Jack and Jill Politics - Latest Comments in Afternoon Open Thread

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

aminahhanan — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:00:37 -0000

This had to be one of the most unmoving, unfeeling documentaries I’ve ever seen. It tried really hard, but it just didn’t do it for me. Maybe in 2012.

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

Town — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:51:07 -0000

Maybe Levi can't get a job in Alaska because of Palin's influence. Ever think about that? He could leave Alaska but that would mean leaving his child.

This is what Sarah Palin needs to do:

A) Stop fighting with a teenage boy

B) Draw up some papers for Levi to relinquish his parental rights in exchange for a payoff. That's the only way she's going to get rid of him.

C) Stop fighting with a 19 year old child.

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

mon_dieu_ishmael — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:17:21 -0000

I have no love for Sarah Palin but Levi Johnston is a pissant asshat. He should have access to his son but why does he keep going on talk shows bad mouthing the Palin family? For the Money? 15 minutes of Fame? Is he paying child support? He is an immature puke.
I can only hope that the Palins and Levi Johnston fade into permanent obscurity.

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

Coby W. Dillard — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:42:52 -0000

Thanks!

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

zackboston — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:41:13 -0000

congrats! all your hard work paid off. . .

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

Town — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:18:33 -0000

And those precincts are typically the Dem. leaning precincts.

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

rikyrah — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:10:55 -0000

EVENING OPEN THREAD IS UP

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

rikyrah — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:09:36 -0000

don't have HBO

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

Coby W. Dillard — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:09:16 -0000

You've got significantly more precincts in urban areas to report.

8:00. Not bad.

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

Town — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:03:11 -0000

There haven't been any black Republicans in office since the 90s, D.

That's 10-15 years ago. If the GOP wants more black votes, they need to start running more black candidates. Are they up to it? I don't think so.

The AP has called the race. What I want to know is, ok, sure, but the State Board of Elections is reporting very few results from the urban areas of Virginia so although I'm 99% sure McDonnell won, how can they call the race when they haven't gotten any urban results yet?

Maybe Fake Virginia doesn't count again, eh?

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

Coby W. Dillard — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:48:35 -0000

It doesn't, because I don't read that deeply into it. For me, '08 was a fluke...not on policy, but because the first black man running for president was bound to mess with electoral statistics for at least 2-3 election cycles. Which is also why the "referendum" theme is crap.

Whatever percentage above the 3-6% of the black vote McD gets is because we went out and worked for it.

Winsome Sears against Bobby Scott, 2004 (I believe). Got trounced. There's one already in for next year, and another may be coming.

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

Town — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:43:56 -0000

http://www.themudflats.net/...

Sarah Palin's robo-calls to VA may have been illegal.

This is an important story because somehow Sarah Palin's organization got their hands on Virginia voting records they weren't supposed to have. Another organization was planning to mail out flyers to people telling them about their neighbor's voting habits. Again they aren't supposed to have that info. The only people who are supposed to have access to that info are party chairs and such. The head of the State Board of Elections is conducting an internal investigation to find out who leaked the voter info.

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

Town — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:39:53 -0000

Yes, it does and it angers me because it goes beyond stating "blacks always vote for the Democratic candidate," now it's stating "blacks only vote for blacks."

And THAT kind of sentiment should worry YOU because if blacks only vote for blacks, the GOP paid you for nothing because Bob McDonnell isn't black therefore blacks wouldn't be voting for him anyway, right? The last time I recall a black person running as a Republican was back in the 90s.

Now as far as turnout, I will predict it will be about 46%. Everyone was saying that the turnout was very, VERY light. I don't know if that's good for McDonnell (b/c everyone is expecting Deeds to lose in a landslide). What it suggests is that a lot of people stayed home and didn't vote. Who didn't vote remains to be seen. Right now, the returns are showing a 65-70% advantage to McDonnell, but the returns are coming in very red, rural counties.

If they haven't called this election by 9pm, McDonnell might be in trouble. I expect the final result to be 56-44 in favor of McDonnell, but there's always the chance this could be a repeat of 2005.

