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.