This is Jenny, Brenda Lee Craig's Sister

Christmas, St. Peter, the angels and me

     Dear St. Peter, How are you?  I hope all is well with you and the angels.  You guys do a terrific job and I know you're busy, so I won't take much of your time.  But there is one thing that's been on my mind.  Could you ask the Boss to cut out this old-age thing?  Pete, I am going through a succession of pills, doctors, memory loss, eye sight and hearing problems, mental decline, foot blisters, arthritis, this-thritis and that-thritis and now Obamacare!

     Don't get me wrong.  The Boss has done a terrific job.  I think giving the galaxies a pin-wheel shape and putting a cap on the speed of light were top drawer and having the sky be blue and the grass green was a stroke of pure genius.  What a great idea He had with gravity (though sometimes I wish I could temporarily suspend it).  I don't know about some of the yukkier animals but I guess there's a reason for them --- food chain and stuff.  Yet aside from tons of great ideas and oodles of nice touches like humming birds and rainbows why did He have to do the old-age thing?

     I know we can't stay here forever, and who would want to, what with Heaven and all coming up.  But I would appreciate just popping up there when the time comes instead of first being old and decrepit.  Could you take this up with the Boss if you don't think He will be mad at me for writing it?  Hope you, the Boss and all the angels have a really great Christmas.  It's the Boss's birthday, of course, and that makes if really big as Ed Sullivan used to say.  Do you remember Ed Sullivan?  Were there really all those shepherds and angels singing that night?     Your friend, freddieplato [For her old Dad]

            Dear freddieplato, The Boss asked me to thank you for your thoughtful e-mail and to assure you that He isn't the least bit angry with you and is sorry about all your old-age problems.  (Between you and me, He gets a lot of nutty requests and yours is most welcome).  He is, as you suggest, rather busy these days, but so is the Adversary, so His time is limited, but He did ask me to assure you that He will give your request careful consideration.  He's coming again, you know, so maybe He'll have a more definitive response by then.  Meanwhile, Have the merriest of Christmases from the Boss, and may I add my own best wishes.  And be cheerful.  On that day your health will be just great and you will be feeling top-drawer.  Some day we'll celebrate the day together and maybe the angels will contribute the music.
     As to the exact date of the Boss's birthday, the Boss keeps that as His little secret, even from me.  When I ask Him He huffs "that's for me to know and you to find out".  And then He laughs with that priceless laugh that fills the heart and the whole Universe itself at Christmas time (whatever the date).  Oh, yes, the shepherds were there and the angels sang.  The Gospels do not say that they sang, people just think they did and it makes good copy, but in this case they are correct.  The angels sang their hearts out.  And don't believe that propoganda about all angels being male.  The prettiest ones are girls.  It was a beautiful night.  That much the Boss does say.  Merry Christmas, Freddie.

                                                                                                                                  Yours,  Pete
P.S.  Ed Sullivan did indeed  put on a really big shew.  He can't upstage the Boss, but it was really big.  He asks me to give you his regards.  Pete

                                                                  

Posted by Freddie Plato at 9:31 AM

Nina Plato --- Her Mother is Russian (Siberian); her father is John Napier Plato's first cousin George Plato

Hip Hip Hooray

Thought for the day

Indeed, the idols I have loved so long
   Have done my credit in this world much wrong
Have drowned my honor in a shallow cup
    And sold my reputation for a song
                                                       
                                           Omar Khayyam

What Should Government Do?

      The federal government pokes its nose into all things which are none of its business, such as worrying about whether you are too fat, and ignores the very things it should be concerned with.  For example every single developed nation in the world regards safe and comfortable passenger rail travel as one of the signs of a great civilization.  The USA is one of the few, if not the only, developed industrialized countries which practically ignores this even though the Constitution specifically makes interstate commerce one domestic responsibility with which the government is expressly charged.  All good passenger rail systems require subsidies.  Not one in the world is paid for entirely by passengers.  Now, with that in mind, try to get a train from St. Louis to Miami or Indianapolis to Houston.  Where rail does exist the roadbeds are dangerous and the tracks and railroad bridges are rotting away.  Yet you can travel all over Western Europe, Japan and China by rail and enjoy every minute of the trip (except for some trains in France where some cars do not have automatic door openers).

