Gwen Hope argues that “the U.S. has its own civic religion. Born in pews, raised by wars, and cemented by money. An abominable worship of state and capitalism fused.” -promoted by Laura Belin

The United States has a religion problem. Primarily colonized by various factions of Puritan Separatists in the 17th century, this isn’t surprising. However, these original colonists’ faith in the Abrahamic deity has mutated over time – monarchic “divine right of kings” became democratic “divine right of nations.”

In place of worshiping the Judeo-Christian god, they instead worship the nation (or, rather, their conception of the nation.) This is the issue we have seen developing for some time now – civic religion – society in which the state and its history is regarded as sacred in the same way as sacraments and saints.

Governor Kim Reynolds launched her first negative television commercial on July 20, with a spot focusing on decisions Fred Hubbell made as chief executive of Younkers during the 1980s. The move came a few days after another national election forecaster declared the Iowa governor’s race a “toss up,” as Cook Political Report did last month.

Incumbents who are confident about their standing with voters don’t typically go negative on tv this far out from an election. New campaign disclosures filed on July 19 show that while Reynolds had more cash on hand than her opponent–even after spending $1.2 million on advertising since the end of May–Hubbell more than doubled her fundraising during the same period and will likely be competitive financially through the November election.

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.

Good for him:

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says he killed about half a million dollars worth of consulting contracts approved by Bush administration political appointees near the end of President Bush’s term.

“The career folks who watched this process unfold in the last waning days of the last administration were very concerned about the process-the connections and relationships between people receiving this half a million dollar contract and what they intended to do with the resource which the career folks felt was unnecessary and inappropriate,” Vilsack said during a guest appearance at the daily White House press briefing. “They made a very strong and powerful case to me that the process was not followed as it should have been.”

Vilsack did not explain precisely what consulting the contract was to involve, but he said it seemed unnecessary.

“I didn’t see any value to USDA from it. I will tell you it was rather startling to see that a substantial amount of money had already been spent on foreign travel under circumstances we did not think was appropriate,” the secretary said.

More details are at the Politico. Thanks to my fellow Iowa blogger Chris Woods for bringing the story to my attention.

This news is obviously related to President Barack Obama’s directive to all the heads of government agencies to restrict no-bid contracts and crack down on wasteful contracts.

(cross-posted at La Vida Locavore, which you really should be reading)

Thanks to John Deeth, I learned that Congressional Quarterly has released its annual rankings of how members of Congress voted. The full chart is here. You can check how often the representatives and senators voted with President Bush, how often they voted with the majority of their own party, and how often they were present to vote.

Deeth noticed that our own Senator Tom Harkin

voted against George Bush’s declared position more than any other senator in 2008, according to Congressional Quarterly vote scores. Harkin opposed Bush’s position 75 percent of the time.

Harkin voted with fellow Senate Democrats 97 percent of the time and participated in 98 percent of the Senate votes in 2008. That’s an impressive attendance record for a senator up for re-election, though admittedly Christopher Reed wasn’t much of an opponent.

Chuck Grassley had a perfect attendance record for Senate votes in 2008. He voted with Bush 72 percent of the time (that’s a low number for Grassley) and with the majority of Senate Republicans 93 percent of the time.

In our House delegation, Steve King (IA-05) voted with Bush the most often in 2008, 77 percent of the time. King voted with the majority in the Republican caucus 97 percent of the time and had a 98 percent attendance record.

Tom Latham (IA-04) was unusually willing to vote against Bush’s stated position this year, voting with Bush only 63 percent of the time. Latham recognized early that a Democratic wave was building and sought to rebrand himself as a moderate, independent thinker in his swing district. He still voted with fellow Republicans 90 percent of the time, and had a near-perfect 99 percent attendance record.

Congressional Quarterly’s rankings show surprisingly little difference between Iowa Democrats in the House. Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02) both voted with Bush 13 percent of the time, while Leonard Boswell (IA-03) voted with Bush 17 percent of the time. Their party loyalty rankings were almost identical, with Braley and Boswell voting with the Democratic majority 98 percent of the time, and Loebsack hitting 97 percent on that metric. They all had good attendance, with Braley making 92 percent of the votes, Loebsack 93 percent, and Boswell 88 percent despite having surgery that required a two-week hospital stay in the summer.

The differences between Iowa’s Democratic members of Congress are more apparent when you look at their Progressive Punch rankings. Considering all his votes in 2007 and 2008, Boswell was the 180th most progressive member of the House, with a progressive score of 92.38. That’s a big improvement on his lifetime progressive score of 74.36; Boswell is clearly a more reliable vote when Democrats are the majority party that controls what comes up for a vote. Ed Fallon’s primary challenge probably nudged Boswell toward more progressive voting as well.

