Barbwire by Barbano: Dream Team: Tom Hanks & Oprah Winfrey

Dream Team: Tom Hanks & Oprah Winfrey
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 7-10-2024 / Updated 7-11-2024 GMT / Expansions in blue

I've come up with the answer to the Donkeykongs' quandary: Tom Hanks for President with Oprah Winfrey for VP. (Taylor Swift will never take a billion-dollar pay cut.)

Hanks has inherited Walter Cronkite's mantle as the most trusted man in the country, often called "America's Dad." Oprah -- God, I hope she's a Democrat -- actually teased Trump that they'd make a great presidential ticket 20 or so years ago -- if you believe the fake news New York Times.

Trump would have to change his underwear at the specter of facing an opponent with a greater television presence than His Wonderfulness.

Tell me I'm wrong. Don't tell me about lack of experience. Trump had zero and that didn't hurt newly-minted Republican Ronald Reagan when he ran for California governor. His only cited credential in 1966 was his presidency of the Screen Actors Guild, where he sold out his fellow actors to movie mogul Lew Wasserman and convinced actors that TV work was worth less than movie work. Wasserman became a billionaire. Ever heard of MCA Universal? (Music Corporation of America / Universal Studios)

The Orange Crusher, now leading his party to a fourth straight national loss, is the end result of movie magic follytix. All that matters is media image.

Trump's obsession with makeup and grooming is well-founded. "It's more important to look good than to feel good," advised Billy Crystal's immortal Saturday Night Live sendup of starstruck narcissism via his smooth alter-ago "Fernando."

If you can fool some of the people all of the time, that's usually enough. We mere mortals have ingrained prejudices that scoundrels, pimps and thieves exploit. It starts with wanting to believe that the other guy shares the better angels of your nature.

Good guys trust that you will do what you say you will do. That you are speaking truth. That you think as they do. That your check won't bounce. That you will be faithful. That you believe in a power higher than yourself. That basic human decency will guide you. All the usual stuff.

Fortunately, that describes most people. But a narrow sliver of charlatans, harlots and varlets see opportunity there. That's what starts wars.

I have lately tried to identify the root cause of the well-documented afflictions of this world. It all comes down to the capital sin of avarice, old-fashioned greed. The worst practitioners are modern corporations, lifeless and bloodless save as official people under the judge-made law of long-dead blackrobes.

The rapaciousness and viciousness of such immortal zombies is unquenchable. These inhuman creations define the very human disease called "more."

There's never enough profit. So big business denudes the global landscape, creates or worsens global warming, lets mere humans die due to pollution or fatally expensive patent medicines, and sells lots of guns. Who cares? The stock market is going crazy!

Joseph Biden is a sucker and fails to recognize that he has broken the New York City street rule from venerable author Damon Runyon: Never, EVER play the other guy's game.

Runyon advised that if some sharpie comes up to you and wants to bet money he can pour cider in your ear without you noticing, only one thing is sure: You're going to end up with an earful of cider.

Biden is playing by the old rules of politics. Trump is playing by the inhuman and cruel rules of modern corporate media. As guys in the ad business always advise, it's all in the packaging.

You've seen me often quote TV journalist Katy Tur. After the 2016 Hillary debacle, she wrote a book based on her covering Trump's campaign. Talk show host David Letterman asked her why Trump won, "He entertained them and he looked strong," Ms. Tur tersely stated.

She remains monstrously correct. I remember a 2020 interview with the daughter of a blue collar Latino Tejano man who died a hard death of Covid-19. He saw the president of the United States say on TV that Covid was no worse than the common cold. So, after staying home for a week, the father did what he usually did on Friday nights, go the the local bar and have a few beers with his buds.

He was dead in a week.

"The only mistake he ever made in his life was believing Donald Trump," his tearful daughter said.

Broke, over-the-hill actor Reagan was manufactured by what's became known as his Kitchen Cabinet, a cadre of millionaires impressed with his media presence at the 1964 Goldwater Republican National Convention.

Reagan shaped a media image, creating just another acting role. this time playing his idol, President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It worked. It's only important that you look good.

That's where Biden has failed and continues to fail. The Dems have a strong bench but nobody has Trump's media savvy. You can't fight fire with eyedroppers of gasoline.

All that matters is looking good and speaking well. Throw in that everybody knows your name, and you can win, baby win.

Otherwise, the republic fails as the formerly United States of America become just one of a line of dominoes falling to the corporately-controlled fascism currently sweeping this beleaguered little blue marble.

We've been warned.

TRUTH IN POLITICS DEPT. After Biden's er...uh...lackluster debate, Trump is no longer trolling that the president was on performance enhancing drugs.

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS. I am one of the most powerful people in the country. Many times over the past few months, I've been polled by robocalls and real people. Sometimes they even get my name right. (I'm still trying to figure out who the hell is "Tiffany Barbayno".)

