Back of the Book — December 5, 2020


This was our 21st pandemic program, and so another pre-recorded program.We talked about the pandemic, which definitely looks like it's in its second wave now. We also talked about Trump and his pals' farcical attempts to negate the votes of millions of American voters. It would be funny if it weren't so damaging to democracy in America. I do plan to update this Web page soon.

Did you know that I've got a brief synopsis of some of the WBAI LSB meetings?

I have also posted a whole lot of the minutes of the Pacifica National Finance Committee on this Web site. I'm a member of that committee because I'm the WBAI LSB Treasurer.

The next WBAI LSB meeting is scheduled to be held on Wednesday, December 9, 2020, it will be held as a teleconference meeting, as the nine previous public meetings were because of the pandemic.

The WBAI LSB met on Wednesday, November 11, 2020.

The meeting was pretty much the usual stuff. Some people seem to be looking to reinvent the wheel. I wonder kind of polygon they'll come up with?

Before the meeting I had put out a written Treasurer's Report for all to read.

Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday of every month, subject to change by the LSB, which gives us the following schedule:

All of these meetings are set to begin at 7:00 PM.

WBAI has a program schedule up on its Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out.

Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.

WBAI is archiving the programs! WBAI has permanently switched to yet another new archive Web page! This one is more baffling than the previous one. For some time I was unable to post archive blurbs, then I could, and then I couldn't again. You can take a look at it and see if I've been able to post anything on it lately. There are still some limitations, but I am assured that I can plug in the archive blurbs that were lost in the latest upgrade.

This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive. The archiving software appears to have been at least partially fixed. To get to the archive of this program you can use the usual method: you'll have to click on the drop-down menu, which says Display, and find Back of the Book on that menu. We're pretty early in the list, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once you find the program name click GO and you'll see only this Back of the Book program. Management has fixed some problems that we'd been having with the archives.

For programs before March 23, 2019, we're all out of luck. The changes that took place once WBAI Management took control of the WBAI archives seems to have wiped out all access to anything before that date in March. You'll have to click on the same drop-down menu as above, which says Display, and find Specify Date, it's the second choice from the top. You are then given a little pop-up calendar and you can choose the date of the program there. Then click GO and you'll see a list of programs that aired on that date. For those previous programs you can get the audio, but nothing else, since I can't post anything to those pages anymore. Yeah, it looks like they'll have some alternating program's name prominently there, but if you have the right date it'll be our program. Good luck.

Since the General Manager has banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. There is another program in the alternate week's time slot.

Bring Back Uncle Sidney!

Our friend, fellow WBAI producer and Saddle Pal Uncle Sidney Smith has been banned from WBAI by General Manager Berthold Reimers. The General Manager will not say why. He won't even tell Sidney why he's banned! This is grossly unfair to Sidney and constitutes abuse of Staff. Why did Berthold ban Sidney?

More to come.

SARS-CoV-2 virus
The Second Wave is Here

We talked about the Covid-19 pandemic. Covid-19 cases in the whole world reached 65,686,172 on Friday when this program was recorded, and deaths reached 1,514,549. In the United States of America the number of cases as of Friday was 14,297,251 and the death toll in America was 278,083. So about 13,842 people died of Covid-19 in America since our last program one week ago. It's noteworthy that on our November 14, 2020, program that deaths for the previous fortnight amounted to 13,688. Since we're weekly now that means that the rate has more than doubled in the past three weeks. Yes, we're in the second wave of this pandemic.

We talked about the news on the vaccine front. It is being predicted that some people will start getting vaccinated in another couple of weeks. I'd be one of the people who would be supposed to get it in February or early March next year. The question here is do I want to go out and risk getting infected? I took the risk to get the flu vaccine in late September, so I guess that I will. The latest word is that kids under 18 will not be vaccinated. Is that a good idea?

The CDC advised Americans not to travel to Thanksgiving get-togethers, and as we said on the last program huge numbers of people traveled and acted as if the virus were taking off for the long weekend. We're being told that we aren't really seeing the full impact of that surge yet, but we're seeing the start of it. By the next program we should have a good idea of what the Thanksgiving Weekend surge will do. The second wave of the pandemic is here, and this surge on top of it may really make for a terrible scenario.