But even the new, improved Boswell had a progressive score of only 67.86 “when the chips were down” in 2007 and 2008. The Progressive Punch “chips are down” rankings take into account particularly important votes, such as the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Loebsack ranked 123rd among House Democrats with a progressive score of 95.41 for all his 2007 and 2008 votes and a score of 80.79 “when the chips were down.”

Braley was not far behind at number 147 among House Democrats, with an overall progressive score of 94.48 and a “chips are down” score of 76.65.

It will be interesting to see whether Boswell’s voting habits change much in 2009, with no primary challenger likely to emerge.

Looking at the big picture, Congressional Quarterly’s Richard Rubin draws some conclusions from that publication’s analysis of voting in 2008:

Bush’s side prevailed on just 47.8 percent of roll call votes in 2008 where he took a clear position. That is the eighth-lowest score in the 56-year history of the survey, although it was higher than Bush’s 38.3 percent success rate in 2007. Congress forced him to accept a farm bill and Medicare doctor-payment changes he didn’t want, and lawmakers challenged him repeatedly on issues from tobacco regulation to infrastructure spending.

Moderate Republicans fled from the president as the election neared, and the average House Republican supported Bush just 64 percent of the time. That’s down 8 percentage points from a year ago and the lowest for a president’s party since 1990, midway through Bush’s father’s term in the White House. His average support score of 70 percent among GOP senators was also the lowest for a president’s party since 1990.

As in 2007, Democrats voted with Bush far less often than they had when the Republicans were in charge and could set the agenda. House Democrats voted with Bush just 16 percent of the time on average — above their 2007 support score of 7 percent but still the second lowest for any president. Democratic senators joined Bush on 34 percent of roll call votes, down from their average support score of 37 percent a year ago. […]

At the same time, despite his political weakness, Democratic control of Congress and frequent defeats, Bush got his way on some of the biggest issues of the year.

Playing offense, the administration secured more money for his effort to fight AIDS globally and cemented a nuclear-cooperation deal with India. But Bush scored most often with blocking tactics, using threatened vetoes and the Senate filibuster to avoid significant changes to his Iraq policies, major restrictions on intelligence- gathering tactics, and removal of tax breaks for oil and gas companies. He was a resilient pinata, losing plenty of votes along the way but remaining the biggest obstacle to the Democrats’ ability to turn their campaign agenda into law.

Rubin’s analysis shows that Latham is far from a maverick within the Republican caucus. He moved away from Bush in 2008 almost exactly in step with fellow House Republicans.

Taking a broader look at the trends, I see two lessons for Democrats here. First, Barack Obama should understand that driving a very hard bargain with Congress often pays off. You don’t have to back down at the first sign of serious opposition. If even an extremely unpopular president was able to do reasonably well with a Congress controlled by the other party, a new president who is quite popular like Obama should be able to get most of what he wants from a Congress controlled by his own party.

If any of Obama’s proposals fail the first year, he should consider trying again later without watering them down. Bush wasn’t able to get everything he wanted out of the Republican-controlled Congress during his first year or two, but he kept at it and was able to get much of his agenda through eventually. Many tax cuts not included in the 2001 package got through in later years. He didn’t get the energy bill he wanted until 2005.

The second lesson is for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. It’s long past time to start making the Republicans pay a price for using the filibuster. Otherwise they will continue to use it routinely to block Obama’s agenda.

Nate Silver recently looked at how Republicans have used the filibuster since Democrats gained the majority in Congress. He concluded that Reid “has been exceptionally ineffective”:

There are basically two mechanisms that a majority leader can employ to limit filibusters: firstly, he can threaten to block votes on certain of the opposition party’s legislation (or alternatively, present carrots to them for allowing a vote to proceed), and secondly, he can publicly shame them. Reid managed to do neither, and the Senate Republicans did fairly well for themselves considering that they were in a minority and were burdened by a President with negative political capital.

Time to play hardball in the Senate, not only with Republicans but also with Evan Bayh and his merry band of “Blue Dogs” if they collude with Republicans to obstruct Obama’s agenda.

Good advice from George W. Bush in this sketch from Saturday Night Live’s election special a couple of nights ago.

This is an open thread for anything related to the upcoming election.

If you were out volunteering today for a candidate, share your story in the comments or post a diary.

I forgot that our lame duck fearless leader was going to address the nation tonight on why we should hand over $700 billion to his buddies on Wall Street.

I saw that Warren Buffett is investing $5 billion in Goldman Sachs and will receive equity in return. Why should taxpayers settle for less?

This is an open thread for anything related to the bailout or Bush’s speech. How did he look and sound?

If we’re talking about policy mistakes with disastrous long-term outcomes, it’s hard to top the Iraq War for loss of life and the 2005 energy bill for threats to the planet.

In fact, we could be here all day if we set out to brainstorm all the horrible things to come out of George Bush’s presidency.

But it does seem like the proposed bailout of failing banks is a contender for worst Bush administration proposal ever.

Here are a bunch of links on the subject.

Paul Krugman of the New York Times is updating his blog frequently.

