The end is in sight

By this time next Wednesday, we should know who will be our national leader for the next four years. That is unless there are voting irregularities in Florida. But, the end is in sight.

The Hound knows this not because Election Day is Nov. 4, but that the attacks are getting weirder and weirder. Such as Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin being attacked for wearing about $150,000 worth of clothes purchased by the Republican National Committee after she was tapped by John McCain as his running mate. Did folks want her running around in plaid flannels and Levis on the campaign trail?

Really, if clothes make the man, how about the woman? Pols use campaign funds all the time to pay for a lot of their expenses. In Illinois, some have been known to purchase Chicago Bulls playoff tickets or Chicago Bears season tickets. Few donors ask what their campaign donations will be used for. Give the hockey mom a break. She's got enough to worry about being so close to a rising Russia.

The other weird attempt at the end game is people wanting to see Barack Obama's birth certificate. The Internet buzz is he wasn't born in Hawaii, but some foreign locale. That, according to these conspiracy theorists, would make him ineligible to be president because he was not born in the U.S., one of the requirements for high office.

That won't pass the smell test, let alone the constitutional law test. If his mother's an American, it doesn't matter if he was born in Andorra or Argentina. He's an American.

To prove that, he worked for the Chicago Democratic machine. They research these type of things as the late political scientist Milton Rakove noted when he showed up to volunteer for a political campaign. "We don't want nobody nobody sent," Rakove was told by a ward heeler.

The same could be said for presidential candidates. Yup, the end is in sight. And none too soon for The Hound.