Everyone gets bored now and then.
GHD & RNN
blogOPTICA
Dreams and thoughts, thoughts and dreams...not necessarily in that order.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Birth, Life, Death--A Personal Event
It is better to have been born, to have lived, and to have died, than never to have been born at all. It is a journey. At the end gate, which is called death, without the other two parts of the journey, birth and life, there would be nothing.
Of the three, birth, life, death, death is the door to eternity, but that is not bad, as that 'eternity' is where we are meant to be. Life, it is meant to be full, but it is still flawed, and all that. Birth, life, is the path, not the destination, eternity through death is.
To take your corporeal body into that forever would truly be sad as our corporeal existence decays no matter how much you love your life.
Your non-corporeal essence is a record of your birth and life, everything, everything down to the nano particle and as expansive as the starry sky. Your life no matter how short or gruesome is a record. A TOTAL record of all of life experiences, it is your 'self', your soul. Even if YOU lived only a minute or suffered throughout or died a horrible death...that is a record you have earned or unearned, good, bad, or indifferent. All the happiness, all the sadness, all the pleasure, all the pain, that is the 'reality' of the body, and it translates into your soul. The 'reality'? At 'death' it all goes with you, but without the body.
Don't believe in a reality without a body? Dream on.
When you 'die', be sure to carry all the love you can muster with you. Love is our buffer, love is our shield, love is our comfort.
Do I seem too sure of myself? It is because in 1983 I drank a lot for a year, and was in continuous physical and emotional pain, so overdosed on aspirin accidently. An excess of both aspirin and alcohol. My gastrointestinal system took the hit.
One morning I woke up, took a crap, looked into the toilet bowl to see a black, tarry mass. I looked at my hands, my fingernails and skin were absent of color, I almost fainted, called my neighbor to take me to hospital. I had developed severe bleeding gastritis...I was bleeding to death from the inside out.
The last thing I remember that day was a group of nurses standing in the hall amazed and worried at how much blood I had lost and received. I was still alive. Then suddenly I was not alive at all, I had died. I had flat lined. Apparently a sizable amount of time passed in this state--maybe twelve, fifteen minutes--I was never told exactly how long. I think the attending staff and doctors did not know for sure themselves.
I was gone, then I was back. The next thing I remember seeing was my ex-wife sitting by the side of the hospital bed. It was the next day. There is more to the event than I am telling here. I do not want to enter into philosophical, speculative discourse. Nevertheless, I have the memory of what happened to my consciousness, and it was good.
In retrospect I can say this now, I do not fear death. I know one other thing: it is the feeling of love that you'll want to take with you.
It also helps to have a sense if humor.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Our New Cartoon Book
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Based on our slideshow comic strips we have put together a book of caricatures, cartoons, quotes and quips skewering your favorite, or...perhaps, not so favorite, pundits and pols.
Suitable for reading in the bathroom or under the covers with a flashlight at night. A book! It's how we pay for our blog.
GHD & RHN
Monday, July 13, 2009
The Future - It's A Gamble - So Here's A Guess
OHAI. File this under 'Humor', barely.
Hey, I'm somewhat of a futurist, although, not an expert, (are any futurist really experrts, come on?), I'm really more of a 'hobbyist' futurist. I just like making projections based on wild ideas...if they come to pass..I look great! (It's that old full court shot at the buzzer strategy!) If they don't, well nobody really cares anyhow and will probably forget about them in short order. Here's where I agree with George W. Bush, however: "Oh, I don't know...I'll be dead when they figure it out."
But, anyhow, here goes: THE COMPREHENSIVE FEDERAL TAX AND POWER LOTTERY PROGRAM
A possible future programs that,
1. reduces taxes by a big chunk, and,
2. makes paying taxes kinda like a game, (but, shhh, it seems like a game, but it's really a tax).
A uniform tax would be levied on every adult citizen this tax would be collected through sales, income, and use of resources, and property taxes at a set percentage rate.
However, this tax would only comprise one half of total federal revenues, the other half would be represented by income derived from selling a lottery!!!
Yay!
The lottery drawing would be held weekly, one drawing per state or territory. with a fixed percentage of lottery sales going to the winners...ah, redistribution of wealth!
How do you enter the lobby, you might ask? Well, every time you buy something, you the NATIONAL POWER TAX LOTTERY, with a drawing monthly, nationwide. This program will provide for federal programs, you know, the federal budget social security supplemental financing comes to mind right away, (I suspect by this program comes to reality social security will need a little outside cash ha, ha.) . Otherwise, you'll buy lottery tickets of your choice ranging from $1 to $20, these will be for designated government programs, i.e., schools, education, public safety, roadways, water, sewerage, hospitals, assisted living centers, health care,
So you see, you could buy a $1 National Power Tax Lottery Ticket, and $5 worth of instant win, scratch off tickets targeted for state programs, like, "Hey, give me five of those $1 scratch offs--one of the 'schools', one 'hospital', and, oh, yeah, give me three 'sewers'."
