Deace and his pastor, Bob Deever of Grace West Church in West Des Moines, said that McCoy calling himself a Christian is a “statement of ignorance.”

“It’s best not to let those lies go unchallenged,” Deace said.

During a recent roundtable discussion on same-sex marriage organized by The Des Moines Register, McCoy said that ultimately the issue is about fairness,  a principal in line with his Christian beliefs.

“I am a Christian and I like to talk about the fact that I think Christians can disagree about this subject,” he said. “One particular view should not dominate another religious view on this issue.”

McCoy is an active member of Plymouth Congregational Church in Des Moines.

Deever said McCoy has developed a God in his mind to allow him to do the things he wants to do, and because he is openly gay McCoy can’t be a Christian.

“You’re going to have to determine what you’re going to believe: your self deception and what you think it is or God’s truth and what he says it is,” he said.

Deace then hearkened longingly for the days when a homosexual could not “live this way without any sort of societal retribution for them.”

“Those days are long gone, and we live in an era where the homosexual lobby basically lived at the legislature this year,” he said.

The effort is part of a national movement to break from the Electoral College system. Support for such a move has been building nationally since 2000, when Republican George W. Bush became president despite losing the popular vote to Democrat Al Gore.

The change wouldn’t take effect, however, until it passes in enough states to equal 270 electoral votes, the number needed to be elected president. At least two states — New Jersey and Maryland — have already entered the compact.

The bill has the support of Democratic leadership, including Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, who has said he believes there is broad support for the measure.

Senate Republicans have been highly critical of the plan, calling it the “Iowa Voter Irrelevancy Act.” They argue that Iowa is a battleground state under the current rules. But if the president is elected by national popular vote candidates would only focus on large urban areas like New York, Los Angeles or California and skip over Midwestern states like Iowa.

“If this bill were enacted, presidential candidates would have very limited motivation to come to Iowa to campaign for votes because Iowa is only about 1/100 of the country’s population,” Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley said in a statement. “They would instead stick to campaigning in other states where the population is more dense and Iowans would be ignored and our issues would be swept aside. This is just another example of how our founding fathers were once again right on target in their desires to protect smaller states.”

Proponents of the bill, including a group called National Popular Vote, argue that because Democrats currently hold a sizable voter registration edge in Iowa, the state likely to be ignored in future presidential campaigns. Under the winner-take-all rule, candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, or pay attention to the concerns of states where they are comfortably ahead or hopelessly behind, instead focusing on so-called “battleground” states, the group said.

The five Republicans on the committee opposed the bill, joined by Democrats Wally Horn of Cedar Rapids and Dennis Black of Grinnell.

Although some have argued that state lotteries are generally recession-proof, this recent economic downturn seems to prove otherwise.

Testifying today before the state legislature’s joint Oversight Committee, Iowa Lottery official Mary Neubauer told lawmakers that Iowa’s lottery was not immune to the downward trend:

Last year, the lottery pumped $56.5 million into the state’s budget. In the current fiscal year that ends June 30, it is projected to give the state $53.6 million. Earlier this year, the lottery had projected the state budget would direct $61.3 million into the state budget.

[...]

The projections get worse for the 2010 fiscal year that begins July 1. The lottery will allocate an estimated $52.1 million in profits to the state that fiscal year, according to information presented to lawmakers.

“We do not anticipate the economy is going to improve in the near future,” Neubauer said. “If anything, it’s going to get worse.”

Most state lotteries were already experiencing a dropoff in sales months ago.  As Chuck Baumann of the Oregon Lottery told Reuters in November, “It’s been kind of an industry notion that lotteries are recession-proof, but I think what we’re experiencing right now is a little bit harsher than slow economies in the past.”

For that Nov. 28 article, Reuters got data from 27 state lotteries.  Of the 27, 14 reported a slowdown in sales, nine reported “steady” sales, and four reported an increase.  This is particularly troubling, because as tax revenue shrinks, state governments rely more heavily on the lottery to keep important programs afloat.

Most of the Old Media were caught up in Lipstick On A Pig, Day Two, trying to decide if Barack Obama had insulted Sarah Palin, and occasionaly noting that John McCain had used the same phrase describing Hillary Clinton’s health care plan. Obama decried the Same Old Rove Politics by repeating (at 2:42 into the clip below) the emphasized “Enough!” from his Democratic National Convention stadium acceptance speech, but then concluded the clause with “Enough Is Enough!“…

…and fans of internet memes all know what follows THAT exclamation.

WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK

Democrats looking for a surrogate to go on the attack could do worse than Samuel L. Jackson and his NSFW anti-snake rhetoric.

Jackson is also anti-pork — eating, not spending — in “Pulp Fiction,” memorably noting, “I don’t wanna eat nothin’ that ain’t got enough sense to disregard its own feces.” But lipstick on a pig may actually help here in the hog state, provided this independent candidate doesn’t split the votes.

