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

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

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!

WEB XTRAS & SMOKING GUNS —>

SUPERSPREADER UPDATE

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