Senator Bernie Sanders: Billions for Bailouts: Who Pays?

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich: What Wall Street Should Be Required to Do, to Get A Blank Check From Taxpayers

Bonddad: This is one of the worst bills to ever be proposed.

Robert Borosage: Financial Crisis: Time for a Citizens’ Plan?

Devilstower: Three Times is Enemy Action

Ian Welsh: How To Bail Out Ordinary Mortgage Holders And Not Just Banks

8ackgr0und N015e wrote a funny piece on one angle of this story that hasn’t received as much attention.

Two of Josh Marshall’s readers ask really good questions.

This post by Matt Stoller includes an excellent statement from Senator Hillary Clinton.

As far as I know, no members of Congress from Iowa have issued public statements about the bailout, but I will post them as they become available.

The Des Moines Register features its latest Iowa poll in the Sunday edition, showing Barack Obama leading John McCain 52 percent to 40 percent among likely voters. The poll surveyed 801 Iowans by telephone, including 616 who said they would definitely vote in November.

If you click the link you can read the exact wording of questions asked, but it’s not clear whether the likely voter screen involved anything other than whether a person said he or she would definitely vote.

It’s the second poll in a row to show Obama above 50 percent in Iowa, with a double-digit lead. A Time/CNN poll taken after McCain selected Sarah Palin but before Palin and McCain spoke at the Republican convention showed Obama beating McCain 55-40 in Iowa, leading in every region of the state and even among rural voters.

Other findings from the Des Moines Register’s new Iowa poll:

Just 18 percent of respondents think the country is headed in the right direction, while 74 percent say it is on the wrong track.

George Bush is at 25 percent approval, 71 percent disapproval. Repeat after me: most unpopular president in history!

Tom Harkin leads Christopher Reed in the U.S. Senate race by 53 percent to 34 percent.

Chuck Grassley’s approval rating is still high at 69 percent. Democrats’ only hope is to pick up so many Senate seats this year that Grassley decides to throw in the towel before the 2010 election. He hasn’t been getting along too well with Iowa Republicans lately, and it’s never fun serving in the minority in Congress.

I love that McCain and Sarah Palin will waste part of this Thursday campaigning at the Eastern Iowa Airport outside Cedar Rapids. Sorry, but Iowa is not really a swing state in this year’s presidential race.

Post your thoughts about today’s events. The front page of Barack Obama’s website has a link you can click to find ways to help Hurricane Gustav victims.

John McCain has seized the opportunity to distance himself from George Bush and Dick Cheney. They had been scheduled to address the GOP convention on Monday night, but those speeches have been canceled. Instead, Laura Bush and Cindy McCain will speak briefly on how Americans can help hurricane victims.

Meanwhile, McCain is touring the Gulf cost and talking about turning the Republican convention into a service event. Fits nicely with his slogan about “putting country first,” except when you realize that his visit is likely to distract the local officials trying to manage evacuation and disaster relief efforts.

He obviously doesn’t want people to remember that the day Hurricane Katrina made landfall in 2005, Bush was celebrating McCain’s birthday in Arizona.

This diary by Muzikal203 compares how McCain and Obama have reacted to Gustav and both senators’ records on matters related to Hurricane Katrina.

UPDATE: I’ve been reading some disturbing posts about police tactics in St. Paul:

A concise roundup by mcjoan is here.

Glenn Greenwald has a lot more detail, including footage of Amy Goodman, host of the Democracy Now! radio program, being arrested while covering the protests at the RNC. Greenwald observed on Monday:

Beginning last night, St. Paul was the most militarized I have ever seen an American city be, even more so than Manhattan in the week of 9/11 — with troops of federal, state and local law enforcement agents marching around with riot gear, machine guns, and tear gas cannisters, shouting military chants and marching in military formations. Humvees and law enforcement officers with rifles were posted on various buildings and balconies. Numerous protesters and observers were tear gassed and injured.

Lindsay Beyerstein wrote this piece at Firedoglake.

Open Left has published several pieces on this, including this post with photos by Matt Stoller.

It is depressing to see such an overreaction to political dissent.

If we don’t want to see John McCain elected president, we need to chip away at his “maverick” image and demonstrate how he has marched in lockstep with the Bush White House.

This web video produced by the Democratic National Committee is a step in the right direction:

Help this video go viral by sending the link to friends, or putting it up on your blog if you have one. Alternatively, reward good behavior by making a donation to the DNC.

Daily Kos user GregMitch put up a diary today today to mark two years since Stephen Colbert’s priceless routine at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner.

He not only roasted George W. Bush, he absolutely skewered the enabling White House press corps (“We, Americans, didn’t want to know, and you had the courage not to try to find out”).

Watch part 1:

Then watch part 2, which includes my favorite parts (as well as a funny line about John McCain):

Then watch part 3:

I still can’t believe he delivered some of those lines.