Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and John McCain (R-AZ) have put out Summertime Blues to show Americans how their tax dollars are being squandered by President Obama in the name of “Stimulus.” Would you believe that they have found Stimulus money being used to study the effects of how monkeys react under the influence of cocaine? No way. How ’bout $1.9 million of your tax dollars to listen to foreign Ants? Sound real? What about $296,385 of your tax dollars being used to study dog domestication? Too crazy to believe? Right wing fear mongering? Would you believe $141,002 to study “dinosaur eggs and other fossils” in China?
76. Field Trip to Study Dinosaur Eggs…in China (Bozeman, MT) – $141,002
This past spring, nine students from Montana State University (MSU) were given a six-week, all expense paid trip to China, funded by the National Science Foundation. MSU received a grant to send students to work with researchers at the Natural History Museum in Hangzhou studying various dinosaur eggs and other fossils. In a conversation with a local resident of Wuzhen, one of the students said “I told him that I was here to study dinosaur eggs. He replied with, ’Bloody hell! That’s the sort of Summertime Blues thing you just can’t make up!’” While there, the students spent six weeks examining and cataloguing the eggs. As recorded on the group’s blog, however, they were still able to take plenty of time to let their hair down hiking on the Great Wall, spending a day at the Xixi National Wetland Park, exploring several small towns, visiting the opera, and touring the Tiatai temples. Not to worry though, according to one student blogger, “Believe it or not from previous blog posts, we have been hard at work doing research.”
Guess how many jobs this one created according to the President’s own web site recovery.gov? ZERO.
Steve Maley
KnightsofMalta
Dan Spencer
Moe Lane
Dan McLaughlin
*looks over glasses*
pamela1631 (Diary) Wednesday, August 4th at 8:32PM EST (link)Coked out monkeys running lines aka the Grand Nom-Nom Spree
Great Wall tripping Dino students with 9 you get cashew spicy eels
How Boo-Boo the family pet got here from there
Your Great-Ants’ African Adventure…the crawling and stinging version.
Sounds lovely and all on my tax dollars too.
I count myself fortunate I’m able to save for one weekend away per year. That’s the sum total of a vacation for me.
A bunch of fricken Peter Pans are running amok, without remorse, flipping the Citizens of this Country the bird and I don’t mean Tweetie.
ARRGGH! A pox upon them!
*always wanted to say that*
This republic was not established by cowards; and cowards will not preserve it. ~~Elmer Davis
I am stone forged from the fires of creation into flesh ~~Pamela1631
The greatest civilization is one where all citizens are equally armed and can only be persuaded, never forced.~~Maj. L. Caudill, USMC (Ret.)
Time to revoke Obama's license to spend
tara2009 Wednesday, August 11th at 1:05PM EST (link)Obama is a hazard to our America. Time to clip his wings . Every thing he has done is an abomination. The trip Michelle made to Spain,while we are in a financial downturn is just another way to rip off American taxpayers.mehpensacola,fl
Monkeys self-serving cocaine tend to use a lot of it
Adjoran (Diary) Thursday, August 5th at 4:52AM EST (link)Shucks, you’d like they just could have asked somebody . .. .
you'd THINK . . . nt
Adjoran (Diary) Thursday, August 5th at 4:53AM EST (link)Where is Proxmire and the Golden Fleece award when you need him
Joliphant (Diary) Thursday, August 5th at 5:20AM EST (link)And these Obama stories are great examples of how the government inevitably wastes the taxpayers money but the best is still in my mind.
$219,592 spent to teach college students how to watch television.
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I am EXTREMELY proud....
wrenhal (Diary) Thursday, August 5th at 9:04AM EST (link)to call myself an Okie. Coburn represents what can be good from a statesman who looks out for the people.
And we spend millions ANNUALLY studying the brown snake in American Samoa
renny (Diary) Thursday, August 5th at 9:43AM EST (link)You would think after a while, some studier would find what he/she is looking for.
This whole grant scam began with Johnson and his Great Soc. and his the entire system should be dismantled.
Johnson spent a fortune looking for “poverty.” He couldn’t look out the window at most of DC? But he started a whole industry, and one that now has driven the entire world into boondoggles like manmade global warming belief, mostly based on non-existent data (Dr. Phil Jones lost all the records once kept at the U of EA).
If you look at NEA grants, you get descriptions like 1) piano lessons for a paraplegic in Harlem, 3) archival and storage records for quilt makers in Appalachia, and 3) tour money for an art professor at Berkeley to “appreciate” Florence, Italy, for he summer. People should do these things from their own or others’ private monies. Not my taxes.
The NEA has famously funded “performance artists” who set themselves on fire, smear themselves in chocolate and then lick it off, and the notorious “p*ss Christ” of the 1980s.
Cons. in Cong. should gut grant making, cut salaries 10%, cut the DC fed. work forces 10%, establish a hiring freeze on all bureaus and agencies, and cut their own staffs.
The average CIA employee makes over $100,000, and when we have 10% unemployment, 10% personal bankruptcies, and, for instance, 10% retail failure rate in NJ, the feds. should stop awarding themselves a largesse not available in the private sector that is supporting them.
I see little o is halting all bonuses, so I guess if Raines were still at Freddie or Fannie he wouldn’t $20,000,000 in bonuses this year (that was 2005), but it’s still so little too late.
Meh...
zarathustra57 Thursday, August 5th at 11:33AM EST (link)OK, it’s a cute series, and we get it, the fed “wee-wee”s away money like it’s nobody’s business. However, singling out a few dumb grants that cost $200K a pop is really missing the larger picture. We’d never balance the damn budget, or get this nation out of debt, by going line-by-line looking for inane little projects like this. There are massive, massive entitlement programs and bureaucracies waiting for the axe. A few hundred grand here and there, while it’s fun to point out, laugh at, and be filled with mock outrage, only takes our eyes off the ball.(I think PJ O’Rourke described this in Parliament of Whores)
But it wouldn't hurt!
voxoreason Thursday, August 5th at 2:42PM EST (link)Before leaving the Senate, Fred Thompson released a list of gov’t programs that duplicate and triplicate activities/studies/other nonsense. Plus, some guy wrote a book along the lines of “How to Cut Spending from A to Z,” which an appropriate wasteful program for every letter. And this was some time back.
There is no shortage of targets: DC pols know what’s going on… and exactly how each benefits a pol’s benefactors. The best gov money can (and does) buy. Exhibit A: Charles Rangel
There is, indeed, a method in the madness. It’s simply a corrupt and wasteful method, just as it was designed.
Seems like McCain is an election year conservative.
Note how establishment repubs are trying to muzzle Rep Paul Ryan (R-WI), who knows what’s going on… but might not be “politically correct,” ie, wanting to be a politician in the worst way. The liberals collectively (how else?) have centuries of experience in this area. Sen Charles Schumer and Rep Ant Weiner are great examples, both from NY.
Bring the boys home, Empire State!
On the other hand, Schumer’s appalling way of tilting his head down while flashing his evil grin perfectly captures the appearance of a vulture. How fitting. There could be a future here for him in frightening small children.