Happy new year, Bleeding Heartland readers!

Ten years ago today I was making pancakes when the future Mr. desmoinesdem told me Boris Yeltsin had resigned. I was living overseas and didn’t know I’d be moving back to Iowa someday. I wasn’t reading any blogs and didn’t imagine I’d ever be writing one for a hobby. I didn’t know anything about breastfeeding or babywearing or cloth diapers.

So much has changed for me during the past decade, but one thing remains the same: I stay home on New Year’s Eve to avoid drunk drivers.

There are many “best of” and “most important” lists floating around the blogosphere this week. Here are a few good posts and threads:

Talking Points Memo announced the Golden Duke Award winners for this year.

Annie Lowrey compiled the top takedowns of 2009.

Chris Bowers says the best development of the decade was the expansion of the internet, and the Obama administration’s protection of net neutrality was the “top political moment of the first year.”

Asinus Asinum Fricat lists the best and worst foods and food trends of the decade.

Mother Talkers users sum up the decade in six words.

Links to all of the year’s “I Got The News Today” diaries at Daily Kos, “tributes to American service members who died as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” can be found here and here.

Jerome Armstrong and MyDD users suggested the most important elections and Congressional votes of the decade. My list of the most important Congressional votes: Bush 2001 tax cuts, PATRIOT Act, Iraq War authorization, Medicare Part D, Bush energy bill, Obama stimulus package.

I agree with most of Chris Cillizza’s list of the top 10 U.S. Senate races of the decade.

What were the top Iowa elections of the decade? The Gore, Bush and Obama victories in the presidential races are obvious choices. I would also add Tom Vilsack’s and Tom Harkin’s wins by relatively large margins in 2002, a bad year for Democrats across the country. That was when Iowa Republicans should have realized they had serious problems, but it didn’t really hit them until they lost control of the state legislature in 2006.

What would you say were the most notable statehouse races from the decade? There were so many great races in 2006 and 2008, including Eric Palmer defeating Danny Carroll twice in House district 75. Dave Hartsuch’s 2006 primary victory over Maggie Tinsman in Senate district 41 was another sign that there was no room for social moderates in the Iowa GOP. I’m still disappointed that we couldn’t elect Jerry Sullivan in House district 59 last November.

Aside from elections, the most significant political event in this state during the past decade has to be the Iowa Supreme Court’s Varnum v Brien ruling. Few people would have predicted that Iowa would be among the first states to have marriage equality.

Please post your own memories of the best or the worst from the year and the decade that passed.