      More to the point.  We are pro-life.  Yet there is a crying need for assistance for teenage girls, sometimes victims of rape or incest and in some cases caught in the bind of violent alcoholic parents, no money, no friends, no place to go and then told to go to term by some pompous busybody who thinks he's an agent for the Lord and will never have to worry about having a baby himself.  We need safe houses, protection, counseling, etc.  This is one thing the government should do.  But the "conservatives" would rather pontificate to get the credit for being righteous and the liberals (and to be honest, a lot of "conservatives") really don't give a damn about anything but reelection so we get nothing but free contraceptives as the answer.  (I am for contraceptives, but that's the only answer that the holier-than-thou types ever offer.  They would rather have abortions, the more the better).  So we get nothing.  For all of the "caring" and Kumbayah bull shit in Washington, help for Saudi Arabia, crocodile tears for misunderstood terrorists, Obamacare and all the other nonsensical "solutions" to non-existing problems, the American girl has to shift for herself while being bombarded with lectures about moral behaviour.  As St. Paul wrote 2000 years ago "The good that I would I do not.  The evil that I would not, that I do". 

                                                                             

 

:

"You Didn't Build it"

"You Didn't Build it"

      President Obama seemed to say that entrepreneurs do not deserve any special credit, or payment, for starting and building businesses because they could not have done so without the ingenuity and work of a multitude of discoverers, inventors, suppliers of goods and services and builders of roads. 

     He's right, of course, and that applies all the way back in time.  People no longer living had to invent the wheel, the printing press, the steam engine, the telephone, the gasoline engine and on and on in order for folks like Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Bill Gates et al., to endow the world with their inventions and discoveries. Therefore --- therefore what?  They do not deserve to receive exceptional compensation?

     If you either work for someone else or for yourself you expect to be paid not for the sum total of human enterprise going back to the wheel but for the incremental value of your contribution to that total.  

If you happen to be Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey or Walt Disney the value of your incremental addition is substantial and will be compensated so long as, and to the degree that, there is a marketplace demand for what you have to offer.

     This has nothing to do with whether you are a jolly good fellow, a scoundrel, or Saint Bernadette, which can be addressed by society in other ways.  Therefore, the reasoning of Barack Obama is defective, misleading and in the longer run, dangerous.

FREEDOM

Mindy --- Belle of China and Polynesia

Haikou, Hainan Province, China

Kwanlee --- Freddie's Younger Sister at the age of 15

FREDDIE PLATO --- of Chinese ancestry but Born in San Francisco and all American and all ours

Nancy Ming --- a Friend of Freddie, Richard and Kwanlee and a gift to America From China

Letter From Freddie Plato to a Newspaper Editor

     One of your readers, Bill Lynch, was exactly right in his defense of Social Security, which has proven to be well managed and solvent, having made every scheduled payment for 75 years with no prospect of not doing so any time soon.  The only problem is that the Treasury owes Social Security about $2.6 Trillion which it borrowed but doubtless would rather not repay.

     What disturbs me is that some of my fellow conservatives have been making derogatory statements about Social Security which are not true simply because they think that they should be true.  This includes such distinguished analysts as Pat Buchanan and Charles  Krauthammer.  Let's be clear.  As Mr. Lynch states there is nothing wrong with Social Security, which has not missed a payment in 75 years.  During the 2000 election campaign none other that Al Gore of all people proposed lock boxes to protect Social Security from the greed and overreaching of the general Treasury.  He was ignored.  Whose fault is that?  Conservatives are no different than liberals in losing credibility when they deny facts that they do not like.
                                  
                                                                   Sincerely, Freddie Plato

MERRY CHRISTMAS! From Freddie's Living Room

FREDDIE PLATO --- She's the Kind of Import From China We Need

Hainan Province --- at China's southmost point --- warm and beautiful all year round

Bartender Story

       A Democrat walks into a bar and flashes a wad of bills around.  He swaggers up to the bartender and says "drinks all around, except for the Republican over there".  To his surprise the Republican says "thank you".  Thinking that maybe he didn't hear that remark correctly he waits until everyone has finished his drink and yells "drinks all around, except for the Republican over there".  again, the Republican says "thank you".  So he says to the bartender "how come that stupid Republican keeps thanking me for not buying him drinks"?  "Because" the bartender responds  "he owns the place and you're buying for everyone else".  

Christian Bashers

     The third grade level of discussion about religion and God's creation of and purposes for man which appear in many popular publications may be amusing but they are also frequently pathetic.  From the agnostic or atheistic view they usually depend on something about the age of the earth or its flatness or roundness, as if they had offered some serious profundity.  Yes, though there are some fundamentalists, Christians and others, who believe that the Bible asserts 6,000 years on the first point and, at one time, flatness on the second, which is their right, which should be respected, most Christians do not know or care about the earth's age and never thought it was anything but round.

