Senator R. Johnson (R. Wisc)
We covered more on this program than the below stuff. We also talked about Mike Nesmith passing away, and we pitched. I really do plan to update this Web page soon. So maybe you could check back for all of that fun stuff.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
Did you know that I've got a brief synopsis of some of the WBAI LSB meetings? Well, I do, and I've recently updated some of that.
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 January 4, 2022, but it will be in executive session to discuss personnel matters,
so you won't be able to hear it. The next WBAI LSB meeting that you will be able to hear the thrilling details of will be held on January 12, 2022, at 7 PM on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security. We're supposed to elect WBAI's Directors to the Pacifica National Board at that meeting and we'll see what else comes up at it. These meetings will be held as teleconference meetings, as the 31 previous public meetings were because of the pandemic.
The WBAI LSB met on Wednesday, December 8, 2021, in an odd mix of the 11th and 12th LSBs. There was a Delegates Assembly meeting, and it happened right before the LSB meeting. A majority of the WBAI LSB had voted last month to hold the Delegates Assembly meeting before the LSB meeting in order to allow the members of the 11th WBAI LSB to vote on four amendments to the Pacifica Foundation bylaws that had been presented. I questioned why it had to be done this way. I said during the November meeting that this would put the legitimacy of those bylaws amendments in jeopardy because the time for the LSB meeting was the same as the time for this Delegates Assembly. The vote on handling the Delegates Assembly this way was 10 for, 3 against and 4 abstentions. I was one of those who voted No.
The time for the start of the WBAI LSB meeting was changed by a couple of people to 7:30 PM and then to 8:00 PM. I think that we could have allowed the members of the 12th WBAI LSB, which consists mostly the same members as the 11th LSB, to vote on the bylaws amendments. I guess that the LSB members in favor of all of the bylaws amendments had counted votes and decided that they'd do better with the 11th LSB members than with the 12th LSB members. The bylaws needed to get 13 votes each to pass, and they got that. I voted for some of them, and I voted against some, and I abstained on one that I believed was out of order. Turns out the one bylaws amendment I'd said was out or order was indeed out of order, but maybe not for the reason that I'd cited.
So at the first meeting of the 12th WBAI LSB, which started seconds after the ending of the Delegates Assembly meeting, we elected the offers of the LSB for the next year. The Chair and Vice-Chair of the LSB will be elected via some company that will send out virtual ballots and count the votes. So it will be some weeks, I think, before we know who got elected to those offices. But no one contested the Secretary office, and so Mr. John Hoffman was elected Secretary by acclamation because no one else was nominated to run for that office. He's not a voting member of the LSB, but the bylaws allow for the offices of Secretary and Treasurer of the LSB to be held by people who are not voting members. And I got reelected Treasurer because I also ran unopposed.
Before the December 8, 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, so we have the following schedule:
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.
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Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.
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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. As of November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.
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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?
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So another ignorant politician is shooting his mouth off about things he obviously has no understanding of at all. Senator Ron Johnson Republican from Wisconsin is getting plenty of press coverage over some stupid things he's been saying. This past Wednesday during a Town Hall discussion Senator Johnson said, Standard gargle, mouth wash, has been proven to kill the coronavirus,
and, If you get it, you may reduce viral replication. Why not try all these things?
Shades of Trump's question about maybe injecting people's lungs with bleach. Maybe if you shoot the mouth wash out through your nose that may help, but it sure wouldn't be a pleasant experience. But if the virus is in your saliva already it's too late to stop it. In that case you're infected. And viral replication takes place inside the living cells of your body, not in your mouth. Maybe the Senator was confusing bad breath with the deadly disease.
And of course a dose of alcohol will kill bacteria and tear apart viruses, and if it gets inside your cells it'll kill them too. Would Senator Johnson recommend that people use mouth wash to ward off or cure chickenpox, or measles or any other airborne viral disease?
The Johnson & Johnson company, no relation to the Senator, which produces one of the three main COVID-19 vaccines, says its Listerine Antiseptic Is not intended to prevent or treat COVID-19
and should be used to freshen breath.
In an effort to make himself look not quite so stupid Senator Johnson issued a statement that says he doesn't recommend mouth wash as an alternative to vaccination, but he hasn't been urging his constituents to get vaccinated against COVID-19 either.
Senator Johnson then started mocking infectious disease experts, calling them the COVID gods.
His statement said that elected officials, not scientists, understand what best serves the public. What a jackass! He said, It's lunacy, Americans did not elect career government bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci, Dr. Walensky, and Dr. Collins to run our lives. We believe in individual rights.
Yeah, let's not pay attention to the people who've spent a good portion of their lives learning about biology and medicine and who have a track record of understanding things like infectious diseases and how to fight them, let's let right-wing Republican politicians handle all of that. In fact, let's expand that idea. So the next time Senator Johnson needs major surgery he should get Mitch McConnell or another Republican Senator to cut him open and make the repairs.
Senator Johnson is also a conspiracy nut. He has suggested that fake Trump supporters
were responsible in part for the January 6, insurrection. His past views on the COVID pandemic got his YouTube channel suspended in June.
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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.
There used to be a number of mailing lists related to Pacifica and WBAI. Unfortunately, they were all located on Yahoo! Groups. When Yahoo! Groups was totally shut down in December 2020, all of those mailing lists ceased to exist. One year earlier their file sections and archives of E-mails, had been excised leaving only the ability to send E-mails back and forth among the members. Now it's all gone. Older Back of the Book program Web pages tell a little more about those lists.
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