hero needs a corresponding Zero, and not every Zero needs a Hero. Just please send us your ideas and if they fit the category, we'll print it. Our e-mail is: PoliticalVine@aol.com. Thank you!