Gathered from the SN&R blogs

California Dems: Get out of Afghanistan

We would have thought this would get more attention from the various daily-paper capital bureaus: Right before President Barack Obama announces his new Afghanistan strategy, the California Democratic Party is telling him it’s time to get out.

At a meeting in San Diego on November 15, the party’s executive board adopted a resolution entitled End the U.S. Occupation & Air War in Afghanistan.

The resolution calls for a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops, an end to the use of military contractors, and for stopping “air strikes that cause heavy civilian casualties.”

One of the authors of the resolution is Sacramento’s own Karen Bernal, who serves on the executive board and is the chairwoman of the CDP Progressive Caucus.

“We think it’s important to make this effort at this critical moment, when the administration is having serious internal debate,” she told SN&R.

She added that she hopes other state parties will follow suit. “We may be seeing the beginnings of a state party pushback on this. We’re starting a fire.” The CDP is not a small or irrelevant organization. But the daily papers in California pretty much all ignored the resolution. What gives?

–Snog
www.newsreview.com/snog

Poe’s Law states that “Without a winking smiley face or some other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that someone won’t mistake for the real thing.”

Poe’s Law explains why, after publishing Ted Cox’s story (“Goodbye, Tammy Wynette” SN&R Frontlines, October 15, 2009) about John Marcotte and his initiative amendment to ban divorce (except for biblical reasons), we got all sorts of letters from good liberals who were appalled at this rampant fundamentalism. We also heard from fundamentalist Christians who said they’d be happy to support the amendment.

The problem with parody these days is that, on the far right, it doesn’t exist. In fact, these anti-gay folks are so nuts about stopping marriage equality that they’ll cut off their nose to spite their face, as my mama used to say. In Texas, it turns out that the way they wrote their anti-gay marriage law may have banned all marriages.

No kidding. According to a report from the McClatchy news service, a Houston lawyer is claiming that a 22-word clause in the 2005 marriage-equality ban has the unintended consequence of endangering the legality of all marriages performed in Texas.

Now, that’s parody.

—Kel’s Hot Flash
www.newsreview.com/hotflash