Category: #jfs

Fuck Insurance (Especially health insurance).

jamie

All insurance is a scam. Health Insurance is a fucking crime.
You have insurance, you think, ‘Cool I’m covered’. But nope…you still have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars. How is that fair?

Insurance should be fucking insurance. I get sick. I’m insured. Insurance fucking pays, not me. It’s not really insurance if they get you coming and going. You pay all that money up front…every month…hundreds of dollars, maybe thousands per year. Sometimes they take it right out of your paycheck, before you ever see it.

Then you get sick. You give em the card, cross your fingers and pray. Deductible here. CoPay there. Deny this. Pro-rated that. You get out of the hospital, and before your recovery is even complete, they start coming: A bill from this doctor you don’t remember. A charge for this test and that screening. You haven’t even gotten back to work, and you’re buried in red ink.

What the fuck people. How is THIS the ‘best’ healthcare? If they save your life and then take your house to cover the cost…and that’s if you HAVE insurance. If you don’t, good luck even getting the services you need. When they know they aren’t getting paid, they somehow manage to do the barest minimum. Imagine that. For-Profit Hospitals putting profits above the best healthcare for all. WhoDaThunk?

Fuck Capitalism. Services like healthcare, police, fire, EMS, ambulance, military, prisons, education. These should NEVER be privatized. Everyone has the right to the best services we can provide when it comes to health and safety. People shouldn’t have to worry about paying the bills for these services. It should be included in our taxes, even if they are a little higher.

Separate but equal doesn’t work any more in healthcare than it does in education. Haves and have-nots alike should be protected from harm as citizens of an advanced and equitable society. Exploitation and greed have no place competing with the Hippocratic Oath for healthcare dollars. Those dollars are best spent on research, not drug commercials, dividends and CEO salaries.

The only way you do that is to get rid of the insurance companies and big pharma. Our universities, properly funded by tax dollars, could be an amazing core of medical research and medicine development…for the good of ALL, not just the shareholders and board of directors. No more price gouging on critical medicines. No more rationing of new medical treatments to the well-to-do and connected.

That’s what socialized medicine could be. It doesn’t have to be a poorly designed and inequitable system. There are plenty of examples of socialized medicine around the world that are models for a better standard of care than ours.

Healthcare is a human right, in a society that has advanced to the point where we CAN CHOOSE between profit and doing the right thing.

Do we really want to be THAT country? The one that chooses profits? Because WE have a choice. ~jg

New York writer and musician, Jamie Gray

Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.

Happy 2022*

jamie
Happy 2022*. Staying Home. Staying Stoned.

I truly thought 2020 was the worst year ever. I was optimistic when it ended. I thought things would be better in 2021. Here we are anyway.

Last Year’s New Year’s Message: Happy 2021 It Might Not Suck

2022. Pandemic year two. They say it will become endemic. That we will learn to live with COVID-19. Like the flu.

Fuck.

Some really great things have happened this year. Most of them have come with caveats and asterisks. Just like 2020. *Pandemic year. It’s easy to forget the little joys in the big hurt. Lots of hurt.

We moved to upstate NY this year. That was a good thing.

This overwhelming sadness is what I’ll remember most about these times. So much loss. My spirit feels beaten and bruised. PTSD seems the new norm, in a world where we must fear living among liars and idiots, who would profit or die by denial of the common sense measures to keep everyone well.

We lost Betty White on the last day of this piece of shit year, confirming it’s status as ‘worst year ever’. #RIPBetty

I don’t go anywhere that isn’t absolutely necessary anymore. Certainly not the crowded indoor areas where music and alcohol flow. The places we used to love to go. Where life stopped for a few short hours, and the only thing that mattered was how the music moved the crowd. Where we all came together, sometimes encroaching on each other’s personal space, if only because somebody lost their balance in the drunken, drug steeped swerve to a frenzied beat that infected the entire crowd. It was fun. It didn’t feel like a death threat, like now.

COVID killed businesses across the country in 2021.

If this is what ‘living with it’ will be like, I don’t think I’m ready for that. I’m not ready to go ANYWHERE without an N95 mask and a litre of hand sanitizer. I don’t see that changing because they start calling it an ENdemic instead of PANdemic. Call it whatever you want. I’m staying home.

So Happy 2022 from my house. Where I plan to spend the year, with the (vaccinated) ones I love most. ~jg

*Pandemic year three.