The average national poll talks to about 1,000 people. The current U.S. population is about 333 million. Roughly half are registered to vote. So when I get a call as a registered voter, I'm speaking for roughly one percent of 1.9 million Nevada registered voters, or about 19,000 folks. Or one percent of the 333 million. That's power. Think of that the next time you get one of those pesky phone calls.

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

¡Sí se puede

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 andSparks-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 the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

Creeping Senility vs. Glaring Insanity
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 7-3-2024 / Updated 7-2-2024 GMT / Expansions in blue

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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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TOP SECRET— HushHush!

"God is a comedian playing to an audience afraid to laugh." — Voltaire

The divine joke is on us, boys and girls. Our vaunted democracy has long been crippled and now its legs are being shot out from under.

One thing is certain: After last Thursday's debate, no one can accuse President Biden of using performance enhancing drugs.

The bright side of President Biden's Shakespearean meltdown, in the opinions of some, is that the Donkeykongs still have time to find a replacement.

Other major democracies have very short election seasons as opposed to us'n where the campaign is perpetual.

It's intentional, turning off the majority of those eligible to vote so that no matter who wins, he — and I do mean HE — can triumph with the minority who bother to show up.

Should Mr. Biden wave the white flag, the question remains: Who has the national profile to replace him? I can only think of two — Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, 82 and running for another term. And former four-term California Gov. Jerry Brown, now 86.

Sen. Sanders recovered from a mid-campaign heart attack in 2020. Biden survived two aneurysms in 1988. A minor speech mistake caused then-Sen. Biden to withdraw from the presidential race, probably saving his life. But that was way back in the rule of law/truth matters era, so very 20th Century.

I would love to see Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer jump into the breach. Alas and alack, as I have been preaching for years, there are three positions in American public life where the U.S. electorate prefers a male: Governor, not senator. Network news anchor. And president.

CBS News has never recovered from the ousting of Dan Rather more than three decades ago. ABC's David Muir has curiously held the top spot for years, while number two, NBC's Lester Holt, has inherited the late Walter Cronkite's mantle as most trusted.

Norah O'Donnell on CBS is an excellent journalist. But she's pretty and she's a she. Many other first world countries have had female heads of state. Even India and now Mexico.

America's technically first U.S. woman president will succeed her husband who dies in office.

Actually, she'd be third. Mrs. Woodrow Wilson was the first after he spent the end of his term flat on his back from a stroke. The second was Nancy Reagan who was caught on tape whispering responses to reporter questions to her husband in the final year of his second term.

Former Vice-President Walter Mondale had Reagan on the ropes after their first 1984 debate. Reagan crashed as badly as Biden did last Thursday.

In their next confrontation, Mondale didn't go for the throat and allowed Reagan to make a joke and laugh off his burgeoning Alzheimer's Disease. Magazine mogul Malcolm Forbes defended big business' "useful idiot" by blaming Reagan's debate prep team. He accused them of stuffing Reagan's head with facts which caused his on-camera confusion.

Pure fantasyland. A healthy Ronald Reagan possessed an actor's memory for lines. He could not speak well from a script, preferring to memorize almost at first sight. Playing the role he had created for himself, Reagan channeled his idol, Franklin Roosevelt. Many of Reagan's jovial quips were lifted from the scripts of old movies.

Back in his radio days, Reagan had a job recreating the play-by-play of a distant game off a wire service ticker tape. He could not present the re-reading credibly so he trained himself to instantly memorize the information on the ticker, then voice it from memory.

In 1969, I worked with an old cook named Jack Digby at the Las Vegas Tropicana. The morning shift was all old-school "call wheel," meaning no foodserver written tags to work from, just a loud shout. Jack could remember even a hundred orders working at the same time — in order. It was the equivalent of oral history traditions in non-literate societies.

I would forget the orders immediately after serving them up. Jack could recall who and what for days or weeks thereafter.

Fast-forward to 2024 and no less than the man who saved Biden's ass in 2020 recycled Forbes' defense. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S. Carolina, said Biden's problem was his debate prep team that infused him with too many facts. ("Preparation overload")

I knew Biden was toast from the first sentence he uttered. His monotone mumbling reminded me of early computer-generated speech. Too bad he couldn't talk thru A.I. so that his remarks would come out sounding like actor James Earl Jones or somesuch.

The president spoke facts. Czar Donaldov proved once again he wouldn't know a fact from a middle finger. He just invents "alternative facts" on the fly.

In her book, NBC journalist Katy Tur gave two obvious reasons (not including Russian trolls) for the Orange Crusher's 2016 victory: "He entertained and he looked strong."

As expected, last Thursday, despite his infirmities, Biden won on the facts, Trump prevailed on image. TV deals in images and the best image prevails, truth be damned.

As are we. So, we are once again back to Reaganesque worries. Whose finger do you want on the nuclear trigger, the fabled red button?

A president must be ready for anything 24/7. Alas, neither major candidate can assert such prowess. I would rather risk a sane bumbler than a horny alley cat.

The odds are that Biden would know what the red button is for. Trump would say "I like it because it's red, but I really want gold buttons. Can I get a gold button before I have to do anything?"

