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BARBWIRE
by
ANDREW BARBANO
Christmas
stockings 2007: Full frontal Hillary
Expanded from the 12-2-2007 Daily Sparks
(Nev.) Tribune
Updated 12-4-2007
With various faith-based holidays rapidly approaching, now is the time to publish wish lists for the exalted and elevated who sometimes step down from on high to walk among the great unwashed who pay their bills.
TO RUDY GIULIANI, R-NY: Conversion to Mormonism so that he may plead First Amendment protection for his multiple wifery. (Don't know if he's asked Pope Benny for any annulments.)
TO MITT ROMNEY, R-Mass.: A happy holiday without questions about your religion. The contradictions, equivocations and sellouts in your public record provide embarrassment enough for any opposition researcher.
TO THE SONS OF MITT ROMNEY: Butch haircuts and boot camp. Your daddy supports Dubya's wars, so why don't you volunteer to prove your patriotism? Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines – great places to start convincing us of your commitment to public service.
TO SEN. HARRY REID, D-Nev.: A lump of clean (?) coal from Sierra Pacific Power.
TO SIERRA PACIFIC POWER: A notice from the Public Utilities Commission that your stockholders will have to eat the entire cost of your foolish power contracts with Enron.
TO UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA FOOTBALL COACH CHRIS AULT: A chokecherry tree for your retirement garden.
TO TAXOPHOBIC MOONHOWLER SHARRON ANGLE, R-Reno: An enlarged garage so that all the kids your tax proposal deprives of classrooms will have a place to go during the day.
TO REP. DENNIS KUCINICH, D-OH: Some long overdue respect for being the only Democratic presidential candidate talking and acting like a real Democrat.
TO SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, D-NY: An intense makeover by heavyweight speech and drama coaches. The presidency is decided not by what you say, but how you say it. Not by what you stand for, but how you look standing there. Cosmetics make the king or queen in our superficial media scene.
TO SEN. BARACK OBAMA, D-IL, AND GOV. BILL RICHARDSON, D-NM: Free coupons from Avis Rent-A-Car to remind you that you can be successful as number two.
Read candidate positions on three key labor issues at the CWA website
NEW AND HOT
Longtime Nevada reporter Dennis Myers' Everything You Need to Know About the Nevada Presidential Caucus and then some site
TO FORMER SEN. JOHN EDWARDS, D-NC: The chance to prove wiseman Bill Maher correct that Edwards-Obama would be a helluva ticket.
TO FOX NOISE NETWORK'S BILL O'REILLY: A lock of Keith Olbermann's hair.
TO GOV. JIM THE DIM, R-Nev.: A four-year ocean cruise with your pal Warren Trepp. If budget cutting is the only thing you have to contribute to the public debate, please let your wife run the state. After all, she's a lot smarter than you are.
TO ASSEMBLY SPEAKER BARBARA BUCKLEY, D-Gomorrah South: Gov. Gibbons' job in 2011.
TO RENOWN / WASHOE MEDICAL CENTER: A stone wall for you to hide behind during bad faith negotiation with your nurses' union.
TO THE BRICKLAYERS AND CEMENT MASONS UNIONS: If Washoe Med's gonna get a stone wall, I hope they at least build it with qualified union labor.
TO ADMITTED MURDERER DARREN MACK: To keep you company forever in jail, a statue of lady justice with money bags on her scales. (Sorry, with your record, we don't dare let her bring her sword.) While we're on the subject of former spouses….
TO O.J. SIMPSON: A library of books and videos about schoolyard bullies. And a court order forcing you to watch them under adult supervision.
TO DARREN AND O.J.: May you become room mates and bosom buddies at Clark County jail. You can trade stories about how the bitches ask for it.
TO THE GOVERNMENTS OF SPARKS, RENO AND WASHOE COUNTY: One wise leader who can balance power for the people. (I can dream, can't I?)
