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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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

The apogee of the apocalypse
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 8-2-2023 / Expansions in blue.

   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.
— Leonard Cohen, 1934-2016

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 Support Don Dondero and Jake Highton and David Toll and Foster Church and Norman Cardoza next. Send endorsements Eee-yo-leven! Barbwire wins 11th 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/9-29-2018 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 More statewide and national award winners We Don't Need No Education—> Neverending Barbwire Series 1997 Pulitzer Prize entries Barbwire.TV: 15-year overnight success Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008 The Barbwire's Greatest Hits BEATING LUSH RAMBO AT HIS OWN GAME: Highlights from radio days mp3 file 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 Tomorrow's news today —> Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential TOP SECRET— HushHush!

This here news junkie has become so sick of the 24/7 Donald Xi Putin Show that I've cut back viewing. Cartoon violence on standard TV shoot-em-ups is often quite preferable to reality.

Perhaps there's an upside to this over-saturation of servitude to power-besotted psychos.

The signs in the heavens (cough, hack!) are pretty clear that Mother Nature is sending her spoiled brats a serious warning thru the muck and mire: Get fixed or get gone.

Barbwire-ites know of my simple solvent for the Herculean task of clearing the Augean stables of current humanity: Women. In command. Period.

Long before writing became popular, there were countless predictions of Armageddon. One of my erstwhile talk radio listeners even gave me a copy of "A History of the End of the World." This came as the world trembled that Saddam Hussein could use (non-existent) nukes against Bush the Elder's invasion to protect the Lone Star royal family's Persian Gulf drilling rights.

Same fears abide today, only worse, as many nations actually possess the nuclear button.

So maybe we stand at the apotheosis, the apogee, the highest point, the culmination of...what, exactly?

Exactly. We either climb to new heights of enlightenment, or crash down, smothered under various clouds of the mushroom, fire or ozone varieties. Pick your poison.

Meanwhile, moonhowlers meander over the nit-pickety small. Should Washoe County school children be exposed to the words "penis" and "vulva"? Doesn't much matter to little kids without enough to eat or roofs over their heads.

This tiny blue picayune pixel of a planet, in the tick of time occupied by our species' sentience, doesn't matter all that much.

Yet.

Today, we have arrived at a point prepared to soar into a sparkling age in which there is no war, no want, no wantonness.

Where science and art synergize into a symphony of wonder and achievement.

Welcome to Wonderland, Alice.

We have matured to a point where we actually control our collective futures, forward or backward, to the garden or to the graveyard.

"The world is in an uproar. The danger zone is everywhere." So warned Ray Charles in 1962, a bluesy predictive parable for the parabola of our arc on this watery ark.

Artists and philosophers have been trying to show us the way for millennia.

Are we finally ready to grow up? For every Jacinda Ardern there be a plethora of guys with guns.

The former New Zealand prime minister gave birth while successfully protecting her country from the COVID plague while puerile pubescent boys were playing target practice around the globe.

I may be a born critic, but I am eternally a guarded optimist with abiding faith in humanity's resilience.

Look at our newly immortal media magicians. Tony Bennett overcame many pronouncements of the demise of his career to become an international and American icon.

Paul Reubens (aka Pee Wee Herman) rose above ridicule and vilification, as did Sinead O'Connor.

All three recently departed awesome artists demonstrated how history will judge you kindly if you practice kindness to others, no matter the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

They were all living examples of the old Texas football axiom: Dance with who brung ya to the ball.

Translation: Stick to what you're best at, then fortune will smile upon you.

Which is why we live within what may well prove our finest or fatal hour: We have the ability to rise with our wonders or fail with our faults.

The ultimate in pro-choice.

¡Sí se puede!

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for those cruelly afflicted by the cruelly small minds on this small planet, especially victims of our perpetual wars.

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 54-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 1988.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

Southern pols are so cute when they whine. William Shakespeare foreshadowed the breed when he termed infants as "mewling and puking" in their nurses' arms.

Too bad today's mewls are also puking on us.

Texas MisGovernor Greg Abbott, acting as though the Lone Star Republic is an independent nation, just groused that his state has sovereign authority over the Rio Grande, aka the U.S. border.

Huh?

The mid-Rio constitutes the international divider between countries and is thus under federal control. Didn't stop the little fascist from putting up razor-wired buoys down the center line.

