Just for those of you keeping track, The Dispatch confirms that Betty Sutton is a "yes" on healthcare reform.

While Ohio Daily has starting running that Driehaus is a no, almost all the talk I've heard have been traced back to pretty vague statements and I also haven't been able to get through to Driehaus' office.

The video shot by the Columbus Dispatch yesterday outside of Mary Jo Kilroy’s office is really making the rounds. It’s been featured on both Hardball and The Ed Show on MSNBC tonight.

If you haven’t seen it yet, ODP has put the most shocking part up on YouTube.

By the way, anyone else notice that the guy next to the screaming dollar guy is holding a baby? Who (besides Sarah Palin) drags a baby to a political event, much less one with this much screaming?

Anyway, the Mary Jo Kilroy campaign has started a petition calling on the organizers of this protest to condemn these actions and restore some decency back to the debate.

Marcy Kaptur is securing her place among the hypocritical faction that’s only pro-life until birth and after that a person is on their own.

Despite other members of the so called “Stupack Bloc” and even the Catholic Hospital Association coming out in support of the healthcare reform bill, Marcy Kaptur wants it redundantly clear that she doesn’t like abortion.

Obviously, Kaptur isn’t saying much about all the people who die from preventable conditions because they couldn’t afford insurance.

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While not a firm yes, John Boccieri is now calling this choice between “voting on an imperfect bill or doing nothing” in an interview with CNN.

An inquiry sent to Boccieri's office an hour ago has not yet received a response. Seeing the level of activity in the office, this isn’t a surprise.

While John Kasich has been less than forthcoming about what funding will be cut through his reckless tax plan, the Ohio Democratic Party thinks you should have a rough estimate. That’s why they’ve launched kasichcuts.com, complete with a calculator to show the likely impact Kasich’s proposed budget hole would have on your local community.

Pictured is the information for Franklin County, which could lose over $73 million under John Kasich. Libraries would lose almost $100 million more than that.

So Dennis Kucinich was just on CNN stating that he has changed his vote and will now vote Yea on the health care reform legislation the House of Representatives is currently considering. I'm really glad to hear that, not just because it will make it easier to get the bill passed, but also because it will give him a much better legacy when he leaves the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012. 

Wait. How can I be so sure he's leaving?

Well, the math is pretty simple. Ohio currently has 18 congressional seats, which were drawn after the 2000 census for approximately 630,000 persons per district. Cuyahoga County, which had just shy of 1.4 million residents at the 2000 census, has two congressional districts to itself, including Kucinich's, and two more that are shared with other counties.

Given that Ohio's population has stagnated, estimated to have grown only by 150,000 over the course of the 2000s, when the 2010 reapportionment is done this year Ohio is all but certain to lose two congressional seats. This will reduce our Congressional delegation to 16 members, and our number of electoral votes to 18. A little quick math shows that with only 16 congressional seats, Ohio's congressional districts will need to be re-drawn for approximately 720,000 residents per person. Meanwhile, Cuyahoga County's population has fallen by roughly 100,000 during the decade. So instead of having two districts all to itself, Cuyahoga will more than likely have only one to itself, plus one more to share with other counties. Which district will stay wholly within Cuyahoga come 2012? 

If I had to bet, I would bet it's Marcia Fudge's Ohio 11th. There will be tremendous pressure to maintain that as a majority-minority seat. In order to do so, it will leave Kucinich's 10th district with the whiter, more conservative less-than-half of Cuyahoga County as well as having to pick up part of (or all of?) either Lorain or Medina counties. I simply cannot see him being re-elected to a district reconfigured like that. 

Why does his legacy matter? It might, and I stress might, enable him to be elected to a different political office if he's interested in running again.  He could end up on the new Cuyahoga County Council. Or he could take the Tom Sawyer route and go from Congress to Columbus. Either way, I'll bet this consideration crossed his mind when he was debating whether to switch sides on the health care bill. Don't think it was all about President Obama's or Speaker Pelosi's entreaties.

As reported in the comments by Blue Dog Rising, it appears that Dennis Kucinich will be making a big announcement about his healthcare vote tomorrow morning.

Given how vocal he’s been about opposing the bill, the only thing that could warrant such an announcement seems to be a switch to supporting the bill.

I will be more than glad to stand down on this one. But make no mistake, I’m prepared to see this one out to the end if need be.

Starts around the 50 second mark in this video.

In support of my post yesterday about Dennis Kucinich, I’d like to direct your attention to this post from the stats wizards over at FiveThirtyEight.

Basically, Nate Silver looked at Democrats votes on “10 key agenda items” from last year. With those votes, he then gave them a value based heavily on the PVI (partisan voter index) of the district represented.

Here’s how he explained it:

“The idea was to see how each Democrat voted relative to the partisan slant of his district; a Democrat voting for the cap-and-trade bill in a Republican-leaning district would get quite a bit of credit for that, for instance, while one voting for the same measure in a district with a PVI of D+15 would get almost no credit for the vote since almost every Representative from such a district voted for the bill anyway.”

At first, Silver applied a "liberal nos" exemption for when someone voted no because they thought the bill was too weak. But a few days ago Silver got curious and refigured it without this exemption.

Anyone want to take a guess who was the least valuable representative for the agenda of change?

Ohio’s own Dennis Kucinich.

And here’s the kicker, Silver points out that all but 22 Republicans have a higher value to the Democratic agenda than Kucinich.

Remember Dennis, even a kindergartener can tell you that actions speak louder than words.

So what if you schedule an on-air interview with Lee Fisher, and Lee Fisher never shows?

That’s the situation Findlay radio station WFIN 1330 found itself in this morning. I found about the situation from the WFIN twitter feed, but the audio is available online of the DJ waiting on the call.

And then, nothing...

And it gets better, this interview already had to be rescheduled once before.

Come on Lee, if you want to be in the Senate you have to do better than this.

The first memorable shot in this latest fight for real healthcare reform came when Republican Senator Jim DeMint promised to make the issue Barack Obama’s “Waterloo”.

Well it’s been a long fight, but now even Jim DeMint is wearing down. DeMint recently told the crowd at a fundraiser that he’s "less confident" healthcare reform can be stopped.

And what about Robert Portman? Well according to the Dayton Daily News, he’s praying for it to fail.

Nope, not world peace or an end to hunger. Robert Portman is praying for more people to die because they had a pre-existing condition and couldn’t get insurance.

Yes, I said it. And I’m prepared to stand behind it.

You may remember back to the days of the Bush Administration, there was quite a debate about the S-Chip children’s health program. In fact an extension for the program came very near overriding a presidential veto, falling just a handful of votes short. You may also remember that Dennis Kucinich was one of the people who voted against it.

And guess what he’s getting ready to do again, with healthcare reform.

So Clevelanders, I urge you to vote no on Dennis Kucinich. Tell him your as sick and tired of his showboating, smile to your face while stabbing you in the back, Joe Lieberman style BULLSHIT as I am.

At this point, I don’t even give a damn if the Republicans take the seat for a term. It’d be well worth it in my book.

Michael L. Pryce, an apparent Tea Bagger, is launching a third party run for Senate.

Yes, Portman has a spoiler.

H/T: Swing State

Notice Software, the developers behind BSB’s iPhone and Android applications, have just rolled out a Blackberry application.

While it isn’t available in the Blackberry App World, you can download the application by going to this site.

And, of course, you can still get BSB on your iPhone or Android device.