Biden's go-or-no-go decision may depend on his most trusted advisor, his younger sister Valerie Biden Owens. He told me so himself when I interviewed him long ago. He has touted his sister's political prowess many times over many years.

It's a shameful time when the surrogates and sycophants of both men are tasked with deflecting by changing the subject from what everybody knows.

If I must, I will vote for the red button, not the golden calf.

Last Thursday was a symptom of our chronic national disease. I thus repeat: Where is the next JFK?

As the classic movie title reminds, this is indeed no country for old men.

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

¡Sí se puede

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

Breaking News —> Masks work!

TV T-Rump Raps America
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 6-26-2024
Updated 6-26-2024 GMT /Expansions in blue

Are you ready for a ballot boxing rumble in the bungle?

Among all the hoopla about Thursday's (6-27-2024) presidential debate, I haven't seen any projections of physical violence. Why not? T-Rump is a rapper kind of guy.

In 2016, he ordered thugs to rough up and physically eject hecklers at one of his love fests.

He recently said that immigrants should be condemned to cage fighting for spectator sport.

In a 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton, he left his lectern and walked up behind her, towering above and glaring as she addressed audience members.

When she finally noticed, she ignored him. And thus lost the presidency.

She should have said "Mr. Trump, if you come any closer to me, you'll be singing soprano."

The Orange Crusher looked strong, Hillary did nothing memorable.

That confrontation is most probably why President Biden demanded participant seating while facing each other Thursday.

Nonetheless, I look for Trump made-for-TV wrestling shenanigans. Perhaps a pocket bullhorn so he can once again shout over Biden. Or simply rising and physically challenging Biden.

I hope that the Secret Service has orders to intervene. Vigorously.

Trump's entire career has been based on media hotdogging.

He avoided liquidation of his companies during one of his many bankruptcies when a group of major creditors decided that his name on the front made the holdings worth more than without it.

Of course, he stiffed them for megabucks as a result.

They bit the bullet because the NBC TV Network had saved Trump's precious tush (correxion: tuckus) by not cancelling "The Apprentice."

To this day, untold numbers of voters really believe that the phony reality show was real, all the way down to admiring the obviously decisive and "successful" "businessman" and his posh "office" —- a movie set.

As with so much else in our sucker-heavy society, it's all in the packaging.

STEALING FIRST BASE. "Have you no decency, sir?" Biden had best quickly use lawyer Joseph Welch's legendary rhetorical question of red-baiting Sen. Joe McCarthy, R-Wisc..

I wouldn't be surprised if Trump steals that line. With T-Rump, every accusation is a confession. Psychoanalysts call it projection, ludicrous but effective on Orange Crusher TV.

MELLONHEAD DEPT. T-Rump scored major bucks last week, the biggest of which ($50 million) came from megarich Tim Mellon.

You can blame Mellon's greedy grandfather for much of this country's affliction since King Ronald the Vague.

Andrew W. Mellon, President Herbert Hoover's Treasury Secretary, was one of many who advised Hoover that our sacrosanct 1930s economy needed no intervention, thus allowing the Great Depression to impoverish the nation.

In their "America: What Went Wrong?" trilogy, double-Pulitzer journalists Donald Barlett and James Steele reported that the anti-big-government speeches of Ronald Reagan were essentially updates of the rantings of old Andrew Scrooge.

This cancer always relapses. Upon suggestion from world class economist Dr. David S. Schwartz, I once published how far down the list you would have to go to arrive at half of the Fortune 500's assets.

Back in 1980, Dr. Schwartz informed me it stood around 250. When I did the calculation a quarter-century later, about 80 companies controlled the majority. Today, corporate concentration is even tighter.

In the 500's 1955 first edition, Fortune Magazine reported "approximately half the free world's industrial output is produced by the U.S., and almost exactly half of the U.S. output is produced by about 500 corporations."

The federal government has never had a trustbuster to rival Republican Teddy Roosevelt who made it his business to break up Gilded Age monopolies that invariably spawned recession or worse — like wars.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has said "capitalism without regulation is tyranny."

Reaganaut deregulation has allowed big fish to swallow little fish to a point where corporations can charge whatever they want and bankrupt or take over any who fight them.

Hence, the undercurrent of seething anger from an exploited citizenry that T-Rump has successfully serenaded and rap-danced.

MORE MONOPOLY GAMES. Billionaire Warren Buffet's NVEnergy is channeling its corporate progenitor, Sierra Pacific Powerful, by asking for a huge increase in its basic customer charge.

Last January, they hit Gomorrah South with a 33 percent increase, from $12.50 to $18.50 a month. Now, they are taking their act north, tripling the ripoff from $16.50 to $45.30 per month.

When I worked for Nevada consumers with Dr. Schwartz and his crew of world class experts, they instructed that the catch-all customer charge was notorious for hiding questionable expenses, like a Ferrari for the CEO's "business-only" use.

No wonder advocacy groups are in high dudgeon.

The national average is $11.66. The highest is Mississippi's $37.41. Mississippi West Nevada would top that if this outrage is approved by state regulators.