This from the same misdirecting mewler who blamed green energy for his rickety power grid's winter failure, killing hundreds of his constituents. Actually, it was Abbott's junky fossil fuel system. The U.S. has three major power grids — east, west and Texas. AbbottLand allows no interties with the rest of the country. In a power crisis, it truly becomes a bloody lone star.

Just because he's a Republican, Tejanos re-elected this little dictator. Speaking of dictators...

FLORIDA IS AS FLORIDIANS DIE. The main front page headline of last Sunday's fake news New York Times froze the chilly cockles of this here old man's heart: "DeSantis' Flip on Vaccine Had Steep Cost for Florida: As his position began to shift, so did his state's death rate — For the Worse."

DeSatanist's principal qualification for the presidency, in his own words, lies in boasting that he stood up to COVID-19 health "bureaucrats" and that "Florida got it right," re-opening just about everything and infecting just about everybody.

Seeing anti-vaxxing conspiracy theories grow popular with moonhowlers, he reversed his position and stopped advising Floridians to get jabbed — even health care workers and cruise ship travelers.

Dead zone in the Sun Belt.

THE HOUND OF THE TUBERVILLES. Given the above prestigious chief executioners...er, executives, I can almost excuse dumbass U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama. Last week, I noted that the former Auburn University football coach, who could not even name the three branches of government, was stopping almost 300 top armed forces officer promotions.

The senate is disgustingly undemocratic. A single yayhoo like flag-waving Tubey Tommy can monkey-wrench the system.

At a time when China, Russia and a host of smaller bad guys are gunning for us, he wants to prevent the military from funding travel for women who need feminine health care services while posted in anti-abortion jurisdictions.

He is so pissily mewling and puking his newfound power that he has even demanded that Democrats write his bill banning the expenditures.

In all matters military, I always ask this question first: When do we stop making more veterans? I write this as my only sibling lies in a V.A. hospital recovering from major surgery.

The only remedy for this world of woes lies with women coming to power. Guys are just too self-absorbed to be allowed to continue to rule with impunity.

That said, the U.S. remains just about the only major global policeman.

A military career is a dangerous job. I applaud the courage of women who volunteer. According to the Pentagon, 8.4 percent of female and 1.5 percent of male soldiers admitted they were sexually assaulted in 2021.

However, the New York Times Magazine reported that for women, it's actually 25 percent.

"Women remain a distinct minority, making up only 16.5 percent (one in eight) of the armed services, yet nearly one in four servicewomen reports experiencing sexual assault in the military, and more than half report experiencing harassment, according to a meta-analysis of 69 studies published in 2018 in the journal Trauma, Violence & Abuse," the Times noted. (Oct. 11, 2021)

Nothing new. A friend of mine, a sniper in Vietnam, said women were treated as "little more than camp followers" when he served.

As to Tommy Tushdown, I wonder as to his position for military women who have become pregnant as a result of rape. Doesn't a lax organization bear some responsibility?

"Just have the baby" is not an answer, especially when some critical, life-saving medical procedures involve abortion.

I don't pretend to have solutions for everything although I have proposed one remedy for abortion: sex control.

The government should criminalize all sex save by appointment in supervised facilities. Extreme? That's where we're headed in Tommy's moonhowler Handmaid's Tale.

Every day that passes, we step closer to WW3 in Europe. Would you want your sister or daughter to join the 1.62 million women of reproductive age (15-45) under the military's purview?

CEO-types make awful politicians. Idolized football coaches present a worst case of that "my way or the highway" mentality.

Coach Tushdown Tommy's boneheaded playbook truly is a matter of national security.

FRY AND DIE. Gov. Giuseppe Lumbago's vetoes of eviction protections for Nevadans is throwing people out on the streets as predicted. See NevadaCurrent.com for horror stories. [Michael Lyle's Nevada Current item also appeared in the Sunday 7-23-2023 Reno Gazette-Journal.]

Joe the No also zapped legislation to protect outdoor workers from increasingly hot summers. The Las Vegas Sun won Nevada's second Pulitzer Prize more than a decade ago, reporting on unsafe conditions during construction of Strip hotels.

The newbie guv lived in Gomorrah South back then. Guess working stiffs don't count in his book, not even his former police colleagues.