Arnold Ziffel guarantees “no pork barrel politics,” so that bridge to nowhere, or rather to Hootervile, is a firm “thanks, but no thanks.”

Independent candidates (perhaps including Ziffel) will split the vote all over the place, if Ron Paul has his way. He endorsed… well, no one in particular on Wednesday, but rather third parties in general and Not McCain in the specific, making a point of saying that he’d gotten a last minute call from the McCain campaign asking for an endorsement and that he’s turned them down. Everyone assumes Paul is really backing Bob Barr, whose running mate this week offered to stand down for Paul. Paul, meanwhile, is coasting to re-election to the house — on the Republican ticket. He may have to eat lunch alone next year.

Or perhaps dine with Joe Lieberman, whose John McCain endorsement got kicked out of the Senate Democrat’s lunch table, but not out of his committee chairmanship. Yet.

As for McCain, he’s fighting the election with the running mate he has, not the running mate he wants. Sarah Palin’s fifteen minutes are continuing, the question being if they will last until Nov. 4. But an analysis of Gallup polling shows that nearly all of McCain’s post-Palin gains are in the South.

In the South, South Carolina Democratic chair Carol Fowler got herself in trouble Wednesday for noting that Palin’s giving birth to her son with Down syndrome was an important part of her public persona. And that’s something I’ve heard Palin’s pro-life/anti-choice (choose your side, even neutral language is near impossible) supporters say as well. Unfortunately, the phrase Fowler chose was that Palin’s “primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”

She quickly apologized. But Joe Biden, wiping a little saliva off his shoes, may have been grateful.

If no candidate gets 35 percent, the party has to hold a convention to choose a nominee, and that’s a realistic possibility in one Iowa congressional race.The prospect of a convention was a hot topic in Democratic circles in early 2006, and Ed Fallon’s gubernatorial campaign made a big effort to elect delegates at precinct caucuses and county conventions. But the convention talk cooled after Patty Judge left the race to form a ticket with eventual nominee Chet Culver, who won a four-way race (don’t forget Sal Mohamed) with 39.1 percent.

Even in a three-way race, a convention is a possibility if the math breaks just right. The Republicans came within 1 percent of a statewide convention for governor in 2002, when the three candidates all bunched up in the 30 percentile. Doug Gross emerged as the nominee, with only 35.6 percent.

That same year, Republicans actually went to a convention for the 5th Congressional District. Four strong candidates competed in the brand-new, solidly Republican district, and they landed between 21 and 31 percent each. Steve King landed at the top of that heap, and then turned that lead into a convention win. The rest is history.

Who attends a convention depends on what level of office is involved. For legislative seats, it’s county central committee members, with votes weighted by the size and party strength of each precinct. County offices are nominated by a county convention, made up of the precinct delegates elected at the Jan. 3 caucuses. Congressional district and state conventions are made up of delegates elected at the March county conventions.

The likeliest prospect for a convention is the Democratic race in the 4th Congressional District, with four candidates seeking the nomination. Republicans have two major three-candidate races: the U.S. Senate race and the 2nd Congressional District.

Prospects also exist for conventions in local contests. The definition of percentage is less than straightforward in elections for more than one seat, such as at-large county supervisor contests. To determine the 35 percent threshold in these races, the Code of Iowa specifies a “percentage of votes” method. To get at this number add up all the votes cast for all the candidates, including write-ins. Then divide it by the number of seats available.

For example, look at the 2004 Democratic supervisor race in Johnson County. Eight candidates were running for three seats, and a total of 20,905 votes were cast. Divide that by three, and the baseline for calculating percentage is 6,969.

Johnson County Supervisors, 2004 Democratic Primary	votes	percentage of votes	percentage of voters	TV Percentage
Terrence Neuzil	5,060	72.6%	54.4%	24.2%
Pat Harney	4,627	66.4%	49.7%	22.1%
Rod Sullivan	3,187	45.7%	34.3%	15.2%
Mike O’Donnell	3,060	43.9%	32.9%	14.6%
Rick Dvorak	1,998	28.7%	21.5%	9.6%
John Schneider	1,339	19.2%	14.4%	6.4%
Julie Gilmere	1,134	16.3%	12.2%	5.4%
James Knapp	446	6.4%	4.8%	2.1%
write in	54	0.8%	0.6%	0.3%

This formula does not factor in the common dynamic of under-voting or “bullet voting,” in which supporters of one candidate don’t use all their votes in a vote for two or vote for three race. Instead, bullet voters vote only for their favorite candidate. You can’t use both, or all three, of your votes on that candidate, but you don’t have to use all of your votes. It’s a common campaign tactic, but one that’s usually done sotto voce so as not to alienate supporters of other candidates. If you want to crunch some math, add up the total votes cast for all candidates plus write-ins, then divide it by the number of voters. This will give you a “votes per candidate” number, illustrating how many people cast some sort of bullet vote. In our 2004 sample race, the 20,905 votes were cast by 9,305 voters, meaning the average voter only cast 2.25 votes for supervisor out of a possible three.