Meanwhile idiots are protesting the closing of a Staten Island bar because the owner and Manager refused to abide by the pandemic restrictions. Bars are not essential businesses. Some people who hang out at bars a lot may think they are, but they're not. If businesses have to shut down for a while, even if that means that the businesses have to cease to exist for economic reasons, then that's what has to happen if the alternative is an increase in deaths and serious illness among the population.

Meanwhile, the disease vector in chief, Donnie Bonespur Trump, continues to go golfing instead of dealing with the second wave of the pandemic, which he is largely responsible for. That is he's playing golf when he's not just sitting around the White House doing nothing other than lying about how he really won the election.

Trump head and statement
He Wants to do Damage

Trump's lawsuits continue to get thrown out of court, sometimes by the very judges he appointed. On the last program I said that Trump, the Republicans who support him and their supporters are becoming a huge cult and we talked about them behaving like the Flat Earthers. Well, Virginia Republican Congressman Denver Riggleman compared the Trump followers to the people who go on actual hunts for Bigfoot out west. Congressman Riggleman should know about the people who spend their weekends going out hunting for Bigfoot because he used to be one of them. He says that he never actually believed in it though, that he just wanted to belong to something and the hunts were what he called good fun. Riggleman says the three main reasons Republican leaders won't take a stand against the conspiracy theory collectives are Votes, fear and money. Congressman Riggleman said that the people who are afraid of what he calls the conspiracy collectives or who actually agree with them are not fit to hold public office. Yeah, I agree with that.

Meanwhile, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is still making a complete fool of himself. He's been holding fake hearings and even getting a lot of attention after a video recording of one of those phony hearings seems to show that he had a bout of flatulence during a particularly strident portion of one of them. Yeah, you get old and you can't hold it in all that well anymore.

December 8, is Safe Harbor day for states to make their official selection of Electors to the Electoral College. If the Electors are selected by this date they are harder to challenge later on. Will we see shenanigans around this?

Trump is now setting about trying to pardon himself and his family for anything they ever did. I've been hearing and reading that there really is a broad precedent for a Presidential pardon that will pardon someone for anything they've done that's criminal, whether they've been charged or not. In 1974, then President Gerald Ford, the only President who was never elected, gave Nixon a full and unconditional pardon for any crimes that he might have committed against the United States as president. I'm sure that Trump is looking for more than that. Will he try to give himself a pardon for any crimes he may commit in the future? He might really want to shoot someone on Fifth Ave. and get away with it. I think he can't do that though. But wouldn't the Mafia have loved to be in this situation? The Trump Crime family may be able to pardon itself. Meanwhile, his pardons will do nothing about the New York State charges that are going to drop soon after he leaves office.

Trump has reportedly raised over $170,000,000 from fools who have contributed to his appeal for money to file lawsuits to overturn the election. And most of that money is going to the Republican National Committee and to Trump's campaign, which you just know is funneling a lot of that money somewhere that Trump wants it to go.

Just remember that the Trump administration's behavior is not normal!

There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. However, there is the Internet! There are mailing lists which you can subscribe to and Web based message boards devoted to WBAI and Pacifica issues. Many controversial WBAI/Pacifica issues are discussed on these lists.

One open list that no longer exists was the WBAI specific Goodlight Web based message board. It was sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as the bleepin' blue board, owing to the blue background that was used on its Web pages. This one had many people posting anonymously and there was also an ancillary WBAI people board that was just totally out of hand.

In June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I was the moderator on it for its last seven years, until it got too expensive.

Sometimes we used to have live interaction with people posting on the Goodlight Board during the program.

Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Saturday Morning With the Radio On used to alternate with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.

One formerly popular mailing list is the NewPacifica mailing list. Founded October 31, 2000, this list has been moribund for a couple of years due to de facto censorship by the group owner. As of February 2019, it had 696 subscribers coast to coast, but postings on it had become very infrequent. During the WBAI Coup of 2019, traffic picked up on that board again, for a while.

Back in the day it sometimes also got a bit nasty. All sorts of things used to happen on that list and official announcements were frequently posted there.

You can look at the NewPacifica list here, and you can join the list from that Web page too. If you subscribe to the NewPacifica mailing list you will receive, via E-mail, all of the messages which are sent to that list.

There is the option to receive a digest version of the list, which means that a bunch of messages are bundled into one E-mail and sent to you at regular intervals, this cuts down on the number of E-mails you get from the list. You will also be able to send messages to the list.

We like to stay interactive with our listeners. Here are the various options for you to get in touch with us.

You can also send me E-mail.

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