BARBWIRE
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ANDREW BARBANO
Pirate Laureate of the High Desert Outback of the American Dream
The Barbwire Molly Ivins Memorial Columniator Hall of Flames


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Je Suis Charlie
"Our republic and its press will rise or fall together." — Joseph Pulitzer

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An Alternative National Anthem
By Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) & Sharon Robinson
© 1988 CBS Records, Inc.

   Everybody knows the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
   Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
   Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
   That's how it goes.
Everybody knows.

   Everybody knows that the boat is leaking.
Everybody knows that the captain lied.
   Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died.
   Everybody talking to their pockets.
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
   And a long stem rose.
Everybody knows.

   Everybody knows that you love me, baby.
Everybody knows you really do.
   Everybody knows that you've been faithful,
Give or take a time or two.
   Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
   Without your clothes.
Everybody knows.


   Everybody knows that it's now or never.
Everybody knows that it's me or you.
   And everybody knows that you live forever
When you've done a line or two.
   Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton
   For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows.

   Everybody knows that the plague is coming.
Everybody knows that it's moving fast.
   Everybody knows that the naked man & woman —
Just a shining artifact of the past.
   Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
   That will disclose
What everybody knows.

   And everybody knows that you're in trouble.
Everybody knows what you've been through
   From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach at Malibu.
   Everybody knows it's coming apart.
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
   Before it blows.
And everybody knows.

Everybody knows. Everybody knows.
   That's how it goes. Everybody knows.

 


I hope you understand I just had to go back to the island.
Leon Russell, 1942-2016


"The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have." Kierkegaard


Murderous MAGA moonhowlers meander among us
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the Wednesday 2-17-2021 Sparks Tribune / Expansions in blue



Greatest Hits Dept.

WE WON: BIG NEWS FROM THE NEVADA PRESS ASSOCIATION CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH —> BARBWIRE NOMINEE GUY RICHARDSON INDUCTED INTO HALL OF FAME ON FIRST BALLOT

Barbwire nominee Dennis Myers elected to NPA Hall of Fame

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10 the Hard Way
Barbwire wins 10th Nevada Press Association award

GOLD 2017-18

2018 First-Place Winners

From the depths of despair to the den of iniquity & holy of holies

"Excellent work. These are some of the most moving columns I've read."
— NPA contest judge/9-29-201
8

The Grasshopper and
the Dragonfly

9-6-2017

Kicked off the Ledge
4-18-2017

NATIONAL NEWS FIRST-BREAK
Back to the Future in
Mississippi West Nevada

10-18-2017

Gold 2017
Don't ask Renown Med for marijuana to help your chemo

10-4-2016
We Don't Need No Education
Toxic turf threat ignored

12-13-2016
Kate Smith & Lady Gaga
2-14-2017

Bronze 6-pack
In the Uber-Nevada legislature, words can kill
4-28-2015
On artificial turf, don't breathe unless absolutely necessary (above)
11-24-2015
Leading questions, lead-headed leaders
1-19-2016

Hopelessly trying to win an earthquake
4-18-2013
2013 Loony Tunes Legislative Lexicon
5-30-2013
The politics of media ga-ga boosterism
3-20-2014

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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

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Would you vote for somebody who put out a contract for your murder?

About 74 million Americans did just that last November. It's hard for me to sympathize with anyone who wants me dead.

I don't know about you, but I'd have a hard time supporting a buncha crazies who let the current plague get out of control because their promiscuous priest ordered them to do so.

Last month, their cult leader sent thousands of them to commit treason resulting in five deaths, including a cop, plus injuries to 140 of his fellow officers.

Alas and alack, most still genuflect mammalian at his mammonian altar where online fundraising continues daily.

About half a million Americans so far lay dead, untold thousands will be maimed for life, the US economy is seriously falling behind China, but the cultists still drink the Kool-Aid.

Even before last week's reality TV rerun, Nevada Republicans were firmly aboard the Suicide Express. Lyon County officials announced they would flout the law and refuse to enforce Gov. Steve Sisolak's mask directives. (Ditto law enforcement in supposedly liberal Washoe County.)

In her rebuttal to Sisolak's State of the State Address, State Assembly Minority Leader Robin Titus, R-Lyon/ConforteLand, of course summoned the dark specter of election fraud while praising Nevada corporate welfare queens like the mining industry.

"Confidence in our electoral integrity has reached an all-time low," she asserted.

Hmmm...wonder how that happened?

Rather than mitigating the century-plus "extractive industries" ripoff, she advocated "finding an equitable and balanced solution that protects our vulnerable populations and give Nevadans the right to work."

Only one problem: In a free society, there's no such critter as a "right to work" but it's a great buzz-phrase which really means open season for union-busting. She might as well have added that the GOP will protect the right to breathe Nevada air (clean or otherwise from some mining smelter).

This lady's a doctor, so I guess she's gotta have some smarts. But we're talking Moonhowler politics here. Instance in point...

BY POPULAR DEMAND: PUNCHLINE, PLEASE. In my remembrance last week of Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame reporter Cy Ryan, I wrote that he once wrote a story involving me that was screamingly funny but a major embarrassment to the Nevada Republican Party. It ran verbatim in the Reno Gazette-Journal state edition but was killed in the local paper. Cy's credibility was such that journalists knew his words were the gold standard. But the RGJ's conservative editors at the time were timid and their readers lost a good laugh.

