Single list tight:
Single list loose in "paragraph mode":
hey
there
partner
Single list loose with multiple paragraphs in an item:
How you doin'?
this item contains multiple paragraphs.
More than one that is.
Three to be exact.
And this one is just a bunch of lines. Spliced together as a single item. A single paragraph.
A single list that looks like multiple lists separated by a blank line:
elements
still list 1
elements
sic, this is still list 1
There's no way to actually get multiple consecutive lists in Markdown. Neither Markdown.pl nor python-markdown allow it either. In a mailing list thread a few years back, John Gruber suggested using double blank lines to separate consecutive lists but no implementation does it. For now you need to separate consecutive lists with unindented text:
Cough.
Cough. Cough.