Health Insurance: Who Needs it!@?

Most states pick a couple of bouncing balls at prime time and some lucky fool wins a million bucks. In Oregon, where some 600,000 people are uninsured, you can win health insurance.

Not everybody's thrilled at the solution. Louanne Moldovan, an applicant with huge medical bills from Crohn's Disease, says, "It's a symbol of how degraded our system is in this country that we are resorting to a lottery... It's pathetic and repugnant at the same time... [but it's] a necessity because I don't earn thousands each month."

Likewise, Oregon's Director of Human Services, Dr Bruce Goldberg, hopes national leaders will bring attention to the problem, but "I hope what they're working for is not a national lottery..." he says.

I wouldn't put it past 'em.

About 45 million Americans are uninsured. Complete BBC story

Paris Spring

Sap is rising. The chestnuts are blooming. And couples in the neighborhood are fighting tooth and nail. Or the drug dealers are. The long-haired person getting his head smashed in turned out to be a guy.

To celebrate the season, I went to the Salon de l'Agriculture earlier in March, where you could see enormous bulls with all their equipment just hanging there, and the resulting calves.

Last Friday, I went to see a show of dirty books that used to be hidden in the basement of France's National Library in a space called L'Enfer. A ticket to hell only cost 7 euros.

I expected the books to be, well, more pornographic. Maybe because most dated from a different era, many of the engravings were absolutely delightful, portraying the pleasure of the artist in the female body. Naked thighs had the most luscious flesh. Asses were so round they begged to be touched. They were so compelling that afterwards, I bet half the het chicks there left the place and went out to find a girl.

The men weren't as much to look at. At least in the early images, they were always fully dressed, only with their dicks sticking out like hooks you could hang a hat on. There some amazing dick-based designs. One assembled them into a wreath with a bloom in the center that was not a flower at all.

The beauty of men didn't really emerge until Cocteau did his drawings for Jean Genet and homoerotic eyes saw the splendor of the male flesh whose necks and hips and hands had as much to recommend them as their dicks. That's art, I think. When even a dyke like me wants to touch them.

Who's in the Cage?

Oh, Mama

Were you frightened when Bush announced he had a direct line to his lord and savior Jesus Christ? Get a load of Mr. Obama who delivered the following remarks this past Friday to about 150 Latino Evangelical and Catholic clerics at the University of Texas at Brownsville. As excerpted from Jacques Berlinerblau's "Huckobama" in the Washington Post, March 4, 2008.

"...And during the course of that sermon, I was introduced to someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed and that if I placed my trust in Christ, He could set me on the path to eternal life...

...And whenever I hear stories about Americans who feel like no one’s looking out for them, like they’ve been left behind, I’m reminded that God has a plan for his people. . . . But it’s a plan He’s left to us to fulfill...

... I’d like to begin with a prayer. It comes to us from Jeremiah 29, when the prophet sent out a letter to those exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon. It was a time of uncertainty, and a time of despair. But the prophet Jeremiah told them to banish their fear – that though they were scattered, and though they felt lost, God had not left them. “For I know the plans I have for you,” the Lord revealed to Jeremiah, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” God had a plan for His people. That was the truth that Jeremiah grasped – the creed that brought comfort to the exiles – that faith is not just a pathway to personal redemption, but a force that can bind us together and lift us up as a community..."

The hairs raised up on anybody else's neck?