BARBWIRE
by
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


Machine Gun Michele and her low-caliber, low-cut friends
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 8-22-2018 Sparks Tribune / Updated 9-6-2018 / Expansions in blue


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

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8 the hard way!
Barbwire wins 8th Nevada Press Association award

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

We Don't Need No Education—> Neverending Barbwire Series

1997 Pulitzer Prize entries

Barbwire.TV
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SUING FOR SCHOOLS
Reruns on Carson-Dayton 226

Additional programs
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go to the BCTV link.

If Reform Fails: Health Care, Jobs and Unions — new power to the people on the public airwaves

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.

You may also take the public option known as the U.S. Postal Service and send a check or money order to ReSurge.TV, P.O. Box 10034, Reno NV 89510.

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.

You are present at the creation of what I hope can become a new media model where the programming accurately reflects what's happening on the ground and the media impact is powerful enough to forcefully pass the message upward.

Thanks.

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew


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

Barbwire.TV:
15-year overnight success

Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008

The Barbwire's Greatest Hits
Highlights from radio days
mp3 file


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Love hurts. I know. Because of my passion for one Italian girl, this column was censored in its entirety in March, 2015. Here's a slightly updated version.

"I didn't realize it until I laid eyes on her in the flesh. Assemblymember Michele Fiore, R-Gomorrah South, is the embodiment of the Italian girl my mother always wanted me to marry.

"Alas and alack, I was born 30 years too soon. Blame my parents. I do.

"I had only seen photos until I beheld her in the legislative hallway. The petite blonde looked every bit like the 'young hot little girls' she announced she desperately wants to protect by giving them guns to take to school. (She also says she wants to shoot Syrian refugees.)

"She sauntered past me wearing an extremely form-fitting little black dress. I was standing with several police lobbyists. I noted that Ms. Fiore openly brags that she packs serious heat at all times, even in the legislative building. But she wasn't carrying a purse."

Women often carry guns strapped inside thighs, noted the female officer standing next to me. But Michele's black mini was so tight that any garter holster would have been a very unconcealed weapon.

Rather matter-of-factly, I offered that "the only place she could conceal her .45 is down with her 38's.

"I know she can shoot, but can she cook? Mama would want to know," I smittenly added.

"I fantasize seeing her in that little black dress, wearing an apron in a big kitchen cooking pasta...

"Later that week, Machine Gun Michele testified in favor of Republican Assemblyman Jim Wheeler's Pop Tart gun bill. Because a kid in another state got busted for chewing a Pop Tart into the shape of a gun, the Douglas County cowboy wants to make all Nevada student gun hijinx immune from prosecution.

"St. Joan of Fiore to the rescue! She reportedly showed fellow lawmakers a lower calorie example, a two-inch gun charm she wears around her neck.

"Two inches. Dr. Freud, call your office.

"The romance is in trouble," I concluded.

The new Tribune boss was not amused. Censorship of the above parsimoniously prurient prose generated/produced high irony. The interim Tribune editor had been boss of the Nevada Press Association.

I was crudely reminded that freedom of the press is limited to them what owns one.

The editor simply e'd that the material was "not suitable." That's saying a lot because at one time or other, the Tribune has published all seven of legendary comedian George Carlin's seven words you can't use on TV. Several of same have appeared in the Barbwire as well as in countless other items since 1988. (Please note that there are no dirty words in the above.)

People wondered where the Barbwire went, so I offered this online explanation: If you thought the column trashy, wait till you see the photos, easily accessible on a Las Vegas radio station's website and viewable via the expanded web edition at NevadaLabor.com/

In June, 2015, the infamous editor nuked me yet again.

"The light side of prison escape" was a gag list of what may have been going on in the minds of two convicts who had engineered an ingenious escape from New York's infamous Dannemora supermax,

For instance: "Head for Nevada. They'll never find us at Burning Man...The things you gotta do these days to get an agent for your book...Whatta ya mean that a Monopoly 'get out of jail free' card is no good?...I wonder if that woman who helped us will lose her job...I'd hate to be the union rep stuck with defending her...Now will they hire my brother-in-law's security consulting firm?...Brazil hasn't got an extradition treaty with the U.S. How do we find Joe Conforte's phone number in Rio?...I'll miss the meatloaf...My only regret is that we've never had children."

I write wistfully of the above love's labors lost because now-Las Vegas City Councilmember Fiore is back in the news, defending her former landlord, brothelmeister and probable Nevada Assemblymember Dennis Hof, R-Pahrump.

"Legislators who say they don't want to caucus with Dennis Hof need to put their big girl or big boy panties on and figure it out," Fiore said in a TV interview with journalist Ray Hagar.

My erstwhile fantasy fiancée, among other lawmakers, roomed at Hof's west Washoe Valley home (since burned down) during the 2015 session. Fiore also told Hagar that some of her male legislative colleagues...er...sampled...Hof's wares during legislative brothel tours.

Hey, you can't pass legislation without fact-finding, can you?

How old-fashioned. Facts don't matter in the age of Czar Donaldov.

Gotta hunch they still would to my dear sainted mother. But love conquers all.

Michele, call me.

NOW, AS THEN, APOLOGETICS. Copious mea culpas to all my feminist readers for the above sojourn into male chauvinist piggery, but the heart is a lonely and pasta-craving hunter.

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

THE BIG 3-0. Sunday, August 12, marked 30 years since the first Barbwire appeared in the Rail City's newspaper of record since 1910. "The Chilling of Hot August Nights" brought the first of my eight Nevada Press Association awards. I'll add more memories of the early days of the Barbwire as time, space and the political season allow.

Whom to blame: How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the
Barbwire in August of 1987

Tempus fugit.

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 sow 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—> Barbwire 30th Anniversary Trilogy
Now well into a 4th decade of equal opportunity harassment of the rich, famous & powerful

Part 3: Biting the hand that feeds me
GOP '18 upsets: Déjà vu all over again
Laxalt and Heller favored to win in November
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 9-5-2018 Sparks Tribune
Part 2: Biting the moonhowlers
Good reasons to lie to those pesky pollsters
Heller eats sheep balls to get the courage to perpetrate guilt by association
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 8-29-2018 Sparks Tribune
Part 1: Bitten by my buds
Machine Gun Michele and her low-caliber, low-cut friends
The censored Barbwires of the 2015 legislature finally see ink and my fantasy fiancée bares all
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 8-22-2018 Sparks Tribune

30 Years before the masthead: Barbano remembers the Barbwire's greatest hits
By Kayla Anderson / Sparks Tribune 8-22-2018

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.


$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

SITE NAVIGATION TIPS: When all else fails, read the instructions (A favorite John Hanks aphorism I've been using for decades)

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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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