Ramona Cunningham, the former head of the Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium (CIETC), is standing trial now for her alleged involvement in misspending about $1.5 million at that agency.

Writing in the Des Moines Register on Saturday, Marc Hansen is disturbed by the over-the-top hatred for Cunningham, who after all “did not murder, kidnap, rape or torture anyone.” He quotes an anonymous poster on the Register’s website, who fantasized about selling lottery tickets to see who gets to flip the switch to shock Cunningham, and who gets to turn up the voltage.

Ramona rancor goes beyond the Internet, though.

It seeps into radio talk and water cooler conversation. Like mucky river water, it has risen to an unhealthy level.

Where does it come from? Some of it comes from a pervasive distrust of government and the belief that sneaky public servants can get away with anything.

CEOs who work for the big for-profit companies seem to get more love. I’m not even sure Jeffrey Skilling, the evil Enron genius, faced the same level of public ridicule.

No, he didn’t. Nor do the executives of defense contractors who misspend billions in public money attract the same kind of vitriol.

I’ve got the answer for you, Mr. Hansen. Misogyny is driving the Cunningham hate train.

People aren’t posting their violent fantasies about extracting revenge on the men who had a hand in the wrongdoing at CIETC. If the person standing trial were named Robert Cunningham, this would be just another boring story about public servants embezzling funds that should have gone toward serving the public.

Her alleged sexual affairs with men involved in the CIETC scandal are nothing to be proud of, but no one is talking about selling tickets to watch those men get tortured.

Similarly, politics may be a contact sport, but if this year’s hard-fought Democratic nominating contest had involved two men, I do not think the commentary would have degenerated to the level it did. (More on that in this great post by Natasha Chart.)

Many women who voted for Barack Obama have nonetheless been disturbed by the sometimes violent hatred certain Obama supporters have expressed toward Hillary Clinton.

My limited personal experience on the internet also suggests that a small but vocal group of men quickly ratchet up the hate level when a woman is involved.

Last year I used to comment sometimes at the Cyclone Conservatives blog (as did a few other liberals). This was tame stuff. I would point out, for instance, that calling the Democratic health care proposals “socialized medicine” revealed a lack of understanding about the difference between “socialized medicine” (such as the Veterans Administration), single-payer health care (where the government pays but does not employ doctors and run hospitals), and imposing stronger regulations on private health insurers (which is what most of the Democrats proposed).

One or more anonymous posters at Cyclone Conservatives started attacking me in comment threads as a “skanky ho” and so on, and even posted creepy threats about following my children. It was so out of line that Don McDowell, the publisher of Cyclone Conservatives, shut down comments for a few days and issued a stern warning that threatening comments would not be tolerated. I did not observe that kind of response to the male Democrats who sometimes waded into the comment threads at that blog.

Hansen observed,

A man in eastern Iowa kills his wife, his children and himself and people say nice things about him. That’s fine. I’m sure the man had many good qualities.

During the past year or so, though, I can’t remember anyone saying anything nice about Cunningham, who can’t possibly be the worst person in the world.

No, she’s not the worst person in the world. She’s just the kind of person that certain sick minds love having an excuse to hate.

When you post a comment at Bleeding Heartland, your IP address appears in the comment.

If you sign up for a bunch of new usernames and post multiple comments in the same diary, pretending to be several different people, it will be obvious because the same IP address will appear in your comments purporting to come from different individuals.

Do not use sock puppets to create the impression that a lot of Bleeding Heartland users agree with you. Pick one username and stick with it for the purposes of writing diaries and commenting here.

Sock puppetry is grounds for banning at most blogs, and Bleeding Heartland is no exception.

The past few days have been intense for candidates and their advocates, and unfortunately we’ve run into some problems with how comments at Bleeding Heartland are rated.

I take part of the blame for not posting clear guidelines on this subject before now.

You don’t have to rate comments (my personal style is to be sparing in handing out ratings), but if you do, you can give five possible ratings.

“4” is for excellent. That means the comment has valuable insight, original information or analysis, and makes a strong contribution to dialogue at Bleeding Heartland.

“3” is for good. You might use this if you largely agree with someone’s comment, but not with every point he or she makes.

“2” is for marginal. You might use this if you strongly disagree with the content of someone’s comment. Also, a 2 rating could be a “shot across the bow” to warn someone that the line of argument in the comment didn’t do much to advance dialogue here, or comes close to crossing a line.

“1” is for unproductive. If you not only strongly disagree with a comment, but feel that it detracts from the atmosphere here (for instance, because it is disrespectful or contains ad hominem attacks), you might give it a 1.

“0” is for troll. If more than one user gives a comment a zero, it will be hidden so that some Bleeding Heartland readers cannot see it.

