BARBWIRE
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ANDREW BARBANO
Pirate Laureate of the High Desert Outback of the American Dream


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

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"Media is the plural of mediocre."
— Jimmy Breslin (1928-2017)

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   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.


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


Putin & the Blowfish: High treason season of the witch
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 7-18-2018 Sparks Tribune / Updated 7-22-2018 / Expansions in blue


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The program premiers were available to every television set in the region because of a high-mileage media hybrid.

The shows appeared on both commercial and community stations. The non-corporate entity produced the events, commercial TV greatly expanded distribution.

Thus began an ongoing series of sane public interest programs which generate both entertaining heat and more than a little light.

Please spread the word and consider contributing to the cause online at ReSurge.TV.

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Your contribution will help fund the distribution as well as ongoing efforts at developing new media, including a regional, non-corporate community radio station and the return of community television to Reno-Sparks-Washoe.

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Thanks.

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew


Click here for selected on-demand re-runs from the Barbwire.TV archives

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Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.

America voted for radical (technically, reactionary) change. We got it. Generalissimo Donaldov's fawning performance in Helsinki last Monday brought shouts of high treason from high places, except from top Democrats.

At least Sen. Schumer and Shadow Speaker Pelosi joined a statement with House Speaker Paul Ryan (even Hermit the Frog hedgingly, grudgingly, curmudgeonly and croakingly kinda concurring.)

The four top congressional leaders disagreed with Czar Trumpsky and continued to back US intelligence agencies which unanimously concluded that Bad Vlad and the Vampires did play a date in the US in 2016 and are booking encores.

New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow wrote "Trump is a traitor and may well be treasonous." Wimp.

Triple-Pulitzer winner Thomas Friedman stated "There is overwhelming evidence that our president, for the first time in our history, is deliberately or through gross negligence or because of his own twisted personality engaged in treasonous behavior — behavior that violates his oath of office to 'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States'...

"Listening to Trump, it was as if Franklin Roosevelt had announced after Pearl Harbor: 'Hey, both sides are to blame. Our battleships in Hawaii were a little provocative to Japan — and, by the way, I had nothing to do with the causes for their attack. So cool it.' " Friedman continued.

Former C.I.A. Director John Brennan tweeted "Donald Trump’s news conference performance in Helsinki rises to and exceeds the threshold of 'high crimes & misdemeanors.' It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???"

Were I still beating Lush Rambo on the radio, I'd now cue Martha & the Vandellas doing "Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide."

But I've got a better idea. For most of the 20th Century, Republicans overtly and covertly accused Democrats of treason for advocating such subversive socialist/communist programs as Social Security, Medicare, welfare, food stamps, universal health care, free public education, voting rights, civil rights, women's rights, economic fairness and anti-discrimination.

The vitriol was just mindless political rhetoric, but it intimidated cowardly Donkeyites for the better part of a century.

Cue Bob Dylan with a song for Republicans, Reaganauts, Religionauts and Corporate Welfare Queens: "How does it feel to be on your own? Like a complete unknown? With no direction home? Like a Rolling Stone."

How does it feel, indeed.

ABORTION TOURISM. With his nomination of another moonhowling Kool-Aid quaffer to the US Supreme Court, the only president we've got deserves credit for opening up a whole new market niche for Nevada.

Low cost abortion tours with rooms, airfare, medical consulting, free shows, Raider tickets and a big buffet all included in one low price. What's not to like?

LAZY JUDGE SYNDROME. That disgrace to my heritage, the late Justice Antonino Scalia, invented a legal subterfuge that guaranteed that he and those who followed wouldn't have to do a lick of work on the bench. Noah Webster would do everything for them.

All that future Antonistas would ever have to do is use a garden-variety dictionary to make complex legal decisions. Today's conservative screwoffs might find a few quirks, like the fact that "steward" and "stewart" were actually nice ways of saying pig-sty warden. They might be forced into occasional taboo improv, e.g., a trombone was called a "sagbutt" back when James Madison and John Jay walked the land. Don't want to offend the weight-loss industry.

Besides, we've got an early tee time.

Last year, I accurately predicted that now-Justice Gorsuch would become Poison Annie's Revenge. (Barbwire 2-7-2017) His mom, Ann Gorsuch Burford resigned under fire as EPA boss after an associate's conviction, but not before carving the toxic template for the now-defrocked Scott Pruitt.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN DEPT. Signs have popped up on southwest McCarran trying to drum up developer interest in the 1,019-acre Ballardini Ranch, the last pristine expanse of open space in the Truckee Meadows. You may access the entire sordid 2006 saga of Love's Labours Lost at ProtectOurWashoe.org. Not to worry. The Great Recession killed the first attempt to bulldoze the bears and bunnies. Great Depression2 will provide instant replay. Washoe County already paid $15 million plus attorney fees for the land without obtaining title, and karma will dictate that justice be done. Sometimes, depression cures depredation...Following up an item I printed last year, I just got a tip that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has finally agreed to investigate Douglas County government for ignoring racist intimidation...We now have a "classic hip-hop" (fka rap) music station at 95.5-fm. Mississippi West is maturing, albeit decades tardy, as usual. Rap eclipsed rock for pop domination a couple of years ago...Barbwire spies report that one of the last bastions of old white guy power is crumbling as Downtown Reno Rotary hemorrhages members...Courageous Marilyn Jones has retired as Duncan-Traner librarian. She had the guts to openly defy huckster ex-Washoe School boss Heath Morrison's stifling of dissent about his abortive attempt to cut already-skeletal library budgets. The community will miss her. So will her students. So will I.


Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
_______
Andrew Barbano is a 49-year Nevadan, executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration, first vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP, labor/consumer/civil rights advocate, member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO and editor of NevadaLabor.com and BallotBoxing.US and SenJoeNeal.org and DoctorLawyerWatch.com/ As always, his opinions are strictly his own. Check local listings for other Nevada cable systems. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988 and received its 8th Nevada Press Association award and 5th first-place at the 30 Sept. 2017 NPA annual convention in Carson City. (That trophy and about six bucks will get you a Latte Mocha Cotsafracas Chingade at just about any Starbux worldwide, guaranteed.)

WEB XTRAS & SMOKING GUNS —> Sore-oppressed Soul-Sister Cities:
Menlo Park and Reno-Sparks-Fernley share similarly sad high-tech stretch marks

"All humanity has left the area": paying for Tesla's Gigafactory
Barbano and Nevada conservatives decry corporate welfare depredations

By Rory Carroll / The Guardian 7-3-2018

Editor's Note: The Guardian publishes 180,000 newspapers daily in London and environs and generates ONE BILLION monthly web page views. (I should live so long.)

"Facebook is taking everything": rising rents drive out Silicon Valley families
Property companies advertising their proximity to Facebook’s campus are giving low-income residents a choice: pay a huge rent increase or move out
By Sam Levin / The Guardian 6-20-2018

ANTE INTO THE GAME: Support the new season of Barbwire.TV by putting your money where my mouth is.


Metastasizical Statisticals

Trump FCC chair investigated for Sinclair ties
TheVerge.com / 2-15-2018

Ready for Trump TV? Inside Sinclair Broadcasting’s Plot to Take Over Your Local News
Its mix of terrorism alerts, right-wing commentary and “classic propaganda” could soon reach 3/4 of the US.
By Andy Kroll/Mother Jones Oct.-Nov. 2017

How Sinclair Broadcasting puts a partisan tilt on trusted local news
By William Brangham/ PBS NewsHour 10-10-2017

Top-down Democrats haven't learned
By Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 8-10-2017

More Faux than Fox? Corporate octopus Sinclair moves to dominate Nevada and U.S. television
By Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 8-3-2017


  A thousand thanks to those who keep sending show suggestions.

  Stay tuned.

  I encourage you to donate to the cause at Barbwire.TV/ The medium that shapes public opinion needs at least one refuge where it is not filtered through the distorted green eye shades of prissy corporate accountants for whom profit is the only priority; where self-censorship is the journalist's normal work environment and where all sins of omission are tacitly encouraged and forgiven with the wave of a balance sheet.

  This is important. We've got a lot of work to do.

 

END OF TIMES SURVIVAL KIT. Defend yourself with humorous or humorless but always-peerless pontification by subscribing to the Barbwire Confidential News Service. Scandalous bonuses for new subscribers.

Hush Hush!

"Media is the plural of mediocre."
— Jimmy Breslin (1928-2017)

Last year's dark foreshadowings unfortunately became reality. I thus suggest inoculation by signing onto the HushHush! list at BallotBoxing.US/ It's cheap as well as enlightening entertainment. Thank you kindly for your support.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)

Peruse the Underbelly of the News —> Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential

For all the news you never knew you needed to know 'til now: Tell your friends and friendly enemies to subscribe to Barbwire Confidential for warm laughter, cheap thrills, hot scoops and occasional cold logic at BallotBoxing.US/ Cheap at twice the price. (Hush Hush!)


Smoking Guns—>
SCOTUS coitus interruptus and terminal Teslacide
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 7-11-2018 Sparks Tribune
Fake boobs and fake news: Guts, feathers and all
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 7-4-2018 Sparks Tribune
Cat house to state house: Any publicity is good publicity
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 6-27-2018 Sparks Tribune
Ghost in the machine: The return of NAGPAC
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 6-20-2018 Sparks Tribune
Lucky June 13: Cheap shots and low blows
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 6-13-2018 Sparks Tribun
A duo of D-Days visit Nevada this week
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 6-6-2018 Sparks Tribune
Grandma, gold standards, forearms and tin ears
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 5-23-2018 Sparks Tribune
Mother Dolores: Our village loses its patron saint
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 5-30-2018 Sparks Tribune
Beer & music and rent & pillage
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 5-16-2018 Sparks Tribune
Stormy weather: Poll dancing for fun & prophet
Barbwire by Andres Luis Barbáno / Expanded from the 5-9-2018 Sparks Tribune
Flint, Nevada: Dirty deeds done dirt cheap
Barbwire by Andres Luis Barbáno / Expanded from the 5-2-2018 Sparks Tribune


$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

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Copyright © 1982-2018 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 49-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 serves as first vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.

Barbwire by Barbano moved to Nevada's Daily Sparks Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in them parts ever since.
Whom to blame: How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the Barbwire in August of 1987
Tempus fugit.

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

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