Jamie Gray | Musician and Writer. Pessimistic optimist.

Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.

Today is The Day…

jamie

Today is the day, they say
That you worried about yesterday, they say
I say, Yesterday would have been
Better without all that fretting
That worry that counted for nothing
But clouding the state of your mind
From the happiness and joy
You could’ve created
Instead of the stress
All the angst and the pain

Live in the now, they say
Nothing’s for sure, they say
Except that the future
and past are the same
They’re both in your head
Illusions not real
Because nothing is real
But the feelings you feel
That can only be felt
By you. Right now.

peace & joy y’all. ~jg

Jamie Gray is a musician, writer, and native New Yorker

Rationality

jamie

Rationality. If you look at American politics right now, you don’t see much of it. No, you mostly see two heavily armed camps, ready to flirt with disaster, risking all of our futures to achieve some set of higher principles that, if left to the other party, mean nothing short of destruction of everything we hold dear.

If you lean left, you’re being told that the evil Republicans are trying to stop the valiant Democrats from purging corporate control of our government and giving money, and the country, back to the people.

US Capitol – Washington DC

If you lean right, you’re worried the stupid Dems will spend us into doom, while taxing the rich until they can’t afford their summer homes and ski retreats.

If you’re on the far right, they’re trying to convince you that Socialism is the root of all evil, and that Satanic forces are killing babies in the womb, as they hand our God fearing Nation over to Hillary and Obama’s army of godless heathen Democrat pedophile pizza-politicians.

Now, I’m not saying I believe politicians from either party (especially the MAGA Republicans). Politicians are liars. It’s what they do. But some things they say make a grain of sense on their own, while others require a leap of faith to believe. I’m too old for leaps of faith. Especially when they require lapses of logic.

None of the MAGA Republicans claims hold up to rational thought. They are based in conspiracy theories, rumors, and full-on mistruths, lacking in facts or proof of any kind. There simply isn’t much in the way of a rational argument. For anything.

Share your fire. Feed the blaze.
#happiness #N0H8

When it’s all said and done, proof is best measured in actions and results. Rich people always do well. They do better when Republicans are in power. Since the 80s they’ve claimed the wealth will “trickle down”, while it gushed up to the millionaires…who became billionaires as millions died in the Pandemic. Meanwhile, America is deep in debt, and sitting on the edge of climate disaster and insurrection. Suffice to say, the trickle they’ve been promising for 40 years ain’t enough.

Poor people rarely win in America. Their voices, while numerous, are routinely ignored and rejected by all in power. At least when Democrats act, the average goes up. Poor gets less poor. Inequity decreases. Usually not by much, of course.

Jan 6 Insurrection| Capitol police defend The Capitol from Trump supporters in Washington DC – Jan 6 2021

We’re reaching a tipping point where debt threatens to collapse our economy as injustice and inequity are rising to unsustainable levels. The seeds of revolution are deeply sown, and change WILL come, one way or another.

Our choice is to usher it in gracefully, or let it take us by force, and at great cost. If the way we’ve handled climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic so far are any indication, we are in for a REALLY hard ride, folks. ~jg

Musician and Writer, Jamie Gray

Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.

Dear Anti-Maskers

jamie

If I drive down your street at 70mph, the residential street your kids play on, you’d probably be in favor of the State forcing me to slow down, wouldn’t you? For your kids safety? Because the Government has the right, and DUTY to protect the people. From reckless speeders and other dangerous people, such as anti-mask propagandists like you.

I don’t have the right to drive without regard for others safety. Likewise, I have the duty to protect others around me, including my children and yours. I listen to the science that says, driving slowly in densely populated areas with children playing is safer than speeding.

But you don’t listen to science. You disregard safety precautions that nearly all medical professionals agree are important, and claim the right to do so is ‘freedom’. Most horrifically, you’re willing to risk your children’s lives to prove your point, one that science says you’re completely wrong about.

If you think your children have the right to attend school without vaccine or mask during a global pandemic, you’re dead wrong. Children shouldn’t have to pay the ultimate price for your stupidity and your partisan, QAnon, MAGA, political propaganda. America’s children certainly don’t deserve to become victims of this deadly disease, because of the lies you promote and defend. Their Deaths Are Your fault. On your head. 99.9% Preventable.