Never use a zero rating to express disagreement with the argument someone is making. That is ratings abuse, and if you do it repeatedly, Bleeding Heartland administrators will either take away your ability to rate comments or potentially ban you from posting here.

A zero rating should be reserved for extreme circumstances, when the comment deserves to be hidden. For instance, if someone is impersonating someone else by choosing a different real person’s name as a screen name (for instance, if I signed up as “Leonard Boswell” and posted ridiculous comments pretending to come from him).

Comments that use racist or otherwise bigoted language also would merit a zero.

Trying to expose the real names of Bleeding Heartland users who choose to write under screen names will not be tolerated either.

Slanderous, ad hominem attacks could get a zero rating too, but be careful not to accuse other posters of slander just because you disagree with their point of view or interpretation of events.  

Today is the first anniversary of the death of Steve Gilliard. As I’ve written before, I loved his blog and miss his writing. You’ll see why if you click on any of the posts I linked to in that diary.

Steve meant a lot to many others too, as you can see from reading the comments below a diary I posted about him at Daily Kos.

Use this as an open thread to tell us about your favorite bloggers. Whose work should we be reading, and why?

We took the kids to the Omaha Zoo today and got home too late for me to participate in Kevin Miskell’s liveblog session at the EENR blog.

Some background and the first few questions are in this post:

http://www.eenrblog.com/showDi…

The rest of the Q and A is here:

http://www.eenrblog.com/showDi…

Tomorrow (Thursday) Ed Fallon is liveblogging at EENR between noon and 1 pm. If you want to ask him some questions, go here:

http://www.eenrblog.com

While you’re there, check out the other diaries. For the most part, the EENR blog focuses on issues rather than candidates, and a lot of good substantive diaries are posted there.

As I mentioned on Sunday, some high-quality state blogs did not receive credentials to cover the Democratic National Convention this summer in Denver.

Today 12 state blogs that did receive credentials have issued an open letter to Howard Dean and the Democratic National Committee protesting the exclusion of some prominent blogs. Kos has the whole letter available at his blog if you click the link.

Much more background on the controversy is here. By allowing state parties to exclude politically inconvenient blogs, the DNC didn’t even follow the criteria it set up for the selection process. They need to deal with this snafu quickly.

Which is one of the 55 state blogs that received credentials to cover the Democratic National Convention in Denver. I am unable to travel to Denver this summer, but I look forward to reading the convention coverage in Iowa Independent.

Unfortunately, it appears that some of the state Democratic parties monkeyed around with the blog selection process. More on that after the jump.

Lynda Waddington has written a good profile of Pat VanZante, who is running in Republican-held House District 71 this year. She sounds like a great candidate. That includes most of Marion County and part of Jasper County.

I would like to see more in-depth coverage of our statehouse candidates and their races at this blog.

I encourage all Democratic campaigns to consider posting here to keep us up to date. I plan to promote all diaries by Democratic candidates in Iowa to the front page.

who is repelled by the overheated Hillary-hating rhetoric coming from some Obama supporters. Rebecca Traister has written a good feature for Salon. Go read the whole thing to see how bashing Hillary alienates even some women who have voted for Obama. Traister writes,

I began reporting this story in part because, as a 32-year-old woman who is more liberal than either candidate, and who was quite torn until Super Tuesday, I had found myself increasingly defensive of Clinton in the face of the Obama worship that rules the mostly white, liberal, well-educated circles in which I work and travel. I was confused by the saucer-eyed, unquestioning devotion shown by my formerly cynical cohorts, especially when it was accompanied, as it often was, by a sharp renunciation of Hillary Clinton, whose policies are so similar to her opponent’s. I was horrified by the frequent proclamations that if Obama did not win the nomination, his supporters would abstain from voting in the general election, or even vote for John McCain. I was suspicious of the cultlike commitment to an undeniably brilliant and inspiring man — but one whom even his wife calls “just a man.”

I am a loud feminist and a longtime Clinton skeptic who was suddenly feeling that I needed to rationalize, apologize for, or even just stay quiet about my increasing unease with the way Clinton was being discussed. Meanwhile, I was getting e-mails from men I didn’t know well who approached me as a go-to feminist to whom they could express their hatred of Hillary and their anger at her staying in the race — an anger that seemed to build with every one of her victories. One of my closest girlfriends, an Obama voter, told me of a drink she’d had with a politically progressive man who made a series of legitimate complaints about Clinton’s policies before adding that when he hears the senator’s voice, he’s overcome by an urge to punch her in the face.

Obama fans, you don’t have to like Clinton, but if you want to help your candidate, keep your feelings about Hillary in perspective (or if you can’t do that, at least keep them to yourself).

Your guy’s voting record in the U.S. Senate is almost exactly the same as hers, as big-time Obama supporter DemocraticLuntz has shown. The policies proposed by Obama and Clinton during this campaign are very similar as well.

