BARBWIRE by ANDREW BARBANO

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As always, the Tribune's crack investigative team has spared every expense to bring you priceless investment advice and fearless forecasts.

POLIAN DANCING — University of Nevada-Reno Football Coach Brian Polian will be named to the NCAA moral obtuseness watch list.

His longtime predecessor, Chris Ault, bailed as it became painfully apparent that UN,R would be unable to compete in its new pro league.

Polian kept his football team practicing in the toxic pollution of the recent California wildfires when local schools had shut down all outdoor activity.

Perhaps he was trying to acclimate his players to southern California smog. They still got smoked by UCLA. Now, he won't even give them a day off between games.

The team is being vaporized. RECOMMENDATION: SELL.

HEY, IT'S A LIVING. In 2014, local sportsbooks will start making odds on how many motorcycle fatalities northern Nevada will experience during the annual Street Vibrations Harleyfest.

Side bets for bar fights and shootouts. BUY.

THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN, PART ONE. It took the current government shutdown ("slimdown" at Fox Paw News) for anyone to notice a major similarity between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Carter started the shutdown game during his oft-damned administration.

Former sportscaster Reagan and Speaker Newt Gingrich merely upped the ante.

Many policies for which conservative moonhowlers venerate St. Ronald the Vague (deregulation, sucking up to big business, tax-cutting, union-busting, expanding military deficit spending while cutting domestic programs), actually started under southern conservative Carter. [1]

The Gipper just sold it better on TV. DON'T BUY.

SOUTHERN STRATEGY, PART DEUX. The highly-touted PBS series Latino Americans ignored the fact that the legendary heroes of the Alamo died fighting for slavery.

Mexico outlawed slavery and Texas was part of Mexico in the 1830s. History was rewritten and the rewrite was set in cement, or at least in celluloid, that the American legends at the Alamo died fighting them damned dirty Mexicans for some nebulous desire for freedom. (Hmmm, didn't some forgettable U.S. president from Texas have a penchant for endlessly repeating "they hate us for our freedom"?)

Jim Bowie had been a slave trader. William Travis brought his personal slave, Joe, with him to be trapped in the siege. Joe was one of two Texian combatants spared post-battle execution.

Two months after the Alamo, former President John Quincy Adams said on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives that "the war now raging in Texas is a Mexican civil war and a war for the re-establishment of slavery where it was abolished." (Ewers, Justin; Misremembering the Alamo; U.S. News & World Report, 4-4-2004).

Make you wanna toss your pseudo-coonskin cap and plastic Bowie knife? DUMP.

DARK PLEASURE DEPT. For the first time, the cheerleaders at the Reno paper have grudgingly admitted that part of former Washoe School Superintendent Heath Morrison's miraculous graduation rate increase was due to "better tracking of students." (Sept. 29 editorial)

In other words, Morrison changed the count, as only this column has been reporting for 18 months.

See the newly expanded We Don't Need No Education section at NevadaLabor.com. BUY.
OLYMPIC GAMESMANSHIP. U.S. Olympic team members, coaches, staff, media and hangers-on will all declare themselves openly gay and encourage every other nation to follow.

They will organize a mass kiss-off at the opening ceremonies in Putin's repressive Russia. (Risky gambit. He's got chemical weapons.)

Miley Cyrus will lead the U.S. team into the Olympic stadium flashing a temporary Putin tat on her telegenic tushy. HOLD.

BURNING LEXICOMMUNIST QUESTION: Will "twerking" make it into the prestigious Oxford English Dictionary as a legit new word?

If you don't already know the definition, you are too old to be reading this column, let alone a dictionary. BUY.

        UPDATE: "Selfie," a noun meaning a self-snapshot posted oneline, beat out "twerking" and "bitcoins."

NEWS HEADLINE OF THE YEAR: "Good golly, Miss Miley!" (Rolling Stone, Oct. 10)

If you don't recognize in that title the homáge to a Little Richard rock 'n' roll classic, you are too young to be reading this column. BUY.

TERRIBLE T'S. Several of my Facebookies have requested that I join them on Twitter.

Please.

Don't ask me to tweet and twerk at the same time. HELP.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.

WEB EXTRAS...

HONOR YOUR DON. Keep sending comments supporting legendary Nevada photographer Don Dondero (1920-2003) for the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame.

His life's work appeared worldwide, including the Tribune and most probably every newspaper in Nevada.

Enlist in the campaign to install Big Don.

