Yesterday, Red State reported on Summertime Blues, a report issued by Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and John McCain (R-AZ), on how your stimulus money is being spent.  $114,541 of your tax dollars are being spent to study the effects of how “monkeys react under the influence of cocaine.”  The Coburn-McCain report indicates the President Obama is also using $1.9 million of your tax dollars to listen to foreign Ants.

6. Ants Talk. Taxpayers Listen (San Francisco, CA) – $1.9 million

The California Academy of Sciences is receiving nearly $2 million to send researchers to the Southwest Indian Ocean Islands and east Africa, to capture, photograph, and analyze thousands of exotic ants. The photographs of the ants – over 3,000 species’ worth, according to the grant proposal – will be posted on AntWeb, a website devoted to organizing and displaying pictures and information on the world’s thousands of ant species.

The project’s goals are, to the lay person, both laudable and arcane: In addition to “foster[ing]…a large pool of ant taxonomists,” it also strives to document “the vast majority of ant species known from [Africa].” “[Ants] give us back the most data on the environment than any other group. Their life cycle is shorter, they change very quickly,” says the project’s Principal Investigator in a promotional article on the Academy’s website. “Everyone has run into ants . . . now we need to listen to them.”

Monkey and Ant stimulus – nice.  How many Monkey and Ant jobs were saved or created by the Obama Stimulus plan?  This would be funny but for the fact that this nation is carrying a national debt of $13.3 trillion and sporting an unemployment rate of 9.6%.