Reflections From a Murky Pond

In Aesop fable of The Ant and the Grasshopper a grasshopper spends the warm months singing and idling while the ant worked hard to store up food for long, cold winter. When winter arrives, the grasshopper finds itself dying of hunger, and upon asking the ant for food and shelter, is rejected and castigated for its idleness and sloth. Soon the grasshopper dies of cold and hunger.

The story was once used to teach the virtues of hard work and saving, and the perils of laziness and improvidence.

That, of course, was a story for a vastly different age. Now such a parable would be derided as an example of greed and the ant would be cast as the villain.  Yet, even so, The Ant and the Grasshopper can be recast in a modern light:

The Ant and the Grasshopper: A Parable For Today

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, NPR, 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 busses in hundreds of angry protesters and 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 for the grasshopper’s sake, demanding that they must kill any God that did not damn this ant.

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, making it 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, rumbles 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 peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire Nation collapses bringing down the rest of the free world with it, and in some dark, but suddenly nearer Hell Pazuzu smiles.

MORAL OF THE STORY:
Be careful how you vote in 2010 and 2012.

Sadly, we’ve degenerated very far since the time of that 7th Century BC Thracian Fabulist, Aesop became famous across the ancient world as the preeminent teller of fables. Now the Ant would be cast as the rapacious, selfish, capitalist and the Grasshopper as an oppressed minority or an example of “The Ant’s Burden.” 😉

The Liberals trying to rule Congress and spread their version of Statism across America are set to commit “suicide by electorate.” Few of them will survive the 2010 Congressional mid-term elections because of how they’ve willfully chosen to ignore and disrespect we, the People on the matter of healthcare reform.

They should be assured that no American will miss them or mourn their passing from power – or life.

The House and Senate separately drafted hyper-partisan bills loaded down with kick-backs and bribes, mostly via committees and behind closed doors; in the wake of Sen. Scott Brown’s (R-MA) election they opted to misuse the Budget Reconciliation process aka “The Nuclear Option” to pass the legislation in the Senate with a mere 51 votes; finally, Pelosi and Louis Slaughter have chosen to “deem and pass” the bill in the House in order to avoid a floor vote upon it.

While none of what the Democrats, led by such Liberal extremists as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and President Obama, have done involving their plans to reconstruct the healthcare provisioning methods of America – functionally, if not explicitly, taking over 1/6 of the country’s economy in the process – is explicitly illegal or unconstitutional, most of what they’ve done is directly contrary to will and desires of the American people.

These Democrats will pay a suitably horrific price for their ill-conceived and pernicious actions and their failure to abide by the wishes of the American people. They will no longer be able to govern the nation, and they know it.

President Obama: Then You Can’t Govern

President Obama was right in asserting that, if they try to pass any major and invasive legislation such as ObamaCare by a 50 + 1 majority, neither he nor his Liberals in Congress will be able to govern the nation. Yet he and they no longer seem to care about that or about the American people who they obviously hold in contempt.

However, this turn of event was boldly foreshadowed many months ago; it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. This has always been about them and their power of the People; never for a single moment was it about what we wanted or felt we needed.

Since it has been plainly shown to the American people that neither Congress nor the President serves the People any longer and seeks instead to rule over us – for our own good, of course – we are looking at both a Dead Congress and Dead President Walking.

Assuming drastic measures aren’t taken by either the People or Obama’s regime before that time, The 2010 elections will be a proverbial bloodbath for the Democrats and the 2012 Presidential election will be the proverbial death knell for Barack Obama.

We will just have to hope that it isn’t by that time too late for our country.

Keep your eyes open. Travel light but load heavy, and always put another round in the enemy after they’re down.  😉

On Thursday, February 25, 2010, President Obama and a select group of both Republicans and Democrats gathered together for the titular purpose of working out at least a framework for a bipartisan Healthcare Reform Bill.

Of course Obama chose to have this event televised unlike much of the previous, substantive meetings involving ObamaCare.

As anyone with a working brain could expect, this was far more about politics – specifically the upcoming 2010 Congressional Midterm Elections and Obama’s bid for reelection in 2012 – than it was about legislation or building consensus or bipartisanship. It was a many hour long series campaign ads paid for by we, the People.

From the reactions to it that I’ve seen today, I’d say that it was a failure and one that hurt the Dems more than the GOP since the Dems have more incumbents in the 2010 elections than the GOP does. Oh well, perhaps they’ll learn something from this – but I doubt that, on the off chance that they do, it’ll be the right lesson.

Poor President Obama has a bit of a quandary. We’ll he be a leader and make a decision when all his choices are bad for his future as a President and for his hopes of reelection in 2012, or will he be a survivor – and a two term President – by choosing not to decide?

Obama’s Quandary – Too Lead Or To Survive

It’s one thing to be a rat caught in a trap. It’s another and, for a politician, worse thing to be the mouse caught between a number of traps. Knowing the doom that awaits and having to choose between – or to choose none – is a far worse torment.

Each piece of cheese looks so tasty, but he knows that whichever one he chooses – Healthcare, Global Warming, Foreign Trade & Relations, National Security, or the Economy – will result in his political demise and the loss of whatever hope he might have for reelection.

Of course President Obama has it even worse than the mouse in the picture. He’s a mouse caught between traps but he’s not alone. There are the Liberals, his constituency right there with him and the Liberals are much like mice and rats; they have the tendency to devour their their own when trapped for any length of time. 😉