The times, they are a-changin'

 Monday October 11 is Columbus Day, when we celebrate the day before the Italian navigator's Spanish crew set foot on Hispaniola.  Has America changed over the last nine months?  Read Joe Biden's Proclamation which finds room to celebrate the achievements of Italian Americans while acknowledging the tragedy and resilience of this country's First People.  Compare and contrast with last year's, warning darkly of "radical activists" and bragging about the Executive Order meant to protect the statues of racist seditionists.  Night and day.  I'm only surprised it didn't warn about how rigged the election would be.

It's been a bad week for the Forever President.  Desperate for attention, last night he made up with Fox News long enough to inform Sean Hannity that Haitian immigrants represent "a death wish for our country."  That's been his position on all immigrants who aren't Norwegian, but this time he traveled back to the 1980s to single out the poorest nation in this hemisphere for abuse:  "Haiti has a tremendous AIDS problem.  AIDS is a step beyond.  AIDS is a real bad problem.  Many of those people will probably have AIDS..." and so on, repeating "AIDS" as the demented tend to do.  To be clear, the Trumpandemic has claimed over 700,000 American lives, hospitals have instituted triage and people react with sometimes fatal violence to the suggestion that they wear a mask, but in his racist mind AIDS -- long controlled by drugs -- is still as terrifying as when he haunted Studio 54.

The Trump Organization [sic] is still trying to unload the lease on the Trump Trivago, the hotel he opened in Washington to siphon money out of diplomats, lobbyists and other supplicants who understood they had to stay and be seen there.  Despite four years of this 64-karat grift, the place managed to lose $70 million under the expert management of Junior & Eric, despite public filings claiming a profit of $150 million.  That is quite a disparity, and I can't believe it all went up Junior's nose.

One of the charges in one of the impeachments was obstruction of justice, but the Senate let him get away with it and no, Senator Collins, Trump has not learned his lesson.  He has ordered Steve Bannon and three other scofflaws to ignore subpoenas from the January 6 Select Committee, possibly setting Pigpen up for criminal penalties.  Will he put his noxious person where his mouth is?  I'm tingling with anticipation.  To make matters worse for Trump, Jen Psaki said the President believes "an assertion of executive privilege is not warranted" for documents Trump is eager to conceal.  Could it be even worse than we thought?

Poor Donnie's star on the Hollywood Walk of Whothehellsthat? is regularly vandalized but an artist called Plastic Jesus decided that isn't enough.  He installed a white coffin labeled "USA Freedom Box."  Beat that, John Wayne!  Plastic Jesus says his motto is "Stop making stupid people famous."  Too late.

Another blow to the Trump legacy:  Joe Biden has restored full protection to national monuments trashed by the Zinke-Bernhardt Interior Department, including Bear Ears and Grand Staircase/Escalante in Utah.  Next up:  rescue the Postal Service from DeJoy.

It doesn't look like the Pulitzer Prize those reporters won in 2018 for writing about Russian interference in the 2016 election will be rescinded.  Also, not only has Trump again failed to win a Nobel Peace Prize but it was shared by journalists who make life uncomfortable for the autocrats of two of Trump's favorite places, Russia (Dmitry Muratov) and the Philippines (Maria Ressa).  No Emmy either.  

And the Nobel for literature honored Abdulrazak Gurnah from the "shithole country" of Tanzania.  Not your year, Donnie.  Very very unfair.