On November 3 we left Miami for Southhampton.  Right behind us,  Hurricane Raphael , was heading straight for Cayman Islands, where we were yesterday.  What a difference a few days can make. On November 5 there was another hurricane, named Donald Trump, who, defying any logic and all odds, got re-elected president of the USA.  My sleep pattern began to change, for I worried about the future of democracy in the U.S.  I was so perplexed at how far off I was towards understanding our nation, that, save for my exposition on the future of the country  the next day, for the rest of the trip pretty much avoided politics in my postings.  Today, I still seem to have lost interest in our future, for all seems lost.  Reminds me of Ray Bradbury's  A Sound of Thunder , where a time traveler returns home to find everything changed.  He would have expected Kamala Harris to prevail over Donald Trump, but the opposite happened because he stepped on a but...

Donald Trump met with President Joe Biden at the White House today .  Four years ago, Trump was the first president in a long time not to have invited the incoming president.,,,Biden.  Worse, Trump did not bother to show up for Joe's Inauguration, the first absentee outgoing president to do this since Andrew Johnson's skipped Ulysses Grant's 1869 swearing-in ceremony.  Apparently all went well today. Senate Republicans voted on their new majority leader and picked  John Thune  of South Dakota. John Cornyn of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida also ran.  Mitch McConnell was the longest serving leader in Senate history.  Scott was the only MAGA endorsed candidate, so Thune might not be what Trump will desire. One significant change to be instituted by the re-elected President Donald Trump will be to create at least one new department to allow for only true loyalists to serve in his bureaucracy.  This new one will be called the  Department of Gover...