CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
September 20, 2013 02:58 PM UTC
61 Comments
Gosh, since Obamacare is an abject failure just like its author and namesake, perhaps Boehner is also doing what the majority of the American people want.
Wow! Are you from some alternate universe where Obamacare was passed before 2010 and actually implemented already?
Did you wear a tin foil hat when you crossed over to our universe?
Hot damn! You took the words right out of my mouth. It's nice to see some more conservatives taking on the Democrat thug world.
Yeah, the GOP Clown world is getting pretty tiresome, so he had to come over here to get his rocks off.
Liberals are so much fun to make fun of. They take themselves so seriously and actually believe they are enlightened. Of course anyone with a brain knows that liberals are quite simply deluded, self-righteous, hypocritical gasbags.
Ok, say in some crazy scenario, The Affordable Care Actis "defunded".
"fishing blues", since you'll no longer be eligible for your mom's health care to carry you till 26, where will you get your health care?
Emergency room?
The escalation pace of the cost of health care has fallen to record lows since the implemention of the Law began. Do you propose to tell me you'd prefer to pay more, a lot more, just because your hatred of Obama supercedes your common sense?
Please, "enlighten" me.
And, obviously, I'd love to know ANY alternate strategy you might know of that will deliver care and bring down costs. That "liberal bastion", the Heritage Foundation, was the originator of the idea we know to be "Obama Care". They championed individual responsibiity as opposed to the "free lunch" at the ER.
Of course, they changed their minds when a Democratic President took thier idea.
So, please, conservative "patriot", enlighten us.
Or don't, as I expect will be the case.
Only because it has absolutely no redeeming value whatsoever will I refer to it this one last time. I recommend total shunning. It'll eventually slink away.
redcat – you may find some measure of agreement and companionship in an extreme lefty publication like ColoradoPols.com. However, communist/socialist fools like yourself are still shunned by the vast majority of Americans. Let your true beliefs come out comrade and you will be treated like the shitte that you are. Shun that shitbird.
As I told your communist friend redcat, my mom is dead. What is it with liberals thinking that insults begin with one's mother? As to health insurance, I pay for my own. How?, why? you ask. Because I am responsible and not a freaking parasitic leech like you and your buddy, the communist redcat.
Lower medical costs you ask? Just as anything in a capitalistic economic system, competition is the answer.
Braindead, freaking worthless liberals. Jazsus!
Really?
How in the world did you miss the part where that"s EXACTLY what the ACA accomplishes rhrough exchanges?
Oh, wait, if you actually WERE paying for your health care, you'd have noticed the increases are slowing and your plan has coverage for pre existing conditions So it's two bad options for you. You're on your mom's, or you're an ER mooch. Two options, both show you to be a liar.
Typical redleg ignorance doesn't do well here. These people will chew up and spit out a half informed extremer like you.
WTF, I should be gettin 'paid to baby sit you here.
Competition always lowers prices?
Wow – then we should allow more electric companies to open up. Gas companies. Water companies.
Why on earth should Denver water get to claim all the water and then also have exclusive right to deliver it to everyone in Denver? Why I'm sure if we privatized the water company (ies) prices would come down, quality would go up. Someone somewhere in the USA must have done it and proved the point.
Stockton, Atlanta, Detroit all privatized water. It turned out so well that it's hard to understand why everyone hasn't done it. Must be the liberal media.
Fee for service, for profit health care is bizarre. And the common "free market" misperception that all free markets are Pareto optimizing only makes it worse. Remove all subsidy and regulation from the medical industry, eliminate the distortion of the 3rd (and 4th or 5th) party payer maket and we get less health care and worse outcomes. Everyone is worse off – exactly the oppsite of the desired market result. (Yes there are market "solutions" but they are not universally better or even humane.)
Healthcare is not consumer electronics or long distance phone service.
Free market does not work in delivering healthcare. We have tried that and now find ourselves in a situation where health care is unaffordable for roughly 1/3 of our country's population.
Free market doesn't work because insurance companies only want to insure young, healthy males. Even young healthy women pay more because, whoops, having a baby is expensive. If you are lucky enough to work for a large employer that can absorb the costs of a few very sick people because of a large pool, good for you.
