Pro-America Rally - This Saturday!!

Tired of seeing Anti-American demonstrations? Want to do something to show your support? Here's your chance.

A Pro-America Rally, sponsored by a local radio station and thus far, WGST 640 AM radio personalities Kim Peterson (the Kimmer) and Glenn Beck will be there.

WHERE: Atlanta- Centennial Olympic Park
WHEN: Saturday, March 15th 1:00-3:00

Make an outing of it, car pool with your neighbors,friends and family. Come on down, bring a pro-America, pro-troops sign, sing "America The Beautiful" and show the Hollywood crowd how outnumbered they are. And what a day to hold it on...the Ides of March!

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County Convention Re-Cap

(Note: We are only reporting those counties who have reported to us. If you want your county to have a mention, let us know.)

Chatham County GOP

Rumors have it that Senate Pro Tem Eric Johnson broke down into tears as he relayed the news that he was going to sign onto Governor Perdue's excise tax increases. What was even more amazing was that, reportedly, over 75% of the delegates rose to their feet to cheer him on in his decision.

PV Dusts-Off The Economics 101 Manual: Hmm...it says here that normally (i.e., with an elastic good), when demand increases and supply remains the same, the price will increase. When the supply of a good increases, and demand stays the same, the price usually falls.

When the price of an elastic good artifically rises, demand will decrease, thus causing supply to decrease as well, and this directly leads to people getting thrown out of work, either as a convenience store operator, a cigarette maker, a tobacco farmer, etc.

In short, once again, Eric Johnson displays a complete failure to understand one frickin' thing about the concept of real-world economics. In 2001, he, along with the other yahoos in the Senate and House, voted to ban video-poker games and thus throw 20,000 people out on the street, all because the state of Georgia didn't like the competition with their lottery. Now, he's signing onto a tax raise and he's getting CHEERED for it. As someone at the Chatham convention remarked, "it isn't Eric Johnson's (or the government's job) job to decrease smoking across the state!"

Cobb County GOP

Would you like the short story, or the lonnnnng story? Okay, we'll do both. BUT, a warning to you. What happened Saturday is raw politics taken, not only to the fringe edge, but over it, and our reporting style doesn't BEGIN to match the level of manure that took place on Saturday in Cobb County.

Short Story

The Flag Thugs and the Christian Coalition Thugs joined forces to lockdown their totalitarian control over the Cobb GOP. Anyone who worked their asses off for the Republican cause for the last 5-25 years was relegated to either "alternate" status on a convention slate, or disqualified completely. Exceptions were made for anyone who supported the agenda of the immediate past Psycho-Bitch Chairwoman, Marilyn Gilhuly.

Long Story

If you will recall from our last discussion of the Cobb GOP, a resolution was adopted that called for a delgate allocation of 1:150 Sonny Perdue votes. This resolution set the maximum number of allowable delegates at 750 total, 699 authorized and 51 at-large delegates.

Now, for the past 4 some-odd weeks, the Gil-hooligans, including the Bitch Herself, Marilyn, had whined and stomped their feet in protest that the increase in the allowable delegate ratio from 1:50 (which is what they wished) to 1:150 would "disenfranchise" a lot of Cobb County delegates to the County Convention. In fact, in Marilyn's own words, she stated the following in an e-mail two weeks ago:

"Hopefully, all of our delegates who show up at Kell High School on March 8th will be seated and hopefully none of our new Sonny/Saxby voters who want to be part of our party will leave disenfranchised, disappointed and determined to vote Democrat from now on. That has always been the goal of the Cobb County Republican Party."

So, would anyone like to venture a guess as to how many delegates attended Saturday's convention?

a) 100
b) 500
c) 1000
d) 478

Yup...that's right, sports fans...if you know anything about the Vine, you know the answer to our pop quizzes is always "D." A whopping 478 delegates, fully 272 people less than what was authorized. In fact, this is maybe 40 people more than the total that attended in 2001. Yeah, and to think they thought they could even get 1200 to attend. Perhaps the missing delegates were over at the Picadilly all day waiting for a meeting to be called to order.

So, anyway, everyone on the Anthony-Scott Hobbs' slate was elected. They are as follows:

Chairman: Anthony-Ray Hobbs (Note to Anthony: Look, Dude, if you're going to become a Southerner, you have to adopt a Southern hyphenated name. Oh yeah, and work on losing that Ted Kennedy accent. We don't like Yankees in this here state.)

1st Vice-Chair: Paul W. Ploener (Yet another Yankee who moved to the South in the mid-1990s and still has a Yankee accent that needs to be eradicated from his vocal cords)

2nd Vice-Chair: Doug DeBolt (No idea of his state of origin)

Secretary: Debbie Ellis (A Southern gal from Alabammy)

Assistant Secretary: William Lathem (Momma said if you can't say nothing nice about someone, just throw them off a cliff.)

Treasurer: Michael Altman (Michael still cannot figure out what happened at the mass precinct meetings, so, we'll give him a grace period)

Assistant Treasurer: Sandra Thompson (Don't know enough about Ms. Thompson to say anything too smart).


Revenge of The Thugs

The Cobb County Nominating Committee was comprised of 10 people as follows:

Fred Allen
Felicity Diamond
Pat Jenkins (FT)*
Linda Gruetter (CCT)**
William Lathem (FT)
David Meyer (FT)
Frank Molesky (CCT)
Calvin Rhodes (Chairman)
Lew Stafford (CCT)
Dawn Strickland (CCT)

* The "FT" designation classifies the person as a "Flag-Thug" which is a person who is only participating in the political process because they wish to have the Confederate Battle Flag return as the Georgia state flag. They seek to destroy anyone who doesn't buy into their psychosis that the CBF is the be-all to end-all state symbol.

