jamie gray's personal blog, featuring his always unique perspectives on life, love, politics, corruption, traffic...and whatever else makes him rant. and rant he will. count on it.
There's a lot more to it than abortion. Nobody wants to have one of those anyway. It's really about Christian values. It's a WWJD question.
Should you vote for the party that wants to feed the poor, heal the sick, and welcome the immigrant? Who accept all people as equal, regardless of religion or gender or skin tones?
Or should you choose the 'Good Guys', the one's in Red Hats, who think they have the right to force their 'Christian' beliefs upon all American women? Upon the rest of secular America. It's not the Beliefs, it's the forcing. Don't let them lie to you: Christians aren't hated for what they believe. It's more what they DO in "God's Name" that pisses people off.
At some point, you gotta ask yourself honestly: How would you like it if someone forced YOU to join the Satanic Temple? Or if they changed The Pledge to "One Nation, Under Allah" and forced you to say it. Or put "In Beelzebub We Trust" on the Greenback? Putting 666 on every bill, coin or credit card?
Because if you allow them to do it in Jesus name, they could do it in Lucifer's in 2028, right? We'd all be much better off, by the way, because the Satanic Temple would allow us freedom to worship as (or IF) we please. #FirstAmendmentRights are important, right?
But finally, it's your choice to make. Decide wisely, while you still have a choice. Re-read that last Book in your Bible (before they censor IT...again) and maybe seek God's advice, if you STILL have doubts. You don't need me to tell you what it says about...well, you know. #AwakeNotWoke
It’s time. Time for The Independent Party – A small, but strong group of Independent candidates, who could essentially become the swing vote in Congress on every major issue. A few members of Congress just proved how powerful a small coalition can be.
The creation of a third party that represents those independent votes, with only a few Congress members in a nearly 50/50 Congress, could result in those votes becoming the deciding votes. A couple Senators and a handful of Congress members is all it would take.
We, the educated, thinking class of America, could take out rightful place as the decision makers in this deeply disturbed land. It’s time we stop letting partisan idiots and fools make the important decisions that matter to ALL Americans.
Jamie Gray. Voter. Conjurer of Bytes, Notes & Words. Seeker of Truth, Peace, & Harmony. Read the full post: jamiegraymusic.com
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.
Jesus didn’t die for my sins.
Jesus was murdered because he stood up for the poor; killed because he championed the ‘unclean’; the immigrants; the needy.
Jesus was assassinated by the church for doing good and preaching peace, targeted because he threatened their profits and the status quo.
Jesus died because he spoke truth to power. Then his killers created a bunch of lies and rules in His Name, that they’ve used ever since to exploit the uneducated, rather than teach them to be free.
Merry Christmas. May the Truth actually set you free. Happy Solstice. May the rebirth begin.
I am ready. Time to say “fuck off and die” to 2022. I don’t make resolutions, but this year needs to be a better one, so I’m choosing to sculpt a better future in my mind, and watch it appear in my life.
2023: It begins. #newyear
Bianchi Particular is hard to find in the US. Gotta go to Buenos Aires.
We sent them fight
We sent them to die
Now The ones who came back
Have to fight to survive
We owe them our future
We gained from their loss
We can’t leave them to suffer
In the weight of their cost
The flag it still waves
The red white and blue
Oh say can you see what
They’ve given for you
When you wake up today
Safe at home or afar
Give thanks to the soldiers
Wherever they are.
#VeteransDay2022
Conjurer of Bytes, Notes & Words. Seeker of Truth, Peace, & Harmony. Jamie Gray lives in upstate NY.
It’s just another election. Another chance to vote for someone you don’t know or care about, and hope they care about you, even though you know they don’t care about you. Two parties with one goal: to keep us regular people from wanting more.
The more we want, the less they can take. They make promises, but things move very slowly in government, and especially at the Federal level, change comes slowly. It can be frustrating. I’ve been expecting cannabis legalization ‘soon’ since 1980. Maybe it will happen this decade. Frustrating.
But I believe this election is different. They’ve taken away just about all they can take, from as many people as they could, and now they are coming for our democracy. Now they want the power to decide who wins the election without regard for our actual votes. They want the power to override the choices of the people, because their own choices are so unpopular that forcing them upon us is the only way.
