Thursday, October 01, 2009

THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

This one is a little different: Two Different Versions; Two Different Morals!


OLD VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!


MODERN VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'

ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant 's house where the news stations film the group singing,'We shall overcome.' Rev. Jeremiah Wright then has the group kneel down to pray to God for thegrasshopper's sake.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ants food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010!

2 comments:

smrstrauss said...

Re: "The precedent set by allowing Obama to be President means that somebody like Kim Jong Il or Osama Bin Laden can have a child with a US woman citizen and that child can be President of the US and Commander In Chief. --Leo C. Donofrio, Attorney"

Since a Natural Born Citizen is simply a US citizen due to being born in the United States it is really up to us, the voters, to protect ourselves against the children of dictators. And, since not all the children of dictators are like their parents (Svetlana Stalin was not like her father, for example), we should be careful in how we decide.

In any case, the original meaning of Natural Born, used in the American colonies before the Revolution, and used in the early states, was simply that person was a citizen due to the place of birth (excepting the children of foreign diplomats). Natural Born was the term they used at the time. Native Born was not commonly used until later.

The Wall Street Journal commented: "Some birthers imagine that there is a difference between being a “citizen by birth” or a “native citizen” on the one hand and a “natural born” citizen on the other. “Eccentric” is too kind a word for this notion, which is either daft or dishonest. All three terms are identical in meaning."

lgstarr said...

"Obama’s father was never a US citizen and was never permanently domiciled in the US. The leading Supreme Court decision in Wong Kim Ark [see link below] indicates that the native born son of an alien is not natural born." --Leo C. Donofrio, Attorney

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0169_0649_ZO.html