John McCain was born on August 29th, 1936. His father was born in 1911 and his mother was born in 1912. If elected, he would be the oldest person inaugurated to that office.

 

 The Russ Belville Show 2008-05-10 [36:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Sorry, we only have a partial recording of the show due to an equipment problem.  See, we we thought we solved all the live in-studio difficulties, but they just migrated to the IT side of things.

[UPDATED: A reply from one of my offended family and my counter follow after the jump...]

My family keeps me in their mailing lists when they send out the various internet flotsam that hits their Inbox. I used to ask, please please please don’t spam me, but to no avail. Now I’ve taken to just reply-to-all-ing whenever I get these things. If you can’t beat ‘em, spam ‘em, I suppose.

Anyway, this was the latest religious spam I got, followed by my Radical Reply:

He (Louie) was talking about how inconceivably BIG our God is…how He spoke the universe into being…how He breathes stars out of His mouth that are huge raging balls of fire…etc. etc. Then He went on to speak of how this star-breathing, universe creating God ALSO knitted our human bodies together with amazing detail and wonder. At this point I am LOVING it (fascinating from a medical standpoint, you know.) …and I was remembering how I was constantly amazed during medical school as I learned more and more about God’s handiwork. I remember so many times thinking…’How can ANYONE deny that a Creator did all of this???’

Louie went on to talk about how we can trust that the God who created all this, also has the power to hold it all together when things seem to be falling apart…how our loving Creator is also our sustainer.

And then I lost my breath.

And it wasn’t because I was running on my treadmill, either.

It was because he started talking about laminin.

I knew about laminin. Here is how wikipedia describes them: ‘Laminins are a family of proteins that are an integral part of the structural scaffolding of basement membranes in almost every animal tissue.’ You see….laminins are what hold us together …LITERALLY. They are cell adhesion molecules. They are what holds one cell of our bodies to the next cell. Without them, we would literally fall apart. And I knew all this already. But what I didn’t know is what laminin LOOKED LIKE.

But now I do. And I have thought about it a thousand times since (already)…. Here is what the structure of laminin looks like…AND THIS IS NOT a ‘Christian portrayal’ of it….if you look up laminin in any scientific/medical piece of literature, this is what you will see…

Now tell me that our God is not the coolest!!!
Amazing.
The glue that holds us together….ALL of us…

Y’know, I looked at that laminin protein for a while and I think you’ve got the wrong god. The protein looks a whole lot more like the caduceus wielded by Hermes, God of Travelers, in the way that the serpent-like chains wrap around the staff. While laminin is important for cell structure, DNA is the code that makes us what we are, and its structure is another double-helix, like the caduceus. It really makes you marvel at how the Hermes, the God of Boundaries, extends to the very boundaries of our cells!

Then I spent a little more time and discovered the protein called porin. Porins are the proteins that allow for diffusion of molecules across cell membranes. They are the very mechanism by which our cells receive nourishment! Now wouldn’t you know it, but the porin looks just like the triquetta of Celtic paganism. Yet another expression in creation of how the power of three San Francisco witches feed all of us.

Now whatever you do, don’t let the Muslims know that the molecules in your silver crosses are shaped liked crescents! — “R”R

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If you heard my interview from today’s show, you heard the story of Tim Garon, a Washington state medical marijuana patient who was denied a liver transplant because of his legal use of marijuana.  Here is some more information on the topic from my cable access TV show, Oregon NORML Presents.

If you were wondering why I played a repeat last week, it is because I was participating in the Global Marijuana March here in Portland. Here’s some video:

 

 The Russ Belville Show 2008-05-03 [77:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Best of The Russ Belville Show. I was busy marching and speaking in downtown Portland for the Global Marijuana March.

ESPN - One tape turned over by Walsh shows Patriots also stole offensive signals - NFL
From Day 1 of the Spygate saga in September, the controversy over New England’s illicit videotaping practices has centered on the Patriots’ efforts to steal their opponents’ defensive signals. But the tapes delivered via FedEx to NFL headquarters in New York on Thursday morning also include evidence of an effort by New England to steal offensive signals, which would broaden the extent of the team’s surveillance operation.

Cheaters.  But probably the perfect dynastic metaphor for a football team in the era of George W. Bush, who cheated his way into the White House and has been flouting all the rules and regulations (a/k/a the Constitution) in pursuit of the big win.

I’m looking forward to the fan signs in the stands next season for Patriot road games.