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

GreenLadyHere13 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:36:03 -0000

D: LOL!!!! :>)

WELLLLL! I guess she's "takin' ova!!" :>)

Watch out!! :>)

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

Coby W. Dillard — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:30:03 -0000

She's good...thinks she's grown now. LOL.

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

Coby W. Dillard — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:29:17 -0000

LOL.

That's enough for me.

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

GreenLadyHere13 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:28:30 -0000

HEEEEY D! ***BIG HUG*** :>)

AWWWWWW!! :>) Just how is the "little one"? :>)

God bless her!! :>)

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

rikyrah — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:27:14 -0000

well, I guess it's good that you were active politically, D.

and, that's the best I can do for you about McDonnell.

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

rikyrah — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:25:58 -0000

you know we never voted until 2008. all those Democrats - they just imagined that Black folks voted from 1965- 2007.

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

Coby W. Dillard — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:24:25 -0000

But does a statement like that really surprise you?

I'm betting on less than half of the turnout from last year in this election. There's a lot of people who think-incorrectly-the mission was accomplished with Obama's election. Personally, I'm starting to wonder if that sentiment ("we're done, we got our candidate elected!") will carry over to VA's GOP next year.

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

Coby W. Dillard — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:19:48 -0000

Polls are closed. I'm home watching the results.

I'm just glad it's finally over. I started working on this campaign a week after my daughter was born...and she's crawling/trying to talk now.

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

Town — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:19:38 -0000

John King opined that without Obama on the ballot, black people just weren't going to the polls. I guess black folks don't vote unless a black is on the ballot.

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

miss_opinion — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:01:06 -0000

Kos:

* Per CNN, voters in Virginia did not see their state's gubernatorial race as an opportunity to voice opposition to Barack Obama. A 55 percent majority of voters said that the President was not a factor in their vote, and an additional 18 percent indicated their vote in Virginia was one of support in the President. Just 24 percent of voters indicated that their vote was one of opposition to President Obama. The numbers out of New Jersey are not terribly different, with 60 percent saying that Barack Obama played no role in their gubernatorial vote, 19 percent saying that their vote was one in support of the President, and 20 percent saying that their vote was in opposition to President Obama.

Concludes CNN, this is not a referendum on Barack Obama.

* Chuck Todd reports that Barack Obama's approval rating among Virginia voters stands at 51 percent (just under the 52.6 percent of the vote he received in the state last November) and 57 percent in New Jersey (almost exactly the same as the 57.1 percent of the vote he earned in that state last November). In other words, exit polling indicates President Obama has not really lost supporters over the past year.

http://www.dailykos.com/sto...

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

AM2k9 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:49:35 -0000

Harry Reid, Democratic Leaders and the White House Still Faking the Funk on Universal Health Care

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

This Halloween a couple of persistent spooks haunt Congressional Democrats and the White House on the health care front.

The first is the overwhelming public sentiment in favor of a government-run, everybody in nobody out Medicare For All type health care system. The proper name for this kind of setup, single payer, is rarely mentioned or acknowledged directly, except in tandem with exculpatory phrases like “...but it's politically impossible...” or “...I'm in favor of it but we don't have the votes...” or dismissed with in favor of some “...uniquely American solution...”

The fact is, single payer is so popular that Congressional Democrats have taken to describing their so-called public option to voters in terms that make it hard to tell the difference between it and a real single payer system. This deliberate falsehood has been perpetrated by some Democrats in the progressive caucus from the beginning of the current congress, and it continues to this day.
Single payer partisans were the first to call it. Back in May Kip Sullivan of Physicians for a National Health Care Plan detailed the differences between the real public option and the one described in glowing terms by progressive legislators. He called it a “bait and switch” job. And when Howard Dean declared on Democracy Now that the public option is best thought of as Medicare, Harvard's David Himmelstein labeled him a liar. That kind of deception works fine as long as there are multiple versions of the Democratic health care bill, each well over a thousand pages long in dense legalese, studded with hundreds of cryptic references to other legislation. It holds up as long as most people don't know the effective date at which the uninsured will begin to be covered under the president's plan is 2013. It's good enough as corporate media stick to the script and mention few or none of these things, and the day of reckoning is months or years away. Lies are good and useful things, until you get caught.