HOT AUGUST STRIKES. Current strikes by the Writers Guild, Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and at Bigbux Overpriced Coffee may be only the beginning. More nationwide work stoppages are imminent at United Parcel Service (UPS) [Teamsters]; Yellow Corp. (YRC Freight and Holland, formerly known as Yellow Freight) [Teamsters]; and General Motors, Ford and/or Stellantis (Chrysler-Dodge-Fiat-Peugeot) [United Autoworkers]. Tune up your picket sign and stay tuned. Viva Huelga!

¡Sí se puede!

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for those cruelly afflicted by the cruelly small minds on this small planet, especially victims of our perpetual wars.

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 54-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 1988.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

Miss Priscilla Goodbody channels Princess Cassandra
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 7-19-2023 / Expansions in blue.

The seer of Troy warned against letting that towering wooden horse through the city's gates. Alas, no one listened to Princess Cassandra.

America today stands at the precipice of becoming an electoral autocracy, a dictatorship masquerading as a democracy.

Modern Cassandras have warned and warned again. The evidence abounds from local Nevada governments all the way up to the lifestyles of the rich and infamous.

Miss Priscilla Goodbody is alive and well right here in River City. Tonight Show legend Johnny Carson hung that handle on TV network censors. (Barbwire 7-12-2023) Mr. Carson is dead but Priscilla and her minions live forever.

Last week, local moonhowlers persuaded three Republican Washoe County commissioners not to re-appoint a longtime library board member, falsely accusing the panel of promulgating pornography to children. The pitchforkers were so benighted that they did not know that board members don't order books.

Same thing happened a few years back when the now-former Douglas County library director came under fire for daring to mention Black Lives Matter. Priscilla's partisans in Nevada's wealthy Confederate Alabaster Bastion almost caused a riot, supported by the county sheriff hisself. (Links with this column at NevadaLabor.com/)

Like Afghanistan's Taliban, American moonhowlers wax wealthy among the dumb and dumber. Who needs schools or libraries when you can easily invent your own alternative facts?

Decades ago, my old ad agency boss, a car salesman by trade, advised "TV spots won't work if you're not telling people what they want to hear."

Selling cars or candidates, it all works the same. A legendary auto salesman once gave me the secret of sales success: "Get 'em in here, mislead 'em, and get 'em outta here."

Instance in point...

DOWN THE TUBES. Newbie Sen. Tommy Tuberville is a Republican and football coach. Those are apparently the only qualifications necessary to get elected to the U.S. Senate from Alabama. Tommy Touchdown is the perfect pol for the Trump era.

This guy couldn't name the three branches of government but he won a lotta games at Auburn, so he oughtta be a senator, right?

Coaches exploit opponent weaknesses to win. Tuberville has used the cockamamie single-senator veto rule to cripple the U.S. military by blocking almost 300 top-level promotions.

He may be undermining national security, but he foreshadows a Trump second term. In the last few days, both the fake news New York Times and that fortress of liberalism, The Economist magazine, have published major pieces about the growing Trump shadow government.

The Economist reported on the Texas-based America First Policy Institute. The Times printed more than a full page about Trump's Project 25, seeded by the seedy Heritage Foundation.

Both are developing policies, lists of loyalists and transition plans so that Czar Donaldov can bulldoze democracy from his golf cart come 2025. Grand design: transfer most government power to the president. Congress and the courts may as well not show up for work.

Trump would eliminate civil service rules so everybody owes his or her job to the bleached blonde boss who can axe them at whim. Shades of Khaddafi's Libya. Think of "The Apprentice" TV show on a national scale with wholesale firings nationally and worldwide. Who needs the EPA anyway?

Trump's idol, Czar Vladimir Putin, provides an abject lesson about what happens to dictators who surround themselves with yes-men and ass-kissers.

Russia, China, Hungary, Belarus, India, Turkey and others have elections that don't matter.

The specter of electoral autocracy has already risen over the American horizon.

NO LABELS, NO SHAME. "No Labels" is a clever right-wing front cloaked in the dark money aura of bringing Americans together with a third-party choice for president next year.

