More on the Nevada State Convention

The news is rather vague about how much Bernie Sanders won Oregon by.  In Kentucky it was fought to a near draw.  Bernie Sanders was ahead in the late polling but Hillary apparently nosed him out by a half a percentage point in Kentucky though reports mid day indicated the race was still too close to call.  It’s yet another Wednesday where Sanders wins the elections but commentators like Stephanie and Norman rant and rave about how Sanders is toast and should drop out of the race or something.  The Democratic State convention in Las Vegas deserves more attention.  The media ignored it entirely over the weekend.  Earlier this week Rachael Maddaw raved about how the out of control violent anarchists and extremists were ruining the democratic party.  It was more of a remark I’d expect Shawn Hannity to say but Hannity held his fire and I admire him for that.  In fact I believe it was Shawn who said “If I were Bernie Sanders at this point I’d be pretty P O’d at the way I’ve been treated”.   Let’s review what happened.  The delegates were sent a lot of publications saying they had to have their credentials and be seated by ten in the morning.  The only problem is the convention started at nine AM, and the chairman was trying to do a fast run around the Sanders delegates.  Sanders people got wind of this and not only were they there at nine but also had a petition to overturn a preemptive resolution saying no floor resolutions could be voted on.  They had to get the signitures of twenty percent of the delegates present for any rule they proposed, and they had a whole list of demands they wrote out.  They presented these to the lady chairman but she just disregarded them.  Then there was a voice vote to vote the present rules up or down.  Now I’m old enough to remember as a young teenager the 1964 Party conventions and I knew that first thing up for business was credentials and then they would vote on the rules, and then they would tackle the party platform.  This is the area where Ted Cruz delegates still have a ray of hope because the rules for this year’s convention haven’t been voted on yet because the delegates are the ones who vote on them.  At any rate it was an up or down yea or nay vote and the “No” crowd was markedly louder than the “Yes” vote.  The chairman said “In the opinion of the chair, the Ayes have it”.  This is an expression I’ve heard before “in the opinion of the chair” but usually it’s a non controversial vote and in congress if a row call vote is asked for they have to grant it.  Not here.  The trouble is with people like Norman and Stephanie is that they have been negative on Bernie from the git go.  Even after the very first vote in Iowa in February there were people saying “Well that’s it.  Bernie lost despite all the campaigning he did in the state.  It’s over for him now”.

I listened to Shawn Hannity after two thirty and he had Phil Robertson, the Duck Dynesty guy and I expected to be repelled by it.  But instead I listened to what he had to say about God and man and Christianity.  But it didn’t have all the theological trappings of a Walter Martin lecture and Shawn himself admitted he’s not big on the technical theological aspects of the Faith but he does agree on the basics.  And I found myself in substantial agreement with him, as far as that is possible.  I have “Faith problems” from things in my own life but I don’t want to go around projecting them on to others, but let others make up their own minds.  I’ve been thinking how people like Ted Cruz are constitutional “originalists” and so am I.  In other words when you can’t tell from the words on parchment what to do about an issue that arises, you go back to the original intent of the Founding Fathers and glean from their writings of the day what was it they meant to say.  Certain things are “common knowledge” and assumed at the time and later liberals try and do acrobatics with the text until it’s unrecognizable.  It’s kind of line in first Corinthians it says for a woman to cover her head otherwise she might be mistaken for a prostitute.  These are the sort of things I’m talking about.  So the question is which things would be disallowed from government today.  I’ve always had problems with the gross abuse of the interstate commerce clauses of the constitution.  In fact in the early days some people were saying they couldn’t ban the use of marijuana because it isn’t in the constitution.  But then some bright boy came up with this interstate commerce clause.  It’s used to regulate and subsidize farm prices and ban farmers from growing what they want and a whole lot of other things.  I got to thinking whether charities would be considered beyond the constitution.  If they were to be ruled as beyond the bounds of Article One, then I guess private institutions would have to take up the slack and I really don’t think they’re up to that.  But beyond this it’s kind of a “state of mind” for these right wingers.  They hate and fear “the other” and wrap themselves in their guns and racism and dare I use the word - - homophobia.  There is also an abiding contempt for the poor which I have experienced myself.  So a lot of the right wing thing is a whole lot “a state of mind”.