Russians associated with liberalization or "westernization" have a strange habit of dying suddenly with no witnesses.

I don't disagree, but I worry that he may be swayed by a) wanting to improve his own "legacy" - which means caving to centrist establishment concerns more so than he already has, or b) hoping getting something notable done makes it easier for a potential Democratic successor.

I vote, too, despite having a pro-life Democratic senator and a Republican governor who cravenly chose not to fight gay marriage in a last-ditch attempt to moderate himself. If you find a time machine, let me know. We can go back and give America a parliament.

...and those bills will get vetoed. The worst thing to worry about is Obama being cautious with the veto in the interest of appearing bipartisan. Outside of that, we mainly have two years of endless show hearings and investigations into his presidency.

In my state, many Democrats are just as likely to pander to the fracking industry and gut public education to enrich corporate charter schools. Except for a handful of important social issues (abortion and gay marriage among them), there's surprisingly little they don't agree on. That stuff counts, too. I'm gay, but I…

It's more than that, though. Jez employees have explicitly carved out "this is not a feminist website" to fall back on whenever they publish something their core audience finds offensive or exploitative. It happened after the Dunham bullshit, and that wasn't the first time.

Considering what happened to her career, I view her comments as a form of unconscious self-hatred.

There have been a slew of these videos in the past few years, deftly edited and scored with the same kind of rising orchestral music. Of course they're advertisements, but I feel like they all came out around the same time for a reason. During the recession, they convinced people that these brands offered quality as…

It's "Main Line," dear. After the railroad. Keep your urban drug terminology to yourself.

The preposterously self-regarding I-have-assimilated-all-my-Art-Theory-Intro-readings prose must have been the final fatal blow.

The "Pink Crap" is believed by many, including my own phalanx of family members who had breast cancer (because "survivor" is as much a patronizing marketing term as "victim" was a dehumanizing term), to be worse than garbage, an attempt to infantalize women and profit off their suffering. Your mileage may vary. You…

Breast cancer is well beyond the tipping point. It's a full subsidiary of corporate marketing. KitchenAid has sold "Cook for the Cure" pink stand mixers for a decade now, bargaining that people would be willing to buy a luxury appliance if they could show their friends how altruistic (and affluent and tasteful!) they…

A patchwork quilt? Is everyone in Minnesota possessed by the ghost of Charles Kuralt?

Lol and if you actually read the article, you'd see that the US sales figures are also a disaster.

Yeah, about that popular thing...

I'm guessing your situation was more dire than most houses with asbestos. Generally, if the asbestos material (insulation, ceiling tiles, floor tiles, mastic, etc) is in good condition, the recommendation is to leave it alone or encapsulate it. It's only when it's exposed and degraded or gets disturbed that it can…

Awesome, vibe, stash, rock, dig. You're a computer program created by Crate & Barrel to infiltrate the late-thirtysomething recently-married market, aren't you?

Awesome, vibe, stash, rock, dig. You're a computer program created by Crate & Barrel to infiltrate the…

If the music tastes of the Russian elite are stuck in the same decade as their social policy, Elton John might just pull this one off.

Thank you! It's amazing that every time this argument comes up (the whole fundamental rationality of science v. everything that isn't science) people forget that scientific progress is human-directed and as vulnerable to abuse as anything else. Eugenics isn't bad because "science" as an entity somehow declared it bad;…

The company is highly leveraged and in financial trouble, and it's brand can only get less relevant over time (especially compared to, say, five years ago.) I don't think Charney is going to be seeing the kind of payout you're imagining.