Please Drink (and Drive) Responsibly

You may as well drink a fifth of vodka and drive 100mph through a school zone at 3:05pm, because that’s probably LESS dangerous than preventing schools from masking up during this pandemic. The Delta Variant is NOT your mama’s COVID…it’s much, MUCH worse. ~jg

The Shark – Jamie’s 2010 Challenger

Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.

Or 1 N Big 9 S 8 Brother A 4 Well

jamie

…”They have some pretty slick AI that screens for connections and the tell-tale hearts of anti-american hostility and malcontent. It sniffs it out chunks of terrorist cholesterol from the Internet’s arteries, as gigabytes of data streams past their hidden packet snatchers.”…

They know you already. You don’t have to believe it for it to be true, and knowing the truth doesn’t make you crazy. Unless they need you to be, and generally speaking, they don’t.

So…Once the NSA knows-that-you-know that they ‘listen’ to everything you do online, it’s basically #GameOn. Are you a subversive? Who are your followers? Who do you follow? Are any of them ‘terrorists‘? Because since 2001, that’s the best way for the .gov folks to shut down the voices that are violent. Preach revolt. Or maybe just make too much sense. 

We’re Watching. ~The NSA

I know they’re watching me. Because they watch everything. Everyone. They have some pretty slick AI that screens for connections and the tell-tale hearts of anti-american hostility and malcontent. It sniffs it out chunks of terrorist cholesterol from the Internet’s arteries, as gigabytes of data streams past their hidden packet snatchers. Filters the digital goo. Combs thru it all, looking for nuggets of evil against Uncle Sam.

Uncle Sam Towers Above The Danbury CT Railroad Museum

Good ol’ patriotic malcontent used to be ok, back in the day. You can still say the government sucks, if you’re careful, but thanks to the MAGA Revolution, we now know that even patriots can be terrorists…and so does the NSA. Even a gentle grumble can raise the AI hackles these days, which flags you for human eyes to review your dossier. Everyone’s got a dossier if they have any sort of online presence at all. I bet you think you don’t, but if you’re reading this, you know me, so they definitely have you in their crosshairs too.

The good news is, as long as you don’t go too far, they would rather just keep watching. Of course, if you suddenly ‘radicalize’ by plotting violence, or maybe worse, disappear from the Web, don’t be surprised if that generic panel van parked on your street is full of feds with heat tracing cameras and parabolic mics. These are scary times…it makes sense. Sort of. In hugely Orwellian fashion.

Jamie Gray|Musician and Writer

I suppose I should worry. I talk a lot about revolution and rebellion. I DO think the government sucks. But I’d never condone violence, except in self-defense. And I’d never advocate for a coup. I think we SHOULD overturn our government…from inside. Through VOTES and legislation and policy. Kick the moneychangers out of the temple of democracy, so to speak. Voting and peaceful protest. Through free speech, empathy and kindness, educating people to see the corruption that is right in front of them, and show them how to be a part of the solution rather than a victim of a system that pretends to care.

I’m not a threat to anybody’s safety. I’m an advocate for a better America. One that takes care of the little guy…and the victim. An America like they told us about in Civics class. Do they even teach Civics anymore?

Most importantly, I’m not a threat to the status quo. Nobody actually listens to me. I’m just a crazy old guy on a couch, with a guitar, a remote control, and a lot of ideas. If I ask my followers to do anything, most of them might get around to doing something. 
If it’s not too hard or uncomfortable.
Someday. Soon, for sure.
One of my favorite songs puts it best: 
“I’d start a revolution…
…If I could get up in the morning”. 
~ Aimee Allen

Thanks for reading to the end. Please #Vote. ~jg

“I’d Start a Revolution (If I Could Get Up in the Morning)” Aimee Allen

Aimee Allen

Can we save our planet? Is it too late?

jamie
Several nations are threatened with extinction due to climate change.

Maybe the climate deniers were wrong.
Maybe the scientists were wrong, too, and it’s MUCH WORSE than they thought.
Maybe it IS too late.
But maybe it’s not.
Even if the experts were sure it’s too late.
Maybe they’re wrong. ~jg

Jamie Gray | Musician. Writer. Ally of Earth.
Not a tool of corporate greed.

Read the articles that inspired Jamie’s Rant:

These countries have warned they face extinction. They hope climate report is a ‘major alert.’ https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/climate-change-rising-seas-may-lead-extinction-small-island-nations-n1276394

Is too late to save our planet? https://www.aljazeera.com/program/inside-story/2021/8/10/is-too-late-to-save-our-planet