Barbwire by Barbano: A smattering of splatterings

BARBWIRE
by
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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Andrew Barbano Editor/Publisher
Photo: Debra Reid, Sparks Tribune

   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 the scene is dead
   But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
   What everybody knows...
   Everybody talking to their pockets.
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
   and a long red rose.
   Everybody knows. Everybody knows.
That's how it goes. Everybody knows.

— Leonard Cohen, 1934-2016

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

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

A smattering of splatterings
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 5-15-2024 / Updated 5-19-2024 / Expansions in blue

"You can only fool some of the people all of the time, and that's usually enough" —Wisdom from a famous philosopher

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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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WARNING LABEL: If you are looking for a positive, upbeat joyful piece of writing, effusively suffused with hearts, flowers and platitudes, read something else. Anyway, furry, cute little platitudes are only found in Australia. I further declare there shall be no order, flow or congruity hereinbelow. Kinda like the world today. Just a smattering of splatterings befitting the sickly state of our body politic. So don your masks and gloves, and prepare for a bumpy ride.

SELLING FEAR ITSELF. The real estate, landlord, auto and fossil fuel industries have all ripped off tactics from the National Awful Association and Big Tobacco to the benefit of no one but local TV stations.

Their saturation commercials say those nasty commie big government types are coming to take your car, your land, your house and your firstborn.

Every candidate in sight lists housing as a big issue.

Only Nevada State Senate candidate and Reno Vice-Mayor Naomi Duerr has uttered the shibboleth: RENT CONTROL for senior citizens.

The Reno City Council actually passed rent control back in the 1970s, then quickly chickened out. The only place you can find the story? Why, right here, of course. Check Rentvolution.org for the greatly expanded Barbwire of July 17, 2019.

CLIMATE CHANGE CODA: "Consumers caused climate change," recently declared an Exxon mogul. Blame the victim. A true Trumpista.

TRANSLATING TRUMPY TALK: The Orange Crusher's minions would do well to remember the infamous words of Nixon mouthpiece Ron Ziegler, the most masterful spokesman ever to infest the White House: "All previous statements are inoperative!"

That way, Orange Crushers won't have to explain why His Wonderfulness gave orders not to place any vets with napalmed faces behind him at his rallies.

NOEMCLATURE: Have you heard that beastial South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is trying out a new campaign song?

Barbwire spies report she will be using one of late night radio legend Dr. Demento's greatest hits: "Dead Puppies Aren't Much Fun" by Ogden Edsl. (The late hyper-conservative Sen. Roman Hruska, R-Nebraska, achieved immortality therein.)

JOHNNY CASH, CALL YOUR OFFICE. Your second-greatest hit has come to life. Donald Trump is a Boy Named Sue. (Or is that Marjorie Taylor-Green in a tangerine-colored wig?)

SMOKING GUN. A big national casino outfit based in Gomorrah South is polling its far-flung grind joints about going smoke-free. Never gonna happen.

The bedrock of the gambling industry has always been addicts, unfortunate people who hopelessly donate their paychecks every payday.

Any drug dealer knows that to keep vacuuming the pockets of the hooked, you must cater to all their vices, including drinking, sex, smoking and worse.

All the rest is just PR.

Why do you think the Nevada gambling-industrial complex refused for decades to allow its wholly-owned subsidiary, the Nevada Legislature, to allocate any money for gambling addiction?

Say the A-word in Carson City and you could smell tar and feathers.

When the biggies finally relented, lawmakers approved cosmetic band-aids for gunshot wounds.

DUMBERER IN DOUGLAS. An eminent candidate for high office from Nevada's Alabaster Bastion, aka Douglas County, wants to go to Washington to cut government spending. (Oh, don't they all?)

First up, he wants to eliminate tobacco subsidies.

Easy enough. They were eliminated years ago.

Keep taking them little white pills for white guys, bro.

DUMB JOCKS DEPT. During last Saturday's Fox baseball telecast of the SF Giants vs. the Cincinnati Reds, a pelican landed in left field.

Announcers Adam Amin and baseball hall-of-famer Eric Karros duly noted the visitor. NEITHER knew what it was.

The closest Karros could come was "it's just a big bird."

Sorry, guys. Big Bird is yellow. This big pelican was brown. Fox Network. It figures.