Those of us who are trying to get a small business off the ground can barely afford health insurance on the individual market. And those who can't, and get very sick often end up in the hospital with large bills they can't pay. Which gets passed on to everyone else, and our rates go higher. Now these people are so poor they qualify for Medicaid, and because they couldn't afford to manage their chronic disease when they had no insurance, their care is now very expensive. But taxpayers have to pay for that. And the vicious cycle continues.
Our current system is so the most expensive in the world and our outcomes are approaching the level of 3rd world care. So, how's that free market approach working out for you?
The ACA will help get a lot of these people get access to healthcare but it will struggle to contain costs. It will alos leave some out. It's a beginning. Unfortunately, we can't refine it because the Do-Nothing House will prevent any positive refinements of the ACA. All they care about is destroying President Obama and to he'll with taking down the country along the way.
I should know better than try to explain anything to a troll like you FB. You are only able to call names and flout your ignorance and anger. President Obama won the election and the Supreme Court ruled that the ACA is the law of the land. Either work toward a positive outcome for the best of the country or get out of the way.
We don't want to refine ACA. We want to lower the Medicare eligible age so that more younger, healthier people are paying in. This can be done incrementally – say first to the same age as Socail Security eligiblity, 62. Then 59 1/2, the magic number for IRA withdrawals.
Somewhere along the line, we merge TRICARE into Medicare, call it Healthcare.. Then, soon after we allow Helathcare to compete in the market for health insurance.
Medicare operates on something like 3% overhead. Tricare is a little higher because the DoD is always looking to get out of the health care business altogether (so the Pentagon is always trying to make it look worse than it is).
United Health, Humana, etc are more like 27 -30%. Even the non-profits routinely incurr 7-9% margin. Healthcare as envisioned wins on price.
The hard truth is we have the greatest healthcare in the world, for those who can afford it. For the rest – stay healthy or die fast are the best choices.
ICYWW – it is harderthan you'd think being smarter than the average lab rat. But at least we know what we're going to do tomorrow night.
Just having medicare for everyone was actually considered in the first place but the view was the the public wasn't ready for that yet but it would naturally expand into universal coverage . The pols of the day who passed it didn't expect it to take all that long either.
With young people who use very little care compared to the 65+ demo contributing modestly but en masse, it would be in very good shape and it wouldn't be unfair because those young people would be needing and receiving more of that quality care as they aged.
We would no longer have de facto universal health care via the ER, the most expensive, least efficient form of universal health care there is. And that's what people forget. We already do have a form of universal healthcare. It's just terrible and expensive but it's what we already have.
The choice is simply between the lousy universal we have right now and affordable quality universal that will give us much more for much less. A truly free market non-universal system is what we'd have if, when uninsured people with no cash bring their injured 4 year olds to the ER the kids are turned away to die.
So we're arguing about whether or not to have something that we already have. We should be arguing about how to make it way less crappy.
I think the public would be ready for medicare for all, but the political environment wouldn't tolerate it. And of course, there would be huge opposition from the insurance industry. Obama is very much a centrist, and he figured if he could get the insurance industry on board, they'd push the Republican Party to support it as well.
That was the mistake from which all the others flowed… his assumption that there was a place for centrists in in the GOP in the political landscape he inherited. That centrist policies would be successful in reaching out to Republicans and getting their cooperation. He really believed that he was going to be able to change the tone. It changed all right. The right's gotten progressively nastier.
The second was that the GOP defined center is anywhere near, by any stretch of the imagination, anything that could be considered center. Centrist and moderate are now just words tossed out to describe anything not so extreme as barking at the moon wacko racist right. It's nuts and Dems have been nuts to let it happen.
There is no appetite to expand Medicare. Even among Democrats. If anything, single payer will be a state by state introduction. I suggest you look at Vermont.
The reality is that we have to work on enhancing what we have and that is the ACA. But right now, even that is impossible because of the Tea Party faction in the House.
Correct about no appetite yet. I was merely commenting on what was once commonly foreseen as something that would probably occur long before now. But of course today's political landscape and definitions would be unrecognizable to the pols of the 60s in any wing of either major party.