Remember: your candidate is winning now and will need all hands on deck after the primaries are over. You don’t want to drive away anyone who might otherwise be inspired to volunteer for Obama.

Over at Daily Kos, SusanG published an interesting review of a new book by David Brock and Paul Waldman: Free Ride: John McCain and the Media.

I don’t have time to read many books at this stage of my life, but if you’ve read a political book lately, please consider putting up a review in the diaries section.

You can use this as an open thread to discuss political books you’ve read, want to read, or would like someone to review for Bleeding Heartland.  

David Mizner has written a diary I recommend to all supporters of Barack Obama. It highlights behavior that inadvertently harms Obama’s campaign by driving away some Democrats who otherwise lean toward him.

Mizner was an active supporter of John Edwards for president, as his diary history shows. Like me, he wrote regular front-page posts advocating for Edwards at MyDD. But after Edwards dropped out, Mizner voted for Obama in the New York primary on February 5.

On its surface, Mizner’s latest piece is an inside-baseball critique of editorial bias at the Daily Kos. He demonstrates how Markos Moulitsas has in recent months become an uncritical cheerleader for Obama, after being skeptical toward all the Democratic candidates in 2007.

But I recommend this diary not because you should care about what some blogger thinks of Markos. Rather, I think Mizner has touched on the alienation many Democrats feel when they encounter the overheated Hillary-hating and Obama-loving rhetoric from Obama fans:

It’s no coincidence that in the last two months the site has devolved into a propaganda organ for the Obama campaign. Although it’s aggravating to come across Drudgery at the top of the rec list and casual claims that Hillary is a sociopath, it’s not the nastiness that’s worrisome (freedom is untidy); it’s the laziness, the unquestioning partisanship, the lack of brainwork. These days at Daily Kos there’s no exchange of ideas, no debate. Obama is good, Hillary is bad, case closed.

It’s probably not wise to go looking to Daily Kos or any other political blog for Truth, but the progressive blogosphere fancies itself the reality-based community, and that commodity is in short supply at the mothership. If you’re a progressive untouched by enthusiasm for Obama or hatred for Hillary, you must be wondering what race Kossacks are watching. In the race I’ve watched, Obama has not campaigned as a transformative progressive. In the race I’ve watched, he has failed to offer a single bold policy initiative, coddled a virulent homophobe for political purposes, voted to fund the war in Iraq and justified doing so by parroting a disgusting rightwing talking point, echoed the GOP claim that the Social Security system is in crisis, refused to join Edwards in opposing the Global War on Terror framework, joined George Bush in seeking to expand the size of the military by 92,000 troops, said he would increase the military budget, supported corporate free trade, enlisted Tom Daschle to assemble a base of support on K-Street, raised buckets of cash fromlobbyist-law firms, and bashed unions for helping Edwards until he himself was the beneficiary of labor’s largesse. Et Cetera.

A dozen links in that passage didn’t come through when I copied and pasted, but click to the original diary and you’ll see that Mizner has the links to back up what he is saying.

This passage also made a crucial point that Obama supporters rarely acknowledge:

I’m not going to defend the Clinton campaign’s race-baiting or its praising of McCain at Obama’s expense. Nor, though, will I defend the Obama’s campaign sexism, or its willingness to claim race-baiting where there is none. I believe history will show both that the Clnton campaign wanted to turn Barack into the “black candidate” and that the Obama campaign wanted to turn Hillary into the racist candidate. They both exploited racial resentment.

Several links in that paragraph didn’t come through. The most important one is to the memo that the Obama campaign distributed in South Carolina, which sought to portray the Clintons as using racially divisive rhetoric. That memo was designed to give Obama an edge among blacks and white liberals, and it worked, but it also distorted Hillary’s comments about Lyndon Johnson and Bill’s comments about the “fairy tale.”

My impression is that intense Obama supporters can’t understand why everyone isn’t as outraged as they are over the latest stupid comment by some Clinton supporter. First, the Obama campaign has crossed lines too, as Mizner points out. Second, many progressives have, according to Mizner,

abdicated the job of trying to hold Obama accountable. Both Move On and Blue Majority gave him endorsements without offering so much as constructive criticism. Kos himself hasn’t written one word critical of Obama in several weeks, during which time Obama has sent nothing but alarming signals on the sphere’s signature issue: Iraq. Unlike Hillary, he wouldn’t ban corporate mercenaries and his advisors are describing his modest withdrawal plan as a “best case scenario” and calling for a large residual force. Also unmentioned by Kos and the other Daily Kos front page bloggers is Obama’s attempt to denythat he once held certain liberal positions.

Again, the links did not come through, but you can find many in the diary.