     Serious subjects exist about God's creation and man's purposes on earth, and for Christians about Jesus Christ's redemptive mission, but they have nothing to do with primitive but honest beliefs in principles of science, which is not what the Bible is about anyway.  (Anyway,  science and religion have been moving closer together even since the Big Bang was conceded in l965).  Unfortunately a lot of people, knowing nothing about real science, think themselves sophisticated thinkers by talking about Salem witches or the views of some priest in the year 1200.

Mindy --- The Spirit of Polynesia from Honolulu --- friend and adopted sister (we're working on it) of Freddie, Richard and Kwanlee

Kwanlee --- Richard and Freddie's Little Sister

Freddie Plato and Her Family

Freddie Plato and Her Family

     Hi!  My name is John Napier Plato, Jr. and Freddie Plato is my daughter.  She has an older brother Richard, age 31, and a sister, Kwanlee, age 23.  My wife is a naturalized American citizen, Chinese by birth, born in Haikou, Hainan Province, China, and Freddie, Richard and Kwanlee are our adopted children born in Hong Kong except for Freddie, who was born in San Francisco.  Richard is an accomplished sketch artist, usually working with a variety of pencils.  Kwanlee, his and Freddie's younter sister,  is also a fine sketch artist and they are equally good at it.  Herein are Richard's pencil sketches of  Kwanlee, her friend Ruth and her  cousins from Hainan, and a sketch by Kwanlee of Richard's feet as he napped on a couch.  There is also a photo in here somewhere of Richard's feet, taken when he was asleep, but he refuses to have the rest of himself shown even though he's a good looking young man.  In another picture he and his sister pose in swim suits but he still doesn't want his face shown.  I really don't know why.  There's nothing wrong with his face.  In fact, he's quite handsome.  Freddie snapped a photo of me standing in our driveway and it is in here too somewhere.  Freddie allowed Richard to select almost all the pictures which are shown here, and the ones of people are almost all of female-type people, more specifically young beautiful ones.  Kwanlee objected that that is sexist and immature.  (She still loves her older brother, though).  Richard agreed on both counts but explained "I'm not mature and I love babes, so sue me".  (But he still loves his little sister).  How do you answer that?  A friend of mine once asked why Richard lets his sisters push him around the way they do.  I answered "he doesn't let them push him around.  They just do".  Mindy is one of Freddie's beautiful cousins.  She is half Chinese and half Polynesian, a wonderful combination.  Mindy was left homeless some years ago and lives with us.  Our lawyer is trying to arrange for us to adopt her but whether he succeeds or not she is part of our family as far as we are concerned and she wants to go by the name Mindy Plato, which I consider an honor.

     All three kids, of whom I am inordinately proud, are very intelligent and talented and none of them has given us anything but joy.  But Freddie is way beyond 'intelligent'.  She has one of the highest, if not the highest, IQs ever recorded in Florida or probably anywhere else.  A man in a position to know told me that Freddie's IQ is about the same as that of Albert Einstein.  Richard and Kwanlee are in awe of Freddie and she is the undisputed leader of the family, even my leader.  Various "experts" have tried to explain this extraordinary mind but they cannot.  She is a powerful, strong-willed young woman who gets her way when it matters, but she is also kind and decent and I have never met or even heard of anyone who doesn't love her.  Richard and Kwanlee brag about Freddie, sometimes so much that she has to tell them to cool it a bit, though I know she appreciates it.  I have never heard one single angry word from any of these three great kids.  For them the expression 'sibling rivalry' simply does not exist in their vocabulary.  For the record, I tried to discourage publication of some of the pictures you see in these essays, thinking them not entirely compatible with the over-all themes of the essays, but the kids outvoted me and, to my surprise, my wife joined them in that.  For one thing, without I hope sounding too melodramatic, she thought that the stunning beauty of Freddie, Kwanlee and Mindy should be shared with the world.  I can't disagree with that.
     Our family owns an island in the South Pacific.  We have all the conveniences of civilization, including a generator to light our house and a place to land a helicopter.  We keep it private, however.  There is only one picture here taken on our island, the one of Mindy.  It's not a big island but it's ours and we love to go there, particularly in the winter.  My wife and I are thinking of retiring there.

     I hope you enjoy this.

                                                            John Napier Plato, Jr.

