There are no words for Nick Cannon and Mariah Carey’s couple costume…

Au natural must-haves…

David Caruso is the celebrity douchbag o’ the week!

Someone was attacked by a liger…seriously they exist.

Seth Rogan wants to do porn with Jonah Hill…

Grossest Halloween candy ever!!

Mineral Makeup: Too legit to quit, or too good to be true?

Elections are right around the corner..what we really need a chick in office

When is the right time to show your BF your…crazy side?

Creepy cocktails for Halloween! Yum!!!

I’m going to say what everyone is thinking. Ludacris is a modern day Shakespeare. Yeah, I said it, someone had to. If you don’t know every word to “Roll Out (My Business)” then I’m not sure you can be considered an American.

What could be better than a modern day Shakespeare? Pair him with today’s JFK or some other awesome leader of yesteryear. That of course, is Barack “Yeah I did coke, so what?!” Obama. Luda plus Obama? It’s like Batman and Robin, peanut butter and jelly, Paris and Nicole, boxed wine and passing out on a sidewalk! They just make sense together.

Naturally I was psyched when Barack and Luda first met up to talk about AIDS, empowering the youth or bling. My hopes were built up by a conversation that I could only assume they had.

Ludacris: YOU’S A HOOOO, OHHHHH!

Barack: Together… we can change America, Ludacris.

Ludacris: Yeah man, you’s going for that number one spot.

Barack: I want you, to be… my running mate.

Ludacris: YEAHHH Baby. Hells YES we CAN OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! LUDA! YEPPP!

My dreams started to become closer to reality when Ludacris dropped his new song “Obama’s Here”. Brilliance, sheer brilliance. I’d even call it poetic if poetry wasn’t so boring. He even dropped the idea of him being the Vice President! I felt faint with excitement, Ludacris said all the things I simply couldn’t articulate. My personal favorite line? “Hillary hated on you, so that bitch is irrelevant.”

However, things have taken a turn for the worse. Obama wasn’t as crazy about Ludacris’ single as I was. He formally REJECTED Luda’s delicately put-together song. I’m crushed. According to Ludacris, Obama would’ve even give him a “special pardon if [he’s] ever in the slammer.”

Barack! You’re going to pardon him for a future drive-by or shoot up of a club, but you won’t accept his praising lyrics? Ludicrous.

Why such a farce? While hardly anyone really claims to “get” the Russian political system, it is generally agreed that Putin’s current power over the Russian public stems directly from the state’s chaotic transition during the 1990s.

Russia emerged from the ruins of the USSR on January 1, 1992 led by reformist Boris Yeltsin. Economically speaking, it was an entirely new country. The Russian nouveau riche established their positions through purchasing the most lavish of cars, furs, and mansions. The most flamboyant were members of an elite group of young billionaires known as the “Oligarchs”. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Roman Abramovich, Oleg Deripaska, names that bring up images of bad 1970s spy flicks, dominated Russian business interests.

While the Oligarchs enjoyed their imported champagne and Aston Martins, the middle and lower classes lived a much different life. For all its evils, life under the communist system included full employment and price controls for housing and basic food…provided you could find housing and a market with food still on the shelves and didn’t mind being a university educated bathroom attendant.

The transition to a capitalist market system, therefore, resulted in massive price inflation and a rapid rise in housing costs. Many found themselves using their pension funds merely to buy a week’s worth of bread. Democracy seemed only to breed corruption and spread poverty.

Not surprisingly by the time the 2000 Russian presidential elections rolled around the populace was ready for a change. Vladimir Putin’s popularity stemmed mainly from being everything Yeltsin was not.

Where Yeltsin spent his second term in office perpetually ill, Putin was a young national judo champion. While Yeltsin became tainted by corruption allegations, Putin has consistently placed himself as actively anti-corruption. Most importantly, perhaps, where many see Yeltsin as a sell-out to the West, Putin has championed the place of Russia as a great military and political power. Therefore, despite Putin’s rollback of many democratic freedoms, he still remains vastly more popular than Yeltsin.

Massive centralization of power under the executive has occurred during Putin’s two terms as president. Because of this, many international observers speculated that he would refuse to step down after his second term (the Russian constitution imposes a two term limit).

Opposition movements, such as “Other Russia” headed by former chess champion Gary Kasparov, find it nearly impossible to run an official campaign. Yet, unlike twenty years ago, they are allowed to meet and organize. Also unlike Soviet-era Russia, there are multi-party parliamentary and presidential elections, though reports of voter intimidation are rampant on election days.

The answer to the initial question: Russia is neither a democracy nor is it the totalitarian regime it once was. The people in Moscow sport Gap bags, one hears U2 blasting from nearby cars, and copies of Vogue line the nearby newsstand. Down the alleys, however, a different story plays out— the intimidation of political dissidents continues, company workers are still pressured to vote the party line, and another generation wakes to face the autocratic haze.