When Obama puts up red flags, and onetime reasonable progressives have nothing but praise for him and condemnation for Hillary, it turns off a lot of Democrats.

Speaking of the devolution of political discourse lately, I can’t resist linking to a diary Mizner wrote last month: “Do You Miss Edwards Yet?” The opening paragraph was a classic:

Ah, 2007. How I long for those halcyon, pre-Ferraro days when a major issue in the primary was the dangerous influence of corporate power. Thanks to Edwards, the Big Three battled over who would be more willing and able to take on corporations. There was reason to doubt that the policies proposed by Obama and Clinton–and even by Edwards, perhaps–would deliver the bold change they promised, but at least the issue of corporate power was front and center. Now, though, with Edwards gone, the issue is barely an issue, and somewhere CEOs and Wall Street execs are laughing.

Ain’t that the truth.

Last week Elizabeth Edwards wrote a fantastic guest post for the Think Progress blog asking why people like her (who have had cancer in the past) are left out of John McCain’s health care reform plan. A great video clip of her slamming McCain’s health plan can be found in this diary by NCDem Amy

McCain has ignored her comments, while one of his fund-raisers tried to pretend her concern about cancer patients being excluded from coverage was not a legitimate issue for political discussion.

But at some point, I think McCain will have to address the issues raised by Edwards. This week it emerged that she has joined the Center for American Progress as a senior fellow.

Already on Tuesday she appeared on NPR to explain how McCain’s plan “falls short in every conceivable way.” NCDem Amy’s diary includes a link to the podcast of that NPR interview, if you’d like to listen.

Elizabeth Edwards has been active intermittently on political blogs since the last presidential campaign, and she will be blogging more regularly in her new position.

Health care will be her main focus at the Center for American Progress:

“As many can attest, I have an opinion on everything,” Edwards said tonight about her new role. “But I am particularly concerned about the state of health care in America and I am grateful to CAP for giving me the chance to continue to advocate for universal and quality health care coverage for all.”

I can’t wait.

Oh, by the way, Edwards confirmed in an interview for Wednesday’s edition of Good Morning America that she prefers Clinton’s health-care plan to Obama’s. I am not at all surprised, since the Clinton plan was closer to that proposed by John Edwards during the presidential campaign.

In fact, while I have no inside information, my hunch is that if not for Obama’s inferior health care reform proposal and his use of Republican talking points to attack Hillary’s proposal, John and Elizabeth Edwards would have endorsed Obama for president by now.  

Chris Bowers announced the launch of the “From blue to bluer” campaign on Tuesday, and asked state bloggers to spread the word. Here are some highlights from his post on Open Left:

Five years ago, starting with his Presidential campaign and continuing with his tenure as DNC chair, Howard Dean introduced the idea of a “fifty state strategy” to the Democratic Party. The basic premise of the fifty-state strategy is that in order to truly revitalize the party Democrats needed to organize everywhere in the country, no matter how red or how blue a district may be, and not just in a select few “swing district” districts.

More recently, progressives have utilized Democratic primaries as a means to successfully change Democratic behavior. So far this year, this strategy has worked in districts such as the Illinois 3rd where Dan Lipinski changed his vote on Iraq because of his primary challenger, the Iowa 3rd where Blue Dog Leonard Boswell has suddenly become a progressive on a range of issues now that Ed Fallon is running against him, and the Maryland 4th where Donna Edwards handily defeated the more conservative Al Wynn. It is in the spirit of all three of these projects that BlogPac is announcing a similar program to reform safe, blue seats at the local and statewide level: From Blue to Bluer.

From Blue to Bluer seeks to first identify, and then help elect, progressive, grassroots candidates who are running in competitive Democratic primaries in blue districts around the country. The primaries can either be for open seats or against incumbents who are either too conservative for their districts, or who are simply corrupt, or both. The goal is to find a handful of proudly progressive primary candidates for local and state legislative races, and then provide them with the national support they need to help put them over the top. Through this program, we can show Democrats across the country that that a fifty-state strategy means blue districts too, and that all Democrats, no matter how local, can be held accountable for not representing their districts or for selling out progressive ideals.

Chris’s post goes into more detail about how solidly Democratic districts do not necessarily produce progressive office-holders (and he cites some examples from Philadelphia politics).

BlogPac is asking progressive activists from all over the country to nominate candidates who have the potential to turn blue districts bluer:

At BlogPac, we want to identify, and help elect, the best progressive primary candidates in blue districts around the country. Let’s find more Anne Dickers! The first step in this campaign is finding the right candidates to support, and that’s where you come in. If you have a suggestion for a local or state-level candidate for us to support, please fill out the form below and email it to natasha[dot]the[at]gmail.com:

From Blue To Bluer Submission Form

Please send your emails as word documents with the subject line “From Blue To Bluer.”

