Unusual Recovery Act projects

Don't read this CNN story, The wide, weird world of stimulus, unless you want to be disgusted. Or unless you really, really love mascots and are happy that we spent money on:

$51,500 of stimulus money on nine mascot costumes and robots, including Bobber the Water Safety Dog, Coastie the Water Safety Education Seaboat and Seamoor the Sea Serpent Robot.

Or this, given DC's love of pork, ironic:

To be specific, AMS bought $16.9 million of canned pork, $2.6 million of ham, with water added, cooked and frozen, and $4.8 million of sliced ham (with water added, cooked and frozen).