Translation: Do unto President Biden what Ross Perot did to Bush the Elder and as Ralph Nader did to Al Gore. (And for that matter, what Teddy Roosevelt did to his protege William Howard Taft which resulted in the election of overt racist Woodrow Wilson — who also opposed women getting the right to vote).

President Bush the Lesser's personal hatchetman (and former Sparks schoolboy) Karl Rove was as ruthless as he was soul-less: Go right at the opponent's main strength and destroy him. John Kerry was a war hero, so smear his military record as false and his medals as undeserved. It worked.

Us old campaign managers recognize a shuck and jive when we see it. Wanna torpedo Biden? Pull a Rove rave by undercutting him with his strongest base of support, African Americans. Joining one of Fox News boss Rupert Murdoch's kids at "No Labels" is no less that Ben Chavis, former national president of the NAACP. With Chavis as wingman for that kamikaze squadron, Biden can crash and burn.

The poster boys leading this week's national rollout were Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, former Republican Utah Governor and Ambassador to China John Huntsman, a onetime Republican candidate for president; and ex-senator and ex-Democrat Joe Lieberman of Travelers Insurance — oops, I mean Connecticut.

Karl Rove destroyed John McCain's presidential ambitions by smearing McCain in the South Carolina primary by distributing flyers on church parking lots which accused McCain of having (gasp!) a black baby. Rove's buddy Bush the Lesser went on to "win" the presidency. (Believe it or else, Coach Tuber Tommy actually said that Al Gore was the president-elect in 2000.)

In 2020, Biden was going down the tubervilles to Bernie Sanders until powerful S. Carolina Rep. James Clyburn saved him by rallying Palmetto State African Americans to his side.

Were I advising today's billionaire GOP puppeteers, I would tell them to do exactly what was announced this week: Break Biden by cracking his Black base and Trump wins again.

This is a cancer on the body politic, so let's call it like it is: COVID '24, against which true democracy is the only vaccine.

The game's afoot. Priscilla and Cassandra have prognosticated: Play or perish.

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for those cruelly afflicted by the cruelly small minds on this small planet, especially victims of our perpetual wars.

¡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 54-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 1988.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

Nevada usually tops the bad lists and craters on the good ones.That frequent criticism is not only true, but also understated.

When we're really embarrassed, we just invent a list.

You've probably heard politicians or economic development boosters smugly assert that "Las Vegas has more churches per capita," a frequent trope whenever anyone questions our morality.

I once tried to find out "more churches per capita than where?" No one could complete the non-comparison. It was just bogus PR spin from tourism promotional types trying to paint Gomorrah South as a family attraction.

I guess the point is we're better than nothing.

We just cannot avoid trying to portray ourselves and something we ain't.

Last week, I saw a news report about the mass exodus of Californians heading to Texas, Florida, Idaho and "no-tax Nevada."

Huh?

Fun spin but a full-blown lie. Nevada may not officially have a state income tax but we make up for it with hidden levies, often called "fees," and high sales taxes which brutalize those of lower income.

Such grinding policies spawn paucity and poverty, leaving schools, health care, parks, roads, first responders and so many other community needs to go begging.

We cannot be far from disc jockeys again sponsoring "fill your favorite pot hole" contests.

I got my first Nevada drivers license in 1969 in a 12-wide mobile home out in a barren Las Vegas field. All I had to do was turn in my fancy full-color laminated California i.d. for a hand-typed piece of heavy paper. No test, no nothing. I dared ask why.

"We've grown so fast that we haven't enacted laws that have been on the books in other states for decades," responded a wise but harried DMV lady.

At a 1981 legislative hearing, the immortal Sen. Ken Redelsperger, R-Pahrump, accidentally uttered unchallengeable wisdom for the ages: "We don't want to be the first to do something."

Not to worry.

For longer than I can remember, I have advised that if you have substantial income, especially without children, you will do real good in these parts. If you don't fit that description and belong to the lower 80 percent, especially with kids, go somewhere else.

Which brings me to the unchallengeable wisdom of a now world-famous everyman named Adam Steelmon who has paid for a Nevada vanity auto license plate for two decades. It reads "GOBK2CA" (Go back to California).

He should get a medal for truth in advertising as his story has gone viral, another public relations coup for the Silver State.

Alas and alack, this poor lout has seen his license plate revoked by DMV censors working for Miss Priscilla Goodbody (see below). Mr. Steelmon has appealed his case.