Just because a seat is blue does not mean it can’t become even bluer. Let’s build a truly national movement, and make a more progressive, reformed Democratic Party nationwide. Send in your suggestions today. The candidates we help support will only be as good as the ones you suggest.

At Open Left, you can find the link to the submission form, which is a pdf file. It looks like this:

Your name:

Your email:

Your website, if applicable:

Suggested Candidate Name:

District:

Major towns in district and/or link to a district map:

Incumbent name, if applicable:

Why is that primary a good one for the national netroots to get involved in (1,000 words or less):

If you know of any good primary battles shaping up at the state or local level in Iowa, please consider bringing the progressive challenger to the attention of BlogPac.

If you supported John Edwards, you probably are familiar with the Edwards Evening News Roundup at Daily Kos. The team who brought you those updates have created a new EENR Progressive blog, a forum for activists to talk about various issues and strategies for building the progressive movement.

Pioneer111 put up this diary about the new blog at MyDD. Key passage:

EENR is a community blog, and we hope you will be part of that community.  We’ve tried to set standards for discussion that reflect our desire for open communication, the search for truth, and that wonderful lesson we all learned in kindergarten, “Play Nice and Share Your Toys.”  There are lots of toys, too.  There’s a wonderful video wall, lots of diaries already there waiting for your comments, links to a mirror of the JRE campaign website, and much more.  We’ll have Open Threads, and special guest bloggers.  And we’re always open to suggestions!

EENR has a really unique feature.  We have 12 subject sections located on the left hand side.  This gives us twelve front pages and if you write a diary with one of the sections in your tags or use the drop down menu in creating it you can be a front pager in any section except the Home Page.   😉 Please join in creating the community discussions in all progressive areas. It also means that candidate diaries do NOT dominate the discussion.  Progressive issues do.  We hope that more contribute to that point of view.

There are diaries on a wide variety of topics at the EENR blog. I encourage progressives to join the conversation–even if you didn’t support Edwards for president.

Steve Gilliard passed away last June (decades too soon), but those of us who were addicted to his blog had been missing his writing for months already. One day in February 2007, Steve went to the doctor to get a prescription for a cold he couldn’t shake. He was admitted to the hospital right away for treatment of an infection of unknown origin, and he never was able to get back on his computer.

I’d already been planning to write this diary before I had my own run-in with a scary infection last week. I don’t write many personal reflections, but I feel compelled to share how much I still miss Steve’s blogging.

Apologies for the sudden break from blogging. On February 15 I came down with an ear infection that got out of control and put me in the hospital with cellulitis in my leg from last Tuesday until this afternoon. I have about 50 diaries in my head and will start writing them again tomorrow.

This week’s round-up once again brought to us by Betsy Muse of BlueNC.

On the eve of the South Carolina primary, those of us near the state are busy canvassing, calling and doing everything we can to stay on top of the local news. Earlier today I pulled up every online newspaper I could find listed for the state and found that the local news was doing a better job than the national media at portraying the race for the Democratic presidential nomination as a three person race.

John Edwards had plenty of press in the local news with at least one or two of the larger papers touting his rise in the polls and a couple of the smaller ones still reporting last week’s news. It was interesting to see that some papers showed only pictures of Clinton and Edwards and at least one paper showed only Barack Obama. Since online “front pages” change frequently, I obviously only had a snapshot of what was being shown at that particular time. However, if it was indicative of the mood of voters in South Carolina, might the national press and the pundits that bloviate therein be out of touch with what’s really going on in South Carolina? I guess we’ll find out on Saturday.

In the meantime, your bloggers at the 50 State Blog Network have been busy.

Your roundup for this week is after the jump.

Thanks again to Betsy for the roundup. -desmoinesdem

Here is your roundup for the eve of the Nevada Caucuses.  Scroll to the bottom and head on over to My Silver State for some excellent and balanced (they actually admit John Edwards exists) coverage of the top three Democratic candidates.

The writers at the state blogs are working hard to bring us the latest on the Dem congressional candidates.  Check them out, especially if you live in a very red district and need a Democrat to adopt.

Thanks to Betsy for the roundup. -desmoinesdem

Once again the writers at the state community blogs are busy staying on top of local and state news and bringing local flavor to national news. It takes longer each week to pull this together because I find myself caught up in reading the excellent coverage provided by these state blogs.

Find an interesting post and jump in the conversation. If you don’t see your state represented here, check out the state blogroll at Open Left or MyDD.

The rest is after the jump.

If you visit Daily Kos, you know that it would practically be a full-time job to read all of the diaries and comments posted there.

As you can see from this post by “jotter,” who keeps track of the “high-impact” diaries at that community blog, there were 1,876 diaries posted on the site just during the week of December 8-14.

