Welcome to the Realm™ - Version 5.0...
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________




Denizens, remember the story about the Ant and the Grasshopper?&#160 The one where the Ant worked his…well, his posterior sectionoid…off during the summer, and the Grasshopper mocked the Ant and blew his wad on Wine, Women And Song&#153?

Or somesuch.

And then the Grasshopper withered away and died come winter, while the Ant was safe, warm, and comfortable?

Now.&#160 Remember the 1990s version of it where the Grasshopper claimed speciesism, had Kermit the Frog come and sing on Oprah, and the Ant had all his stuff taken away from him and given to the Grasshopper, ala Communism?&#160 (Or Clintonism, as the case may be.)

Both versions are here, if you wanna read ’em.

Michelle Malkin has written a beautiful revision of the tale – and hopefully she won’t be too mad, ’cause I’m gonna borrow it and post it below the fold.&#160

In a meadow on a hot summer’s day, a Grasshopper was chirping and carousing his time away. He watched scornfully as an Ant nearby struggled to store up large kernels of food and build a secure nest. The Ant pulled overtime shifts to pay off his loans and accumulate retirement funds for the future.

“Give it a rest,” the Grasshopper said. “Why bother saving and slaving and toiling and moiling? Let’s party!” The Ant demurred: “I am planning ahead for winter and you should do the same.” The Grasshopper blew off the Ant, squandered his supplies the rest of the season, and abandoned his home while on vacation (paid for by tapping every last cent of his home equity gain) instead of holding down a job.

When winter came, the Grasshopper’s pantry was empty and his shelter ruined from neglect. The Ant, weary from planting, harvesting, and stocking up for months, was dining comfortably in his nest.

Cold, hungry, jobless, facing foreclosure, and up to his two pairs of eyeballs in debt, the Grasshopper limped to the Association of Community Winged Insects for Rescue Now and demanded recourse. The office was swamped with thousands just like him. ACWIRN immediately put the Grasshopper to work registering dead ants as new voters.

Funded with tax dollars from the rest of the meadow’s residents, ACWIRN organized mass protests at the Bank of Antamerica, ambushed its top officials at their private homes, harassed their children, and demanded that the meadow’s politicians halt all foreclosures (“We must keep Grasshoppers in their houses!”) and outlaw discriminatory lending practices against starving, homeless Grasshoppers (“Well-stocked shelters are basic insect rights!”)

The banking industry capitulated; the Orthoptera Lobby secured hundreds of millions of dollars in housing earmarks and grants and counseling subsidies to support the Grasshoppers with the shadiest credit and employment histories. Antie Mae, the meadow’s government-backed home lending giant, fueled the push for increased insect homeownership in the name of biodiversity. Its executives cooked the books and headed for the hills. Katie Cricket and the Mainstream Meadow Media joined the grievance-for-profit circus, profiling Grasshopper sob stories and drumming up ratings as bewildered Ants wondered who was looking out for them.

The banks drowned in toxic debt. More Grasshoppers fell behind on their mortgage payments. Bailout mania and panic gripped the meadow.

Our little Ant, minding his own business, heard a knock on his door one late winter night a year later. It was his old, sneering Grasshopper neighbor. With ACWIRN’s presidential candidate, Barack Cicada, now in office, the Grasshopper had been hired by the meadow as a tax collector.

“I’m here to take your provisions,” the Grasshopper cackled.

But it was the Ant who had the last laugh. “I’ve learned my lesson,” he told his shiftless friend. “Why bother saving and slaving and toiling and moiling? I’ve spent all my savings. I’m walking away from my mortgage. Thrift is for suckers,” the Ant said as he headed out the door, leaving the Grasshopper empty-handed.

Once again, Damned Good Stuff&#153 from the Word Processor of Malkin&#153.&#160


Notice: compact(): Undefined variable: limits in /home/sysop284/domains/spatulacitybbs.net/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-comment-query.php on line 853

Notice: compact(): Undefined variable: groupby in /home/sysop284/domains/spatulacitybbs.net/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-comment-query.php on line 853

Notice: compact(): Undefined variable: limits in /home/sysop284/domains/spatulacitybbs.net/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-comment-query.php on line 853

Notice: compact(): Undefined variable: groupby in /home/sysop284/domains/spatulacitybbs.net/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-comment-query.php on line 853

Notice: Theme without comments.php is deprecated since version 3.0.0 with no alternative available. Please include a comments.php template in your theme. in /home/sysop284/domains/spatulacitybbs.net/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 4027

One response to “Ant & Grasshopper, 2008 “Mother Of All Bailouts&#153” edition”

  1. HDD says:

    I have been pondering this idiotic bail-out for the past week, and have come to the conclusion that everyone who supports it is a complete, blithering idiot with absolutely no understanding of basic history or economics.

    This was tried before. In the 30s. By Roosevelt.

    The Depression was extended by over a decade because of FDR’s ‘bailouts’.

    If this ‘bailout’ is passed, I’d start looking for depression-proof work immediately. If your income is dependent on people with money spending that money, within two years, you’ll be out of work.

Leave a Reply

_____________________________________________________

    
_______________
 
 
Glossary -  Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - History - The SpatulaFAQ
This blog is best viewed with your eyes. 
It helps, though, if you have Microsoft Internet Explorer  set about 1024x768 1280x1024 with your Favorites window activated on the left deactivated.  (At least until I can get a better handle on how WordPress works.)

(KORRIOTH:  Oh, great.  More wormholes.)

Mozilla Firefox doesn't do too badly, either; in fact, it's His Rudeness' browser of choice.
You can  use Nutscrape,  if you so desire - but why in blazes would you want to use a browser from a company that had to hide behind Janet El Reño's skirt to be successful?

And don't even  get me started on Opera or Chrome.  I'm not about  to trust any browser that won't let me change its color scheme.
Hacked by ZAKILOUP was based on WordPress platform 2.6 (it's 3.05 3.31 now), RSS tech , RSS comments design by Gx3.