Fight, dammit.

AWFUL TRUTH DEPT. Even if you go completely off its grid, NVE can still legally bill you for that ripoff customer charge —- just in case your location ever hooks up again.

Money for nothing and the kicks for free.

NEWS BLUES Q: What's the worst thing a team can do on opening day? A: Not show up. The Reno Gazette-Journal's Monday edition never arrived via its new paper boy, the US Postal Service. Surprise, surprise.

Alas and alack, such devolve the vagaries and vicissitudes of attempting to exert First Amendment rights via cheap Second Class Mail.

I still got the New York Times in the morning on my driveway.

HAND OF GOD DEPT. T-Rump supports Louisiana's affront to the US Constitution by ordering illegal posting of the Ten Commandments in all schools and potentially other public places.

So when will the Orange Crusher mandate the same at Mar-a-Loco and his many properties worldwide?

Moses, call your office.

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

¡Sí se puede!

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.)

6-25-2024 BREAKING NEWS UPDATE TO BARBWIRE CONFIDENTIAL SUBSCRIBERS: Jon Ralston's Nevada Independent (thenvindy.com/) just reported an AARP poll which shows Trump over Biden in Nevada by 3 points head-to-head. That's within the usual +/- margin of error, in other words, a tie. More disturbing: "In a full ballot test including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other third-party candidates, Trump's lead over Biden expands to 7 percentage points. The poll also finds Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) leading Republican Sam Brown, holding a 5-percentage-point lead."

Kennedy the Lesser has yet to qualify for the November ballot. He and his minions didn't read the rules and his petition was disqualified.

What a country. UNJOY.
_________________________

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

Breaking News —> Masks work!

Ammotextual orgy of death
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 6-19-2024 / Expansions in blue

"Hell is empty and all the devils are here." — Shakespeare's "The Tempest"

We make our own hell and this monster mannunkind* is doing one helluva job.

"Israel is falling into a trap laid by Hamas in its war in Gaza," conservative Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said last week.

Great minds think alike. I wrote the same thing last year in the Barbwire of Nov. 22, ironically published on the 60th anniversary of JFK's assassination. (Where is another JFK when we need him/her?)

For decades, I have written extensively about war, mannunkind's most self-destructive addiction. You will find a recent compendium with my column "War in Moderation?" (Barbwire 4-13-2022). You may access it from the top of the front page of NevadaLabor.com/

Just look for the photo of the naked girl walking thru a crowded Central Park painted in anti-war slogans. (Courtesy of my New York City contributor, high-rise Ironworkers Union member and occasional "Saturday Night Live" tech Steven Gulitti.)

Which brings me to last week's cockamamie U.S. Supreme Court decision about bump stocks. The cheap accessory for the latest consumer version of Russian Sgt. Kalashnykov's infantry rifle made its American inventor an instant millionaire.

Bumpstocks utilize recoil from squeezing a trigger on a semi-automatic rifle. It thus becomes a full machine gun capable of spraying 400 to 800 bullets per minute. Parsing and perverting plain language, Justice Samuel Alito and his five ammotextual colleagues assert that technically, it's not a "machine gun" (The latter fire 500 to 1,000 rounds per minute with one squeeze.)

LEST WE FORGET

A bumpstocked machine gun was used to kill 60 people and wound more than 400 at the Oct. 1, 2017, Route 91 Harvest Festival, an outdoor country music concert on the Las Vegas Strip. More than 400 other concertgoers were hurt in the ensuing panic to escape the barrage originating from a room at the high-rise Mandalay Bay Hotel. It was the largest domestic mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

"I am so angry at this ruling by the Supreme Court. Living in Las Vegas and knowing people who survived and how this crushes them is terrible." — JUDY TREICHEL, Longtime Las Vegas resident and Barbwire subscriber

The distinction without a difference is apparently all in the fingerings. I agree. The court gave public safety the finger.

A bumpstock-rigged cannon is not a machine gun in the tortured logic of the second biggest disgrace to Italians every to sit on the court. Alito's predecessor, the late Antonino Scalia, pimped the twisted idea of "originalism."

Translation: If it didn't exist when the US Constitution was ratified in 1788, it's illegal now. As I have oft-stated, there go the EPA, the FDA, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, NASA and the U.S. Air Force, to list just a few.

As usual, the ammotextuals advise that if you disagree, get Congress to act.

Might as well try to catch the wind.

The only remedy lies in adding four additional justices not pre-screened by Mitch McConnell and his moonhowlers to serve the overlords of America's endemic white male supremacy.

BUMPSTOCK BUMPER STICKER. A Georgetown University professor has been stripped of his credibility by that dirty fake news outfit commonly called the New York Times.

A guy named William English is apparently guilty of serious abuse of English, kinda like his follow ammotextuals in the Clarence Thomas club.

His as-yet unpublished "research" has been used in a plethora of landmark gun cases. He "expertly" validates the Nutso Rifle Association preachments that everyone over the age of one needs at least one firearm for self-defense.