It may be the one party that’s pushing for a more authoritarian America than the other right now, but in truth it’s the system that allowed it to get THIS bad. Our elections have become about money and manipulation, not issues that most people care about. Re-election and party loyalty have become more important than American progress and the Constitution.
Our government has lost it’s way. Once the greatest democratic experiment in the World, American politics has descended into a system of corporate rule, where the number of dollars is more important than the number of votes. Two party rule means we get to vote for two sides of the same old shit, and lack of term limits and ethics standards means it can be very profitable to be a lifetime politician.
We get to choose which politicians work for the corporate overlords, instead of public servants who work for US. Our government is run by an elite ruling class, rather than everyday Americans in service to make America better for All.
The Founders would cringe at the horror that we’ve wrought from their precious framework. But they also gave us the power to fix it…IF we choose to use it. IF we decide to reform our corrupt system, and refuse to allow our vote to become completely meaningless. Before the corrupt political elite make sure that we can’t.
I will vote tomorrow, and I’m voting BLUE because there are too many MAGA election deniers running on Team Red, and democracy is just too fucking important to fuck around.
#Vote #Election2022 #VoteBlue #Independent
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.
People who want to live their lives by their own rules
People who want to tell others how to live
If you’re in the second group, kindly go fuck yourselves with a fire hose. ~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.
New York Native Jamie Gray is a Conjurer of Bytes, Notes & Words; Seeker of Truth, Peace, & Harmony.
I don’t know why. I’ve never been to the UK. My parents are both from NY. I have no actual connection to Queen Elizabeth. But hearing that she was on her deathbed, and subsequently passed, brought tears to my eyes.
Queen Elizabeth II passed away today.
My Grammy told my mom as a child that she had to keep her room clean in case the Queen were to pay a visit. My mom told us kids the same thing. I suppose I stopped fretting about a Her Majesty’s Inspection a long time ago, but I still found myself weeping today, even as I knew for sure I’d never have to pass the Royal mustard. (That’s a weird expression, isn’t it?)
But if I’m being honest with myself, I know that I’m sobbing, not for a queen I’ve never been subject to, the Mum of Nation, a land far away, but for my own sadnesses and loss. If I’m being honest, I’ve spent a lot of time with tear-streaks on my cheeks the past few years. It doesn’t take much anymore.
The loss of your mom is hard. I miss mine every day; today more than many. Some of today’s tears are for the British people, losing theirs. But as we kids learn to live on, beyond our parents days on earth, the UK will go forward with King Charles (that sounds SO weird to say) at the helm of the British Empire. The sadness will linger, and then fade I suppose, but her reign will be remembered forever. God Save The Queen.
King Charles III becomes King
I wonder how many kids are secretly breathing a sigh of relief that The Queen will NOT be coming to check up on the tidiness of their bedrooms?
Jamie Gray | Conjurer of Bytes, Notes & Words. Seeker of Truth, Peace, & Harmony.
Racism isn’t the real problem, labels are. Don’t get me wrong, racism is a very real problem. I think we all need to practice anti-racism daily. But, that means finding the causes of racism, and effecting changes.
Because racism is more than just learned hatred. It’s about how we think. How we form our subjective opinions about the things we experience around us. That’s what needs to change. Because, one of our biggest problems is that, for some reason, we have the need to lump everything into a group of similar things, and then put a label on it.
When we label something, all objectivity goes out the window. Find an unlabeled jar of green, leafy material in your kitchen cupboard…you might draw the subjective opinion that it’s Oregano. Someone else might start looking for a bong to stuff it in. If there’s a label on it, your opinion doesn’t matter any more. Which is fine, until you open that mislabeled jar, and you smoke yourself into a huge headache instead of making spaghetti.
Objective thinking means overcoming the impulse to label everything, and instead letting everything label itself via discovery. Asking extra questions, rather than assuming the answers, based on labels that may or may not be fact. Observation, rather than intervention. Considering infinite possibilities of our futures, rather than just using past experiences to guide our present actions.
