It seems to me highly ridiculous that we are involved in national elections, over a year before actual voting takes place. Everyday on the 'nightly news' we are bombarded with 'who has raised the most millions' in this run for the "House". We're repeatedly filled with alleged facts and figures of how all of 'our problems' can be solved (again) from national health care (including paid health care for illegal immigrants) to taxing the rich, to the end of the war, to a 'chicken in every oven', from the ridiculously to the sublime.
The last time I looked we were the strongest, richest most influential nation in the world (although now 16th world ranking in education with declining high school graduation rate, with a dwindling post graduate rate in math and science) with less than 5% unemployment, more availability of food, entertainment, clean water then any nation in the universe, a record Stock market, productivity (still) 'second to none', the most freedom in the world, as well as the most opportunity available to those who desire to work and 'risk'; still, due to media hatred, our President is recognized as 'stupid' with a rating lower than any other president in history, and the rest of the world viewing us as 'spoiled brats' that have nothing better to do than too complain. Chicken Little is alive and well with these political aspirants, and yet on major issues, as in the aforementioned Education comment, protection of our Borders, a workable foreign policy, cooperation with emerging nations, and the firmness needed in dealing with the real threat of terrorism, we hear nothing of substance from them. And, maybe above all, we have already forgotten 911, and in no way are prepared to fight terrorism on our soil as we will have too!
We have forgotten the 63 lives taken in 1983 at the US Embassy compound in Beirut. We have forgotten the 241 US servicemen killed at the US Marine Corps headquarters in Beirut only six months later. We have forgotten the attacks at the US Embassy in Kuwait the same year and the attack the following year at the US Embassy in Beirut and the 1985 restaurant bombing in Madrid, and the 1985 bombings at the US Air Force Base at Rhein-Main where 22 died. We have forgotten the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking where an American in a wheelchair was singled out and executed. Somehow we have forgotten the TWA Flight 840 bombing that killed four and the Pan Am Flight 103 that killed 259. In case you have forgotten, in 1993 two CIA agents were shot and killed as they entered CIA headquarters in Langley. World Trade Center 1993 six killed and over a thousand injured. 1995 US military complex in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia car bomb killed seven service personnel. 1996 truck bomb US military compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia that destroys the Khobar Towers, a US Air Force barracks, killing 19 and injuring over 500. US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are attacked leaving 224 people dead. October 2000 the USS Cole is bombed leaving 17 US Navy Sailors dead.........and, I haven't even got to 911!
Therefore, a little story as I remember our past history, where we as a nation used to act decisively, as some emerging nations now do...so, read both stories, sit back and think, then act.
The Story: ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER
PART ONE: THE OLD VERSION (USA 50's, 60's and some of the 70's)
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!
PART TWO: UPDATED VERSION (USA past three decades)
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, 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 and Reverend Al Sharpton stage demonstrations 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. And Rev Al works on getting the Ant fired from his work.
Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, and Senator Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader 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 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 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!!
