I get a lot of weird phone messages.
Land grabs and murder in the rurals, who you gonna call?
I recently helped a Carson City senior citizen who cares for her disabled son. Her landlord would not fix her decrepit, mouse-infested apartment (fittingly a block from the legislature). Problem solved.
However, I draw the line at the guy who called wanting me to exterminate voles in his lawn.
I didn’t know we even had freakin’ voles in these parts!
Then again, who better to control pests than a semi-pro pest like me?
WW2 WEASELS. I did two Nevada Newsmakers TV shows last week with Sam Shad. Donald Trump’s latest bigotry dominated.
Following Mr. Trump’s toxic logic, I noted that the next step for immigrants will be concentration camps (perhaps with proper i.d. like yellow Stars of David and bar-code tattoos).
That painfully hits home. I have stated before that I have no use for the late singer Kate Smith, for whom a longtime Sparks elementary school is named.
Kate Smith’s signature song, “God Bless America,” was given to her by legendary composer Irving Berlin, a Jewish Russian immigrant born Israel Isidore Baline.
Growing up, Kate Smith’s name was anathema in my Italian-American household.
Based upon as big a lie as Saddam Hussein’s mythological nukes, the feds began rounding up loyal Japanese-Americans about 74 years ago. They were herded into concentration camps, losing jobs, homes, property and sometimes their lives in deplorable conditions. Much of suburban California was built on their farmland which was literally sold dirt cheap for past-due taxes.
Kate Smith was among those who advocated for placing Americans of German and Italian descent into similar barbed wire ghettoes. That was hard to do, especially with Germans.
Fresno State history Prof. Jose C. Canales has noted that given the large number of German immigrants assimilated into the U.S., there was as much pressure to intervene on behalf of Germany as there was to intervene for France and England in World War One.
White Europeans had become too ubiquitous to warehouse.
Had Kate Smith had her perverted patriotic way, my mother, my father and all my relatives would have become so many cattle.
CONGRATS to retired Nevada attorney David Kladney for publication of his Dec. 3 guest editorial in the Chicago Tribune. The UNR journalism grad has long been a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Entitled “Face it, we’ve lost the public’s trust,” the powerful piece leads with “Another shooting. Another video. Another police cover-up.”
You will find it linked at the expanded web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com/
TRUMP’S RUNNING MATE. After her since-”clarified” statement that she wants to shoot Syrian immigrants, I disrespectfully suggest that Mr. Trump select Nevada Assemblymember Machine Gun Michele Fiore, R-Gomorrah South, as his vice-presidential running mate.
At least it would get my fantasy fiancée out of Nevada.
Be well. Raise hell. Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Barbano is a 47-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com. E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us> Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988
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