Oh, how sweet it is in the aftermath of Obama’s huge win in North Carolina and squeaker loss in Indiana.  The talk now is that Obama will lock up the majority of pledged delegates with his expected win here in my home state of Oregon.  With the majority of pledged delegates, the superdelegates will be politically unable to stage Clinton’s Hail Mary coup attempt.

Barack nailed it the other day when he said that Clinton learned her lessons from the days of bitter Rovian politics: all the wrong ones.  She decided that was the way the game was played and she would be dirtier, more tenacious, more fear mongering, more race-baiting, more Rovian than the next guy.

Then Obama, like a leader, changed the rules of the political game and brought us back to talking about issues and avoiding the politics of slander and guilt-by-association.  Have you once heard the words “Monica Lewinsky” from him or his camp?  When it would be so easy to return a Rev. Wright “why didn’t you leave your church of twenty years?” volley with a backhanded “why didn’t you leave your husband of twenty-three years?”  When there were any number of opportunities to slam her on sniper fire (he defended her, actually, like a true Democrat defends a fellow party leader) or coffee machines (that’s my job) or not pumping gas, he stayed above the fray in that unflappable favorite-college-professor way of his.

I am so looking forward to the televised debates between the handsome young multi-racial Constitutional scholar with the commanding baritone and the elderly pale confused forgetful rage-driven former POW*.  The parallels to Kennedy/Nixon 1960 will be spilling off editorial pages.

And the campaign!  Oh, I expect McCain to go through the full Rovian cycle of fear, smear, and make unclear, but coming from Raging John the fear’s going to smell like grandpa ranting about kids on the lawn, the smear will seem mean-spirited (and Obama will deftly tag any Swift Boat style attack ads right back at McCain with, “John, I can’t understand how after the Bush dirty tricks against you in South Carolina, you’d dust off the same bag to use against me.”  Or maybe I’m hoping for that; Obama’s probably too cool to go for it), and trying to confuse voters about Obama is going to be tough when he’s going to be painted as confused about his own politics (insert MoveOn McCain/McSame Flip-Flop ads here).

As I hold my mail-in ballot in my hand and color in the oval for “Barack Obama”, it’s comforting to know that my oval may just be the one that nominates the first non-Bush/non-Clinton president in my voting age lifetime (oh, and he happens to be black, too!)

One of my favorite movies is “When We Were Kings”, the documentary of the Ali/Foreman Rumble in the Jungle of 1974.  As Ali was training, the kids in Zaire chanted “Ali bomaye!  Ali Bomaye!”  (”Ali, kill him!”).  Now thanks to Huffington Post, I think I’ve got a new favorite African saying:

“Obama biro yawne yo! Obama biro yawne yo!” (”Obama’s coming. Clear the way.”)

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AKRON, Ohio - A medical examiner must change her autopsy findings to delete any reference that stun guns contributed to the deaths of three people involved in confrontations with law enforcement officers, a judge ruled.

Friday’s decision was a victory for Taser International Inc., which had challenged rulings by Summit County Medical Examiner Lisa Kohler, including a case in which five sheriff’s deputies are charged in the death a jail inmate who was restrained by the wrists and ankles and hit with pepper spray and a stun gun.

Kohler ruled that the 2006 death of Mark McCullaugh Jr., 28, was a homicide and that he died from asphyxiation due to the “combined effects of chemical, mechanical and electrical restraint.”

Visiting Judge Ted Schneiderman said in his ruling that there was no expert evidence to indicate that Taser devices impaired McCullaugh’s respiration. “More likely, the death was due to a fatal cardiac arrhythmia brought on by severe heart disease,” the judge wrote.

Schneiderman ordered Kohler to rule McCullaugh’s death undetermined and to delete any references to homicide.

The judge also said references to stun guns contributing to the deaths of two other men must be deleted from autopsy findings. Dennis Hyde, 30, died in 2005 after a confrontation with Akron police, and Richard Holcomb, 18, died the same year after being hit with a stun by a police officer in suburban Springfield Township.

I don’t know why anyone bothers to amass a mountain of student loan debt to work hard and go to medical school and forensics school to become a medical examiner, when all you need is a judge’s robe to know how and why people die in police custody. The guy died of a heart attack; those 50,000 volts coursing through his body had absolutely no effect on a pepper-sprayed fully-restrained young man with coronary disease. [Read more →]

Will this be Hillary’s “George H.W. Bush and the Grocery Scanner” moment?