This is the most sensible option I have heard yet, but then I'm partial, since I've been asking about it for months now.

I found work that I could do despite my physical disability, but that locks me out of any reasonable chance of health care.

Since we've been on the subject of healthcare, if you are like me and don't have health insurance--which means you must stay healthy and treat yourself with herbal remedies---here is a terrific supplier of herbs and some very useful videos on how to create your own tinctures and syrups.

Tinctures take six weeks to make, so it's good to start now. Elderberry syrups you make and use right away- they only last two weeks in the refrigerator-- but using it may ward off flus and colds and might help if you get the flu.

I've purchased enough herbs for the fall and winter for 50 dollars. I love the whole process, having pretty jars full of herbs and remedies in my cupboards, the aroma of herbs, and the fun of making the tinctures and syrups. Plus it feels like anarchy to be your own doctor. Herbs have antioxidants and other vitamins and minerals that allopathic medicine doesn't have, too. And because your body is better at using what it needs of whole herbs, doses don't have to be so exact.

You have to do your reading, though, because they are powerful and some have toxic properties, or shouldn't be mixed with certain things, but there are so many resources for learning about them. And you can always see a naturopath first and then order the bulk herbs. If you make the recommended remedies yourself, they are much more affordable.

On one of the videos, an herbalist shows you how to make $100 worth of valerian ticture for example for around $15 or less.

Anyway, Mountain Rose is a terrific, reasonably-priced supplier and here are some fun videos for making remedies.

http://www.youtube.com/user/mountainroseherbs

i have a question on taxes.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/18/taxes-crisis-recession-opinions-columni...
in this article it states that corporate taxes are high because the corporation pays a tax and then the shareholders pay a tax. Isn't that two different things? Why would that be considered as 2 items that should be added together to determine the rate?
When income tax is spoken of for wages, the sales tax isn't automatically added as an additional surcharge! Am I making the right analogy???
Help please!

"The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent.

"Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is actually going on, but for the many there is not time, and the network news is the only news even though it may not be news at all but only a series of flashing fictions..." : Gore Vidal

Over the weekend CNN was pitching “Romney Care” as a “compromise” plan for healthcare reform, while the Seattle Times did the same for the local co-op Group Death (I mean Group Health). CNN skirted the details of Massachusetts’ healthcare reform, failing to point out that plans under the insurer of last resort, Commonwealth Care, can still be an extremely expensive proposition for previously uninsured people required to buy coverage, but who otherwise could not afford it or would be denied coverage by other insurance providers. While there is a sliding scale for premiums based on ability to pay, there is still the potential for massive out-of-pocket expenses if you have the temerity to get sick. Furthermore, the plan has had budgetary issues, and tax increases to help relieve costs have been predictably opposed. One thing the plan has had a "positive" effect on is exposing just how great the shortage of primary physicians is.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is continuing the insensible policy of trying to win over enough Republican lawmakers to make the claim that it is seeking a “bi-partisan” healthcare reform plan. Why, why, why? When the Republicans were in power, does anyone think they gave a damn about “bi-partisanship?" Not to my knowledge. Who cares what Orin Hatch thinks; the Republicans used the reconciliation ploy several times without once considering the hurt feelings of the Democrats.

The Democrats simply do not get it. The people respect strong, decisive leadership. If it is strong and decisive and unwavering, people will actually believe that leadership knows what the hell it is doing, or at least has a plan. I hate to say it (and I hope I'm wrong), but I am increasingly convinced that Obama and the Democrats will be completely and hopelessly indecisive and divided when the time of decision comes.

Obama likes the Lincoln analogies; well, here’s another one (at the risk of being “pedestrian”): in the 1860 presidential election, the Democratic Party was so bitterly divided between northern and southern wings that the party fragmented into several different parts, with only the North supporting the “official” Democratic Party candidate, Stephen Douglas. Although Lincoln won less than 45 percent of the vote (almost all of it in the North) he handily won the Electoral College. Many Northerners abandoned the Democratic Party in favor of the Republicans, because they were for the most part of the same mind in opposing the concept of a minority of slaveholding Southerners controlling the destiny of the country.

Now, we still have a fragmented Democratic Party and a united Republican Party. The Democrats reconstituted themselves after the Civil War, since the extension of slavery was no longer a dividing issue; Democrats didn’t start to fragment again in a significant way until Truman started having strange ideas, like desegregating the military, which disturbed the sensitivities of the Dixicrats. The problem today is that any issue that changes the status quo is a divisive issue, and Blue Dog Democrats are (let’s face it) Republicans under another name, who don’t like change. If they are not this, then I wish they’d just come out and tell us what they believe in that makes them "Democrats." In the meantime, Obama should—no, must—forget about lawmakers with an “R” after their names and focus on the challenge of “bi-partisanship” within his own fragmented party.

Here is one of the most sensible discussions on healthcare reform that I've ever heard.

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13

On Fresh Air Terri Gross interviews TR Reid who traveled around the world seeking care for a bum shoulder. He sums up all of the different versions of healthcare provided by the countries he visited, and from his travels, he came up with four categories of health coverage. Medicare--(named and created by Canada); NHS-- Britain; non-profit private insurance --Germany; and third world care (Out of pocket, trade, or stay sick and die). He maintains that the US system is inefficient partly because we have all four types of care in our one country.

One of the most interesting parts of the discussion was how Taiwan's liberal progressives were able to gain universal care for their citizens by insisting that it is indeed a moral imperative.

It's a very intelligent, witty, interesting discussion with a little bit of ayurveda thrown in too.

Reid's one mistake is comparing Germany's insurance coverage to our own. Germany's insurance companies are non-profit and it would be illegal for them to be otherwise. That's why their system works.

Well, reiterating what I said in my last comment (and it's actually a surprise to me that he thought I 'd respond to his Friday comments, since I've never directly responded to anything he's said before), history is simply what it is. B Roll would prefer to "sex it up." I suspect that B Roll thinks what I recounted was "pedestrian" because he simply has no idea of it, and being presented with reality it's a problem for him.

I have to admit that I find it interesting that B Roll would claim that I am being overly sensitive concerning the atmosphere of racism, discrimination and civil rights violations that permeates around the immigration "debate" (and anyone "suspected" of being an immigrant) that the SPLCenter and other organizations have done extensive research to expose. And yet on the other hand, he has no problem in refusing to address the terrorist activities of Hamas (the chosen representatives of the people of Gaza); he defacto accepts it as business-as-usual. I don't care how he sugar-coats it. Let's not forget that the reason Gaza has been cordoned-off is because of the series of suicide bombings that killed hundreds of Israelis after the failure of the Rabin/Peres peace initiatives. If B Roll wants to make common cause with this Rasta guy, he has to live with it; the Israelis shouldn't have to.

DDay:

I don't know what Food Fascist or you said today should "inflame" me, although apparently a few people seem to think that some of what I said at first blush is--even when I try to be "dispassionate" as in my opening post.

In regard to textbook changes, I would agree that it is completely inappropriate and a disservice to our children to deprive them of knowledge of the various political, social and cultural conflicts that have shaped this country. And unless they go to college and study history as a discipline, even then knowledge of history (let alone American) is rather thin and restricted to what people decide interests them. That the Texas textbook board wants to excise Cesar Chavez is particularly intriguing to me, since he is virtually the only Hispanic that textbook writers deemed worthy to including in a textbook by name. I saw him speak in front of the Capitol building in Sacramento in 1990, sharing the podium with Gerry Brown and Jesse Jackson--speaking against, curiously enough, a proposal to limit health care benefits for public employees.

mstaggerlee, and DRichards: Beautiful wise words and peacemaking.