I can’t even keep up with all of the diaries about John Edwards at Daily Kos. Many days I rely on the “Edwards Evening News” crew, who summarize the stories of the day and link to many of the good diaries. (Here is a link to all the back issues of the Edwards Evening News Roundup.)

While it’s impossible for me to cite every diary worth reading, I want to call your attention to two from the past week that I found particularly moving. The year we stole a Christmas tree by “chuckles1” was the fourth most-recommended diary out of the 1,876 posted. It inspired “karateexplosions” to write The Timeline of My Decision, which became the highest-impact diary of the week, recommended by more than 750 Kossacks.

I encourage you to click the links and read those diaries. They are compelling first-person accounts of how quickly middle-class Americans can find themselves living in poverty.

Many of our presidential candidates talk about this fine line between a middle-class lifestyle and life below the poverty line. For instance, Hillary Clinton’s “trap door” ad deals with that kind of economic insecurity, and she used the trap door metaphor in the Des Moines Register-sponsored debate last week.

But ultimately, I feel John Edwards is the candidate best able to address the issues that contribute to this problem. Not only has he drafted a plan to end poverty within 30 years, a wide-ranging plan to address hunger and food insecurity and a Rural Recovery Act, his own parents occasionally had trouble making ends meet. Chuckles1 noted in a comment below his diary,

I’ve heard John Edwards talk about this before, that look on your fathers face when he realizes there isn’t enough money. The guilt, the pain.

AND, not having done anything wrong, having worked hard, tried to get ahead, just to be left behind.

I don’t mean to suggest that other candidates in our field feel less compassion for struggling families. But I think Edwards would invest more of the president’s political capital into dealing with poverty. Karateexplosions likes all of our candidates,

But my primary vote goes to Edwards and his message of hope.  I never wanted my children to have to see That Look.  But now that they have, I want to work for an American future that means my children’s children will never have to see That Look.

If you are interested in sustainable agriculture, check out the new Golden Apple Press blog. Front-pagers include Natasha Chart, who occasionally posts at MyDD, and Orangeclouds115, whose “Vegetables of Mass Destruction” diaries have gained quite a following at Daily Kos.

The latest post at Golden Apple Press is on farm-to-school programs. You may recall that the Iowa legislature approved and funded a farm-to-school program on the last day of this year's session.

Well, you haven't seen me around these parts very much lately.  I've been busy.  As I disclose in my profile, I work for Iowa House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and we've been busy prepping for next years session and getting ready for campaign 2008.

I recently attended a great NCSL conference where we discussed blogging, podcasting, and other “web 2.0” tools that can be used for sharing information with the public about legislative business.  It got me fired up to build new sites for Majority Leader McCarthy and for the Iowa House Democratic Caucus. These sites haven't been made fully “public” yet, but I wanted to run them past the local blog community to see what they think – while soliciting comments.

We have enabled a “limited” comment function to begin with on both sites.  The idea is to test whether we can keep “flame wars” off of the site.  We'll see.  We will allow criticism, but we will attempt to moderate swearing, personal attacks, and ad hominem.

A while back I put up a post about the different attitude toward disagreement on political blogs and non-political blogs. I noted that

One surprising lesson I've learned is that people take offense much more easily on parenting blogs than at places like Daily Kos and MyDD.

Well, in the past few days I have gotten myself banned at a blog for the first time ever. It was Jess's Christian parenting/simple living blog Making Home, where I had been commenting for a few months. Jess is one of those bloggers who moderates comments not to screen out spam but to screen out views she considers “personal attacks” or intended to lead her readers astray.

I had tangled with the blogger before, resulting in her censoring my comments, but the last straw for her was the thread below this post, in which she made all kinds of ridiculous assertions about evil society vs. perfect Christian womanhood. She did post my first comment, under which she commented that in the south they have a saying: if you throw a rock over a fence, it's the hit dog that hollers.

Meaning that if I objected to her absurd stereotypes about women who don't share her values, my disagreement is proof that she must be right and must have struck a nerve.

I tried to respond to her (and to her husband, who fancies himself a real Biblical scholar) several more times, but never made it through her editorial screen again.

Elsewhere on the thread, I noticed that Jess, her husband and several of her readers tag-teamed to attack “Christine,” who had previously identified herself on the blog as a terminally ill theology student who had felt Jesus Christ's healing power in her own life. Christine's version of Christian faith was insufficiently judgmental and narrow-minded for Jess. I felt bad for her, but when I tried to post a comment supporting her, of course Jess did not let it through.

I don't post this in any effort to drum up a blogswarm, because there's no point–Jess would never let any of those comments through either. 

But I did find it amusing that after years of participating in all kinds of arguments at Daily Kos and MyDD, handing out and receiving fewer than a dozen troll ratings during all of that time, I managed to get banned from one of these non-political blogs in a matter of months. It's amazing how thin-skinned some of these people are.

