here is the liberal version

It turns out that the grasshopper wasn’t really dancing and playing
all summer. He was really a disabled Vet who had recently returned from
President Bush’s war in Iraq where he was severely injured while riding
in a Hummer that was not properly armored even though the war has been
going on for over 4 years.

What the ant had interpreted as dancing was really a bad gait caused
by an ill-fitted prosthesis that had been gnawed on by rats while
waiting for treatment at Walter Reed Hospital.

The playing was the grasshopper attempting to hitch a ride because
he couldn’t afford to pay the $3.49 per gallon for gasoline that
Exxon/Mobil was charging in an effort to boost their already record
quarterly profits of 92 Billion Dollars (that’s $92,000,000,000.00)
which happened to be up 75% from the last record quarter that they had.

He was trying to catch a ride to the Halliburton headquarters
because he heard that they were doing pretty good - Build and Fight For
Profit! - and thought that they might be hiring. It turns out that they
were hiring, just not here in the US. They had openings at their
customer call center, but it was located in Bangalore, India. He
thought about trying to make it over there for the job, but it turns
out that the average wage that is paid to these call center people is
only the equivalent of about $175.00 a month.

It also turns out that Fox News didn’t quite have it right on the
ant’s situation either. It turns out that he was really a Republican
congressman from Sugar Land Texas. What was supposedly work was really
him scurrying from corporation to corporation eliciting bribes…ahhh, I
mean, donations for a supposed children’s charity that were then
diverted to paying for parties at the Republican National convention.
As an inducement for these contributions the ant was offering exclusive
face time with the Vice-President of the United States and other top
Republicans aboard a luxury yacht. These meager donations of $50,000 to
$100,000 were exempt from campaign finance reports because they weren’t
for a political campaign, but rather a donation to a children’s charity!

And while it was true that the Democratic leadership did call for a
return to financial sanity by rescinding the tax cuts for the rich,
which the ant had profited by handsomely, it wasn’t true that the ant
ever came any where near paying his fair share in taxes. As it turned
out, the ant had moved the headquarters of his tool making business
that he had purchased in a hostile, leveraged takeover from the small
Connecticut town where it had been located since 1843 to Bermuda to
avoid paying United States taxes.

The other thing that Fox had wrong was that the ant didn’t get fined
for violating the EEOC statues, he was fired for soliciting sex with an
under age congressional page. Fox also didn’t report that the
Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and other key
Republicans knew about the ant’s behavior, possibly for years without
ever doing anything about it.

As far as the grasshopper ending up dead in the ant’s house, this
part is true. It turned out that the ant’s house was indeed seized by
the government due to the ant being caught with over 2000 oxycontin
tablets that it was suspected that he had gotten from Rush Limbaugh.

The grasshopper bought the house at the drug seizure auction with
the money that he made from selling his story to the National Enquirer.
He was shot and killed during a botched drug raid. It turned out that
the date for the raid was wrong on the memo that the DEA sent to the
FBI, the state highway patrol and the local drug enforcement task
force. When the joint task force battered in the door to what they
thought was the ant’s house and saw a grasshopper of color, they shot
first and asked questions second.

At first the chief of police denied any wrong doing on the part of
his officers or any members of the task force. The grasshopper was
forced to recant his denials when a copy of the security tape from the
ant/grasshopper’s home surfaced on YouTube that clearly showed the
grasshopper being beaten, tortured and then shot by various members of
the task force. It later turned out that several members of the task
force had actually taken digital photographs of the grasshopper being
tortured and humiliated.

The ant in the mean time has just received a $5,000,000 advance on
his tell all book and is in negotiations with the Lifetime Channel for
an autobiographical movie of his life. It is rumored that he is
considering teaming up with Newt Gingrich to take a run at the
Republican nomination for President and Vice-President.

I once saw an ant moving a rubber tree plant.

Once upon a time, a rural, grade school educated ant was told by a group of college educated grasshoppers that a rubber tree plant would help the ant save his children. The grasshoppers told the ant how he and his brethren were destroying their environment because of their lifestyle. They told him that his uneducated mind couldn’t grasp the enormity of what he and his fellow ant were doing to this fragile earth.

The ant, trusting that the grasshoppers to be wise as they have traveled far and wide while he and the rest of his colony had rarely traveled far from their colony, listened carefully as the grasshoppers described the future devastation that ant, and all the other little ants, were going to causer due to the ant's uneducated, eco-hostile life style.

"Do something now," said the grasshoppers, "or your children will suffer the consequences of your self-absorbed, limited view lifestyle."

