it's not some wholesale assault on private health insurance, let alone the single-payer idea that many liberals favor. Some businesses may even find that they would shoulder less of the health-care burden under it.

Under a single payer system, businesses would shoulder *none* of the health care burden.

A fact which many business leaders are starting to realize.

It is the insurance costs of employee medical care that, to a large extent, make American auto companies less competitive than they could be. The same is true for many other areas of business and industry.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200709200005

But in the next sentence, Post correspondent Geoff Earle quoted Clinton saying that "she could envision a day when 'you have to show proof to your employer that you're insured as a part of the job interview,'

People talk a lot about how bad the media is, and how they want it different, and how trivial the subject matter covered but... they keep buying the paper. If they were serious about their stated beliefs, they would be reading serious journals, and they don't. It's that simple.

America is not a nation that reads any more..

Which is the entire point of my brouhaha with Kitt several threads back.

Yes there are some Americans who still read, but as a whole America gets its infotainment from the glass teat.

America has long had an anti intellectual culture and it is steadily progressing in the same direction.

Face it dudes and dudettes, *we* are the political intellectual elite..

Scary thought, eh?

People talk a lot about how bad the media is, and how they want it different, and how trivial the subject matter covered but... they keep buying the paper. If they were serious about their stated beliefs, they would be reading serious journals, and they don't. It's that simple.

America is not a nation that reads any more..

Which is the entire point of my brouhaha with Kitt several threads back.

Yes there are some Americans who still read, but as a whole America gets its infotainment from the glass teat.

America has long had an anti intellectual culture and it is steadily progressing in the same direction.

Face it dudes and dudettes, *we* are the political intellectual elite..

Scary thought, eh?

People talk a lot about how bad the media is, and how they want it different, and how trivial the subject matter covered but... they keep buying the paper. If they were serious about their stated beliefs, they would be reading serious journals, and they don't. It's that simple.

America is not a nation that reads any more..

Which is the entire point of my brouhaha with Kitt several threads back.

Yes there are some Americans who still read, but as a whole America gets its infotainment from the glass teat.

America has long had an anti intellectual culture and it is steadily progressing in the same direction.

Face it dudes and dudettes, *we* are the political intellectual elite..

Scary thought, eh?

Unless you can replace "God" with "Love" (and some people can) you don't get to call me nuts for believing in something intangible yet significant.

I think that you would agree that having love for one's family is not the same thing as believing in the Invisible Pink Unicorn or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

I'd be willing to wager that you do not believe in the IPU or the FSM.

Why do you lack faith in the IPU and the FSM?

Could it be because believing in those entities is patently ridiculous?

Now perhaps you understand how many atheists feel.

With a single payer system, workers are empowered and have one less reason to either shift employment or engage in collective actions to better their employment.

I didn't really mean to imply that *all* businessmen were thinking of single payer as a uniformly good thing.

However, what you write above seems to me to be a little off base.

It is insurance which locks many people into their current employment these days. Freeing workers from the indentured servitude of having to keep insurance coverage will allow more job migration, not less.

Also, with single payer employees will have an increased advantage in collective bargaining. Today employers hold the threat of reduced or even no insurance coverage as a sword of Damocles over the employees heads.

Released from the insurance threat, collective bargaining will be able to negotiate for other sorts of benefit such as increased pay with greater chance of success.

That the IPU and the FSM are not significant intangibles.

From the point of view of the atheist, God, the IPU and the FSM all exist on the same level of insignificant nonexistence.

And yes, I would consider someone who truly believed in the IPU to be a little whacked.

Is that a large majority of atheists in America started out as theists.

We understand you far better than you understand us, since we once *were* you.

Deconversion (what a theist goes through in becoming an atheist) is a process of examining one's beliefs in the cold, hard light of rational reason.

That is why you will find many atheists who are more conversant with the actual beliefs of their one time faith than those who remain believers. One cannot examine one's own beliefs rationally unless one knows what those beliefs truly are, or at least what they are supposed to be.

With a single payer system, workers are empowered and have one less reason to either shift employment or engage in collective actions to better their employment.

Parse your sentence carefully..

"Workers have one less reason to either shift employment or engage in collective bargaining" is what you actually wrote..

A vote for any candidate who supports the drug war is a vote for the continuing slide of America into a form of fascism.

I would love to hear from those who disagree.

Keep in mind that Obama the presidential candidate would imprison Obama the teenager.