The Bush Administration had Congressional approval to build a fence along strategic portions of the border with Mexico. But it drug its heels, piddled around, and got virtually nothing done. Now it’s out of time. Of course, it was clear from the beginning that the President’s heart wasn’t really in it.

So what do we hear this week?

The Mexican army on Friday announced that it has made the largest seizure of drug-cartel weapons in Mexico’s history.

The cache of 540 rifles, 165 grenades, 500,000 rounds of ammunition and 14 sticks of TNT were seized on Thursday at a house in the city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas, Mexican Assistant Attorney General Marisela Morales said.

“The seizure … is the largest in the history of Mexico involving organized crime,” Morales told reporters at Defense Department headquarters, where the army displayed hundreds of rifles, pistols, and shotguns, and laid out rows of grenades and crates of ammunition.

This arsenal was discovered just a couple of miles south of McAllen, Texas in the Mexican town of Reynosa.

The fact is, swaths of northern Mexico are now under the control of the drug cartels and the corruption-riddled Mexican government and Army are losing the battle to oust them.

Of course, it would be profoundly troubling if there were evidence that the Mexican drug cartels were cooperating with Islamic terrorist groups. Well . . .

Washington Times: “Terrorists Teaming With Drug Cartels”

Islamic extremists embedded in the United States — posing as Hispanic nationals — are partnering with violent Mexican drug gangs to finance terror networks in the Middle East, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration report.

Have a nice day!

 Some researchers at Oxford came up with a list of what they consider to be the irritatingly overused phrases. Their top ten?

1 – At the end of the day
2 – Fairly unique
3 – I personally
4 – At this moment in time
5 – With all due respect
6 – Absolutely
7 – It’s a nightmare
8 – Shouldn’t of
9 – 24/7
10 – It’s not rocket science

These phrases are indeed tired and worn slick. But I can think of several that are much more “irritating.”  Off the top of my head, there’s:

“License and registration please.”

“Does that itch?”

“Ms. Winfrey is here to see you.”

“Yes, I’m going to finish my fries.”

“Is this your dog?”

Any suggestions of your own, dear readers?

I just posted my first ever “Reader’s Poll” over at my Chris Matthews’ Leg blog.  Help me out and go over there and vote.

The outcome of the election was not a surprise. A Dem win by either Senator Clinton or Obama became a near fait accompli the moment McCain clinched the nomination in a year in which the economy was the dominant issue for the electorate. The real shocker would have been a McCain upset.

But like many other people who place a high value on limited government, the sanctity of human life, America’s special relationship with Israel, and the need to remain on offense in the war on terror–the results left me feeling a mixture of anger, disappointment and sadness.

Anger  . . . at what has derisively come to be known as “the mainstream media,” as most journalists and journalistic institutions self-consciously abandoned all professional standards and all pretense of objectivity and transformed themselves into an unregulated arm of the Obama campaign.

For example, by August 7, Sen. Obama’s face had been on the cover of Time seven times–and with equally ridiculous frequency on Newsweek as well. The week before the election, a smiling Sen. Obama–the smoker–graced the cover of Men’s Health. That’s right. Men’s “Health.”

(By the way, have you seen a single press photograph of President-elect Obama smoking during the stressful campaign? Will the press scrupulously avoid publishing any photos of the President smoking in the same way they complied with FDR’s request that he not be shown in his wheelchair? And will there be ashtrays in the Oval Office–sporting the presidential seal? Can I have one?)

This morning, Chris Matthews told Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program that he felt it his responsibility as a broadcaster to help make the Obama presidency a success. Seriously. For eight years we’ve been told by Matthews and others that it was the press’ job to be adversarial to the White House to keep it honest. Now it’s suddenly its job to be a loyal part of the team? That’s some serious “change.”

Today, AM talk radio is the only mass media vehicle on which conservative voices can still be heard outside the editorial pages of a few local newspapers. If, as expected, the Pelosi-Reid-Obama government reeinstates the fairness doctrine and effectively muzzles that channel, we will have a situation in this country that is truly dangerous for democracy.

Disappointment . . . that my party couldn’t find a way to nominate a stronger, more conservative candidate for the most important political office in the world. There is much to admire about John McCain the man, but as long-time readers of the blog know, I’ve never been a fan of McCain the politician or crafter of public policy. The fact is, George W. Bush, Bob Dole, and Bush 41 weren’t the best picks either, though, again, there is much to admire about each man. You have to go back to Ronald Reagan to find the Republican Party nominating the right man at the right time.

And there is also disappointment in the small but highly visible number of conservatives and libertarians who constructed contorted rationalizations for supporting Senator Obama’s candidacy.

Sadness . . . that I was robbed of the exciting opportunity to cast a vote for the first black President of the United States because the first African-American nominee of a major party was unfit for the office by virtue of inexperience and ideology. That would have been fun. If America was truly hungry for a wise philosopher-king with dark skin, it should have found a way to draft Thomas Sowell.

I get the pride and thrill that people of all races are feeling about the passing of this milestone. And I understand how powerful the pull of “identification” was for black evangelical Christians. Just look at how excited we Christians get when we find out that some celebrity or sports star is a believer.