"How am I harming my children?" asked the ant, "I work hard and provide them with food and shelter. I build them a home in which to avoid the hot sun and the drowning rains. I provide food and water for them. And I help the other ants do the same for their children!"

“That’s part of the problem,” declared the grasshoppers, “You’re denuding the natural vegetation when you harvest all the food. You're poising the water when you collect it and let so much just drop away while you carry it home. You’re killing young shade tress and bushes by digging in the dirt under their roots. Your over-harvesting you crops and using valuable land that should be used to grow other, non-food vegetation that should be growing here. And you’re teaching your children to follow in your destructive footprints!”

“I had no idea!,” replied the ant, “I thought I was just doing the right thing for my kids!”

“Well, your not!,” preached the grasshoppers, “as a matter of fact, you’re lifestyle is killing the very children you’re claim to love! How can you let this happen? How can you be so stupid?”

The ant began sobbing, thinking of the trillions of ant children that are suffering and dying because he and the rest of the adult ants were such fools. “Tell me what to do,” pleaded the ant, “tell me how to save my children!”

“We’re glad you understand,” said the grasshoppers, and we have a plan to save you and the rest of the ants.”

“Tell me, oh wise and noble grasshoppers, “ said the ant, “tell me how I can save our children!”

“It’s simple,” said the grasshoppers, “first you need to atone for your past behavior by giving us 12 percent of your food supply so that we may share it with the ants who are not denuding their vegetation as quickly and as efficiently as you.”

“But my children need that food,” said the ant, “Can’t we do something else?”

“No,” said the grasshoppers, “and who are you do question our wisdom?”

“Yes,” the ant replied, “I see that you are much wiser than I am, and I will comply. What else must I do?”

“You need to find a rubber tree plant and carry it to here to the entrance of your colony,” said the grasshoppers, “and use that tree to shade your borrows so you don’t need to dig some much dirt and pile it high and higher just to keep your home cool.”

“Yes,” said the ant, “I can see the wisdom in that, but I can’t do that alone. How will I move that big, heavy plant?

“Don’t be foolish,” said the grasshoppers, “You can just get the rest of the ants to help!”

“Can’t you also help?” ask the ant, “Your much stronger than us, surely you could help in the work of carrying that heavy plant.”

“Are you crazy?,” replied the grasshoppers “don’t you know we have to travel to other ant colonies and tell them how to save themselves? We’re far too busy to help you do something you’re capable of doing yourselves! Don’t bother us again with such foolish questions, just do as we say! remember, your children’s lives depend on it!”

“Yes,” said the ant, “I’m sorry for interrupting your noble work.. I won’t bother you again” The grasshopper left, confident that the ant will tell others of the perils that awaits them if they ignore the grasshoppers advice and fail to do as the grasshoppers instruct.

The ant hurried back to his colony and told them what the wise and noble grasshoppers had said. The other ants, believing the grasshoppers, set out to do as they said. They carried 12 percent of their food supply to the grasshoppers, just as instructed. They stopped digging deep into the soil and building high mounds, just as instructed. And they traveled a vast distance to locate a Rubber Tree Plant, just as instructed. With great effort over many months, the ants finally returned to their colony with the massive plant.

The grasshoppers were no were to be found, having traveled to other colonies, no doubt, to spread their wisdom to others.

To the ant’s horror, they discovered that, contrary to what the grasshoppers had said, all their efforts had not saved their children, but had, instead, lead to their deaths. By giving away so much of their valuable resources to the grasshoppers, the children didn’t have enough to eat. By reducing the harvesting of food as they had for untold generation, the plants they rely upon for food had overgrown to the point where they used up all the nutrients in the soil. The food plants had all died. harvesting was impossible. By not digging deep in the soil, the roots of the surrounding vegetation could not grow deep and strong. The trees and bushes soon withered and died. By not building high mounds at the entrances of their colony, a single rainstorm had caused a flood that had entered deep into the colony, drowning any child that had not already died of starvation. By changing their lifesyles as the grasshoppers had instructed, the ants had distroyed themselves.

The ants were devastated. All their hard work was useless. All their dreams were destroyed. All thanks to the grasshoppers who were nowhere to be found

The remaining ants died off one by one. They never again knew the joy of watching their children hatch, never hearing the sounds of thousands of little legs scurring under the ground, never experiencing the pleasure of farming the vegetation, never knowing happiness again. The colony died, broken and miserable, and the grasshoppers were nowhere to be found.

The moral of they story? When a bunch of self-appointed elites tells you that you and your kids are in danger due to your lifestyles and that they know how to stop it if only you change but are unwilling to share the burden of that change themselves, don’t listen to them! Drive them away! For the sake of your children, drive them away!