The Ants and the Grasshopper, modernized

This take-off on Aesop’s fable The Ants and the Grasshopper was emailed to me by a friend, and appears to be adapted from Jim Quinn. Enjoy!

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.

Modern Version

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain 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 he is 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.” Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper’s plight.

Nancy Pelosi & 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 and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

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 ramshackle, once prosperous and once peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.

What’s the moral of the story? Be careful how you vote in 2010!

Strategy for passing Obamacare

This is a summary of a detailed outline by the Heritage Foundation of the strategy to send Obamacare to the President’s desk by Thanksgiving day.

The four stage plan to pass Obamacare has been publicly confirmed and is ready to be implemented:

1. Senate Finance Committee (headed by Sen. Max Baucus) passes a conceptual framework of Obamacare out of committee. This is a less-radical version of Obamacare is likely pass out of committee this week since the CBO released a favorable score yesterday.
   Status: incomplete.

2. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid must merge the Senate Finance Committee bill with another (more liberal) bill from the Senate Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions (HELP) Committee.
   Status: in progress.
   
   1. The actual final text will be determined by Reid himself.
   2. Reid can draft and insert text into the bill not approved by either committee.
   3. This process will take place with no senate hearing or public conference committee.
   4. No one will be allowed to read the bill before the Senate debate except senators chosen by Reid and the Obama Administration.
3. Sen. Reid will move to proceed to HR1586 (the house bill passed in March which taxes bonuses received by certain TARP recipients) in order to get around the Constitutional requirement that tax bills originate in the house. Reid’s final version of the healthcare bill will be inserted into HR1586 and passed.
   Status: confirmed.

4. The house will then take up Obamacare and could pass it without amendment (sending the bill directly to the President without a House-Senate conference committee and another round of votes in the House and Senate–and a longer period of public scrutiny of what the proposed law actually says).
   Status: implementation in progress.

Successful execution of this strategy is possible but not without difficulties:

1. It will be difficult for Sen. Reid to keep all 60 democratic Senators happy as he merges the two committee bills. These bills diverge on some of the most sticky issues, including the public option.
2. Sen. Reid has never attempted to merge committee bills before and the process is intensely complex, which leads me to believe that it could take longer than they expect.
3. The House may not pass the bill without amendment, which would force a House-Senate conference committee to resolve the differences and thus open up a period for public scrutiny of the bill.
4. Any delays will reduce the chance of final passage.

Why taxing the rich doesn’t work

Illinois Policy Institute’s John Tillman is interviewed on Good Day Chicago on September 14. John discusses the “soak the rich” tax policies being mentioned by some gubernatorial candidates and is also asked about health care reform.

The Horrible Truth: A Big Part Of Obamacare Has Already Become Law

…as part of the big honkin’ porkulus bill that Congress never even read.

The stimulus bill, besides wasting truckloads of taxpayer money, established “The Federal Coordinating Council For Comparative Effectiveness Research”.

If you have not read this stimulus bill, you should. The Federal Coordinating Council For Comparative Effectiveness Research is established on page 73.

From http://thetruthwins.com/archives/the-horrible-truth-a-big-part-of-obamacare-has-already-become-law

This Clunker

Note: William Warren’s award-winning cartoons published at GetLiberty.org are a free service of ALG News Bureau. They may be reused and redistributed free of charge.

Can We Decommission the Health Care Bill with Sodium Silicate?

An excellent article. I am shocked at the lunacy that is standard fare in Washington, absolute absurdity.

CARS is perversely profligate in numerous ways, among them the fact that car dealers must waste time filling out onerous paperwork to get reimbursed by the government and adding legal riders to contracts with car buyers regarding liability for rebates. Mechanics must squander effort draining each car’s oil, then donning protective suits and carrying out a dangerous procedure involving pouring sodium silicate on the engines to make them “seize up” and cease to function.

A Peek Inside “ObamaCare”

This health care overhaul (1000+ pages) is an inexcusable assault on the Constitution and everything America stands for. Here are only a few of its many horrifying provisions:

• PG 29, Lines 4-16: Directly rations health care for the elderly.
• PG 30, Sec 123: Establishes a government committee that decides what treatments/benefits you get.
• PG 58: The creation of a national ID health card and a comprehensive federal database containing streaming data on every American’s personal financial records.
• PG 59: The federal government accesses your bank accounts for mandatory funds transfers.
• PG 124, Lines 24-25: Bans companies from suing the federal government, bans the entire judicial system from hearing any cases on the legitimacy of this blatantly unconstitutional socialist health care takeover (no judicial review allowed whatsoever).
• PG 145, Line 15-17: Requires all employers to enroll all new employees in the government system (no choice whatsoever).
• PG 195: Federal officers will have full access to every citizen’s most private records.
• PG 241, Line 6-8: Mandates that all doctors be paid the same, regardless of specialty.
• PG 272, Sec. 1145: Cancer treatment rationing.
• PG 298, Lines 9-11: Imposes penalties and fines on private hospitals for readmissions after initial treatment (fix it on the first try or suffer the consequences).
• PG 425, Lines 4-12: Creates mandatory end of life consultation.
• PG 430, Lines 11-15: Puts the federal government in complete control of what care you receive at the end of your life.

More at the Macon County Conservative Examiner.