Objective thinking means that everyone gets the benefit of the doubt. Each person we meet becomes an opportunity to grow, rather than someone you can trust, or someone you should fear. Using our subjective opinions about events from our past should inform us in the present, but not control how we see unfamiliar experiences and new people in our lives.
Because a lot of times, we’ve got a mislabeled jar in the cupboard, and before making purple kush pizza for the family, maybe we should open the jar and give it a sniff. ~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 | Conjurer of Bytes, Notes & Words. Seeker of Truth, Peace, & Harmony.
Is everyone properly horrified yet?
Or will some folks continue to sit silent while even MORE of our liberty is sold to the highest corporate bidder?
Because THIS America we have now is complacency’s reward. We MUST demand a BETTER America. Better for ALL, not just a privileged few. E Pluribus Unum. From many, one.
Happy July 4th. Happy Birthday to the most divided America since the Civil War…Funny how little we’ve REALLY changed in 150+ years. Except the Mason-Dixon line now runs through every town, right down Main Street.
But we don’t have to accept this America as Ours. We can change Our America to become the Home of Freedom for realz, Freedom for ALL, not just Freedom for the ones who can afford it. ~jg
What if your vote mattered, and the money you paid in taxes was actually spent on things that mattered to YOU? Imagine if you got to vote on where that money got spent. What if you could check boxes on your tax return to determine what purposes your tax money could be spent on, and the government HAD to spend it on those things only? Yes, spend my taxes on education. No, don’t spend anything on military. Yes, feed the poor. No, tax breaks to ExxonMobil.
Well, it probably wouldn’t work because rich people would start paying just enough taxes to fuck over the rest of us…but the point is this: We don’t live in a democracy. It’s a plutocratic oligarchy. Your vote may count for WHO you elect, but what they do when they get there is decided by money. Legal bribery, really. They call it lobbying, but rich people pay cash to get the government to do what they want. The more money you have, the louder your voice and the more likely you are to get your way.
Most of us have better things to spend our money on, because we know the puny amount we could spend wouldn’t buy us a second thought from our government. But wealthy people and corporations have deep pockets, and control the outcome of our votes. We don’t get to decide ‘pass gun control’ or ‘don’t pass gun control’. All we can do is vote red or blue and wait for nothing to happen.
Our voices have been silenced by big government and a rigged two party system that is designed to self perpetuate and grow, exploiting the masses more as it does. The rich get richer. Pandemic Recession. War. None of it matters when you’re rich as fuck. Bank accounts keep growing. Lobbyists are hired. Votes are solicited. Laws are changed to spend more government money here or there. Never where it’s really needed by the majority of our citizens.
People who need help go without, while the rich get tax cuts. Billions go to subsidize fossil fuel corporate shareholders while our veterans are forgotten. Teachers use their own money to buy paper and pencils because schools are underfunded. Folks lose their houses because of medical bills, while Jeff Bezos blasts his ugly bald head and all his rich buddies into space. It doesn’t matter who you vote for. As long as money makes the decisions in DC, it doesn’t matter who you elect. Not in this system.
But a system that pretends to be democratic can’t last. Good intentions or not, this is not what the framers could have forseen. They were wise, not psychic. They built checks and balances, but there’s a way around everything if you’re willing to sacrifice your conscience, and well, most of the politicians we elect have none.
So it keeps growing. Bigger. More corrupt. More money for the wealthy, less of everything for everyone else. Less happiness. Less free time to think about being unhappy. Less money. Less LIFE. Until it ultimately implodes, thanks to corruption and greed, or explodes in revolution, whichever comes first.
There’s still time, for a ‘peaceful revolution’ at the ballot box, but since one party is going out of their way to erode our faith in elections, the other kind of revolution will quickly become the only game in town.
Your VOTE still matters. Choose wisely. Choose Independent. Choose Implosion. Demand better candidates. Demand term limits. Demand money OUT of politics Demand a VOICE in the future. Demand DEMOCRACY. Don’t buy the party lines. EITHER of them. They are both designed to polarize and divide. They are both designed to exploit. Designed to fail.
United we Stand, Divided we Fail. ~jg
Conjurer of Bytes, Notes & Words. Seeker of Truth, Peace, & Harmony. | Jamie Gray jamiegraymusic.com
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.
