On herbal infused meads, I highly highly recommend reading Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers by Stephen Harrod Buhner (this is the book that got me interested in mead).  Not only will you learn more than you ever wanted to know about honey, it is chalk full of tons of mead recipes using medicinal herbs.

Regarding Heather and psychotropic meads, he has an entire chapter on this topic.  In it, he discusses how Heather flower originating from the Scottish Highlands was known far and wide at the time for its psychotropic qualities.  However, it doesn’t come from the flower itself – rather, from a fungus that symbiotically lives on the flower.  Supposedly, in commercial alcohol production using this flower, they are required by law to strip off any of the fungus.

The likely case you present for the economy going forward sounds plausible and I think it is likely part of ‘the plan’ that this administration has in mind… the combination of lowering taxes and deregulation certainly SEEMS geared towards extending the already long bull market. But I strongly suspect that the next big recession and/or crisis will come from outside the US this time, probably stemming from debt crises involving dollar-denominated debt.

If that next global downturn turns out to be more of a recession, I imagine the US will enjoy some period of a ‘flight to safety’ that could last up to the 2020 election. But if it’s more like 2008 with serious debt crises involved, then I think the US economy will not escape unscathed and it will affect the election accordingly (though that certainly could spun into ‘hey things are bad but we’re doing better than other countries because of my awesome deals yada yada…’). I imagine how long the dollar stays strong (or whether it gets even stronger) will greatly determine which form the next downturn takes. I think it’s 50/50 right now which way it goes, but I freely admit that’s as much intuition as it is data… and I’m certainly not a financial expert or even play one on TV 🙂