Texting While Driving

      Of all the things to be thankful for at this time of year the top of my own list is our collection of brilliant and dedicated legislators, both parties, federal and state.  Who but a state legislator, this time in Florida, would have the cosmic brilliance to ask whether texting while driving warrants a careful study to find out if it might affect performance at the wheel of a car and even cause injury?  And here all I thought we had to do was to ask any five-year old.  But no, while we watch more people die we will commission a "study" because heaven forbid that our great leaders could decide such a difficult question themselves.  And the five-year olds are probably in kindergarten and unavailable.

      A pregnant nineteen year old girl was recently killed crossing the street by some fun-loving, texting driver.  How long will it take these nincompoops in Washington and Tallahassee to do something about this? 

      The irony is breathtaking.  Government sticks its incompetent nose everywhere it doesn't belong and virtually ignores a subject which is clearly the established duty of the government, state and federal, to address.  And yes, the federal government, having the authority to "regulate commerce", has the power and the obligation to address such questions.

 

Lady of the Rings

Thought for the Day

If government were to take over the management of the Sahara Desert there would be a shortage of sand there within five years.
                                                                                      Milton Friedman

Wake Up! Open Your Eyes!

Get Up ! Go Into Action!

In Hainan --- Richard's Psychiatrist Dorrie Lane Plays Soccer

Correspondence With St. Peter

      Dear St. Peter, How are you?  I hope all is well with you and the angels.  You guys do a terrific job and I know you're busy, so I won't take much of your time.  But there is one thing that's been on my mind.  Could you ask the Boss to cut out this old-age thing?  Pete, I am going through a succession of pills, doctors, memory loss, eye sight and hearing problems, mental decline, foot blisters, arthritis, this-thritis and that-thritis and now Obamacare!

     Don't get me wrong.  The Boss has done a terrific job.  I think giving the galaxies a pin-wheel shape and putting a cap on the speed of light were top drawer and having the sky be blue and the grass green was a stroke of pure genius.  What a great idea He had with gravity (though sometimes I wish I could temporarily suspend it).  I don't know about some of the yukkier animals but I guess there's a reason for them --- food chain and stuff.  Yet aside from tons of great ideas and oodles of nice touches like humming birds and rainbows why did He have to do the old-age thing?

     I know we can't stay here forever, and who would want to, what with Heaven and all coming up.  But I would appreciate just popping up there when the time comes instead of first being old and decrepit.  Could you take this up with the Boss if you don't think He will be mad at me for writing it?  Hope you, the Boss and all the angels have a really great Christmas.  It's the Boss's birthday, of course, and that makes if really big as Ed Sullivan used to say.  Do you remember Ed Sullivan?  Were there really all those shepherds and angels singing that night?     Your friend, freddieplato [For her old Dad]

            Dear freddieplato, The Boss asked me to thank you for your thoughtful e-mail and to assure you that He isn't the least bit angry with you and is sorry about all your old-age problems.  (Between you and me, He gets a lot of nutty requests and yours is most welcome).  He is, as you suggest, rather busy these days, but so is the Adversary, so His time is limited, but He did ask me to assure you that He will give your request careful consideration.  He's coming again, you know, so maybe He'll have a more definitive response by then.  Meanwhile, Have the merriest of Christmases from the Boss, and may I add my own best wishes.  And be cheerful.  On that day your health will be just great and you will be feeling top-drawer.  Some day we'll celebrate the day together and maybe the angels will contribute the music.
     As to the exact date of the Boss's birthday, the Boss keeps that as His little secret, even from me.  When I ask Him He huffs "that's for me to know and you to find out".  And then He laughs with that priceless laugh that fills the heart and the whole Universe itself at Christmas time (whatever the date).  Oh, yes, the shepherds were there and the angels sang.  It was a beautiful night.  That much the Boss does say.  Merry Christmas, Freddie.

                                                                                                                                  Yours,  Pete
P.S.  Ed Sullivan did indeed  put on a really big shew.  He can't upstage the Boss, but it was really big.  He asks me to give you his regards.  Peet

                                                                  

Posted by Freddie Plato at 9:31 AM

Brother Richard snoozes "watching" T.V. Kwanlee sketches!

If it's Important, Don't do it Half Way!

The Search for Truth Goes on

Kwanlee --- Freddie's "Little Sister"

Haikou, Hainan Province, China

South China Sea --- Hainan Province, China

Sunset in Hainan Province, China

Oxford University, England

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!