bodhi tree swaying

• Apparently God does not like his followers to resign for ethical violations, misuse of taypayers’ money, lying, and dereliction of duty, as Mark Sandford attests.
• "Joe" "The Plumber" calls for the assassination of a senator, or at least comes close. He also reveals a stunning grasp of history. I had no idea that Karl Marx predated the American Revolution.
• 3/4 of people in the US who are pushed into bankruptcy by medical problems have insurance. You can read about some health care horror stories in this NYT article.
• My 2-year-old pointed to NYT columnist Maureen Dowd’s picture on my monitor this morning and identified her by name. Maia, you rock! (She’d asked me Maureen’s name at least two months ago).
• Glenn Greenwald discusses the deaths (possibly by torture) of perhaps

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c4chaos on Twitter mentioned a post on Daily Kos on Buddhism and healthcare in the US — very apropos given my post of earlier today. It’s a bit "wouldn’t it be great if everyone would just think of the common good" but I think it’s a good start at framing a discussion in Buddhist terms.

You might even want to skip the long intro that covers the four noble truths to get to the section on the eightfold path, which starts:

Right view: bi-partisanship, triggers, co-ops, public options, market competition, socialism, single-payer, profit margins, trillion dollar price tags. In what way do any of these describe a working health care system?Right view would be to start by looking at the problem. What is, are, the problems with health care? Primarily, that some 45 million or more don’t have access to affordable coverage; that the

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From the New York Times:

The best efforts of the scientific community to prove the health benefits of vitamins keep falling short.

This week, researchers reported the disappointing results from a large clinical trial of almost 15,000 male doctors taking vitamins E and C for a decade. The study showed no meaningful effect on cancer rates.

Another recent study found no benefit of vitamins E and C for heart disease.

In October, a major trial studying whether vitamin E and selenium could lower a man’s risk for prostate cancer ended amidst worries that the treatments may do more harm than good.

And recently, doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York warned that vitamin C seems to protect not just healthy cells but cancer cells, too.

Everyone needs vitamins, which are critical for the body. But for most people, the micronutrients we get

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