Category: #opinion

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.

Uncommon Sense

jamie

Common sense is a paradox. Having common sense is not common at all. What seems common sense to you, may not be obvious to other people, and many people just don’t have any common sense at all. Some people just act irrationally. Even if they claim it’s by design, that doesn’t make it sensible.

So much about life today is paradox. Almost no one is who they seem, as much as who they want you to see them as. Even our leaders have abandoned Truth and Logic for lies and deceptions.

I’ve always thought that most people ‘get it’. I figured, a small minority may be clueless, while most people understand things. More or less. That’s what I thought. Used to think.

…our Leaders have abandoned Truth and Logic…

It’s easy enough to look back and ask if what you did made sense, but it’s also hard to look at our mistakes objectively. It’s much easier to ACT as if we’re smart and just ignore our own ignorance.

Lately, it’s become clear that those of us who truly think about what we’re doing, and whether it makes sense, we are a drastic minority.

Talk about a paradox. ~jg

Jamie Gray – Musician, Writer, Thinker

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.

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.

Autumn Kindling

jamie

I’d like to say I know who I am. I’m pretty sure I’m still finding out.
I’d like to say I know how things really are…that I know a lot about lots of important stuff.
Maybe I used to. The truth is, these days I feel like I know a lot of useless stuff that I’m absolutely sure will someday be important to someone, someplace.

Fall leaves in the yard | Original Photo by Jamie Gray

But, I do know a lot of things that could be much better, but for some ‘important’ people who are unwilling to change and uninterested in doing anything for anyone but themselves.
I also know that we all can make a difference if we decide not to be indifferent. I try to do my part.
The sun rises and sets, and all that I know seems everyday madness. But it’s bigger than me. It’s bigger than us.
Another day in the gilded age of Internet and impressions.

Every age of glory fades away or goes down in flames. And…It’s just…well, everything about America right now looks a lot like Autumn kindling.
~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.

Jamie Gray – Upstate NY Musician, Writer, and Photographer

Trump was not God’s fave

jamie

To all my so-called Christian friends who voted for Trump: The rise of Evangelical sheisters and the Trump presidency were both predicted by Jesus in Matthew 24:23-25

What would Jesus do?

23
At that time if anyone says to you, `Look, here is the Christ!’ or, `There he is!’ do not believe it.
24
For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect–if that were possible.
25
See, I have told you ahead of time.

True Christians act like Christ. Name ONE thing Trump and his team did that was Christ-like. Can’t name one? Because Trump did the OPPOSITE of what Christ would do.

Open your eyes. Don’t be deceived. ~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.