States, and local governments would receive revenue not from their own taxes but based on available resources, industries, and service OUTPUT....the more output the more revenue received. Build a bridge, get money from the federal government, build a sports arena, get fed money from the tax lottery!! Smaller local governments and municipalities would receive revenue the same way, if a community built a new school, money from the fed tax revenue program arrives. Just like that. TA, DA!
How would this money be apportioned? Ahah! I'm glad you asked: By gauging through regular polls--A SMART TAX!--that is how educated the citizenry is, or not...how many slackers the community has, alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana sales (oh, did I mention hemp would be legal?), and also health--i.e., who is dying, and at what age. So a total loser community made up of low income properties, non-achievers, welfare recipients (yeah, there still would be handouts, but aged and infirm and children of need would receive fed government support for living, healthcare, of course). But for the rest of society, citizens need to advocate, and vote the projects into being, building needed schools, infrastructure, healthcare facilities, business parks, what have you, projects for the common good.
The mechanics of the free market will supply goods and services, as before, (that's 'before' as in 'past', which of course, means like 'now').
But don't short change the LOTTERY...once a week in fifty or so markets, at every level of society---some one, somewhere becomes a millionaire!
And once a month, nationally, someone becomes a MULTI-MILLIONAIRE!
Whew, talk about redistribution of wealth!
THANKS,
GHD
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
The Whistle Blower Equivalence
The other side of the equation to free market enterprise and self-regulation is not the sole reliance on regulation by agency or governmental bureau, but robust, legally enforceable, generous 'whistle blower' rewards and protections. This is the self-serving equivalency of the personal gain incentive versus corporate, share holder, greed incentives. Both sides of the equation then appear equal.
Corporate entity, step out of line? Someone in YOUR organization, who knows the rules of the game, will be finely rewarded to show the error of your ways. Sleazy? Sure. But, apparently, that is how the game is played. You, corporate America, lobbied and made the rules. Now, live by them.
Sorry if this solution seems like a simplistic solution and rather morally sleazy...but hey, right or left, corporate America, this is the standard you live by and promote as solutions across the board to almost every issue, but only, if the solution is to YOUR benefit.
Live by the gun, die by the gun. You know, it's the 'eye for an eye' thingy.
Thanks,
GHD & RHN
Friday, June 26, 2009
Saint Peter Tracks Dick Cheney
Cheney's being tracked at the Pearly Gates, (St. Peter looks familiar, remember, 'One Flew Over The Cukoo's Nest', the movie?
GHD & RHN
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Mahmoud Goes To Russia
Ahmadinejad goes to the Security Summit...comes back a changed man.
A SILENT SLIDESHOW CARTOON STRIP BY G.H. DIEL
[SCROLL DOWN FOR WALSH/O'REILLY POST]
Joan Walsh of Salon.com causes Bill O'Reilly to loose his air time.
GHD & RHN
Monday, June 15, 2009
Are Manufacturing Jobs Lost In America...Forever?
LINK:
Does America Need To Make Things? TechCrunch Sarah Lacy on June 14, 2009
Well, we still are making things, just not the same things in the same way we used to. So we end up with 1000 smaller automobile manufacturing companies instead of a big three. The scene today has become diversification of manufacturing instead of monopolization. As, IMHO, indeed it should considering the advances in technology and productivity.
Of course there will be painful losses as the national workforce shifts around, because, after all, we are talking about people here, not widgets--WE, people, have different needs than machines and manufacturing!
In the final analysis once the transition stabilizes, employing not ONLY people, but more productive-technological-enhanced-better-educated people, and their availability balances out with available jobs in EVERY sector--via supply and demand, our sense of 'manufacturing' will stabilize. But, different types of businesses AND manufacturing. For a market for jobs not like it was...but much, much, much, bigger.
Let's say we open a large manufacturing facility in China. Underwritten by US investment, with some US management, but most of the employees are Chinese, the product: widgets are sold globally, the Chinese employees receive the wages, the product is produced efficiently and at low cost, and the profit...comes home to the US. The fact is there is an enormous amount of manufacturing in the US, just not the traditional heavy, smoke stack industries that drove the economy since the industrial revolution.