For now it makes sense to support the least bad of the options presently available, the already passed ACA, and to continue to apply pressure toward reaching the kind of tipping point that changed things so quickly in recognition of gay rights. Gay civil unions and Gay marriage seemed very far off in the not very distant past, too. Slogs can turn into tipping points pretty suddenly.
Really?
An acolyte of Vietnam draft dodger turned riot agitator and presidential assasination talk spewing tedi nugent calling Democrats "thugs"?
You're projecting again, young diaper stain. Yes, projecting.
I only speak in nouny nouns.
Um. What the fuck are you babbling about, conservtard?
Angry, incoherent babbling is all they have left, Hawkeye.
The GOP has lost the support of women, minorities, and anyone who has an ounce of compasison and two brain cells to rub together. Gerrymandering districts to a comical extent is all that keeps these pathetic throwbacks involved in the process of government, much less a useful part of it.
Time is killing them off. Progress is leaving them behind. All they can do is try to delay the inevitable for a little while longer. All of the screaming just hides how terrified they really are.
Cur: The GOP has lost support of women (those that only care about one issue -abortion) minorities (those that only care about welfare) and anyone (who only cares about what they can get out of the deal, because they believe they were born entitled). Therefore the GOP has lost support of all parasites. Of course, they never did cater to bloodsucking leeches.
The GOP cares deeply about blood-sucking leeches. They include, but are not limited to, Wall Street bankers, farmers, defense contractors, airlines and the broadcasting industry.
Oops–those are facty things, fb. You could look them up.
Here's a "facty" dirty gertie, if it weren't for farmers, you wouldn't eat. Typical, duplicitous, hypcritical, weeping, loony lib.
Jazus! You people are pathetic, parasitic & pathological.
Project much?
1. Do not feed the the trolls
2. Obamacare is based on a conserative idea–back when conservatives actually had ideas
3. Obamacare is not healthcare reform, it is insurance reform. Nothing effects the practice of medicine directly. By making insurance more complete and coverage broader, the pactice may be affected indirectly, but for the love of pete, it is about insurance
4. After another shooting where the shooter had clear mental health issues, conservatives are back on it about better mental healthcare. How can we do that if we don't have the rest of you healthcare? Oh and by the way, who pays the bills for the uninsured innocenets shot by the insane or are they just SOL? Given how it is playing out in the House GOP caucus all insane people should run for congress, it seems to be working for the GOP?
5. You don't negotiate with 6 year olds, suicide terrorists, or house GOP members, they are irrational and treating them like they are rational cheapens the discussion.
The house GOP literally thinks that threatening to destroy the country in order to stop a relatively mild piece of insurance reform is ok. Please stop the insanity. Please stop treating them like they are part of the rational range of political discourse. I'll take the John Birch society over the House Republican caucus–their closer to the mainstream.
"2. Obamacare is based on a conservative idea-back when conservatives actually had ideas."
One of the largest message failures for ACA supporters has been the failure to help people understand this basic fact: The insurance industry itself proposed the framework of the ACA. Four years ago, as someone not a part of the health care or insurance industry, I prepared some basic information about health care reform to present to a group in my community, yes, during that infamous August of 2009.
Well, I still have my one-inch-thick file of research I did for my little presentation. It includes such fascinating documents as "Now is the Time for Health Care Reform: A Proposal to Achieve Universal Coverage, Affordability, Quality Improvement and Market Reform," December, 2008, written by none other than the Board of Directors of AHIP – America's Health Insurance Plans. AHIP is the national trade association representing the health insurance industry. I also have a copy of their November 19, 2008 Press Release titled, "Health Plans Propose Guaranteed Coverage for Pre-Existing Conditons and Individual Coverage Mandate." Many useful quotes from the press release – here's one:
Also from the November 2008 press release, a summary of AHIP's Proposal to Guarantee Coverage for Pre-existing Conditions and Promote Affordability in the Individual Insurance Market::
Robert Zirkelbach, spokesperson for AHIP, was quoted in a 2009 Robert Wood Johnson foundation publication as saying, "The most expensive thing we can do is nothing at all."
