The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, June 25, 2024: "What do we thin...

I speak about the Torah portion Shelah-Lecha, and of the need to control our minds for the upcoming election.

The Mason Missile, June 24, 2024

Greetings, Americans! It has happened: Donald t---p, the twice-impeached, raping, cheating, stealing, ignorant, self-centered sick bastard who lurked around the white House, has been formally indicted for falsifying business records to hide the hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, to keep their affair quiet during the 2016 presidential election. (https://manhattanda.org/d-a-bragg-announces-34-count-felony-trial-conviction-of-donald-j-trump/) (https://apnews.com/article/trump-trial-deliberations-jury-testimony-verdict-85558c6d08efb434d05b694364470aa0) We are at the end of LGBTQ+ Pride Month, when Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning (as in young kids, growing up, ask themselves, “Am I gay?”) show their pride and self-acceptance of who they are and what their sexuality is, and knowing there are others just like them. It’s also a time to fight against those who, “for the noblest of reasons, like religious liberty,” seek to find any excuse to pare down, slice by slice, any or all of the advancements they have made in civil and human rights, and acceptance as citizens. Such attempts include, but not limited to, laws dictating which gender bathroom trans kids go to in school, complaints about libraries hosting drag queen story times, school libraries having LGBTQ+ themed books on the shelves (that show gay kids that there are, and have been in history, others like them)—the list goes on. Because of these dangerous crusades, gay kids will get the idea that there’s something wrong with being gay—and that THEY THEMSELVES are wrong and evil for being gay. These same crusaders against LGBTQ+-ness, as part of the evangelical rightist movement, have attached themselves politically to the twice-impeached, thrice-married, tax-cheating, wife-cheating, business-cheating, golf-cheating, nation-cheating, rapist and indicted criminal as their presidential candidate. The interesting thing is, so many of these evangelical campaigners have been found out to be sexually off base themselves. Case in point: Robert Morris, senior pastor of Gateway church, a Texas megachurch, and a “spiritual advisor” for trump, has been found to have had “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady” who was TWEVE YEARS OLD at the time. (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-adviser-pastor-robert-morris-confesses-sexual-behavior-rcna157474) The list goes on. The evangelical political movement has shown its corruption by having such a corrupt person as their standard-bearer. If you want to what a second trump regime (God forbid!) looks like, read about the document popularly called “Project 2025,” put out by the Heritage Foundation, a so-called “think-tank” designed to dress up the most reactionary ideas in the best academic finery. This has been called the “bible” of another trump administration, whose main author is Russel Vought, who was trump’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget. (https://www.thenation.com/article/society/russell-vought-center-renewing-america-christian-nationalism/) Vought, after leaving the government (thank God!), assembled the Center for Renewing America, another position-paper factory, and their documents have gone on about returning America to be “one Nation Under God,” and whining about schools grooming children by drag shows and “wokeness.” Project 2025 has a strong dose of Christian Nationalism to it. These are some more of the thoughts this think-tank has been thinking: Concentrate all power upon a unitary executive; this follows the Unitary Executive Theory, which states that the Congress cannot control or limit the President’s power over the executive branch. It was an idea common in the George W. Bush administration, that the President has the absolute authority to locate military forces upon his orders, and arrest and detain persons. It was advanced by John Woo, an attorney in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush II administration, during the “War On Terror.” (https://www.acslaw.org/expertforum/exploring-the-limits-of-presidential-power/); Eliminate the Departments of Justice, of Education, of Commerce, and of Homeland Security, and the FBI (which used to be conservatives’ favorite bureaucracy, along with the military), eliminate cabinet secretaries and replace career civil servants with trump loyalists and flunkies (https://www.alternet.org/authoritarianism-project-2025-trump/); Eliminate protections against discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity; Direct the military to perform domestic law enforcement functions, thereby declaring war on its own fellow-citizens; arrest and deport immigrants; and implement capital punishment with swift “finality.” (https://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/the-death-of-america-as-we-know-it/article_388920c1-1442-54ba-865c-d9b8923f06c8.html) Also in Project 2025 is the idea of restoring the military draft, so that young men and women would be compelled to serve under a commander-in-chief who regards them as “Suckers” and “Losers,” and would not hesitate to use them as cannon fodder for some egocentric war, so he could make himself look like a REAL man; and there would be no anti-war movement to stop it. (https://cardinalpine.com/2024/06/17/trump-mandatory-military-service/) It’s a common political fantasy on the right: look for a “strong man” dictator who would destroy the unclean, non-conforming, and dissenting elements of our society, and not let a silly little thing like Civil and Human Rights, or democracy, get in his way. the evangelical right has, as I have stated, been corrupted by its proximity to power, from the Reagan administration through trump. Its whole agenda anymore is to bash LGBTQ+ people: bash Jews, Muslims and other religious minorities; and ignore discrimination of people based on race and class. BUT—all is not lost. The presidential election coming up on November 5 will give us the opportunity to end this scheme of dictatorship, by us going out IN DROVES to the ballot box. But concern yourself with the polls; one thing I can’t stand is when the news media acts like trump will win, even before we’ve voted, so why bother to vote? DO go out and vote, and we will thwart trump and his nightmare of dictatorship. We’ve GOT this! Stay safe, stay strong, and stay together! Slava Ukraini! Am Yisrael chai! America will be free! Bye!