What was it? Then-Congressmember Barbara Vucanovich's all-time mammalian genuflection at the gambling industry's mammonian altar. In Cy's article on gambling addiction among new military recruits, the Republican superstar said slot machine playing is "healthy" and "cost effective" recreational activity which keeps young soldiers "off the streets and away from drugs and other illegal activities."

Dear Barbara.

Republicans Dean Heller and Mark Amodei succeeded the late Mrs. Vucanovich in the northern Nevada congressional district which has never elected a Democrat in its four-decade existence. Both were good public officials but drank the Laxalt Kool-Aid once they got to DC where you either join the club or serve on the janitorial/valet parking committee.

The Nevada Republican Party still suffers from the late U.S. Senator Paul Laxalt's control-freak power as recently evidenced by the highly educated but morally obtuse Dr. Titus. Disagree at your peril.

So the corporate welfare queens keep their free ride. Multi-national casino and mining outfits, Cabela's sporting goods, the Sparks Marina shopping complex, Tesla, Apple, Switch, Blockchains, the Reno Aces and so many more suck at the public trough while the better schools Dr. Titus touted somehow always starve.

During recessions, support for the physically and mentally disabled gets butchered first by governors and lawmakers of both parties. Then schools.

Teachers and students demonstrated for more funding on the streets of Carson City last Monday. Alas and alack, thanks to another of Vucanovich's successors, Jim the Dim Gibbons, a Republican minority can kill any tax increase no matter how fair or well-deserved. Just like the GOP minority let Donald Trump slide with mass murder last week.

A SENSIBLE REPUBLICAN. We just lost international industrial titan George P. Shultz who served in four cabinet positions under Republican presidents. He was about as wise and even-tempered as people get.

In a 1991 speech before the National Planning Association, New York Times writer Leonard Silk quoted former Secretary of State Shultz as saying "the whole workplace is changing, the patterns of competition are changing." Shultz added that a balance of power in the workplace remains as necessary as ever.

In "a healthy workplace, it is very important that there be some system of checks and balances...what used to be called the system of industrial jurisprudence...Free societies and free trade unions go together," Shultz stated.

"As a society, we have a great stake in freedom and a lot of that is anchored, somehow, historically," in the labor movement, Shultz noted.

"It is no accident, (Shultz) said, that the first thing a dictator does is to get rid of the free trade unions, if there are any," Silk reported.

"'And it's not an accident,' (Shultz) added, 'that a lot of the fire for what happened in Eastern European countries came out of a trade union, Solidarity.' Societies that lack the kind of organization that will 'really get up on its hind legs and fight about freedom' are missing something," Shultz asserted.

Future President of Poland Lech Walesa and his Solidarity trade union fought for their rights to live and work freely.

Dr. Titus and her retro-GOP should read up on some history before tossing around terms they know nothing about.

NUMBERS CRUNCH. According to the latest update, the Republican Party just lost about 12,000 Washoe County registered voters while the Donkeyites shrank by one thousand.

¡Sí se puede!

Take care of each other and be careful out there.

Be well. Raise hell. Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (And my French.)
Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)

___________________
Andrew Barbano is a 52-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, BallotBoxing.US and CesarChavezNevada.com/ Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988. E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us>

WEB XTRAS & SMOKING GUNS —>

SUPERSPREADER UPDATE

A hard rain falls on the land of the giants
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the Wednesday 2-10-2021 Sparks Tribune

Maskerape: Get COVID-19 & vax on one bus ride
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the Wednesday 2-3-2021 Sparks Tribune

Capitol punishment and bus station blues
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the Wednesday 1-20-2021 Sparks Tribune

Bus drivers lay to rest one of their own, call on RTC to enforce COVID-19 protections
By Astrid Mendez / KTNV TV-13 (ABC-Las Vegas) 1-22-202

Funeral for 2nd Nevada bus driver felled by COVID-19
1-22-2021


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Smoking Guns—>

 



$75 dead or alive: Still crazy after all these years
A mass murderer becomes famous on TV a century later

How come nobody noticed 'til now?
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 2-21-2018 Sparks Tribune

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory owners Max Blank and Isaac Harris. Is not Mr. Harris eerily familiar to television junkies?

From the Emmy-winning opening slate of the blockbuster "Cheers" television series. Combined with its "Frasier" spinoff, it lasted 20 years.
The "shirtwaist kings" immigrated from Russia and made a fortune manufacturing "Gibson Girl"-style blouses. (Photo, "The American Experience"/PBS)
The Emmy-winning opening slate of the "Cheers" television series before the "slate" of creators is superimposed. Looks like Mr. Harris' dead ringer (at left) is having a bloody good time.

"Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" Chico Marx disguised as Groucho Marx in "Duck Soup" (1933)
Back to the story of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist holocaust

Triangle tragedy recalled as requiem
"The Fire in My Mouth," a new oratorio by Pulitzer honoree Julia Wolfe, premiered with the New York Philharmonic Jan. 24

By Michael Cooper / The New York Times 1-23-2019

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Copyright © 1982-2021 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 52-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and SenJoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee. He is the executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and a longtime member, officer and political action chair 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.

Betty J. Barbano
2-7-1941 / 12-27-2005

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