It kind of hit me at work the other day.

I think that republicans are afraid this time around.  I have worked at the same place for a little over 10 years now, lived in the same community for more than 14 years, and gone to the same church for a little over 13 years.  I am a bit settled in my ways.

I am also known as the local "crazy" liberal.

UPDATE:  Title change.  You guys win.  I'm back in the game, coach.

As my name implies, I am from WV.  I've lived here slightly more then three quarters of my life.  I guess I'm not the 'typical' West Virginia voter according to the pundits (and I guess Hillary by extension).  I have a Masters Degree in my field and make slightly more than the average earner in my state.

What's the problem? (From the Charleston Gazette (http://www.wvgazette.com/...) )

An agreement negotiated by the union and the FAA in 1998 had set Yeager's [Charlteson's airport, named after local hero Churck Yeager] allotment of controllers at 25, according to [Jim] Ennis [a representative the controllers' union local for Yeager]. But the FAA invalidated the pact in 2004 without explanation, he said.

It first knocked the acceptable level down to 21, without conferring with the union. Then it reduced the minimum again, to 19, Ennis said.

"This has been happening gradually with attrition," he said. "It's a situation where, you're making it with this many people, let's see if we can make it with less."

Follow me on a mental journey as I read the Gazette article and became quite perturbed and did about 30 minutes of Googling for some on topic stuff.

Just a hop and a skip and a jump away there's more...

Sorry, flights have been delayed, you'll have to drive on over...

I'm intrigued to see where we get with this project (lol... or if anyone comes back for more...)

I'm kind of on a jag to try to make Single Payer (SP) more palatable to the world.  The original diary (http://www.dailykos.com/...) was born out of my desire to find a better way to promote universal health care in this country.  Better than taking swipes at insurance companies.  While part of me understands the cathartic release in smacking those mean insurance companies around, I felt that there had to be a better way to go about promoting SP as an alternative.

In talk-radio parlance: "Long time listener (commenter), first time caller (diarist...)"

I like to read the diaries on health care here.  I will admit that I am a techie (computer programmer-type) who used to work in the health insurance (well, Third Party Administrator) field about 9 years ago.  I will also be up front and let you know that I do support a single payer system, probably somewhere between the Canadian and British models.

As I said above, I do support the concept of a single-payer system, but I feel that we may be taking a tack that may not make us much headway in the battle.  There is a fair amount of insurance company bashing that we see around here, and some of it is certainly deserved.  The for-profit, capitalist market is all we have for the most part for health coverage in our country.

We need to realize, however, that even in single payer (which I support) you still have a 'market,' albeit a very large one with one player.