riding a dead horse

Every so often I get an e-mail funny that seems especially appropriate for its time. Here's one I got last week:

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in business we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buy a stronger whip.
2. Change riders.
3. Say things like "This is the way we always have ridden this horse."
4. Appoint a committee to study the horse.
5. Arrang to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Increase the standards to ride dead horses.
7. Appoint a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
8. Create a training session to increase our riding ability.
9. Compare the state of dead horses in today's environment.
10. Change the requirements to declare "This horse is not dead."
11. Hire contractors to ride the dead horse.
12. Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Declare that "No horse is too dead to beat."
14. Provide additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
15. Do a CA Study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
16. Purchase a product to make dead horses run faster.
17. Declare the horse is "better, faster, and cheaper" dead.
18. Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
19. Revisit the performance requirements for horses.
20. Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.
21. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

[source unknown]