The Mason Moment June 17 2024: "Trump andThe CEOs"

I speak about trump's address to corporate CEOs, and of corporate corruption.

The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, June 10, 2024: "Trump's Probati...

I speak about trump's Probation Hearing and His Las Vegas rally.

The Mason Moment, June 4, 2024

I speak about the history behind Juneteenth, the Tulsa Race Massacre on 1921, and the attempts at censoring teaching about such topics.

The Mason Missile, May 22, 2024

Greetings, Americans! On April 23, I did my duty as an election board worker for my division in Philadelphia. We need more people to step up and take part in OUR political system, and play a part in positively shaping OUR community. Maybe YOU could run for an office? Why not? And we must stand up to the violent minority who, through their terrorism (terrorism IS very much American, not always abroad) attempt to prevent or weaken the public’s right to vote. Such terrorism includes “voter ID” laws, limiting the number of drop-off boxes for mail-in ballots, and, as in Georgia, prohibiting serving food or beverages to people in line, for hours in whatever weather, to vote. Our right to vote is a mighty weapon in our hands, and certain powerful forces want to take this weapon away from us. Let’s not allow this to happen. We are in the season of Memorial Day, where we show our respects to those men and women in our Armed Forces who died in service to their country. We must continue to honor their memory, and to assist and aid their loved ones. As opposed to so many political hacks who want to talk all badass without risking themselves (and send low-income kids to get killed), we must genuinely worry about the needs of military families. The danger of fascism is ALL too real, and it’s not hyperbole, it’s a genuinely American strain we’re up against. Recently, trump, over his “Truth Social” rag of a social media site, put out a video, with AI-generated images of old-time newspapers, on the theme of “What if trump wins? (God forbid!)” One smaller headline talked about a “unified Reich,” as in hitler’s Third Reich. (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/not-an-accident-trump-s-unified-reich-video-alarms-historians-and-fascism-experts/ar-BB1mMZvo) The campaign took down the video, but trump showed us once again, for any of us paying attention, what he would do to this country, IF he is elected again. We must add this alongside the march of the torch-bearing neo-Nazis in Charlottesville in August 2017, where he said there were fine people “on both sides”; his telling his rally attendees to beat up anyone who dares stand up to him; his dining with such Jew-haters as Nick Fuentes and Kanye West; his hiring while in office of Steve Bannon, online conspiracy-monger and believer in racist conspiracy theories; trump saying, according to General John Kelly, that hitler “did some good things”; trump doing nothing while COVID-19 spread all over the country, saying “It is what it is (dictators think their citizens are expendable); and NEVER forget about how trump urged his followers to rampage through the Capitol, to try to destroy the peaceful, democratic transfer of power after losing the 2020 election. NEVER, Americans, forget all that. Just as hitler cozied up to the big industrialists, financiers, and other conservative elites of Germany for their support (https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-big-business-bailed-out-nazis), trump is trying to get money out of the billionaire class to finance his campaign—and to pay for his legal bills. recently, trump held a dinner at Mar-A-Largo with fossil-fuel executives, telling them IF he is elected, he would give them everything they wanted—ending Biden Administration executive orders to protect the environment, eliminating prohibitions in offshore drilling, ending all of Biden’s green energy programs, and granting them more tax breaks—IF they collectively give him $1 billion. (https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/09/trump-asks-oil-executives-campaign-finance-00157131) (https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-offers-oil-execs-110bn-in-savings-exchange-support-2024) Oil industry lobbyists are already drawing up proposals and strategies to implement these policies IF trump wins. The fossil fuel moguls may act liked they’re shocked—shocked, I tell you!—but they have no more use for democracy, or for the lower classes (that’s us), than the industrial moguls who thought hitler was a good investment in order to beat down communists, Social Democrats, and unions, and then after the Second world War acted so innocent about what the regime did. Industrial and commercial corporations are authoritarian, hierarchical systems, spanning throughout the globe, and so what chance has a poor individual working person have against such a vast bureaucracy? (Yes, that’s what they are, bureaucracies, raking in TRILLIONS of dollars, and none of this Ayn Rand “rugged individualist” bullshit!) It’s only through organizing from the grassroots, in our worksites and neighborhoods, we have ANY chance of standing up to these Wall-Street gangsters, and their congressional concubines, and their pet media, and their deluded thugs. Remember November 5 is just a few months away, and we must take our stand and get out and VOTE like our lives, and our country, and our democracy, depend on it, because it does. Stay safe, stay strong, and stay together! Slava Ukraini! Am Yisrael Chi! America will be free! Bye!

The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, May 6, 2024

I speak about how Kristi Noem's dog killing isn't popular, and of the cruelty and violence of the MAGA base.