** The "CCT" designation classifies the person as a "Christian Coalition Thug" which is a person who will engage in lying, cheating, spreading malicious lies and rumors, or treating anyone who doesn't agree with their point of view as someone to be destroyed for political goals. They can be easily recognized by their frequent, and public, mention of the Lord while at the same time demonstrating hypocrisy of His Commandments and prescriptions for living a morality-based life.

The Flag Thugs have been involved in the Cobb GOP for about 2 years, tops.

The chairman of Nominating, Calvin Rhodes, has been involved for about the same amount of time as the Flaggots (a Neal Boortz term). During the 2002 cycle, Rhodes teamed-up with Marilyn to feverishly work for Cecil Staton against Congressman Phil Gingrey in the primary. Gingrey kicked the living daylights out of Staton in a runoff. No one knows under what rock Calvin crawled out from under to end-up in Cobb County, but lots of folks are looking to jam Calvin back under one (the Vine can hardly wait for him to run for public office).

The CCT's are just your basic religious zealots who are politically clueless about winning elections and only seek party politics to excercise their fringe religious agendas. (You can look for most of their candidates to be defeated in either a primary or the general.)

Fred Allen and Felicity Diamond are just basic Republicans with no whacked-out agenda.

ANYWAY, so, the time comes for the Nominating Committee to present their report. In actuality, there had been a preliminary report issued at registration and this was modified a bit before the actual report at 3:00 PM was presented. Several longtime activists like Tommie Howard were placed in alternate status, and some folks, like Frances Paige and Patricia Fuller, didn't make it to the original slate for district or state.

After the delegate and alternate slates were presented, questions about the process were asked from the floor. How many people applied? "Over 800," according to Rhodes. "Were all the delegate and alternate slots filled?" A rustle of paper, and then Rhodes answered, "No, there are still 49 alternate slots available for the 6th district and state conventions." A motion was made on the floor to allow written requests to be submitted to the NC to fill those slots. The Convention agreed to recess for 10 minutes to consider more applicants to fill the open slots.

There were 31 requests submitted to the NC for consideration. When the convention reconvened, 30 of them were read into the record as being added to the alternate slots, leaving 19 open slots. A question was raised from the floor to the NC asking if all applicants had been reviewed. Rhodes' answer was "Yes, all applicants had been reviewed and accepted for nomination to the slate except for one. Bill Simon was rejected by the NC."

Now, in a curious twist of events, newly-elected Cobb County Chairman Anthony-Scott Hobbs took a point of personal privilege to implore the convention to "reconsider that Bill Simon be put on the slate due to his work and support of Republicans." The Convention Chairman, Judson Hill, failed in his duty to ask if there were any nominations from the floor, so Hobbs' request fell on deaf ears, and the slate as presented and amended was voted to pass, though not unanimously.

Asked afterwards for his response to being rejected by the NC, Simon shrugged his shoulders in a so-what manner and told the Vine "Look, in the war of Good vs. Evil, occasionally, Evil wins a battle. Individually, these sleazebags wouldn't have the intellect capable of defeating me one-on-one, so they can only band together to defeat me." The Evil Ones could not be located for a rebuttal comment.

We are happy to report that, when the report of the Resolutions Committee was presented, no nutty, one-issue resolutions made it to the floor. All resolutions passed unanimously.

One curious item to report. On two occasions, 11th District Congressman Phil Gingrey appeared on the premises to address the Convention. On both occasions, his presence was either ignored by the Convention Chairman or he wasn't noticed to be recognized. Since this was Mr. Hill's first-ever convention he chaired, we're going to assume he didn't notice Gingrey rather than jump to the conclusion that he shared the former county chair's disdain for Congressman Gingrey. (Right, Judson???)

Columbia County GOP

Rumors have it that Congressman Charlie Norwood was behind the ouster of of Alvin Starks as County Chairman. Which we find rather peculiar since it was Norwood who pushed to have Starks elected in 2001. Ah, the vagaries of Charlie Norwood. First he supports Ralph Reed, then he turns against Ralph Reed. First he supports Alvin Starks, then he turns against Alvin Starks. Norwood appears to be suffering from some form of "bi-polar" disease. Maybe he should check himself into a clinic.

DeKalb County GOP

120 people attended. Mike Kovachich (sp?) was elected chairman. No discourse, no dissension. Everyone got along great.

Gwinnett County GOP

230 or so attended the Gwinnett convention. Buzz Brockway was reelected with no opposition. First Vice-Chair Sheryl Dawes was defeated by newcomer Julianne Thompson.

Note to the Gwinnett Old Guard: Julianne will make a fine First Vice-Chair. Cut her some slack. She is not as nutty as her supporters.

Note to Julianne: Stay away from advice from Maria Strollo and Judi Quigley, and you'll do well.

Floyd County GOP

171 delegates attended, including 10 African-American delegates. Chairman Keith Howell faced opposition from Eddie Lumston but won with 105 votes to retain his chairmanship. Lumston then proceeded to challenge each of the down-ballot seats, only to lose every one of them until the 4th Vice-Chair slot. In a demonstration of party unity, Howell's 4th vice-chair slate person withdrew his name from nomination so that Lumston could win and serve on the Executive Committee of the county. Amazing what happens when people are willing to demonstate they can work together for the good of the party.