Dr. English has been stripped naked as long being on the take from the ammotextual lobby. The full story will be linked at the expanded web edition of this column.

ADDICTION, PART DEUX. Shareholders of Caesars Entertainment, aka Reno's Carano family et al., just voted down a proposal to implement a study analyzing potential cost savings from a smoke-free policy.

Why would they do such a thing? Because the bedrock of the gambling business is the addictive gambler. Failure to assuage all addictions of compulsive personalities means substantial financial loss.

I wrote about this decades ago (Barbwire 3-20-1990) when chronicling the failure of the nation's first non-smoking casino, a short-lived experiment at Reno's Ponderosa Hotel.

They had a bar but taking away their smokes turned them off.

A casino principal told me that the player they feared most was the guy who walked in, bet heavily for 20 minutes, cashed in his winnings, and left.

I visited the Ponderosa during that time and the bar and blackjack tables were always quiet. Addicts were elsewhere.

Successful casinos provide nicotine, alcohol and various potential sex opportunities, especially if you are a good enough customer. At minimum, a vice-besotted environment loosens inhibitions and makes questionable compulsions easier to assuage. Exploitation at its best, the American way.

Ban video games for little kids? Regulate Google or Facebook? Why, pretty soon they'll try to force carmakers to install seatbelts! (If you can't see through BigOil's massively expensive propaganda campaign in favor of dirty gas hogs, you either haven't been paying attention or are a truly kind, forgiving and innocent soul.)

DEBATE-ABLE. The June 27 CNN-originated presidential debate will be carried on Reno's KNPB TV-5, the region's Public Broadcasting System affiliate. Other non-subscriber network stations will probably do likewise. CNN put restrictions on use of its program, including no split-screens such as another network's personalities doing running commentary while the 90-minute show is in progress. Before and after, OK. (FOX News must really be pissed.)

[UPDATE: Northern Nevada ABC affiliate KOLO TV-8 will also carry the event.]

President Biden would have been nuts to participate without three-minute microphone kill-buttons. In 2020, Czar Donaldov talked over Biden so many times that he was barely able to say more than good evening and goodnight. Trump looked like exactly the pompous bully he has always been.

VAPING PEEVISHLY VEEPY. I would love to see the Orange Crusher name Kim Kardashian as his running mate. (Barbwire 6-5-2024) He's playing the media like a fiddle, as usual. The highest interest is currently on little-known but wealthy North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. His media presence is not as white wallpapery as Mike Pence. Trump will never allow a number two who can upstage him.

As I've noted, he dumped his wife Ivana partly because she became a media darling running his Atlantic City casinos, and she was good at it.

KID STUFF. The City of Reno has announced implementation of "safety flashers" in school zones. Won't work. Naked guys wearing overcoats and neckties would get heatstroke on hot days and sue for workers' comp.

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

¡Sí se puede!

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.)

*Poet ee cummings wrote "pity his monster mannunkind — not."

_________________________

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

Breaking News —> Masks work!

Devouring their own
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 6-12-2024
Updated 6-13 & 6-19-2024 GMT / Expansions in blue

The Orange Crusher's Nevada klan is ravenous for the blood of their own.

In their latest public relations coups for the Silver State, Republicans increasingly resemble the reviled mascot of their hated rivals: GOP true believers look like true dumbasses.

The fake news New York Times ran a front page above-the-fold embarrassment last Sunday about MAGA Moonhowler Religionauts imposing a Kafkaesque pogrom against one of their own. I fully expect nooses will soon be clandestinely hung at the Esmeralda County courthouse. (It was good enough for Mike Pence, wasn't it?)

If any of them know how to read, they are researching the mechanics of burning a witch at the stake. In almost three full Times pages of sheeple-people insanity, a wide swath of Nevada's 14 Cow Counties come off looking like Mississippi 1861.

The sinner of the moment is Esmeralda County Clerk Cindy Elgan, 65, a Republican who for 20 years has held the post in Nevada's smallest county (registered voters 620). One of the lowest-paid elected officeholders in the state, she has a "Trump 2024 — Take the Country Back" flag flying in front of her house. (Justice and Mrs. Samuel Alito, take note.)

Because of the witch hunting spawn of the felonious Orange Crusher, people Mrs. Elgan has known for decades are calling for her head. They circulated a recall petition against her. As inept as their narcissistic godhead, they failed despite driving hundreds of miles thru the desert to recruit registered Republicans to sign onto their crusade.

T-Rump carried Esmeralda by 82 percent while losing Nevada in 2020. Nonetheless, many folks down Goldfield way believe any and all wacko conspiracy theories. The Times printed an extensive list, some of which even I have never heard about and follytix is my favorite sport.

Mary Jane Zakas, Eglan's principal accuser, a retired teacher and old friend, "came to believe that Covid was a creation of the federal government used to manipulate the public and steal elections," the Times reported.