Calculating percentage of voters, by dividing the candidate’s results by the total number of voters, produces a lower percentage but provides a more reliable assessment of how many people supported a candidate. Another common, misleading method in a vote in a two-or-three race is to add up all the votes and divide each candidate’s vote by the grand total. This is often seen on local TV and produces seeming paradoxes like candidates winning with 17 percent.

Another seeming paradox happens in a race where four candidates are competing for three seats. It’s possible for a candidate to win support from a majority of voters, yet finish in last place, as in this 2001 Coralville contest. Over half of the voters supported Bream, yet he drew the least support and lost.

Coralville City Council, 2001	votes	percentage of votes	percentage of voters	TV Percentage
Henry Herwig	744	80.0%	70.4%	26.7%
Dave Jacoby	732	78.7%	69.3%	26.2%
Tom Gill	682	73.3%	64.5%	24.5%
Bob Bream	614	66.0%	58.1%	22.0%
write in	17	1.8%	1.6%	0.6%

]]> http://iowaindependent.com/2383/primaries-by-the-percentages/feed 0 http://iowaindependent.com/1563/arkansas-congressman-a-vocal-bill-clinton-could-have-changed-my-war-vote http://iowaindependent.com/1563/arkansas-congressman-a-vocal-bill-clinton-could-have-changed-my-war-vote#comments Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:01:54 +0000 Douglas Burns http://iowaindependent.com/1563/arkansas-congressman-a-vocal-bill-clinton-could-have-changed-my-war-vote

A conservative Democratic member of Congress from Arkansas says that had Bill Clinton spoken out forcefully against the Iraq War in 2003, putting a voice to a position the former president claims he held at the time, it could have switched this “Blue Dog’s” vote on the House floor.

“It probably would have had an effect on me and the way I voted on the resolution had I known for sure he felt that way, and why he felt that way, which is a conversation we could have had but didn’t,” U.S. Rep. Marion Berry, D-Ark., told Iowa Independent and the Carroll Daily Times Herald this morning.

Berry spent Monday in western Iowa campaigning for U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.

With grave reservation and much doubt in his heart, Berry said, he voted in favor of the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq.

Berry is a member of a coalition of conservative congressional Democrats known as the Blue Dogs. Had Bill Clinton expressed opposition and given cover to Berry, the congressman could have made the case to this key swing block of voters in the House.

“I don’t overestimate the impact I have,” Berry said. “The reason I voted the way I did is because I didn’t think anyone could sit in the Oval Office and not feel the weight of responsibility to this country and to humankind to where they would enter into something like this casually and I was wrong.”

When questioned about the suspect veracity of Bill Clinton’s assertion that he was an early opponent of the war, Berry acknowledged that he didn’t recall any public statements from the former president before the war.

“I agree with you there,” Berry said. “I don’t remember it either.”

But Bill Clinton has said he was against the war from the beginning.

“But he didn’t say he spoke out against it,” Berry said.

Isn’t that almost worse, if he’s a former president and he feels that strongly about it and he remains silent?

“Well, former presidents have a certain expectation, kind of an unwritten requirement that they don’t speak out against the next president,” Berry said. “They just kind of don’t do that.”

Berry said it important to consider that Bill Clinton is not running for president.

“The No. 1 point there is he said it,” Berry said. “He didn’t say it for her. He’s not running for president as she said in one of the debates.”

A strong supporter of Hillary Clinton, Berry raised an issue one expects to hear from detractors — that Clinton English often demands laser-like attention.

“You really have to listen to what the Clintons say, especially with him,” Berry said. “You’ve got to listen to him very carefully. We all just make a few slips of the tongue from time to time but he doesn’t say things he hasn’t thought out.”

Berry has known the Clintons since 1976, and says the nation needs Hillary Clinton’s experience now.

“I fear for the future of the republic and I think there is absolutely no one else in the Democratic or Republican party primaries who even comes close to her range or vision and knowledge and wisdom to face all the problems we have from health care to our standing in the world community,” Berry said.

Berry takes issue with Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and others who suggest Hillary Clinton could pose problems for her party in the South.

“She understands the neighborhood I come from, the part of the world I come from,” Berry said.

Berry added: “The people of Arkansas still adore Senator Clinton.”