CORPORATE WELFARE QUEENS ARE IN HIGH DUDGEON. The mining industry, as it has for 152 years, ordered up a bipartisan group blow job from the majority of Nevada's congressional delegation for a new law allowing the exploiters to pollute large tracts of public land.

Business as usual.

Pols and developers are also pushing for another huge federal freebie with a well-oiled PR campaign oozing away.

They want more federal land to be given to developers to alleviate boomtown Nevada's housing crisis.

That's like asking your drug dealer to cure you.

They are hiding behind the usual cloak of homelessness and squealing how much good they will do for the least among us.

Then, they take public land and taxpayer subsidy money to build posh mansions and condos.

And a sprinkling of "low cost" accommodations.

How low?

Well, determined by comparison with fat market prices, of course.

Municipalities are all for expansion and I can't say I blame local officials.

Nevada's regressive tax system demands constant growth because under the law, the minute a property is sold, it begins to "depreciate" and is decreasingly taxed as such.

Bass ackwards, a government-managed chain letter.

GOING POSTAL. Mail theft is an increasing problem. Trump's postmangler general, Louis the Clueless, ordered the postal police force not to enforce the law or interfere with a theft.

Check out KOLO TV-8's recent update.

SPEAKING OF TV. Where are all those Biden millions our fearless leader is purportedly spending to blunt Trump's blunderbuss?

A new poll shows Nevada is Trump's best swing state, up by 12 points, the only place the Putin apprentice leads by double digits.

WOLF PACK BLUES. The Reno Gazette-Journal and USA Today just published a magnum opus on lack of progress in womens' college athletics in the 52 years since passage of Title IX.

The poster child for abuse? The University of Nevada-Reno, a male chauvinist pigsty.

It's three full pages and well worth reading at USAtoday.com/

If it doesn't piss you off, you are morally obtuse.

All I can add to such great journalism is something that's not there: Had the late great UNR President Milton Glick (1937-2011) not died in the saddle trying to save his school from legislative oblivion, this never would have happened.

Paraphrasing the old country song, mamas, don't let your baby girls grow up to be Wolf Pack.

UNR BLUES, PART DEUX. Park the new VA hospital on UNR's northern perimeter at McCarran Blvd? A prima facie traffic and logistical disaster.

¡Sí se puede!

Vaxx up, stay safe, pray for Ukraine and almost 100 other currently war-torn lands.

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

_________________________

Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 55-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since August 12, 1988.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

What happened to us?
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 5-8-2024 / Expansions in blue

Did we do something when we should not have? Did we do nothing when we should have?

One Photo That Captures the Loss in Gaza
"Dr. Sam Attar went over and only then realized that the boy was dead."
By Nicholas Kristof / The New York Times 5-4-2024

Karam and his mom at the hour of his death

Any way you slice it, this world is the result of its dominant species, at once both awesome and awful.

Immersing myself in media the past few days, I generated enough notes for three or four columns. Love, hate, reason, superstition — all well-represented.

Then I saw the photo of that grieving mother.

We have made so many of those in our short span on this orb and they all lead to the same damned and damnable place.

When, oh when, will we ever learn?

As the world plunges into the cauldron of World War Three, I hope and pray that all the sorrows of today represent an apex of the evil men do. (And it's always men, greedy, power-drunk, reptilian macho caudillos.)

The single photograph which told the story of the Vietnam fiasco was the famous shot of a naked little Vietnamese girl, crying and screaming, running down a road among other peasants.

Much of her skin had been burned off after a mass U.S. napalm bombing. She miraculously survived and became an anti-war activist all her life.

You can find the latest candidate for the Gaza War's snapshot in everlasting infamy at nytimes.com/

Reporter Nicholas Kristof, the Tiananmen Square Pulitzer Prize co-winner (with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, the first married couple ever to do so) gave most of his Sunday column to THE PHOTO. (Linked to the web edition of this Barbwire at NevadaLabor.com/)

I teared up the moment I viewed it.

I wept as I read Kristof's description.

I had a hard time reciting the text to a friend by phone.

And I'm having a slog writing this.

Kristoff got THE PHOTO from a longtime American surgeon friend, Dr. Sam Attar of the Northwestern University med school.

He's one of legions of candidates for sainthood who have risked the last full measure of devotion for victims of this monster mannunkind's perpetual wars.