But isn’t voting for a African-American man that you would clearly have vigorously voted against if he were white, a blatantly racist act? Isn’t this a variant of “the soft racism of low expectations?”

***

Chris Matthews is clearly wrong in thinking it is his job as a journalist to work for the success of the Obama presidency. But it is my duty as a believer to pray for President Obama, and I already am.

As a person who loves this country mightily, I’ll entreat the God of heaven that President Obama will operate in wisdom, steer the ship of state well in these dangerous waters, and find the will to resist the pull of the forces that dominate his political party.

Because when the most liberal Congress in 30 years starts flooding his desk with legislation, he’ll have to either sign the bills or veto them.

Voting “present” is no longer an option.

Later on tonight, (I’ve got to get some paying work done first) I’ll post all of my post-election musings and meloncholia in one big, rambling, depressing dump. Then, having fully purged, I’ll go back to  posting mostly witty riffs on retro-future culture, oddball stuff I find on the web, and heart-warming anecdotes about parenting and such, for a while.

Yes, those of you hoping I’ll stop yammering and bellyaching about the culture and politics for a few minutes will get your wish.

I’m currently debating myself about whether to keep the Chris Matthews Leg site going beyond the election. It has somehow taken on a life of it’s own and actually gets a lot of traffic. (If somone knows the best way for me to turn that into a little cash for my trouble, please let me know.)

Speaking of earning cash . . . back to work now. It’s only 8pm and I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep.

I strongly suggest you read this:

A group of British conservatives have launched a web site to counter anti-Americanism in Great Britain and elsewhere.

Have a look at “America in the World.”

Update: Maybe someone should launch a website to counter anti-Americanism in America.

In 2000, Al Gore got 29 percent of white voters who attended church weekly. Four years ago, John Kerry got an identical 29 percent of the same group. So, for the last four years Democrat strategists have worked at trying to peel off enough of those voters to swing a close election their way.

Today a Gallup poll puts support for Barack Obama among this group at . . . wait for it . . . 28%.

Excerpt:

No Democratic nominee in the modern day has made more of an effort to court religious voters than Obama. Jimmy Carter, a Southern evangelical, was the last Democrat to narrowly contest weekly church-going voters in a two-man race. But where Carter attempted to deemphasize his faith in the 1976 campaign, Obama has repeatedly returned to his faith to narrow the so-called God gap that has dogged Democrats for decades.
The party’s primary saw repeated and unprecedented events emphasizing faith, such as the Compassion Forum a little more than a week before the Pennsylvania vote. In the general election, in no less unprecedented form, the first event attended by the two candidates was not a presidential debate but a forum on religion and cultural politics at an evangelical megachurch.

Many will likely write the failure of these efforts off to latent racism among white Christians. But how then does one explain the fact that white guys Kerry and Gore got virtually identical margins? Of course, the real answer is, “It’s the ideology, stupid.” The old statist,  government-as-false-messiah policies of the past don’t suddenly become appealing just because Nancy Pelosi awkwardly uses some biblical language.

And if there were some Bush values voters out there who were considering switching sides, I suspect that seeing what Sarah Palin was subjected to put an end to that.

Of course, Barack Obama may not need any additional votes from this group this time around. And if this poll holds up, he won’t be getting them.

 Early on in this race, a lot of Americans, including some friends of mine, became enamored with with “idea” of an Obama presidency. As any good post-modern will tell you, narratives are everything, and the Obama narrative was über appealing. But here in the final hours before an election set in the most volatile global context since 1936, my hope is that moderate voters are taking a hard look at “President Obama” the reality.

The ever-brilliant Mark Steyn explores this theme here.  An excerpt:

The two-dimensional idea of President Obama is seductive: To elect a young black man of Kenyan extraction and Indonesian upbringing offers redemption both for America’s original sin (slavery) and for the more recent perceived sins of President Bush — his supposed enthusiasm for sticking it to foreigners generally, and the Muslim world in particular. And no, I’m not saying he’s Muslim. It’s worse than that: He’s a pasty-faced European — at least in his view of state power, welfare, and taxation. . .The problem is we’re not electing a symbol, a logo, a two-dimensional image. Long before he emerged on the national stage as Barack the Hope-Giver and Bringer of Change, there was a three-dimensional Barack Obama, a real man who lives in the real world. And that’s where the problem lies.

This was heartening. Some liberals are starting to express embarassment about the liberal media–particularly the network home of Keith Olbermann:

Both sides of aisle rip MSNBC

An excerpt:

 The cable news channel is “completely out of control,” said writer-producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, a self-proclaimed liberal Democrat.

She added that she would prefer a lunch date with right-leaning Fox News star Sean Hannity over left-leaning MSNBC star Keith Olbermann.

Olbermann was criticized by many who attended Monday’s luncheon sponsored by the Caucus for Producers, Writers & Directors at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The event was dubbed “Hollywood, America and Election ’08.”

Bloodworth-Thomason and others seemed especially critical of the way MSNBC — and other media — has attacked Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin while demeaning her supporters.

I was wondering if were any intellectually-honest feminists out there with the courage to denounce what Gov. Palin has been subjected to since being named McCain’s running mate. It’s good to know there is at least one.