Thanks to the relentless work of single payer forces, including some members of the Congress, the web of deception around the public option is unraveling. The day the Senate version of the health care bill was finalized even Rachel Maddow got around to posing many but not all of the same deal-breaking questions Kip Sullivan, PNHP and others single payer activists were asking five months ago, questions that the public option's sponsors couldn't answer then, and can't answer now.

How can the public option “compete” with private insurers to lower their costs when it will be limited to only a few million people?

How can the public option “compete” with private insurers when its pool will be disproportionately poor and sick?

Why must we wait until 2013 for the Democratic plan to cover the uninsured?

The behavior of some leading Democrats on single payer is positively schizophrenic, poo-pooing, downplaying and dismissing single payer while they describe their incredibly complicated some-of-you-in and most-of-you-out versions of the public option and the “robust” public option as Medicare For All in everything but name and unique American-ness. There are, of course other questions Maddow and company could ask whose answers, or non-answers would be even more damning. But these are a good start.

The second scary trick looming ahead of Democrats is of course the 2010 election cycle. When the truth comes out, and voters eventually see the gap between what they want, what Democratic leaders are claiming for their versions of the public option, and what they seem likely to get, it's easy to envision a lot of very unhappy Democratic voters, and not so easy to predict what they might do. Many of them won't vote Republican in any case, but might stay home in numbers big enough to tip the balance in some congressinal districts.

The foundation of the president's plan, and the plans of Democratic leaders isn't single payer, it isn't Medicare For All, and it's not even any kind of public option, robust or otherwise. The foundation of of their health care reform remains bailing out the private insurance companies, guaranteeing them a lucrative market by forcing Americans to buy their policies, some of them with taxpayer subsidies and funds squeezed from existing Medicare, Medicaid and other care for those at high risk and low incomes.

Democrats can lie about or suppress discussion on these things for a little while to come. But the truth will come out, much of it well before the 2010 elections. The standard alibi of blue dog Democrats has always been that they can't support any “robust public option,” let alone single payer because their districts are sooooo conservative. But this doesn't hold water. Many blue dog districts are among the highest in proportions of the uninsured, and rife with bankruptcies, caused in large part by unpayable medical bills. These blue dogs have been shielded from progressive challengers in primary elections by none other than Rahm Emanuel for two or three terms now, and they expect that protection again for standing with private insurers against the voters of their districts.

2010 is beginning to look a lot more like Clinton's first mid-term election, in which Democrats lost dozens of seats and the political initiative passed to Republicans for the next 14 years.

If Democrats refuse to pass a health care bill that is very close to Medicare For All, they are storing up trouble for the near future. They only thing, increasingly, that congressional Democrats have to recommend them is that they aren't Republicans. Whether that will be enough to re-elect them in 2010 is anybody's guess.

Private insurance companies have a business model to protect. They are making a killing. 120 killings a day, in fact, and 45,000 a year. Single payer activists, whose aim is to take private insurance companies out of the health care equation, aim to raise the price of doing business for private insurers to unacceptable levels with tactics that have begun to include nonviolent civil disobedience in and around the offices of insurers, who are the only real death panels.

Congress and the White House are continually bombarded with letters, phone calls, faxes and emails demanding the consideration of Medicare For All, HR 676, simple and effective single payer legislation introduced by Congressmen Conyers and Kucinich, and sponsored by 90 of their colleagues in this congress. The initiative in the struggle for universal health care remains where it always has been, in the streets and in the public and private meetings of single payer advocates. The harder they press, the more divided congressional Democrats become, between those who adamantly oppose single payer AND the imaginary public option, and the faction that keeps telling us their “robust public option” is so much like single payer that we'll hardly know the difference.
If you want to become involved in the fight for universal, everybody in, nobody out health care, go to www.mobilizeforhealthcare.org and sign up to be included in the flow of information and connected with like minded activists in your city or town. It's time to demand what most people voted for last year. Health care for everybody. Now.

Re: Afternoon Open Thread

AM2k9 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:46:55 -0000

Harry Reid is one big pile of bullshit.