Ms. Zakas is further sure "that Trump's election in 2024 was pre-ordained by God, that he would return to power with hoards of gold collected from other countries...that Americans would have free electricity, zero income tax, and 'medbeds' powered by a secret technology to heal diseases and extend human life." (Muscular Marjorie Taylor-Greene, call your office.)

The only thing standing in the way is the vaunted "deep state," the Times noted.

It has apparently never occurred to them that if Trump is that powerful and anointed by God, why can't he pull a Harry Potter, wave his magic wand and smite his enemies unto the eternal Fires of Gahenna without a pesky election?

"This is actually insane," remarked deputy Esmeralda clerk Angela Jewell. "This is how democracies end. There must be some way to reason with these people," she added.

Dream on, blithe spirit.

"They're too busy chanting their mantras to stop and listen," Elgan noted.

"The only thing we have to give in return are facts," Douglas County Clerk Amy Burgans told the Times. She added that she believed all the election fraud rumors until she was appointed, then "did a complete 180" after learning the job.

"Our elections are more accurate and secure than ever before in American history. The reality is Trump lost," she added.

Alas and alack, we now live in the post facts, post rule-of-law era where only media image matters. The full Times piece will be linked to the expanded Barbwire web edition at NevadaLabor.com/

[UPDATE: Times reporter finds trust and empathy still exist in Esmeralda and Goldfield.]

GUILTY AS CHARGED! Times commentator Michelle Goldberg recently noted that when Trump is ranting, "every accusation is a confession." AMEN.

TRAVUS T. HIPP GOT IT RIGHT DECADES AGO. "Soft shoe fascism is afoot in the land," the late Tribune multiple hall-of-famer often said. The only thing missing has been the jackboots which are now being polished at conservative DC think tanks.

Can tanks with cannons be far behind?

The game is to keep the lower classes fighting with each other so they won't look up at the corporate overlords who have so very successfully bought all aspects of our democracy to serve their bidding. Result: the gap between the mega-rich top 10 percent and the rest of us now stands at its widest ever.

Never let the facts get in the way of a good tall tale.

TIPOFF. In Gomorrah South last Sunday, Czar Donaldov rustled a crowd of about 6,900 braving heatstroke to worship their godhead. Some were hospitalized.

Both the aforementioned Rep. Taylor-Green and indicted Nevada GOP Chair Michael MacDonald equated the prideful apostate in the red baseball cap with Yeshua of Nazareth.

Pandering under his usual divine streetlight, Trump promised Las Vegans he'd make tips non-taxable.

Culinary Union leader Ted Pappageorge immediately put Trump's latest pie-in-the-sky promise into the bulging bilge file.

"For decades, the Culinary Union has fought for tipped workers' rights and against unfair taxation. Relief is definitely needed for tip earners, but Nevada workers are smart enough to know the difference between real solutions and wild campaign promises from a convicted felon," he stated.

RIGGING THE GAME. Probably after seeing an inside poll and wanting a piece of a win, T-Rump endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Sam Brown after the event. Publicly published polls were showing Brown and Dr. Jeff Gunter in a close race among eight GOP primary contenders.

Democratic incumbent Jacky Rosen used her mentor's playbook and spent big bucks trashing Brown.

She obviously identified Gunter as the weaker opponent.

The late Nevada U.S. Sen. Harry Reid did the same thing by getting madcap Sharron Angle thru the 2010 primary and easily defeating her in November. Reid even secured strong Repuoblican support. Rosen's gamble appeared to have turned the GOP race into a dead heat. [UPDATE: Brown won, Gunter is screaming election fraud. What else is new?]

GOLD HILL NEWS 50th. This Saturday or Sunday, hie thee to the Comstock to celebrate the golden anniversary of the legendary Gold Hill News, founded by another Tribune alum, David Toll. Bank of California building, Main Street, Gold Hill. Info: Robin Cobbey, <goldhillnevada@gmail.com> 775-843-6217. Full details with this Barbwire at NevadaLabor.com.

Vaxx up, stay safe, pray for Ukraine and almost 100 other currently war-torn lands as we once again fail to learn the hard lessons taught on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944 or at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery outside Paris on June 9, 2024.

¡Sí se puede!

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.)

_________________________

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

Breaking News —> Masks work!

President Donald Kardashian
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 6-5-2024 / Updated 6-7-2024 GMT / Expansions in blue

Would you vote for an Oprah-Trump or Trump-Oprah ticket? Oprah Winfrey actually floated such an idea to the Orange Crusher in 2000.

She has since seen the error of her ways.

Nonetheless, she was onto something.

I have been saying for decades that the secret of success in short-attention-span America lies in getting famous by any means necessary.

It does not matter if you are a saint like Mother Theresa of Calcutta or an insane mass murderer like Charles Manson. Get famous, get a book deal, sell the movie rights, get your own TV show.

More than a century ago, legendary Boston Mayor James Michael Curley famously asserted that "I could elect Judas Iscariot. The name is familiar."

Curley served as a state legislator, congressman, governor and four-term mayor.

He also went to jail in 1947 in the middle of his fourth mayoral stint. He did 18 months in federal prison for mail fraud. (Sound familiar?)

