[BFritz]

I've said this before, but I need to say it again because it just makes this story make sense. My dad sent me this, and he grew up in extreme poverty, I mean EXTREME poverty, and worked his ass off, went to college on an academic scholarship, got a job, worked his way up, and bought in to a different company. This sums up a lot of our country's problems.




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 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." Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's
house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall
overcome." Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the
grasshopper's sake. Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry & Harry Reid exclaim in an
interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of
the grasshopper, and call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make
him pay his fair share. Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity
and
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. Hillary gets her old law firm to
represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the
case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill Clinton
appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients. The ant
loses
the case.


The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of
the ant's 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 2008.