At a northern Gaza hospital, "he was preparing to go into the operating room one day when a woman called him over and asked him to photograph her young son, Karam, in his bed in the ICU. Sam went over and only then realized that the boy was dead," Kristof reported.

"Every time staff wanted to cover him fully with a blanket, she would flip it back and say 'No!' and she would start talking to him, asking him where he went."

(If you need to take a break now, so do I.)

Kristof continued "The nurses and other doctors who were in the ICU that day said that Karam died of complications from malnutrition.

"The United Nations confirms that Gazan children have starved to death.

"The nurses wanted to remove Karam's body after he died an hour earlier but his mother wouldn't allow it. In her grief, she told Sam that Karam was a prince and she wanted Sam to share the boy's photo.

"Perhaps she thought this was a way of commemorating her son," Kristoff noted.

"I've criticized the way Israel has conducted the war in Gaza and President Biden's strong support for it, for a child is killed or injured every 10 minutes, according to the United Nations...This photo captures a preventable tragedy," Kristof wrote.

"As I argue that it's time to end this war, I think this photo has a persuasive power greater than my words...As we discuss Gaza, let's keep in mind that the war unfolds through lives like Karam's...(THE PHOTO is) a reminder to us all of what's at stake," Kristof concluded.

THE PHOTO is an elevated shot of an ER bed you've seen a jillion times on TV.

A moveable curtain scrunched to one side, a black lifesigns monitor on the other.

Karam lies small, half-covered with a red blanket, head to his left, looking thru eyes that cannot see to see, toward his black-robed mother.

She grasps his hand as she kisses it.

I have foolishly and inexpertly asserted for decades that any war can be avoided if its seeds are smothered early.

You know, "peace on earth to men of good will" and all that pious nonsense, right?

Will this be the third and final world war?

And will some of us be around for a new, permanent age of enlightenment when the better angels of our nature have finally prevailed?

Hope springs eternal, but wellsprings can run dry when all available water has been used for tears.

When will we ever learn?

HOW'D WE GET HERE? Read "Who Will Answer?", the Barbwire of November 22, 2023 (JFK 60), at NevadaLabor.com/

"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." — Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973)

¡Sí se puede!

___________________
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 55-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since August 12, 1988.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

Ain't we a pair?
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 4-10-2024
Expansions in blue / Updated 4-11, 4-14, 4-15, 4-16 & 5-2-2024 GMT

So stated Tina Turner in the 1985 blockbuster "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome."

That line best summed up my overwhelmed feelings last Friday evening when the Northern Nevada Central Labor Council inducted the late Tribune journalist and my old friend Dennis Myers into the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame.

Using a hockey analogy, Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar noted that the occasion completed a hat trick for Dennis. He had previously been so honored by both the Barbwire and Nevada Press Association rogues galleries.

Living up to my self-imposed nickname of Quarantino, I attended via Zoom, dressed appropriately for the solemn occasion: In a sweatshirt and UnionYes! baseball cap.

I thus stood surprised and amazed by the second installation of the evening, The Barbwire Man hisself.

Zounds.

I told the sold out event's attendees that this represented the second-greatest honor of my life, eclipsed only by the day I married my wife, Betty, 40 years ago.

I was and remain humbled to stand with giants who accomplished much more than I ever will. The César HOF includes Nevada's two greatest legislators, Sen. Joe Neal and Assemblymember Bob Price, both D-North Las Vegas.

Fred Ross, Sr., the union stalwart who taught César Chávez how to organize abides therein, as do Maria Zamora, who marched with Chávez from Delano to Sacramento in the 1960s; United Auto Workers stalwart George "Battling" Nelson of Sparks who stood beside Chávez and United Auto Workers legend Walter Reuther at the dedication of the United Farm Workers headquarters; Nevada labor mainstays Dan Rusnak and Sam Lumpe; the late Nevada Labor Commissioner Stan Jones and his wife, Wendy; and the original Chávez HOF honoree, Darlene Jespersen.

Ms. Jespersen was a longtime Harrah's bartender who refused to follow demeaning new corporate makeup face painting rules. Her wrongful termination case broke new ground for women's rights at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Dennis, Nevada's greatest reporter, was the first journalist so honored. I can only state that I am the second because Dennis himself accorded me that appellation.

I still term myself an advocate and hellraiser. I don't present both sides, especially when the other side is suffused with flaming bigoted moonhowlers.