————————————-
So, why is no one talking about the true origins of the ACA or Obamacare? Do I have some secret trove of information that no one else has? (Ha!) Here's the real question: Why don't the news media talk about what I have in my one-inch file folder from 2009? Why isn't the insurance industry speaking up NOW to tell the truth about the ACA?
And the $64,000 question (okay, I date myself, so what's new?!): Why is the Democratic Party and the average health consumer in this country allowing themselves to be held hostage but a bunch of crazy liars, i.e. the right wing, the House Repubs, and Faux News?!!
Get back to me when you come up with the answer.
. . . allowing themselves to be held hostage by a bunch of crazy liars, . . .
I'm not sure its fair comparing House Repubicans to 6 year olds. Just saying. 6 year olds can be fairly rational at times.
Red: if it is so good, why did congress exempt itself? And why are the altruistic unions trying to get out of it as well?
Nothing like a healthy dose of the Red. Consider all your points taken.
The ACA was originally a Heritage Foundation proposal from 24 years ago. The Republican party should be proud to see it become the law of the land. Would you feel better if it were called HeritageCare, or even DemintCare?
http://healthcarereform.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004182
I'll respond to FB when he actually posts policy ideas and facts. I'll respond with ideas and facts. Other than that, I'll ignore him and stay out of the monkey poo fight.
Shunning, or not feeding the trolls, will probably work eventually. Remember, LB, probably n3b too, come here primarily to pick fights with liberals. You can oblige them…or not. Plenty of folks on here enjoy the insult wars, too. Doesn't make for great political discourse, and no one will ever change his/her mind or learn anything, but it's sort of entertaining.
Actually I like seeing new conservatives drop in mamma. It can't all be about policy and facts. Flinging monkey poo is a time honored tradition around these parts and who knows? Maybe one of these brainwashed youngsters or shriveld oldsters who stop by will offer some literary entertainment while the country is swept away in a flood of toxic ideology.
Hey mom, please don't respond. If I cared what 300 pound, bonbon eating welfare parasites had to say, I'd stake out the candy and cookie section at the grocery.
Freaking liberals think they are so special. Jazus!
This current crop of trolls is just here for propaganda and disruption, not political conversation. When you document a flat out lie, they change subjects or just repeat the lie.
If ColoradoPols doesn't ban them it will just get worse.
Moderatus, fishingblues, N3B and LB are just lobbing insults; EF is just spouting Libertarian ideology and defending racism.
Internet communities that do not police the trolls inevitably lose their audience. Who wants to hang out with and be insulted by a bunch of assholes?
It is an easy trade-off: how many readers do you want to lose if you tolerate three or four trolls?
Moderatus is a pain but not in the same category as FB and N3B who are strictly a waste of space. I support Moderatus as our token rightie wacko. I mean we have to have one. Must say though, the insults about how we're all fat and on welfare are pretty LOL funny. I'm apparently fat, a man and on all manner of public assistance. I admit I get a chuckle out of that.
Wrong you moronic nimrod. Mama is obese, just ask her. You are a communnist/socialist. Admit it you coward.
A sure sign of psychosis is paranoia. Why don't you tell your friends (made up friends -liberals can't have friends. They are all narcicistic and too full of themselves.) just who it was that called you "fat, a man and on all manner of public assistance"?
Again, the obsession with insulting "Mama" personally, especially regarding her attractiveness to him…..hmmm……
Paging Dr. Freud…. Dr. Freud… there's a Mr. Oedipus on Line 2……
PuhLease, Mudge. I don't know FB from Adam. Apparently, he's making assumptions based on my pudgy "teacher" avatar, because, y'know, avatars reflect reality, right, N3B, Danny, realist, Davie?
I made the mistake of trying to be nice to fb and talk him out of his baffling rage and into arguing the way most of us on here do. He just kept on insulting everyone. Really, "not feeding the trolls" is the best way to handle them.
I recommend a "mulligan".
On the bright side, FB makes our other conservatives look almost reasonable.
I don't mind the trolls at all; they serve a valuable purpose. It's important to see exactly how deep into the cesspool the GOP is having to reach to get any kind of support these days. Every day, the GOPS looks more ridiculous, and every day, to keep the psychos happy, they have to get worse and worse, to keep those psychos from turning on them.