The rabble-rousers over at Open Left (Chris Bowers, Matt Stoller, and Mike Lux) have launched a campaign against “Bush dogs”, defined as Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives who have in 2007 both capitulated on the Iraq funding bill and voted to allow Alberto Gonzales warrantless wiretapping powers.

You will probably not be surprised to learn that IA-03's own Leonard Boswell makes this list. Like many in the group, he is in the “Blue Dog” faction in the House. (Other “Bush dogs” are in the “New Democrats” group in the House, but Boswell does not belong to that club.) 

Boswell's disappointing vote on these issues is only the latest in a long string of disappointments for me, from voting for all of Bush's horrible energy bills to supporting permanent repeal of the estate tax to voting for the “torture” bill in the fall of 2006.

Does Boswell really represent such a conservative district that he “has” to vote with Republicans on these issues? No, he does not. His district actually has a partisan index of D+1.4, whereas many of the Bush dogs are in districts that lean Republican, or deep-South districts where rank and file Democrats tend to be more conservative. 

Chris Bowers specifically criticized Boswell in this post, in which he made the case that Boswell is NOT “voting his district” when he casts his lot with the Bush White House.

Paul Rosenberg provides some interesting data on the “Bush dogs” and how vulnerable they might be to a strong challenge: click here for more. 

Some in the blogosphere have criticized this effort to target in possibly hit Bush dogs with primary challengers, saying it could endanger our majority in the House and is bad form to “meddle” in other states' politics. Chris Bowers responded to the criticism here, and Mike Lux weighed in on the dispute, and his desire to promote progressive voting in Congress without harming Democrats in truly vulnerable positions, here.

What do you think? I support letting Boswell know when we are upset about his voting, but I don't see a primary challenge as having much chance here. Anyway, Iowa is going to lose a district after the 2010 census, and Boswell will likely retire at that point.

Primary challenges against other “Bush dogs” may be well worth the effort, on the other hand. Even if we don't beat these people in the primary, we can push them to vote better, as Jane Harman and Ellen Tauscher (both California Democrats) have been doing since netroots progressives targeted them for primary challenges. 

Someone I know who spends a lot of time on blogs professionally told me that political blogs make up only about 5 percent of the blogosphere.  I had no idea–until recently I never read any non-political blogs.

In the past few months I've started reading more blogs related to mothering, natural parenting and green or simple living. Most of these blogs are non-political, although some have the occasional pro-Republican post. Many of them have a Christian orientation as well.

I've learned a lot from reading these blogs. One surprising lesson I've learned is that people take offense much more easily on parenting blogs than at places like Daily Kos and MyDD. I have seen bloggers get quite offended by “total strangers” posting “rude” comments on their blogs that really didn't seem so rude to me.

They should see what some of the Clintonistas say about me at MyDD!

Some of the non-political bloggers I read take a much more active role in restricting the comments on their blogs.

When political bloggers do this (like iPol), it's to prevent spam from being posted, not a way to screen out opposing views. Cyclone Conservatives and The Real Sporer don't censor my comments.

I've had some of my comments screened out by non-political bloggers for reasons I don't understand. I make an effort to be respectful in my disagreement and truly don't think my censored comments were offensive. Half the time I was just trying to make things interesting on a thread containing 30-plus comments along the lines of “Excellent post! Thanks so much for putting that in perspective!” 

Anyway, does anyone else out there read non-political blogs on sports or hobbies or whatever? If so, have you noticed less of a tolerance for spirited disagreement?

I can't go this year, but if you were thinking about it, make up your mind today. The registration site is here:

http://www.yearlykos…

I'll be away from my computer for several days, so there may be light posting until Tuesday, unless noneed4thneed and Mark Langgin have some extra time on their hands.

Meanwhile, consider this an open thread for discussing what you've been hearing from your caucus-going friends and neighbors (Democrats or Republicans). 

Iowa was a “red state” in 2004 and many attribute the rural electorate in Iowa as “leaning Republican” – and most definitely more conservative than the average urban voter,  New numbers released by the Center For Rural Strategies are showing a slight shift in favor of Democrats on “generic ballot” questions:

Writers who knew Steve better, and had been reading his work longer, have been sharing their memories and their thoughts about Steve.

Meteor Blades put up a diary at Daily Kos linking to a favorite post by Gilliard, from July 4, 2003. Read through the comments section, because several people link to other posts that are absolute classics as well.

PsiFighter37's diary is in the same vein, and is worth reading through too.

Shanikka shares her perspective as a black blogger, and links to several other fantastic Gilliard posts.

Sara, who commented frequently at Steve's blog as “Mrs. Robinson,” shares her thoughts at Orcinus.