Please send me your memories and endorsements via e-mail or to P.O. Box 10034, Reno NV 89510.

The Barbwire got the late Reno Gazette-Journal columnist Guy Richardson elected last year.

Let's go for a repeat.

BARBWIRE.TV. Support the return of community TV to these parts.

If last year's elections didn't convince you of the need, the 2013 legislature certainly should have.

Join up. You may donate at ReSurge.TV or contact me.

This is important.

Thank you.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)

____________

Andrew Barbano is a 45-year Nevadan, chair of the Nevada César Chávez Committee, producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration, first vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP, labor/consumer/civil rights advocate, member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO and editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. Check local listings for other Nevada cable systems. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Daily Sparks Tribune since 1988.

Smoking Guns... 1. Gebbie, Melinda and Smith, David; Reagan for Beginners; Writers & Readers Publishing, Inc./Distributed in the U.S. by W.W. Norton Company, New York, NY; 1984; pages 81-89.    Unfortunately, the opening episode fails to mention that the Texas rebellion, sanitized by the Alamo myth, was a pro-slavery war. Late-coming Anglo settlers from slave states were angered that Mexico had banned slavery. Makes you want to toss your Davy Crockett pseudo-coonskin cap and plastic Bowie knife.    Later installments show how the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and union leader César Chávez sparked a long-smoldering fire. Check listings for frequent re-runs of the six-hour PBS series.    Let your local station know about the omissions and tell us what they say. César Chávez is featured on the final first-run installment. Check local listings and pbs.org for re-runs. Almanac: On Oct. 2, 1835, the Battle of Gonzales, the first skirmish of the Texas Revolution took place. Texian settlers half-heartedly exchanged fire with Mexican soldiers near the Guadalupe River. The Mexican Army finally withdrew. It wasn't much of a fight, but it was the first. Latino Americanos, una serie documental que marca un hito con sus seis horas presentadas en tres partes. PBS sacará al aire la serie a nivel nacional en el otoño de 2013. Nevada K-12 rankings: See how your school did We Don't Need No Education The continuing Barbwire series ...and more ammo... The Post-Dated Recession: Pay me now or pay me later Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-6-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune The Post-dated Recession By Joshua H. Silavent / Daily Sparks Tribune / 5-3-2011 Union decline and rising inequality in two charts by Colin Gordon Economic Policy Institute / 6-5-2012 Used in journalist Mark Robison's extensive Hard Labor: Nevada unions tout role in helping workers, firms, economy (Sunday 2 Sept. 2012 Reno Gazette-Journal, page one, Reno Rebirth section of the print edition). Union men Jim Burrell, Paul McKenzie and Guy Louis Rocha did the movement proud. Not included in the RGJ online edition. WOMEN AND UNIONS — ORPHAN MAJORITIES The Barbwire Labor Day column Reno Gazette-Journal / 9-3-2012 Nevada Press Assn. Better Newspaper Contest HAT TRICK: Barbwire takes first place three years in a row. The winning entries Suing for Schools: The 20-year shuck Expanded from the 2-21-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune Click here to view the show on your desktop RED flags flying low over Sparks Expanded from the 1-10-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune The wrath of self-righteous racism Expanded from the 11-8-2009 Daily Sparks Tribune Government contacts Nev. congressional delegation Nevada Legislature State of Nevada Secretary of State Carson City Clark County City of Las Vegas Douglas County Reno City Council Sparks City Council Washoe County Commission Washoe Registrar of Voters The campaign against forcibly-paid newspaper obituaries And they wonder why the newspaper business is dying?   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 The 2009 first-place Nevada Press Association award winners Tony the Tiger & the flaky NFL Barbwire / 11-30-2008 Deregulation is never having to say you're sorry Barbwire / 8-3-2008 Nevada: A good place to visit, but do you want to live here? Barbwire / 6-15-2008 The 2008 first-place Nevada Press Association award winners The price of a piece / 6-17-2007 Boxing Pandora /9-23-2007 The Lady in the Red Dress 10-28-2007 1997 Pulitzer Prize entries ...and more ammo yet The life and times of Travus T. Hipp The best who ever was

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Copyright © 1982-2013 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 45-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee, He is producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and serves as first vice-president, political action chair and webmaster of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.

Barbwire by Barbano moved to Nevada's Daily Sparks Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in them parts ever since.
Whom to blame: How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the Barbwire in August of 1987
Tempus fugit.

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