TO THE RENO KAZOO-JOURNAL AND KOLO TV-8: The swimming pools of your wildest dreams. May you be forever haunted with nightmares of drowning in money for forcing out the best of the best for the sin of being paid decent wages.
TO THE DEPARTED BUT NOT FORGOTTEN Cory Farley, Don Cox, Steve Sneddon, Tonia Cunning and Tad Dunbar: Keep writing and reporting. With many new channels of distribution available today, please find what's best for you. The High Desert Outback of the American Dream needs your experience and your fire.
Be well. Raise hell.
NAOMIKLEIN.ORG: The Shock Doctrine Short Film
A Film by Alfonso Cuarón and Naomi Klein, directed by Jonás Cuarón
An official selection of the Toronto Film Festival
An official selection of the Venice Film Festival
The Shock Doctrine short film is cleared for Internet use but not for broadcast,
so feel free to share it with your friends.
NAOMI WOLF: Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps
There are some things common to every state that's made the transition to fascism. Author Naomi Wolf argues that all of them are present in America today.
Alternet 5-20-2007
REQUIRED READINGS
Johnson, Chalmers; REPUBLIC OR EMPIRE? A National Intelligence Estimate on the United States; Harper's magazine; January, 2007. I love it when heavy hitters validate what I've been saying for years in the tiny Sparks Tribune.
Barlett, Donald L. and Steele, James B.; America: What Went Wrong? (1992); America: Who Really Pays the Taxes? (1994); America: Who Stole the Dream? (1996) ; Andrews & McMeel/Universal Press Syndicate. For additional comments on the work of the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning team, use the NevadaLabor.com search engine and sweep for "Barlett."
Review of Alex Carey's Taking the Risk Out of Democracy:
Propaganda in the US and AustraliaThe Orwell Diversion by Alex Carey
Excerpted from the book available below
ORDER Taking the Risk Out of Democracy
Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty
By Alex Carey
Edited by Andrew Lohrey
Foreword by Noam Chomsky
University of Illinois Press
SEE ALSO: Lapham, Lewis H.; Tentacles of Rage: The Republican Propaganda Mill, A Brief History; Harper's Magazine cover article; September, 2004, page 32.
By one conservative estimate, the corporate right has spent about $3 billion over the past three decades manufacturing public opinion to suit big business goals. Lapham's number covered the early 1970's to the present day. Alex Carey noted that by 1948, anti- New Deal corporate propaganda expenditures had already reached $100 million per year, not adjusted for inflation, for advertising alone. (Carey, ibid; page 79)
Adjusted for inflation, that 1948 $100 million becomes $801,659,751.04 in 2005 dollars.
Conservatives Help Wal-Mart, and Vice Versa
As Wal-Mart struggles to rebut growing criticism, it has discovered a reliable ally: conservative research groups.
New York Times 9-8-2006; Free registration may be required.BARBWIRE: Labor Day '94: People vs. corporate con job, 9-4-94
Chilling forecasts from Alex CareyBARBWIRE: The Nevada Republican Party Becomes Communist, 3-30-97
A prescient Plato on the dangers of oligarchyThe sands of time do not cloud the long memories of the sheiks of Araby
Barbwire 9-10-2006
Rinfret, Pierre A.; Peace is Bullish; Look magazine, 5-31-1966
Barbwire Oilogopoly Archive
I've been telling you so for more than 10 freakin' yearBarbwire Nevada Corporate Welfare Archive
Learn about the goodies which suffering profitmongers suck from the public trough
Nevada: Right to Work for Less
Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it
Nevada Legislature
State of Nevada
Secretary of State
Clark County
City of Las Vegas
Reno City Council
Sparks City Council
Washoe County Commission
Washoe Registrar of Voters
The Dean's List
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006
Copyright © 1982-2007 Andrew BarbanoAndrew Barbano is a 39-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org; a member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO, and the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune since 1988.
Site composed and maintained by Deciding Factors, CWA 9413 signatory
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