President visits White House

Today the President visited the White House: Al Gore, the man who won the 2000 US Presidential election, was at the White House occupied by the man who lost, only to be installed in the office by the US Supreme Court. As surreal moments go, this is pretty high on the list.

Gore was visiting as one of the American Nobel Prize winners. I wish the visit would help remind people that Bush was installed as president after bad rulings from the Supreme Court and after what can charitably be called “irregularities” in the way that Republicans ran the 2000 election in Florida. That's not likely.

It's natural to suspect that the Republicans have been operating a vote suppression agenda, trying to manpulate laws to suppress votes from probable Democratic-leaning voters (the “Real ID” act for example), and following the politically-motivated firing of US Attorneys who weren't sufficiently aggressive in prosecuting (persecuting is a better word) Democrats for imaginary “voter fraud”. The hit man in that effort, Alberto Gonzales, is still under US Justice Department investigation amid charges he lied to Congress, a criminal offence. Gonzales' neocon allies have set up a “defense fund” to raise money to pay his legal bills.

My own bet is still that eventually several members of the Bush Administration will be convicted of various crimes, and my hope is that some will go to prison. I also suspect that had the man elected in 2000 actually been sworn in, none of that would be the case.

Meanwhile, there was great news today that arch-homophobe Republican Senator Trent Lott will retire from the Senate in January. The far-right Lott lost his job as Majority Leader when he made statements supporting racial segregation championed by Strom Thurmond. Though he back-pedalled furiously when the news broke, nothing could save Lott when even Bush couldn't overlook it. Good riddance to bad rubbish.