Having alienated all but the dregs, they're down to a power base of racists, inferior personality-types with gun fetishes, fools who think giving slobbering "service" to the 1% will somehow, someday, lead to them getting a few meager crumbs, people who think Jesus wants them to be rich and superior, and bitter, twisted misogynists (of both genders) to have any kind of support. Quite the lineup.
If the GOP stays on this course, in twenty years, they'll be completely irrelevant, and many, many essays will be written on The Fall of The Republican Party. It's sad, because some of them aren't so bad….
Won't take 20 years . . .
I genuinely miss lively debates with knowledgeable conservatives who are able to express themselves well.
Disagree. Trolls just insult and disrupt.
Libertarians are not trolls (usually), more like cultists, religious fanatics or climate deniers. Useless to argue with them because their belief system doesn't permit deviation from their Strange View of human nature and wacko economic theories.
ArapaGOP was a horse of a different color. He did sort of fulfill the role you describe of giving us an insight into the Conservative mind if not the Republican establishment. His analysis of the last election was priceless. And, his defense of Republican Values gave us a daily if not hourly reminder of what today's conservatives are on about. Clearly he was ordered to stop posting here as it was damaging the Republican Brand.
Hey park, do you know what bigotry is? Intolerance is the annswer, for the slow of wit.
Do you know why exclusively liberal talk radio and websites are non-existent? Of course it is because even the loony lib can't stand to hear weeping, whining, hand wringing and complaining all of the time. You people are so pathetic, you can't stand yourselves.
What is hysterical is that the truly looniest of libs have convinced themselves that all conservatives are evil and thus easier to hate.
Liberals, Jazus!
Liberal websites are non-existent? Turn off the " IQ<100 " firewall and watch what opens up, Gomer. As for radio, of course there's no Liberal talk radio! We don't listen to the damned radio, because it's 2013, not 1954 like you pinheads wish it was.
. . . ummm, Gomer's a GD Mensa-genius compared to this fucking Goober . . .
Hey mom, quit stuffing your face with potato chips and listen. It is not "political discourse" when a bunch of liberals get together and agree on all things liberal. If a conservative happens along, it is hate, hate, hate.
I tried being civil. My very first post was attacked by a bunch of you liberal loons and my polticcal philosophy (Libertarian) was rudely treated with insolence. I just naturally assumed that is the way you play. When I hand you all your collective ass, because you are not smart enough to play, you all get mad, pout, cry and generally act like the duplicitous assholes that you liberals are.
Fishingblues – please keep it civil or go somewhere else. Using comments to just insult people is a waste of everyone’s time (yours included)
Pols: I'm sure you will want to be consistent across all political spectrums and denounce incivility from liberals as well. (Not likely.)
Huge difference
1 Free markets are not free, asshole.
B You are an asshole.
See, in the first I'm making an sociopolitcal economic comment while addressing it to a specific person.
In the second, I am just to insult someone and waste my and everyone's time.
If you don't see the difference – follow the Golden Rule.
Golly mad, will you
A.) be my
2.) mentor?
You wouldn't and shouldn't have to be the bad guys if we could all just control ourselves and stop feeding the troll. Please, everyone. listen to the Red (Danny that is).
+12
What? Who? There was a troll? j/k….. I'm done, no more talking with or about …whoever you're talking about.
Agree – and really, it's easy to do.
I'm disappointed in the current crop of trolls. They just get angrier and stupider. Then there's EF. He's smart at least.
. . . maybe probably about nearly as close to as smart as he thinks he is . . . They all seem to aspire to the genius of Glenn Beck as far as I can see!?!
On a more pleasant note — great to hear from Mike Littwin again:
http://www.coloradoindependent.com/144046/littwin-republican-mission-creep-on-obamacare
Littwin's take on the GOP's wish for self-annihilation:
Ecen more important, what Littwin is saying is that it's the grown up wing's (what's left of it) take. So there's that. Now Dems just have figure out how to take full advantage as the GOP always manages to do when the shoe is on the other foot.
That would be "even" of course.