He told media types that he has only received one negative comment in all those years. Law enforcement officers from Nevada to Texas have pulled him over to say they like his plate.

Unfortunately, as a carpenter from Galilee once opined, a prophet is without honor in his own country.

Legendary Tonight Show host Johnny Carson termed network censors as "Miss Priscilla Goodbody," a proper puritan appellation if ever there was one. She has apparently expanded her enterprise to upgrade Nevada's moral climate.

Carson liked to ridicule the fact that people in commercials could hold up a beer but could not be shown drinking it on camera. Although that's now permissible in this increasingly libertine age, beer advertisers still stick to the old Television Code prohibition.

I remember one spot wherein NBA hall-of-famer Bill Russell held up a brew followed by a thunderous lightning strike. The camera then returned to a smiling Russell holding a less-than full glass. He would still go thirsty today.

So Mr. Steelmon must defend his creativity before our righteous protectors of the public welfare.

At least he's been paying good money to the state for the privilege, which is more than I can say for Nevada's ever-expanding list of corporate welfare queens who are lightly taxed when taxed at all.

So you be the judge. Is "GOBK2CA" any more lewd and lascivious than BUTY, BANGLA, DOBY, DRTBAGG, 69DROP, DOUCME, KRACKO or RNECK, all of which Ms. Goodbody OK'd?

She approved BUCK UP despite objections. The Reno Rodeo Assn. might agree, given their recent "Buckin' Good Time" ad campaign. How RNECK.

Somebody even complained about AFM, probably an application from a member of the American Federation of Musicians union. At least that one survived.

ADVICE TO FUTURE APPLICANTS: Avoid the letter "F" no matter what. Ditto anything remotely drug-related, including marijuana, legal or not.

However, KGRAM somehow got thru the dirty minded and drug-phobic process.

Must have caught Ms. Goodbody in a rare good mood. Perhaps she's lightening up in her old age. Or perhaps lighting up?

GET USED TO IT. License plate abbreviations have become epidemic in the cyberworld of LOL, BFF and OMG. So what does it matter that legions of school kids from LA to New York City can't read?

I can't communicate on a glorified postage stamp-sized TV screen. I'm still hung up on an archaic form called complete sentences. People who think like me are dinosaurs.

Given the evidence on the record, we are going back to the future. Text and license plate abbreviations are already obsolete as we increasingly use the latter day equivalent of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Only today, we call them emojis.

Who needs words when you can just look at the pictures?

All I can add is WTF!

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for those cruelly afflicted by the cruelly small minds on this small planet.

¡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 54-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 1988.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

It all started with Hollywood superstar Paul Newman. Although I did a little work for his Budweiser Lightning CanAm racing team back in my motorsports days, my most recent encounter occurred much closer to home.

My refrigerator, actually.

I keep a couple of pizzas in the freezer to consult whenever temptation visits. I always buy Newman's Own.

Even though they cost more, all profits go to charity. The late Mr. Newman's foundation long ago eclipsed $100 million to non-profit organizations.

Even though he died in 2008 ("Paul Newman: Driven Star" Barbwire 9-28-2008), his image still sells very well.

I once had a major New York ad agency fly their chief counsel to Reno to negotiate a Newman racing sponsorship for one of their big time clients. They offered a laughable amount.

"Paul's getting $3 million a picture," his racing partner chuckled when I told him about it.

The most successful movie star since WW2 was not only a good race driver, he was also pretty stylish in the kitchen. His salad dressings were so popular that he started making batches in his Connecticut garage to give to friends.

Pretty soon, they were in grocery stores, then started what is known in the trade as brand extensions. Hence my pizzas and other products.

And so it came to pass late one night last week that I needed a pizza, a desire soon assuaged by firing up a Newman's Own Stone Fired Quattro Formaggi (four cheese) beauty.

And then the humour descended upon me: I needed a beer to go with it. There, in the back of my fridge, was a lonely Bud Light, perfect for the occasion.

Alas and alack, moonhowlers have toppled Bud Light from its well-deserved number one ranking after more than two decades. Thanks to their unpatriotic efforts, a foreign import now rules.

About three months ago, a transgender podcaster named Dylan Mulvaney posted a Bud Light promotional video. Trolls pounced.