We, the United States, have an enormous technological base at this time, but this is closing as other nations seek the same modern industrial technology and employment compensation structure we already have in place. Make no doubt, that gap will close. I speculate that part of the current economic collapse is due to adjustment down of economic, manufacturing, the working knowledge/experience base, and technology factors, compared to the way the production and distribution of goods and services in-place since the WWI had developed, and now. The structure, expectations and processes had grown to a 'bloated' stage, and now is the natural reduction of that artificial state, a 'cancer' might be an accurate metaphor, the operation cannot be avoided. The transitions will be painful, but it must take place in order for for a new, more effective, efficient and profitable stasis to develop.
I know of absolutely no one...who wanted manufacturing to go some place else. The migration occurred because you cannot artificially economically sustain any industry. Tariffs are not the industry. The real bug in the bonnet comes when a business sector is so large that IT drives a good portion of the economy, or that with lacking sensible regulation starts 'hijacking', robbing the economy. To wit: automobile, coal and financial in the headlines now.
Unfortunately, due in no small part to modern almost instant communication and transportation and global expectations, those American workers and industries who did not anticipate change, were left behind. If you want a snapshot of the 'so-called' turning of 'our' back on manufacturing, return to small town and city development councils twenty years ago across the country. The mantra was: we MUST get more manufacturing jobs, facility reuse, develop industrial parks! They wanted it, it did not work out because they could only artificially support it financially. You cannot rob Peter to pay Paul, if Peter is broke, and Paul can't pay back.
So what do we have now? A retrained work force still the envy of the all the developed nations! And the cycle starts once again.
GHD
Saturday, June 13, 2009
The Factor! Interviews Joan Walsh
Joan Walsh of Salon.com causes Bill O'Reilly to loose his air...time.
A SILENT SLIDESHOW CARTOON STRIP BY G.H. DIEL
GHD & RHN
Thursday, June 11, 2009
At Some Point The Hate Screamers Will Bite Themselves
At some point the vile opinions broadcast by the right wing 'hate talkers' will come back and bite them...big time.
At some point they WILL cross the line, congress will ACT, (if for no reason then self-defense), the FCC WILL step in, there WILL be law suits, reputations WILL be shredded, and people WILL loose their jobs. At the seemingly passive 'hate talker' supportive corporate media headquarters, New Corp, FOX, you know who you are, hear my complaint, Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, et al.
I've been visiting this planet long enough to see the backlash strike before, (lest we forget the infamous commie hater Joe McCarthy's scummy legacy).
Good luck, loathsome hate screamers, guys AND gals! Truly you have proven yourselves agile enough to bend down and grab your ankles. Now twist a bit more and you should be able to easily bite yourselves in your asses, (you're making yourself an easier target every time you open your mouth).
GHD
LINKS:
Can right-wing hate talk lead to murder? Joan Walsh, Salon.Com
Monday, June 08, 2009
Death Defying Pundits?
Fair and balanced news...not always. Sometimes it's torture.
We're still waiting for these brave souls to submit to experimental torture, after all, they torture us every day.
Update June 8, 2009
The news wire stretched way too thin.
Visit all of G. H. Diel's & R. Nigl's cartoons and blogs at
GHD & RHN
Monday, May 25, 2009
Go Ahead, Make Our Day.
Hear this Iran and North Korea. Remember the cold wars?
Here's the deal. We'll relieve you of all those sanctions, restrictions and annoying UN controls. However, you want nukes and the ability to develop the means to deliver them? Fine.
An essential point you should understand is this: Step out of line once and you can be guaranteed you will be obliterated. Period.
Sell to terroists? BOOM. Nuke neighbors? BOOM. Your people, your government, your land. Gone. Forever. Go ahead. Make our day. Think about it.
Welcome to the club, boys, (are you listening Pakistan?)
The friendly folks in the USA, and the other nuclear powers.
Bye, for now.
Just a thought.
GHD & RHN
The scenario I am suggesting is this: as a nation, you really don't want to be part of the nuclear franchise. This makes you a VERY BIG TARGET, there are already many powers out there ahead of you. Rethink. Nuclear explosions are unlike any other, they tear apart the atomic structure of EVERYTHING, (if you believe in souls, that, included).
In other words, achieving nuclear weapon technology in light of the advanced nuclear technology of others, is a non-argument and an irrational global position, for those powers who understand this, and for those who do not, in other words: got nuke aspirations for weapons? Yeah, argue until you are blue in the face. But, really, DON'T GO THERE, there's a long line ahead of you, and they have much, much bigger arguments.
