Nantucket Overrun By Deer, Ticks, and Idiots

BROOKLYN, New York -- Over the weekend, the New York Times ran an article about the accelerating spread of Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses on Nantucket. We have blogged about this disease in the past, and its (alleged) origin in an offshore military research laboratory. Most people I tell this story to are incredulous and don't believe any of the links between Lyme disease and Plum Island, but I again implore you to read Michael C. Carroll's Lab 257.

Personally, I think that deer should be eradicated from the island. They are not native to Nantucket, but were introduced in 1922, a time when deer were quite rare in the northeast. Now we have no shortage of deer, and an aggressive culling and birth control program would do wonders to reduce the danger of tick-borne illness to the island's human residents. Nobody needs to go around blasting the island to pieces killing 2,500 deer, but the visitors have outlived their usefulness.

Other islands have experienced a similar deer tick menace, such as Fire Island, off the coast of Long Island, which has "the highest concentration of deer ticks of any National Park area in the Eastern United States." This problem is often exacerbated by people feeding deer (as insane as that sounds). Said one Nantucket resident who opposes efforts to control the deer population, "I really love the deer, and I can’t help it. My mother took me to see ‘Bambi’ when I was little." Well, my mother took me to see "Lady and the Tramp," but that does not make it okay for me to spread garbage all over my front lawn to attract stray dogs, which I also really love.

Enough With the Teabagging Already

BOULDER, Colorado -- While walking down the street in Boston recently, my mother found this flier on the ground. She had no idea what it said, so she mailed it to me to translate. The flier is back from the last election, and it was put out by the Massachusetts Senior Action Council, a grassroots community organizing group that lobbies for the rights of seniors. Here's what it says:

What would you do if 40% of your revenues were taken away?

Approving ballot question 1 threatens to eliminate $12.7 billion (around 40%) of the state budget by ending the Massachusetts income tax.

On Tuesday, November 4, say NO on ballot question 1. Today times are hard enough, and it's not worth it to make them worse.

The story behind this is that some tax-protesting fools got a measure on the Massachusetts ballot this past November that would have amended the state constitution and outlawed the income tax. Luckily, the voters of Massachusetts were wise enough to vote down this suicidal libertarian proposal 70% to 30%.

These same survivalist cranks [Note: In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that as a semi-professional academic, I was born and raised in a secret Comintern camp in communist Hungary and sent to this country to brainwash college freshmen with propaganda about "income inequality" and "post-structuralism." Additionally, that guy is right, and the change over to digital TV is a conspiracy to brainwash America] are likely going to spend tomorrow "teabagging" Obama by chucking tea bags into whatever body of water they can find with their CPAC friends. At least the elderly Russians in Massachusetts have more sense than the Republican operative nitwits who are organizing tomorrow's fake "grassroots" movement, which is nothing more than a pathetic partisan ploy to try and gain some electoral legitimacy.

Who was it again that oversaw the greatest expansion in government spending since Lyndon Johnson? And who oversaw the near doubling of the national debt? And who had a secret, illegal wiretapping program to spy on American citizens? And who operated a global network of secret prisons to kidnap and torture people? Oh right, I forgot - Barack Obama is the Nazi fascist communist gay Muslim terrorist free-spending wealth-redistributor. I hate to sound so partisan myself, but this nonsense tax protesting, and the fake populist outrage over invented government intrusion into our daily lives by the new administration, is positively sickening, and let us speak of it no more.