Hello, hello, hello, John Mason. How is everybody? I shall start off by wishing everyone once again a happy holiday season. Whichever holiday you celebrate. And that noise in the background is uh is the wind and the rain and snow hitting Philadelphia. And I'm one of those fortunate people that have a roof over their head. And let us do what we can for those who do who are not as fortunate as we are. And recently the president of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, addressed the Congress of the United States, thanking them and us, the American people, for our support in their struggle to retain their freedom. And to show the level of sick pity partisanship permeating Washington, the pro-Trump Republicans are just been whining and bitching about having calling Zelensky a big old welfare queen, having to pay for uh pay for billions of dollars in aid to you military aid to Ukraine and whiny about waste and all that. This is the same body, body of people that uh group of people that who who passed a trillion dollar tax breaks for corporations and billionaires. People who don't need it. A party whose economic program has always been welfare for the wealthy, socialism for the social register. And this is and these MAGA Republicans are just uh too tied to the apron strings of Donald Trump, who who in turn is uh tied up with Vladimir Putin. If it wasn't for Putin and his uh his interference, probably Donald Trump would never have been elected. Uh elected, so-called. Hillary Clinton, remember, won the popular vote, but but Trump got uh enough uh electoral college votes, which reminds me we got to eliminate the electoral college. It's a remnant of the time in our history where southern states felt they were privileged and thought they deserved protection, and so to preserve their precious slavery, so they concocted the electoral college to veto the popular vote, North and South and the March is I am super happy about, well kind of sort of happy about the results of the uh 2022 election. Uh it wasn't this great huge red deluge that they were everyone was anticipating. You can't always count the prognostications of the mainstream news media. And we were because we decided to uh to stand up for our freedoms, stand up for our rights, and put forth the effort to defend our democracy, uh progressives and labor and community-based people, mobilized, we mobilized our votes, we hit the streets, passed the pamphlets, urged people to vote, got people to the polls, helped them use the polling systems, and they voted, and we had this victory. What kind of victory was it for the Republicans in the House? The Maggas just are hell-bent on uh denying uh Kevin McCarthy the speakership just so they can. And there's no matter how beholden they uh how let this be a lesson. No matter how how thoroughly uh you kiss uh Trump's ring among other parts of his body, he will still betray you. He will not respect you. As so many Republicans, I'm thinking about Ted Cruz for one, lose their honor and dignity and decency to support uh Donald Trump even after he insults them, even after he slanders uh slanders them. Slander the way uh Trump slandered Cruz, insulting his wife and slandering his father. Have these Republicans Republicans have no honor left, no decency, no patriotism? Do they have to uh play up to the MAGA base? Yes, unfortunately they have to. Again, like I said, it's on the path of authoritarianism. I mean the authoritarians and neo-fascists are dominating the Republican Party. And they are not ashamed to attempt to violate anybody's human and civil rights to get their way. The most obvious example is the continued attacks on LGBT people, like such as uh local libraries being being ordered to ban books on with LGBTQ content so to prevent grooming our children. But kids who know they're gay and who need re uh support as they examine that part of their lives need to stuff need to study it. They need uh re reassurance, support. Let them know that okay, you're gay, we know you're gay, but we love you, and we still love you and we support you. Kids shouldn't be terrorized because they're gay. It's still going on. Terrorizing libraries that have gay gay th gay content, terrorizing uh uh drag events like what the Proud Boys have been doing. Proud of what? I Proud of what I damn I damn sure don't know. And school bullies terrorizing gay kids. They perceive uh uh gays as weak and effeminate, which is why they terrorize them. But we have to fight back. We can't take this. I'm not gay myself. I strive to be a good ally. I say let us support our LGBTQ, etc. friends and neighbors. Let us uh support women as they uh defend their bodily autonomy, yes. Their reproductive rights, their right to an abortion, should they feel the need for such a procedure. And workers, I'm a union man, I'm proud to be a union man. And we must uh support uh work support workers. Workers as they try as they organize to to have uh good wages and especially in the midst of a pandemic, which we're still recovering from, and unsafe occupational conditions. Occupational safety and health is a very important key uh thing I'm interested in. And to support workers as they resist the harassment and intimidation from management that you which utilizes these uh union busting firms, which have become very sophisticated. And we must prevent uh government bodies from uh from looking the other way as we're being terrorized. I mean, so many uh uh levels at so many levels of government, uh municipal and county and states and federal, all these outgroups, labor among them, and LGBT and women, and and ethnic and racial minorities, I continue to be intimidated because those terrorizing them think uh they can get away with it because uh they think that the police and law enforcement is on their side. Usually it's been shown that uh it's often been the as often been the case, the Southern Poverty Law Center has shown countless cases of uh white nationalists and neofascist groups infiltrating law enforcement and the military. So as to attain military weapons and training. Uh so when the they so when their big day comes to massacre their uh opponents, they'll be armed and ready. We have to fight this. We're not gonna take it. Let that be it let that be one of our resolutions for the coming new year, 2023. We must resolve to stand up for our rights. And we can beat them. Okay, that's it for now. 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