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

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 allowed to 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.'

Acorn  stages a demonstration in front of the ant 's house where the news stations film the group  singing, 'We shall overcome.'  Rev. Jeremiah Wright  then has the group curse God for the grasshopper's  sake.

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.

The  story ends as we see the grasshopper  finishing up the last bits of the ants  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 2012.