“Every sperm is sacred.” – Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life” (1983)
Madcap former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin did serious damage to Obamacare when she called its end-of-life counseling provision “death panels.”
They would have been nonesuch and irony of ironies, the man who made her rich and famous, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., cast the deciding vote to save Obamacare years later. (To the good senator’s everlasting credit, draft-dodger Donald still smears the war hero’s name long after his death.)
Alas and alack, Mr. McCain’s 2012 Republican vice-presidential nominee’s smear of a label is coming true, largely due to the Clorox Orange Crusher’s cultish behavior.
Most nurses and teachers quit after their first five years, burned out. The plague that the Mar-a-Loco Messiah knowingly let get out of control turbocharged the exodus. The US has four percent of the world’s population but leads the planet in COVID-19 fatalities, more than 800,000, accelerating toward a million.
Trump hisself is both vaxxed and boosted. But he nonetheless opposes vaccine mandates. America’s Righteous Republican Dad thinks government should stay out of people’s bodies. Not necessarily. (See Supreme Court item, hereinbelow.)
Health care providers across the nation were forced to act as ad hoc death panels last year and swamped hospitals are now back in the biz. Decades of conservative budget cuts made us unprepared for a pandemic. No less than Bill Gates warned us in 2015. We don’t elect long-term thinkers in a country obsessed with quarterly profit and the daily stock ticker.
The wages of sin is death. Panels.
SKIP & JILL WENT UP A HILL. “Race ya down!”
Skip won twice, Jill won twice. There will be no rubber match.
As usual, the Reno Gazette-Journal got the biggest Sparks news of last week wrong.
Former Assemblymember Skip Daly, D-Sparks, announced his campaign to replace recently-resigned State Sen. Julia Ratti, D-Sparks, in next year’s election,”ditching his biennial bout” with Assemblymember Jill Dickman, R-Sparks.
The RGJ’s inexperienced political reporter contacted Ms. Dickman who “confirmed Friday that she did not plan to launch her own campaign for Ratti’s former state senate seat.”
The Kazoo-Journal added that Daly and Dickman had faced each other in five of the past six elections.
Just about everything in the above story is wrong, save for the names of the officeholders.
EIther the RGJ did not ask or Ms. Dickman did not volunteer that she and Daly could not have a fifth faceoff unless one of them moves. Redistricting placed Daly, who lives a few blocks from Sparks City Hall, into the bailiwick of fellow Democrat Natha Anderson. Dickman lives on Disc Drive.
Finally, Skip and Jill have gone head-to-head four times, not five. Reminds of Democrat Ken Haller and Republican Bruce Bogaert, both well-remembered now-dead buds of mine, who traded the southwest Reno assembly seat four times in the 1970s.
The sprawling new District 13 goes from Spanish Springs’ Lazy 5 Regional Park in the north to Reno’s Peckham Lane to the south. The eastern boundary is the intersection of Interstate-80 and the Truckee River, west to Kings Row almost to McCarran in northwest Reno.
IT NEVER ENDS. Reno City Hall just distributed a glowing story about Mayor Hillary Schieve “recognized for her efforts to address the climate crisis as part of the 2021 Mayors Climate Protection Awards.” (Honorable mention)
This just does not square with the facts, especially that her Regional Transportation Commission appointees, Councilcritters Neoma Jardon and Oscar Delgado, have crippled the bus system for which they are allegedly responsible but choose to ignore. They did nothing to end the August-November Hat Trick Strikes, leaving 20,000 bus passengers a day to resort to autos. Which skyrocket carbon emissions.
The Jardon-led RTC plans to cut 15 routes after their January retreat, opting for some doofus dial-a-ride. Moving from transit buses to smaller vehicles geometrically increases greenhouse gas emissions.
Having a PRopaganda department means never having to say you’re sorry.
Us unenlightened union guys are apparently incapable of appreciating the included kissy-facey shoutout to that bastion of workers’ rights, Wal-Mart, sponsor of Mlle. Mayor’s prestigious honor.
RECOMMENDED READING: Veteran law reporter Linda Greenhouse’s “The Supreme Court, Weaponized,” in Sunday’s NYTimes. She notes that the current homotextual majority (my term) is ready to overturn longstanding precedents just because they can. Welcome to the schoolyard.
On my July 4, 1990, talk radio show, I actually got a prestigious Nevada lawyer, who had just won one of the biggest Nevada cases of the 20th Century, to grudgingly admit that law, history and precedent be damned, five of the nine Supremes can do whatever they freakin’ please. Exactly Ms. Greenhouse’s point last Sunday.
Stand by for taxpayer support of religious schools, Capone Chicago shoulder holsters, the end of Roe v. Wade and affirmative action. Oh, yeah, and more anti-union decisions as “the court’s conservatives hijack the First Amendment and convert it into a tool of deregulation.”
How long before non-government supervised sex is banned? (The madcap GOP Texas governor says he’s comfy with banning abortion in rape cases because his wonderfulness will stamp out rape. State sex supervision is the only way to get that done. Birth control? Fuhgeddaboutit with that court majority. )
DEADLY PREVIEW. You want deregulation, you got it. In his Sunday Times piece, Jamelle Bouie notes that without a union or personal services contract, American workers are stripped of almost all rights save for the few protected by law but usually ignored with impunity. Witness the Amazon and candle factory workers who died in the recent Kentucky tornado because their bosses threatened them with firing if they went home — even after sirens went off.
“Most workers are subject to an unaccountable ‘private government,’ “ authoritarian and sometimes deadly in character, he noted.
That’s why we need more union people like my friend Skip Daly in government. I’m glad he’s back in the arena.
Happy High Holly Days to you and yours.
Take care of each other and be careful out there.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 53-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org and MississippiWestNV.org/ He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks Communications Workers Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are strictly his own. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us
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