I the unlikely event any of our readers wishes to hear my thoughts on the election, well, Chas pretty much nails it. Read his link: the questions posed therein have far more bearing on my own life than anything I've heard a candidate mention.

I really don't hope for much these days in terms of taxation, liberty, shrewd foreign policy, immigration, &c. About the acme of my fondest hopes for the next administration is a Forest Service with a reasonable budget and some BLM personnel with detectable humanity. I do think Palin has a certain amount of appeal, but the crowds chanting "Drill, baby drill!" last night were decidedly a turn-off. Likewise, while I can be sympathetic to her environmental record in the context of a vast, utilitarian, Federally-owned state like Alaska, I fear her sensibilities may be less agreeable in a West with exploding population densities. I'm definitely not anti-drilling per se, but I invite anyone pondering the putative environmentally-friendly next-generation extraction technologies to drive some BLM roads near, say, Vernal, Utah and report back. And please report back from Vernal itself, recently a quiet, medium-small Mormon agricultural town, now covered in billboards advertising meth addiction hotlines and pre-employment drug testing, full of tattooed punks ranting to themselves, property taxes soaring. If we're going to drill, could we please see some long-term benefit to the drilling communities instead of rapid degeneracy and bust?

Rod Dreher, who seriously likes the Alaskan, has some intelligent things to say as well.

But I'm told that it really comes down to a culture war. As the saying goes, it's a damn shame both sides can't lose.

Ugh, that was unpleasant. Cheer up! Here's a heron eating a bunny!