If Ben Franklin had his way, we’d be eating the national bird ? every Thanksgiving. Or maybe we’d eat bald eagle, because Turkeys would be a protected symbol of America’s deliciousness? #YouTellMe ~jg
America’s love-hate relationship with the bald eagle https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/03/bald-eagle-america-history-jack-e-davis/621311/
The Bald Eagle is protected in the US, but I bet it tastes just like Turkey.
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.
What the fuck? Wake up, Joe! I’m just saying. Biden should’ve been at the UN before Putin’s troops crossed the border into Ukraine, demanding a vote for UN Troops be sent in to defend the Ukrainian people.
Not NATO. The United Nations. And No, Russia doesn’t get a vote because they just lost their seat on the security council, thanks to this criminal act of aggression.
UN Peacekeeping Troops
I’m serious. UN troops should be defending Kiev. I mean, isn’t this what the UN is for? To defend democratic, peaceful nations from war pigs like Putin, who would invade sovereign soil and attempt to overthrow a duly elected government, and replace it with a Kremlin puppet.
I’m really not a war monger, in favor of American troops being used as ‘peace keepers’. But under the UN Flag, those same troops make an important statement: “Civilized people don’t do this shit, Vlad”. UN troops are a deterrent. He’s not just attacking Ukraine, he’s attacking the World.
War Pig Vladimir Putin. Where’s a CIA assassin when you need one?
This bold move would send Putin a message:”The World is against you on this”. If Putin chooses to fire on UN Troops, he’s declaring war on the World. He truly would be over the edge, to do that. I would argue that anyone THAT unstable is going nuclear eventually anyway.
Yeah, I said it. That’s what we’re all afraid of: Putin’s Nukes. If he doesn’t get his way, he’ll throw a big boy tantrum. Then, how does this not escalate to ICBMs unless he backs down or we do? I’m sure the generals have a plan for this. Time to roll Operation Pig Roast?
Bullies only understand strength. It’s Time To Eat Our Spinach.
Because appeasing a bully never works. He took Crimea, now he’s back for the rest because no one made him pay for his crime. If the World lets him take control of Free Ukraine, what will he plunder next? UN Troops in his way are an IMPORTANT statement that the World will not stand for it. Not America. Not NATO. TheWorld.
Defending fledgling democracy from criminal acts of warfare by autocratic dictators should be Mission #1 for the UN. Defending peace, and those who struggle to defend their freedom.
“You can say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
I hope some day you’ll join us, and the world can live as one”.
~John Lennon /Imagine
If the UN will not stand up for a free Ukraine, what the hell is it good for? Let’s just get rid of it. Scrap the useless den-of-shuck-and-jive United Nations, and replace it with a United World that is willing to act. Willing to do the right thing.
For Ukraine, and for everywhere democracy and freedom struggle to survive. ~jg
Putin ordered a Russian invasion of Ukraine, a clear violation of international law
I support the Ukranian people, and their right for their votes to decide their own future. #FuckPutin and the horse the shirtless war pig rode in on. ~jg
Ukrainian troops on alert
#RussiaOutOfUkraine #IStandWithUkraine
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.
Capitalism is survival of the fittest. Dog eat dog. Caveat emptor. Profits and power are the cornerstone of the elite class, a self made royalty in a society that measures value and worth by the dollar and acre.
In contrast, most of us ordinary people see the importance of the common good. We recognize the inherent value in taking care of everyone, not just the ones who would kill and eat everyone else in order to ensure their own survival. As human beings, adopting degrees of Socialism is the acknowledgement that we’ve transcended to those higher places. It’s evolution of the species, to a new place, where we learn take care of our own. ALL of them, even if they don’t look like us or speak our tongue.
Socialism doesn’t mean everyone gets an equal share, like in communism. Instead, socialism seeks to ensure that everyone gets an equal chance, and less lives are wasted. Even a capitalist should be able to grok the concept of less waste. Isn’t prevention of wasted human potential just as important as protecting human life itself? Our society should be made up of haves and have-mores, instead of haves and have-nots. The rich can still get richer. They just can’t do it by exploiting people to the point of sickness, starvation and homelessness. THAT sounds like Humanism to me…and shouldn’t we ALL be humanists? #HumanityFirst ~jg
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.
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.
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, 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