Yes, people went to jail for "paper crimes" even back then.

He made a career of running against the elites and upper crust. (Sound familiar?)

Curley was sometimes compared to Louisiana Gov. Huey P. Long.

Both Curley and Long had slightly fictionalized versions of their careers become Hollywood films. (Sound familiar?)

Curley threatened to sue the producers of the Spencer Tracy film "The Last Hurrah." (Sound familiar?)

Long was long dead before the movie version of Robert Penn Warren's bestseller "All the King's Men" hit the silver screen.

It won a bunch of Oscars, including the best actor trophy for Broderick "Highway Patrol" Crawford.

The Orange Crusher has been threatening to file a defamation action about the "The Apprentice," a new flick about hisself and his mentor, Sen. Joe McCarthy's (R-Wisc.) Red Scare lawyer Roy Cohn.

It proved quite popular at Cannes this season. Unlike the earlier two productions, today's lead actors don't play fictionalized characters.

Trump should send flowers. He's the walking embodiment of the old country boy politician motto, "Call me a sumbitch, just spell my name right."

Any publicity is good publicity. Still.

With Ms. Winfrey having seen the error of her youthful indiscretions, I thus predict that the most famous American who is famous just for being famous will become Trump's vice-presidential running mate: Kim Kardashian.

Trump's kinda girl.

I visualize Czar Donaldov secretly fuming that presidential pretender RFK the Lesser has already named a foxy billionaire as his number two.

Which means that should Trump lose this fall, Ms. Kardashian becomes the automatic GOP 2028 frontrunner.

T-Rump, always the master rapper, just tried to polish his self-anointed outlaw image by chilling with accused criminals. He also said he'd be OK with prohibiting contraception, then walked it back, just like he told Fox Noise that he never said "lock her up" about Hillary Clinton.

He also mumbled he would not order the release of sealed records about his party hearty buddy Jeffrey Epstein. ("I like them young, but not as young as he likes them," Trump said before Epstein punched his own ticket outta here.)

UPDATED 6-7-2024: T-Rump's next underwhelming Whopper of a running mate.

NIXON, PART DEUX. Perhaps most chilling is T-Rump's latest vague promise to end wars.

"I get along very well with Putin and I get along with Zelensky, and I would put them in a room and I would get it ended and I have an exact plan as to how but I can't tell you that." (Sound familiar?)

And whatever happened to that other "plan" to repeal Obamacare with something better?

In 1968, Richard Nixon and his future secretary of state, war criminal Henry Kissinger, pimped another "secret plan," aimed at ending the Vietnam War.

Actually, Kissinger clandestinely subverted President Lyndon Johnson's negotiations to end the bloodbath.

Kissinger held a 1972 press conference to announce, in his best Dr. Strangelovian growl, "peace is at hand."

Richard the Rotten thus defeated anti-war WW2 hero George McGovern. The Vietnam debacle lingered until 1975 after Nixon had resigned.

WISEST WORDS OF THE WEEK. Last Saturday, the fake news New York Times ran a stellar piece by triple-Pulitzer winner Thomas Friedman, one of the wisest people out there in these trying times.

I will link it to the expanded web version of this column at NevadaLabor.com/

Friedman started off lamenting mankind's destruction of mangroves, thickets of trees which protect coastlines and nurture life.

"Our society has lost so many of its social, normative and political mangroves —- all those things that used to filter toxic behaviors, buffer political extremism and nurture healthy communities and trusted institutions for young people to grow up in and which hold our society together," Friedman lamented.

His checklist of lost mangroves is chilling: Shame. Civil discourse. Universities "whose first impulse these days is to seek cancellation and not conversation."

It's worth noting here that the smallest Ivy League university, Dartmouth, avoided all the conflagration which has engulfed so many by promptly getting factions talking with each other.

Imagine that.

Friedman's list of mangled mangroves includes religion, membership in which has fallen below 50 percent for the first time in Gallup's eight decades of tracking it.

H.P. Inc. CEO Enrique Lores once told Friedman "Today we have the power to part the Red Sea...but too often without the Ten Commandments."

Amen.

"Small town newspapers used to be a mangrove, buffering the worst of our national politics," Friedman noted. Alas and alack, more than 200 US counties are today "news deserts."

"More than half of all U.S. counties now have limited access to reliable local news and information," he quotes from a Northwestern University study.

Nevada has lost many of its small town papers, widening the gap between the Cow Counties and the metros (Clark, Washoe-Carson).

"Our republic and its press will rise or fall together," legendary newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer famously remarked.

Brace yourself for a very bumpy Fall 2024.

¡Sí se puede!

Vaxx up, stay safe, pray for Ukraine and almost 100 other currently war-torn lands as we once again fail to learn the hard lessons taught on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944.

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.)

_________________________

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

Breaking News —> Masks work!

The shrinkflation of democracy
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 5-29-2024 / Updated 5-30-2024 / Expansions in blue

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

Last week, the Reno Gazette-Journal announced its own funeral.