Anheuser-Busch had even given Mulvaney a can of Bud Light with her picture on it. String her up!

I have not read any of their viral infections and do not intend to do so.

The results of the insults speak for themselves. Apparently there were a lot of manhood-challenged Bud Light drinkers who possessed loyalty worthy of a pre-teen Donald Trump. (I pity their wives.)

Two Bud marketing execs who had OK'd the Mulvaney influencer video are now on "administrative leave," the term normally applied to cops who shot somebody.

Brand loyalty and sports team affinity is as fickle as teenage crushes.

Wanting to belong remains an innate human tribal desire. Why else would anyone put hyper-expensive Las Vegas Raiders tickets on a high interest credit card to watch guys beat on each other when they need binoculars to see which of the little ants down on the field is which?

But hey, you've bought your way into the tribe which gathers on the parking lot, all wearing expensive Raiders paraphernalia to partake of the body and blood of their gods (hot dogs and beer) before venturing several miles into the holy of holies.

If the Bud bosses had been paying me, I would have risked my job advising them to rise above the bigotry.

Look how Nike hugely benefited as the only corporate sponsor to stand with former UNR/49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick when he protested America's endemic racism.

Oh, I forgot, we no longer have a racism problem. Gov. Ron DeSatanist told me so. And that pillar of civic virtue, Clarence Thomas, even coined the term "racialism" because racism no longer exists.

Wiseman George Carlin once advised to beware when they start adding syllables.

Shell shock became combat fatigue, he groused. Over the decades, it morphed into traumatic stress syndrome and is now post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Shell shock" perfectly described the damage done to soldiers who've undergone such suffering, Carlin said. Now, we have bloodless "PTSD."

George Carlin lost his lucrative Gomorrah South gigs when he stopped doing the Hippy Dippy Weatherman and held up a mirror to America. He prospered, as did Nike.

Bud's bosses, not so much.

Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth turned into a waffle maker on "CBS Mornings."

"There's a big social conversation taking place right now and big brands are right in the middle of it...not just our industry or Bud Light," he mumbled, adding "What we need to understand is, deeply understand and appreciate, is the consumer and what they want, what they care about and what they expect from big brands."

How about balls? Macho woman bashers understand brass balls. They don't appreciate soggy soothing suits.

All this reminds me of Schlitz. Ever heard of them? Back in the mid-1970s, Schlitz was the world's largest brewery.

I had several beers with one of their execs in Honolulu in 1974. He was there in advance of their national convention. I tried to use the connection to get a future gathering in northern Nevada but soon confronted the awful truth: We didn't have enough hotel rooms to handle the action.

Not long thereafter, the owning family's corporate CEO, Henry Uihlein, died of cancer. The rudderless company went sideways.

Somebody tinkered with the ingredients of the flagship brand.

One batch was so modified that when poured, it wouldn't create a "head" of foam, which is useless. The 1970s equivalent of trolls went to work. Competitors planted the word that Schlitz was selling (gasp) "green beer." Zounds.

Beer does not need aging or foam, but brewers add ingredients just like detergent marketers. Housewives were used to soap creating bubbles. Detergents, which were much more efficient, didn't do so. But bubbles told housewives that the detergent was working. So they add bubble chemicals to this very day, as do brewers.

It's all a marketing mirage like the beer-broads-bras-macho mystique. I know a Sparks businessman who used to smoke. One day, he was out of Camels. A woman offered him a Virginia Slim, a brand targeted to addict women with flowers on the tall thin packaging.

My Sparks friend recoiled, refusing to put a "Vagina Slime" into his mouth. That's marketing and salesmanship, baby.

Cigarettes and beer are both drug delivery systems. The only real differences are illusions created by the advertising department. Kinda like with politicians.

For me, I will remain a good Christian and enjoy my vices in moderation. An occasional Paul Newman pizza with one Bud Light.

I'm an old marketing and advertising dinosaur, immunized against spin.

Have a Bud Light.

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for those cruelly afflicted by the cruelly small minds on this small planet.

¡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 54-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 1988.

 

Breaking News —> Masks work!

If you strike a king
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Invasion of the Chicken Pluckers
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	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.

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Back to the story of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist holocaust

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Copyright © 1982-2023 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 54-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 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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