A folksy rice farmer who represents northeastern Arkansas, an area that includes most of Arkansas’ Delta lands and stretches west to the Ozarks, Berry talked of leaving behind his water jug, boots and a shovel to drive to Washington, D.C., where he was a special assistant to President Clinton in the 1990s.

“The culture shock is just amazing,” Berry said. “It is something you have to experience to appreciate.”

Based on his own issues with adapting to Washington, Berry suggests top Clinton rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., doesn’t have the experience to be president.

“Four years in the United States Senate or even a couple of terms doesn’t prepare you for anything like what the president of the United States is going to face January 2009,” Berry said.

Berry added, “I don’t question (Obama’s) intelligence. I don’t question any of ‘ems intelligence. I’m not saying they can’t learn it. I’m saying she doesn’t have to learn it. She already knows most of these people she’s going to be dealing with.”

Seen from the Iowa perspective, the CNN/YouTube debate in Florida offered Huckabee an extraordinary chance to build his recent momentum in the Hawkeye State. With Sunday-best wit, and more than a few God nods, Huckabee seized his moments and perhaps did enough this evening to move into a dead-heat (or even to the lead as one poll suggested) with long-standing front-runner here, Romney, the former Massachusetts governor.

Simply put, Romney looked vulnerable tonight, seemingly scared of the next words that might emerge from his own mouth.

But the debate win may have come at a huge cost for Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, who exposed a soft flank with his party on illegal immigration, an issue that stirs the most passions in conservative bastions of the state.  (They may love Jesus but my money’s on them hating the Mexicans in front of them in the Wal-Mart check-out lines more.)Huckabee acknowleged support for providing college scholarships to illegal immigrants who had been in primary and secondary education in his state.

“We’re a better country than to punish children for what their parents did,” Huckabee said in defense of his position.

“Mike that’s not your money,” Romney said. “That’s the taxpayers’ money.”

This exchange came early in the debate and had the night ended there Romney would have had his commercial, a deadly spot to loop through local television stations on his new nemesis.

But Huckabee came back big. And Romney faltered, looking at one point as a waffler on, of all things, the Bible.

Of the GOP candidates Huckabee is the best with humor.

When asked what Jesus would do about the death penalty Huckabee joked, “Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office.” And later, when asked a question about his position on funding for space exploration, Huckabee said, “Maybe Hillary could be on the first rocket to Mars.”

A Baptist minister who is now running ads characterizing himself as a “Christian leader” Huckabee’s deeper answer on the Bible being the word of God revealed to man was a steroid-swatted political homerun.

Huckabee also benefited as a specator, perhaps even more so than when had the Florida floor. Romney took some blistering shots from former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani who accused Romney of living in a “sanctuary mansion” where illegal inmmigrants were employed.
“You have a special immigration problem that nobody up here has,” Hizzoner said.

Later in the debate, Romney declined to describe waterboarding as torture and inspired the wrath of war-hero John McCain, as the Arizona senator and most famous POW in American history suggested that Romney’s position is one borne of the easy life of a stateside civilian.

“Life is not “24″ and Jack Bauer,” McCain said, referencing the popular Fox network show.

Without considering the current state of the race in Iowa, just looking at the debate in an organic sense, McCain demonstrated statesmanship and class that made his fellow travelers on the stage seem like small men, petty political staffers.

Does McCain now own a gun? No. But he damned well knows how to use one. No explanation necessary and Romney’s 2nd Amendment appeal — that his son left a couple of rifles at his house — seemed downright sissy.

McCain also effectively uses anti-war libertarian Ron Paul, a GOP congressman and presidential candidate, as a foil.

“We never lost a battle in Vietnam,” McCain said in response to a Paul point. “It was American public opinion that forced us to lose that conflict.”

The base loves fighting the 60s culture wars over and over and over …

McCain also noted that unlike President George W. Bush he wouldn’t need to rely heavily on a vice president for international affairs and military advice.

And if America had taken the advice of Democrats six months ago, the terrorists would be declaring victory today, McCain said.

Then you have Romney who couldn’t give a straight answer on gays in the military.

Of the other candidates Giuliani did nothing to hurt himself tonight. It was an unremarkable performance but one that leaves his campaign unshaken, and a surging Huckabee is just what the doctor ordered for Hizzoner as it is doubtful Huck has the stuff to compete in larger states where his front-porch-swinging ways and Scopes Monkey Trial-era view of science may make him long for those fat joke he used to hear.

Former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., shows signs with strong answers on guns and abortion.

“I own a couple of guns but I’m not going to tell you what they are or where they are,” he said.

But he fades into the background too easily. He only got minutes of airtime in the hour-long “Law & Order” episodes in which he appeared and he doesn’t fight for the mike in these debates. This is no time for the Easy Eddie appproach to the American presidency — and even small government types get this.

Congressmen Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter are just wasting valuable time, none of which I am going to spend here now.