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
I grew up with a bunch of religious taboos and social rules to follow. My parents were consumed with appearances and fitting in. By the time I got to high school, I was pretty messed up. Confused. Ignorant. A normal teen, growing up, without Internet, back in the day.
Apparently, I’m one of the last boomers. My parents were part of the Silent Generation. I guess the silent part was for realz because I never even heard of the Silent Generation until I looked up the folks to see where they fit in. Silence is golden I guess.
I miss my parents. Maybe they helped mess me up in the head. They caused some pain, but they didn’t do it on purpose. By and large, they did a pretty good job for their day. I mean, people didn’t really have a clue back then about parenting. You just did what your parents did. Funny how once you become a parent, you can see it from your parent’s perspective, and it suddenly makes a lot more sense. You know, all that shit that didn’t make sense back then, it’s pretty clearly stupid as fuck now.
I tried really hard to blame mom and dad for a lot of pain that was clearly my own fault. It took time to grow up and own the responsibility. It’s fine to acknowledge the damage that others cause us. But ultimately it’s up to us what we do with that pain. We do best when we own it and choose not to be defined by it, but rather defined by how we overcame it. Own the pain by owning the triumph.
The pain just keeps coming, and as you get older, each day gets a bit more full of pain. But also more full of joy. I find more joy in everything I do. Peeling through the skin of bitter pain to savor the joyous fruits, makes the fruit all the more sweet. ~jg
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.
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
It’s a circus. A dog and pony show, of lies, half truths, and propaganda, moderated mostly by the honor system, as actual journalism has devolved into a mass-media marketing scheme. Competing corporate overlords selling the particular brand of fear they think you’re most likely to buy. When in truth, they should be afraid of YOU.
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Here’s the thing about modern American politics: They want us to argue, to the point of complete distraction if at all possible, about big picture shit that is really hard to change. Both parties want the same thing. They want us at each other’s throats over masks and vaccines, instead of just wearing them. They chide us on, to defend or attack the right to be an idiot vs. social responsibility and acting in the common good. Respecting the rights of all the other idiots. But what they DON’T want us to do is to learn to communicate with each other.
Uncle Sam is a Corporate Tool.
They ply us with contradictory information. Some of it’s true, but they make it all seem true. That way when we discuss it, nobody can easily agree on the facts. Close scrutiny will reveal the truth eventually, but who has time for that? By the time the truth comes out, the ‘facts’ don’t even matter, thanks to the hype.
It’s a circus. A dog and pony show, of lies, half truths, and propaganda, moderated mostly by the honor system, as actual journalism has devolved into a mass-media marketing scheme. Competing corporate overlords selling the particular brand of fear they think you’re most likely to buy. When in truth, they should be afraid of YOU.
Corporate News is Not Journalism. Take the time to find The Truth.
Someday, I hope Americans will wake up and realize they deserve better than lip service. We deserve great things.
‘We live in the greatest country in the world’. That’s what they say. I beg to differ.
The greatest country in the world would be at the top of every list. Education. Happiness. Poverty. Healthcare. Crime. Violence. Civil rights. Wellness. Climate change. Sustainability. Incarceration. Mental health. Innovation. Productivity. Renewable energy. Manufacturing. We don’t lead the world in ANY of these important issues.
Poverty in America rivals many ‘third world’ nations. Education sucks. Don’t get me started about healthcare. It’s fine if you can afford it.
The United States of America: It’s fine if you can afford it.
We may have the most powerful military in the world, but even that’s not going to last long. We’re diving deeper and deeper into a national debt we can never repay, to fund wars on terrorism, which are really just thinly veiled political power plays, economic plunder at the expense of the indigenous people who really just want to be left alone to live their lives.
If every American could just go to the doctor without worrying about money, that would be great. If every kid had the opportunity for a GREAT education, and no one had to worry about being homeless in their old age, people would say THAT is great. If we sent food to the hungry, instead of missiles and tanks to their government: greatness.
People in many countries live a better life than we do, here in the States. Free healthcare. A social security system that works. Clean power fueling sustainable industries. Great free education for all. We have plenty of opportunities to become a great country. Truthfully, we’ve been a greater country before. The MAGA folks are at least partly right. We were far from perfect, but we used to lead the world in something other than greed and exploitation, before we lost our way.
We’ve given the keys to our future to a few powerful people, people who control corporations, which control our government. Corporations are very good at doing one thing: maximizing profits. THAT’S how they’ve managed to get people to work sixty hours a week and STILL not earn a living wage. Life isn’t better than it was fifty years ago for most Americans. Even most rich people don’t feel like things are better. Many wealthy people are preoccupied with losing everything, all the time.
Protecting rich people is so much more important than protecting poor people.
Why? Because, the rich are better than everyone else, of course. Wealthy people are simply more entitled to human rights than other people, simply because they have money, and…they’re just fucking entitled. That’s just ‘how it is’.
We let this happen. We allow a system to exist that causes this to be true, despite our ability to make demands enforced by democratic action (OUR VOTES). The system doesn’t have to be like this. It doesn’t have to be like it used to be, in order to magically get better. Think about that. It just makes no fucking sense.
Vote. It counts. Otherwise the minority, GOP assholes wouldn’t keep trying to suppress it.
The system has to get BETTER to get better. Better for EVERYONE, not just the elite. Not just for some people. Better in the things that matter. Change must benefit the majority to have a positive effect. Better.
I say, how about we try making things ‘better’ first and THEN maybe we can talk about ‘great’.
Greatness isn’t just a claim you make to impress people over cocktails. Greatness is easily recognizable. Greatness lasts. Truly great things stand the test of time. Some even improve with age. ~jg
Jamie Gray – Musician & Writer
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.
