Hell froze over

Sarah Palin took an IQ test and finally scored in the three-digit range.

Harry Reid and Bill Bellichick were sitting at a table at a fund-raiser and both cracked a sincere smile.

Hillary Clinton had a picture published in the newspapers where she didn’t look, tired or mad as a wet hen.

You can’t believe any of the above, but you can believe what’s below.

Despite the budget deficit that defies explanation and has more zeros than a Nolan Ryan no-hitter, the government – the one run by people we elected to serve our needs – is spending money on projects and programs that are mind-bogglingly stupid.

The government funded a $700,000 study by the University of New Hampshire to study greenhouse gas emissions in the dairy industry. The study concluded that “cows emit most of their methane through belching, only a small fraction from flatulence.”

There was no mention of BS in the report, literally or figuratively.

The provost of the university said the study was “not wasteful. It’s important.” Apparently, he said it with a straight face.

In case you think the University of New Hampshire is the lone recipient of dubious federal largess:

1) Wake Forest University received almost $150,000 to study “preliminary data on the efficacy of integral yoga for reducing menopausal hot flashes.” That’s gummitese to explain how meditation and exercise might ease menopausal symptoms. It’s a possibility that taking a shotgun and shooting the holy heck out of a bunch of man-shaped targets might do the same thing.

2) Wake Forest (those grant-writing little boogers!) also got more than $70,000 to study the effects of self-administering cocaine on the glutamate system on monkeys. College students are gonna get high on getting monkeys … well, high.

4) University of North Carolina-Charlotte received a whopping $760,000 grant to develop computer technology to digitally record the dance moves of performers. Interesting project, assuredly, but how is such a study the business of the federal government?

5) In the past several years, more than $1 billion has been sent to dead people to pay for prescriptions, wheelchairs, pay rent, and even to help defer heating and air conditioning bills. More money than oversight, for sure.

6) $21 million in federal funds goes to Lockheed Martin from NASA to advance research for supersonic jet travel. The first benefactors of this technology is expected to be business executives.

7) The government spent $2.2 million to help pay for a new irrigation system to a San Francisco Golf Course, a public course that the city council is considering closing due to a species of frog and snake that are endangered and live in the area.

8) Your tax dollars went to pay the expenses of five students of the University of California-San Diego to go to Africa to study and report on why “Africans vote the way they do” in elections? Is it possible that a similar study in the U.S. would have been more helpful?

9) A company called NanoGriptech has been awarded more than $400,000 to develop sports equipment (read football and baseball gloves) to develop a technology that mimics the sticky feet of geckos. The far-ranging plan is to develop a technology that will allow robots to climb difficult surfaces.

10) And, finally, Indiana University professions received more than $220,000 to study why young men do not like to wear condoms. Eeeeewwwwww!

Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up. These are some examples of your tax dollars are work … and the attitude of those elected officials who approve such nonsense.