Unca Darrell

OCTOBER 31 / Reasons to vote against Obama and Biden

REASON NO. 23 / Disreputable friends

WALL STREET prefers Obama-Biden to McCain-Palin.

OCTOBER 31 / Reasons to vote against Obama and Biden

REASON NO. 22 / The test

And here's the point I want to make. Mark my words. Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking.

We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America.

Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said.

Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.

OCTOBER 31 / Reasons to vote against Obama and Biden

REASON NO. 21 / Charity

Over the past ten tax years, Senator Biden's average adjusted gross income was $245,044. His average annual charitable giving was $369. That's 15 cents out of every $100.

Senator Obama's average taxable income for tax years 2000-to-2004 was $243,726. His average annual charitable giving was $2,154. That's 80 cents on $100.

Only after he decided he should be president of the United States did Senator Obama up his charitable giving, to 4.7% in 2005 and 6.1% in 2005, Much of it went to Pastor Jeremiah Wright's church.

OCTOBER 31 / Reasons to vote against Obama and Biden

REASON NO. 20 / Divided government

SOMEDAY, THE DEMOCRATS will be back in charge again. Do we want a Democratic Party that's in charge of everything? Well, you know, I suppose it's my job to say yes. But the truth is, as an American, it's better when parties share power. It's better when even those people who didn't win an election have something to say.

OCTOBER 31 / Stuart Taylor on "which Obama?"

OBAMA BECAME more than casually acquainted with Bill Ayers, the Weather Underground bomber with whom he served on the boards of two Chicago philanthropic groups. In 1995, Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn -- the same Dohrn who in a blood-curdling 1969 speech had cited the Charles Manson gang of murderers as role models for the Weather Underground -- co-hosted a political fundraiser for Obama in their home. By then, the still-unrepentant Ayers had become a respected member of the academic establishment in which far-left views are fashionable.

I dwell on these much-debated associations not because I think that Obama sympathizes with what he has called Ayers's "destestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8" or identifies with Wright's wild ravings. But I do think that Obama has understated (at best) his involvement with Wright and Ayers. And I wonder about the worldview of a man who was so comfortable with such far-left extremists and whose wife, Michelle, asserted earlier this year that American is "just downright mean" and "guided by fear" and that most Americans' lives have "gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl."

OCTOBER 30 / Reader response on Chris Bell

A READER chuckles about these lines in the Chronicle's endorsement of Chris Bell in Texas Senate District 17:

He served five years on Houston City Council where he chaired the council's ethics committee. It produced recommendations that tightened up the city's campaign finance rules and mandated financial disclosure measures for elected officials.

. . . . Bell filed ethics complaints against House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the first shots in a fight that led to DeLay's resignation.

So Mr. Bell is a paragon of ethics, it seems.

OCTOBER 30 / Voter guide, anyone?

WELL, I FINALLY got a newspaper voter guide this week.

From the Kingwood Observer.

Anyone seen a guide from the Chronicle?

I haven't.

OCTOBER 30 / . . . or your lying eyes

"Snow blankets London for Global Warming Debate." (Thanks to Instapundit.)

OCTOBER 30 / Long-term change in America's idea of itself

Push past the historic candidacy, however, and one sees something even larger at stake . . . . The real "change" being put to a vote for the American people in 2008 is not simply a break from the economic policies of "the past eight years" but with the American economic philosophy of the last 200 years. This election is about long-term change in America's idea of itself.

. . . . With this election, the U.S. [read United States] is at a philosophical tipping point.

Daniel Henninger, "Wonder Land: The True Meaning of 'Historic Vote,' Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2008, Page A17

OCTOBER 30 / Another silly question

Square this circle:

The Chronicle's editorial board has a longstanding principle, I am told, of opposing the election of professional lobbyists who run for public office.

Chris Bell is a professional lobbyist.

The Chronicle today endorsed Mr. Bell for Texas senator from District 17.