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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Share your fire. Feed the blaze.
#happiness #N0H8
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.
US Capitol – Washington DC
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.
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.
Once upon a time, the Republican party stood for small government, family values, low taxes and States’ rights. Not anymore.
Honest Abe would shudder at the state of the Republican Party, The Party of Lincoln.
As an independent, I’ve voted for Republicans because they were people of honor and character. These days, it’s hard to see any truth for all of the lies.
Trumpian Republicans aren’t real Republicans. They are just using the GOP, a party that had already lost its center thanks to right-to-life extremists and an obstructionist platform, to sully the American drinking trough with the foul and muddy water of propaganda and lies.
Republicans embraced the Big Lie because they are being held hostage by the Big Liar.
Instead of embracing new technologies and sustainable energy, they spread fear and lies. Green energy will cost jobs. Clean energy is too expensive. Whatever it takes to keep things how they are.
But, it turns out that everything they say is a lie. It turns out they’ve never embraced truth or science or morality. It turns out that none of that matters to them.
The only thing they live for is party loyalty, as the party desperately clings to power. Power vested in a minority of rich white male egomaniacs, who believe they are better than the rest of us. They talk about America, but not about the America of many cultures. They mean WHITE America.
Jamie Gray – Musician, Writer and Critic of The Idiocracy.
The America most of us live in is NOT the America they pursue. In their America, the strong dominate the weak. It’s every wolf for himself. Mercy and compassion are a weakness to be overcome.
They say ‘If you’re poor, you’re a failure. Probably lazy.’ The wealthy love to blame people for their predicament.
Capitol under siege by Trump loyalists on January 6 2021
It’s time to stop blaming, and start doing something about it. It’s amazing to me that we COULD fix so many of our problems, but our leaders CHOOSE NOT TO, and Republicans lead the way in the obstruction of every policy that benefits anyone except their rich, corporate overlords.
It’s pretty obvious that the Republican party needs to change in order to survive. They will probably continue down what looks like a path to their own destruction, but it’s important to note that the GOP could seize the opportunity, and do a LOT better. Maybe even become a force for positive change.
More likely, they’ll just keep changing for the worse. ~jg
I can see why Democrats are nervous about killing the Filibuster. Why? Because it will be gone FOREVER. Permanently. No take backs. Both parties might have to actually have to start governing, instead of just blaming the other for everything. Don’t believe me? Hear me out.
Let’s say the Republicans come back to hold a majority in the Senate. I prefer that this never happens, of course. At least not THIS Republican party. Anyway, let’s say they do take back the Senate.
The LAST thing they would do is reinstate the Filibuster. Because if they DID, they would suddenly need 60 votes to pass anything instead of just 50. Why would they want to give the Democrats 10 votes? They wouldn’t.
Democrats should repeal the Filibuster immediately, and start governing. Expect the Republicans to do the same when they get a majority. Everybody needs to put on their big boy pants and learn to compromise.
Both parties need to start serving the people who elected them, not just the corporations and rich bastards who exploit the rest of us for their own gain. We’re tired of dying so the rich can get richer and have more power to fuck us in the ass with.