Digby keeps it short and sweet at Hullabaloo.

Jane Hamsher remembers meeting Steve in New York last September–it's worth clicking through to Firedoglake to read the whole thing.

With great sadness, I share the news that went up on The News Blog today:

Steve Gilliard, 1966-2007  

 

It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog (www.thenewsblog.net), passed away early this morning. He was 41.

To those who have come to trust The News Blog and its insightful, brash and unapologetic editorial tone, we have Steve to thank from the bottom of our hearts. Steve helped lead many discussions that mattered to all of us, and he tackled subjects and interest categories where others feared to tread.

We will post more information as it becomes available to us.

Please keep Steve's friends and family in your thoughts and prayers.

Steve meant so much to us. We will miss him terribly.

– the news blog team

Steve Gilliard was one of the early front-pagers on Daily Kos, but I wasn't reading him (or any blogs, really) at that time. He graduated to his own blog, which I started reading occasionally around 2003 or 2004. From time to time I clicked through a link from somewhere else.

I liked his voice. He was funny, even when angry. He seemed to be about my age. Although his life experiences as a black man from New York City were very different from mine, I could relate to his perspective on many things.

I started checking his blog once a week or so. By late 2004 or early 2005 I was checking every day. Last year I was often checking two or three times a day.

I absolutely loved his rants. His writing style was so different from mine, and it seemed to flow so freely.

I also found his optimism refreshing. I can be a pessimist by nature. He was convinced that Bush would not serve out his second term. I didn't agree, but I loved reading the case he made for it.

He was knowledgeable about military history, and I learned a lot from his posts.

I didn't know him at all. A few times I sent him links to articles I thought he'd be interested in, and we exchanged a few e-mails that way. But you know how it is–when you've been reading someone's work for so long, it starts to feel like you know the person.

In February, Steve got sick and went to the doctor for a prescription. He thought he'd be home the same day, but he was immediately admitted to the hospital. His friend Jen started periodically posting updates about his health. I remember early on she warned readers that she thought Steve would be in for a while–she'd never seen him that sick before.

I hadn't known anything about his health problems, because I was not a regular reader of his blog at the time of his first hospitalization for open heart surgery a few years back. Apparently he suffered kidney failure while recovering from that surgery and was on dialysis ever since. An infection of unknown origin put him into the hospital this year. It turned out to be an infected heart valve, so he had open heart surgery again to replace that. Afterwards, Steve never left the ICU. He seemed to be making progress at some times, but then there would be setbacks. At least Jen got to visit him a couple of times after his surgery, and he was able to communicate with her. 

I am devastated for Steve's family, especially his mother, who was with him every day in the hospital. I cannot imagine how hard it would be to see my child so ill and be unable to make him better. His loss will leave a hole in the lives of his friends, and Jen in particular.

I've been missing Steve's writing this spring. It's nothing compared to the unspeakable tragedy for his friends, but I do feel sorry for all of his readers who will miss him as well. 

The News Blog does not currently appear to be searchable. If I can find it later, I will post one of my all-time favorite rants by Steve after the jump. It appeared shortly after the Katrina disaster.

UPDATE: Found it. “We told you so,” which appeared on September 3, 2005, is after the jump. 

LATE UPDATE: I posted more about my background here and here. A better e-mail for contacting me: desmoinesdem AT bleedingheartland.com

Desmoinesdem is the pseudonym of a woman who has been interested in politics since she took on the role of John Anderson for a 5th-grade class debate. She wonders whether there are any other Bleeding Heartland registered users old enough to remember John Anderson.

She first participated in an Iowa caucus as a Paul Simon supporter in 1988. She wonders whether there are any other Bleeding Heartland registered users old enough to remember Paul Simon.

Now she is a mother of two in the Des Moines suburbs. She was a precinct captain for Kerry in 2003/2004 and for Edwards in 2007-2008. Aside from electoral politics, her interests include a wide range of environmental issues and attachment parenting.

The best way to contact her is to comment in one of her diaries, but she can also be reached at desmoinesdem at yahoo.com.

As far as I can tell – Bleeding Heartland is off to a great start.  A big thank you goes out to Drew & Chris and anyone else who contributed to getting this off the ground.

Many of the ‘national’ community blogs (i.e. Daily Kos, MyDD…etc) have thriving “meta” discussions and collections of link resources.

In the interest of facilitating informed blogging about the Iowa Legislature I thought I would post some helpful links to resources available for bloggers…

It’s about time Iowa had a true community-based blog – one where commenting is not the beginning and end of reader interaction.  On Bleeding Heartland everyone is able to write their own diary, meaning more and better content and a more diverse representation of views from around the state.  The commenting system is also a big improvement over anything else available.  So create an account, write a diary, and let us know what is going on in your corner of the state.