Video of Myers and Barbano inductions —>

https://youtu.be/pFNUBW1vhEo

https://youtu.be/GopULsYDWuE

Text of Judge Patricia Lynch acceptance speech for Dennis Myers

Official Cesar XVIII commemorative program book

A posthumous accolade / By Matthew Bieker
Reno News & Review 4-27-2024

ADIOS, VERITA BLACK PROTHRO. Last Saturday came news of the death of the beautiful Nevada activist and businesswoman. Verita paid heavy dues in her shortened life. When she ran for Washoe County public administrator in 2018, some freedom loving racist defaced her candidate signs with black spray paint.

The Nevada Democratic Party sent out a double notice, also including the hit-and-run fatality of Kurt Englehart, aide to Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto, D-Nev.

I stand proud and humbled by having known and worked with most of the above superstars in the firmament of human aspiration.

READER RUMBLINGS: Tribunistas have reacted to this newspaper's March 27 publication of the Nevada Independent news service exposé of our regional health care octopus. ("Renown Health is a powerhouse in Northern Nevada. Is that a problem?")

Last week, I added some very necessary perspective regarding the origins of the malady by calling attention to the 1995 Washoe County Grand Jury report documenting the outright theft of our formerly publicly owned, low cost hospital.

Some Tribune subscribers sent these comments: "I worked there as a head supervising nurse. Their 'non-profit' status is just a moniker. Actually, 'More Money' is their tacit motto." And this: "I remember times when management harassed me to make sure all my employees only gave Renown management five-star ratings or I would be demoted, go without a raise or some other hellish reprisal."

I built a whole website of research on the depredations of our health care conglomerate which will be linked to the expanded web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com/

UNHEALTHY CARE, PART DEUX. The fake news New York Times just published a major scandal regarding big health insurance companies. Many have retained an outfit which earns billions in commissions based on how much health care they DENY to insured patients.

"Don't like your $100,000 surgery bill? Sue us, turkey." [UPDATE: Websearch "hamby nytimes.com tool helps insurers reap fees shift costs" to view several articles.]

I have never seen a better argument for a single-payer national system. Fully one-third of all U.S. health care dollars go toward profit and paperwork. This has resulted in the highest costs for just about the poorest care in the industrialized world.

Social Security, that dastardly government run program, only costs three percent to run. Continuing rape and pillage by the health care industrial complex must come to an end.

I remember when moonhowlers took to the streets to campaign against Obamacare. Some dimbulb woman actually told a reporter she was there to "keep government's hands off my Medicare."

In 2009, the U.S. government became the largest health care customer in the country. Combined with the military, the Veterans Administration and other programs, Uncle Sam has long been paying most of the bills. It's well past time to reign in pillagers like Renown, Cigna, Aetna, Humana, United Health Care (aka AARP) and Big Pharma.

Sorry, Ronnie, government is not the problem. Government is the solution.

HISTORY FOR DULLARDS. Supporters of T-Rump, the croaker who raps America, want to rename DC's Dulles Airport for the Orange Crusher. What an insult to the legacy of the Republican Dulles Brothers, Allen who headed the CIA, and John Foster Dulles who served as Secretary of State, both under President Dwight Eisenhower.

These bastards made a sport of overthrowing small democracies, most notably that of Iran. The latter was accomplished because British Petroleum wanted their oil refinery back after the democratically elected Iranian government nationalized the industry after decades of western exploitation.

We are at war with Iran today because of the depredations of the Brothers Dulles back in the 1950s.

So why trade a headache for an upset stomach?

SLIGHTLY CYNICAL DEPT. Congratulations to the universities of South Carolina and Connecticut for winning their respective women's and men's minor league professional basketball championships.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

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

Larry Barbano, Frater Mei
1947-2023

To Die For
My daughters were born 65 years ago yesterday. Alas, their youth was cut in twain.
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 1-17-2024

Web Xtras & Smoking Guns—>

Why the science is clear that masks work
By Zeynep Tufecki / The New York Times / 3-10-2023

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$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

Wasting workers where everybody knows your name
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 10-18-2023

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Andrew Barbano is a 55-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and SenJoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee. He was the longtime executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and has been a quarter-century member and 10-year officer of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

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

Larry Barbano, Frater Mei
1947-2023

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