The ant and the grasshopper....updated to today!

The Ant and the Grasshopper

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!

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MODERN VERSION: This would be humorous if it were not such an
accurate metaphor!

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, Fox 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 exclaim in an interview with La rry 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 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 doe sn'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.