Democracy will go down with it along with the hundreds of newspapers already lost and those who have caught the RGJ disease.

Why should you care? After all, we can get daily news 24/7 for free someplace, right?

You get what you pay for and corporate America is making you pay dearly every day: At gas pumps, grocery stores, restaurants, your school and your job.

I have been railing against America's creeping monopolies for decades.

They continue to encroach a little at a time.

Kids pumping their own gas or sweating thru voicemail hell instead of talking to a human think it's OK because that's the way it's always been.

Abuse and erosion become embedded.

"Starting Monday, June 24, the U.S. Postal Service will be delivering the Reno Gazette-Journal to optimize resources amidst increasing digital readership demand," Executive Editor Peggy Santoro wrote last week.

"The Reno Gazette-Journal will utilize a (postal service) program called Exceptional Dispatch, which allows time-sensitive periodicals including newspapers to be locally distributed. RGJ print editions will enter the mail locally, in Reno, and not be affected by the USPS's recent announcement that it will move Reno's mail-processing operations to Sacramento," she stated.

That, dear readers, is one serious sin of omission.

"Exceptional Dispatch" (AKA Second Class Mail) is mostly for mail that has three days to two weeks for delivery, like magazines.

Mrs. Santoro continued "The Sunday edition will be delivered on Saturday...This change will make a big impact on the consistency of delivery, which is great news for our print readers...Readers can also visit RGJ.com...Subscribers with questions or concerns can visit help.sitename.com/contact-us," she concluded.

OOPS DEPT. The above help-site name does not exist, even with prefixes added such as https:// and https://www/

RGJ.com subscriber info lays likewise devoid.

I don't blame Peggy. She's a great journalist and the senior employee at the Incredible Shrinking RGJ, having put in more than 30 years at hard labor.

She's seen it go from force to flat-line and is now the designated ICU nurse on death watch.

I've been in some form of the newspaper business since I was about 10 years old, a kid hawking the "greenstreak" afternoon final edition of the Fresno Bee on the streets of old downtown.

For all its flaws, the Reno Gazette-Journal remains the central news dissemination source for all of eastern California and northwestern and north central Nevada.

Making the system so user-unfriendly that the company can justify its elimination is an old corporate trick going back almost a century.

Make no mistake, it's coming. At minimum, this "upgrade" will make worse the forcible fracturing of citizen consensus and community cohesion into splintering silos of suspicion.

We've seen this show many times before.

Railroads made passenger service so bad that they could kill it due to "lack of interest." (TRANSLATION: Not enough profit.)

They kept passenger revenue by starting Greyhound, which is why bus terminals popped up next to railroad terminals all across the country, including Sparks-Reno.

After World War 2, Detroit auto barons took over cheap and efficient southern California mass transit, then made service so bad that citizens had to buy cars.

Gridlocked freeways were built along former rail rights-of-way.

Mrs. Santoro states "The Sunday edition will be delivered on Saturday, giving readers a head start on weekend features..."

Today, the Sunday RGJ goes to bed at 4:00 p.m. Thursday.

There are NO newspapers now printed in northwestern Nevada. From Fallon to Carson/Douglas/Tahoe to the RGJ, ALL are produced in California save for the Sparks Tribune which is printed in southern Nevada.

Killing home delivery might make collateral damage of the San Francisco Chronicle, Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

When the RGJ eliminated Saturdays, it killed Saturday delivery for all, scrambling all Saturday, Sunday and Monday deliveries.

In my experience, the "Sunday" paper would now have to close Wednesday (or earlier) to be on California presses Thursday, get trucked to Reno's Vassar Street post office by Friday to hit Washoe households on Saturday — in a perfect world. (Everybody knows that presses, computer systems and vehicles never break down and Donner Pass will never be closed again as a personal favor to Postmaster Louis the Clueless Dejoyless and his favorite president.)

As the Washoe County Registrar of Voters Cari-Ann Burgess told the RGJ after Dejoyless announced the January 2025 move of most mail processing to W. Sacramento, first-class mail, which is supposed to get anywhere in Washoe in two days, currently sometimes takes as long as seven.

Mme. Registrar added that if the change goes ahead, it means the end of mail-in voting.

Thus, the shrinkflation of democracy.

Triple hall-of-fame journalist and Tribune alum Dennis Myers once noted that voter registration is the best system yet devised to keep citizens from voting.

Add that to all the other hassles, mix in a little corporate propaganda as news, and you end up with government by monied corporations, the very definition of fascism.

I write this feeling two emotions, sorrow and anger.

The republic is in bad enough shape without placement of further inhibitors to inform the body politic and let them vote.

Did I mention that the ad accompanying Mrs. Santoro's corporate statement last Sunday ignored whether or not the paper would continue Monday and Tuesday publication?

The icing on this crummy cake is that subscriber prices, in print and online, will more than double.

The shrinkflation of news and thus democracy.

Stay tuned if you can.

It ain't over 'til it's over.

¡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 the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

Cheesily pickled politics
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 5-22-2024 / Updated 5-23-2024