Events

Vieques is part of Puerto Rico and, therefore, part of the United States. So I haven't missed entirely everything. For example, I have these things queued up to read...someday: Trump's election is already hurting Chicago businesses. One concept explains all of Trump's outrages. Trump is unaware, shocker!, that his new office has 18th-century constraints. The Trump Time Capsule will continue. Encryption is good for you. Especially if Trump is president. Wow. It's almost as if this guy can destroy...

It finally stopped raining in Puerto Rico late this morning. That was a few hours after half the main island and all of Vieques lost power. Ordinarily I'd link to the news report but, it turns out, an island-wide power failure isn't actually newsworthy here. And yet I'm really loving this place. Vieques has a rare combination of undiscovered and verdant that I find compelling. My only other experience in the tropics is Saint-Martin, which I love (because airplanes!) but which hordes of people visit by...

I'm spending a couple of days on two U.S. islands in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico and Vieques. So posting is a little iffy. Right now I'm waiting for the island hopper to take me between the two islands, a flight that will spend less time in the air than it will taxiing on the ground. There has been a minor problem, though. It has rained every day, and the forecast calls for more rain every day. Here's Condado Lagoon from the roof of my hotel: Right now it's a little sunny but still not what I would call...

Vice President-elect Mike Pence attended a performance of "Hamilton" in New York last night, and at the curtain call, actor Brandon Victor Dixon (who plays Aaron Burr) had something to say: Tonight, VP-Elect Mike Pence attended #HamiltonBway. After the show, @BrandonVDixon delivered the following statement on behalf of the show. pic.twitter.com/Jsg9Q1pMZs — Hamilton (@HamiltonMusical) November 19, 2016 WaPo: Pence reportedly left the auditorium before Dixon finished speaking, but a show spokesman told...

If you look at the regimes of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia, you see pretty much the end state of democracies run by populists who value loyalty over, say, competence: runaway inflation, shortages, brain drain, and increasingly repressive policies aimed only at keeping the power structure intact. If you want to see what the beginning state of such regimes, look no further than Trump's transition team. Already they've defenestrated the policy wonks they'll need to actually do...

Despite everything awful happening around the country, here in Chicago we've had unusually gorgeous weather. We've had 81% of possible sunshine this month, well above the normal 43%. And we've also had near-record heat, with today predicted to be 22°C, a whopping 14°C above normal. Of course, tomorrow a cold front will come through to give us our first freeze since April, but hey, it's November.

Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat outlines the similarities between Trump and Mussolini. They're legion: “These people are mass marketers. They pick up what’s in the air,” Ben-Ghiat said. The film reel was to Mussolini as Twitter is to Trump. “They give the impression of talking directly to the people,” she said. They can be portentous and relentlessly self-assertive. In a way, authoritarians have to be, Ben-Ghiat explained, since they’re selling a paradox: a savior fashioned as the truest, most authentic...

They didn't even wait for the body to get cold: One day after President-elect Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka spoke to "60 Minutes" about her father's rise to power, her jewelry line alerted journalists to a surprising fact: The First Daughter-elect's bracelet could be bought for $10,800. The sales tactic marked one of the first moments since the election during which the Trump companies have sought to use Trump's presidential prominence to boost their private fortunes. There is nothing illegal about the...

In a sense, Donald Trump seems like the former President of the Galaxy ("a role that involves no power whatsoever, and merely requires the incumbent to attract attention so no one wonders who's really in charge"): narcissistic, vain, not terribly bright, and uninterested in details to an unprecedented degree for someone holding his office. That's all very funny in a Douglas Adams novel. But in real life, it's actually terrifying: President Barack Obama’s remarks about Donald Trump in his Monday press...

Throughout this past miserable campaign, I couldn't tell whether Trump was as frighteningly bigoted as his public utterances seemed, or if he were putting on a show to win the right-wingnut vote but was secretly just as establishment as his history suggested he'd be. And then two days after the election he appointed his running mate head of his transition team, yesterday appointed RNC Chair Reince Priebus his chief of staff, and in between named Steve Bannon a special advisor. Seriously, Priebus as...