> I don't know. Even though I know HTML, I'd much rather create a bullet list by putting an asterisk in front of each item than writing a bunch of <ul><li> tags.

But I wouldn't—and it's a lot easier for you to process your Markdown and paste it into an HTML-enabled text field than it is for me to process my HTML and paste it into a text field that understands only one of the flavours of Markdown that doesn't have sufficient escape hatches built in (or that, like most flavours, has lots of features built in that you're apparently supposed to discover only by experimentation, preferably without any sandbox or preview available).