LINKS:
Russia fears Korea conflict could go nuclear - Ifax | Reuters India Wed May 27, 2009 4:48pm IST
Monday, April 27, 2009
Not Bad News
In fact, GM's demise, is not bad news. They, GM, have been doing business wrong, so wrong, for as long as I remember, and I used to work for them. It's a long sad, blind, story I'd be happy to tell, (don't worry, it's not a big deal story, small time, on my part - I was a production worker). But, GM has been fooling/screwing buyers into believing if you glue on a bit of chrome here, a bit of chrome there, glitter really, you can sell American consumers anything. Just tell them it's what polls show they want, then back it up with advertising that aligns. When their products rust away or stop working...duh, what's wrong with the business plan: they raked in the profits after all. Trouble is, due to the ignorance of the American consumer, I mean, the U.S. buying public, their plan has succeeded, until now. Now, reality catches up with ignorance.
Don't complain about the automotive industry's screw up. They became big enough to drive a good portion of the economy. Blame the U.S. consumers...you, and me. I say, wake up buyers of shit, good riddance. GM, and all those guys - the financial sector included, business sectors with minimal controls - drove the economy, in big part, and the politics that go along with it, always at our own expense, to the brink.
They, these predatory business models, are not too big to fail, and maybe now after our complicity, have succeeded, in part, but in the end, have failed.
Just desserts is what I am thinking, for all concerned.
RHN
Thursday, April 23, 2009
'In Peace, One' - Google, The Tower Of Babel, Reversed
Here are many translations of the English phrase, 'In Peace, One.' The grammar as transliterations is not the way you might say it in your native language, but you get the idea.
In peace, one.
In pacis , unus.
平和では、 1 。
在和平， 1 。
Në të paqes, një të tillë.
В мир, един.
En pau, un.
在和平， 1 。
U miru, jedan.
V klidu, jedna.
I fred, en.
In vrede, een.
Rahu, üks.
Sa kapayapaan, isa.
Rauhassa, yksi.
Dans la paix, un.
En tempos de paz, un.
In Frieden, ein.
Στην ειρήνη, ένα.
שלום, אחד
शांति में, एक..
A béke, egy.
Dalam perdamaian, satu.
In pace, uno.
평화 있음, 한.
Tā miera, vienu.
Taikos, viena.
Fil-paċi, wieħed.
W pokoju, jeden.
Em tempos de paz, um.
În pace, o.
В мире, одна.
У миру, један.
V kľude, jedna.
V miru, en.
En paz, uno.
ในสันติภาพหนึ่ง.
Barış, bir.
У світі, одна.
Trong hòa bình, một trong những.
GHD & RHN
N.B.
And here's something you also may be interested in, 'America's Stonehenge'
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Karl Rove: Obama White House Has Rove-Like ‘Ethical Problems’ Bull Shit!
Okay, Rove figured out formally what other Republican's are doing by their generally nasty intuitive reactions. It looks like the Republican's are going down, way down in future elections, (you can only live in a state of denial so long before reality catches up to you).
Rove knows if he identifies Democrats to have the same huge moral flaws that they themselves have shown over the past few decades - even if those accusations are false, in other words, lies - then, when the Dems prosecute the Repubs for ANYTHING, Rove, and other operatives offering the same brand of stinking fertilizer, will simply say, "See, they are guilty, even more than us!"
But, I think the Obama administration is onto this crap-flinging technique now and blocks the Rove-like shit every step of the way. Bill Clinton did this so well, and the oposition hates him with a fever. The net result of Karl Rove's 'cleverness? Repubs will get, really, really pissed off, and do enormously stupid political things. Backfire time for Rovians*.
GHD & RHN
LINKS:
| *1. | Rovian | |
adjective. describing something exhibiting or employing fraudulent spin. Deft use of misleading information, double speak, or double logic for the purposes of manipulating policy and the general public. In a typical Rovian maneuver, incorrect information was purposely provided to the reporter so as to discredit the entire story when it came out. The Urban Dictionary | ||
Friday, March 06, 2009
Obama Meets Limbaugh - The Elevator
This is a variation on the old 'proverb', joke, whatever: 'Man who farts in church, must sit in own pew.' Except here, we use an elevator instead of a traditional church. You know, modernized religion. After all, an elevator is kinda like a church, a meeting place we're forced into, it's tall, it goes up to the heavens - the top floor - and down to the lobby, that's where most of us get off.
Sigh,
GHD & RHN
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Karl Rove Attends A Barbecue
Barbecues are great, unless you're the main course.
LINK: The original report was an interview with Fox News which can be found HERE.
GHD & RHN
Recent Posts
- Fall - A Silent Slideshow Cartoon Strip
- Birth, Life, Death--A Personal Event
- Scary News--Sean Hannity will not rule out 2012 bid for White House. Palin too?
- Our New Cartoon Book
- The Future - It's A Gamble - So Here's A Guess
- The Whistle Blower Equivalence
- Saint Peter Tracks Dick Cheney
- Mahmoud Goes To Russia
- Are Manufacturing Jobs Lost In America...Forever?
- The Factor! Interviews Joan Walsh
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