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(12/06/13 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>On Tuesday, I posted a selfie on Instagram. On Wednesday, another selfie.Fifteen followers liked the first picture, 19, the second. I paid attention to that. I follow the likes my Facebook statuses receive. I note which of my Tweets receive the most retweets.Social scientists would say I’m infected. To quote the title of a 2009 book, we’re in the midst of a “narcissism epidemic,” fueled by social media, and the most expressive symptom is the selfie.According to the Oxford Dictionary, the use of the word “selfie” has increased 17,000 percent in the last year, so we might be past an epidemic. We’re in a narcissism pandemic, an extinction-level narcissistic apocalypse.The Atlantic quotes several academic studies covering tens of thousands of participants, each concluding that narcissistic behavior has risen drastically in the past three decades. It’s an undeniable fact. We’re narcissistic. In the words of Complex, we’re all Kanye now. Maybe I’m an extreme narcissist — a Yeezus among Kanyes — but I don’t think it’s all that bad.In fact, I think it’s a tremendously positive change.Our attitudes toward ourselves lie on an axis stretching from self-love to self-hate. And I think we should stay as far away from self-hate as possible.What are the dangers of narcissism? The concern, from a sociological perspective, is that it exacerbates individualism and destroys social bonds. Narcissists are exploitative and hostile, according to the studies mentioned above. But we’re breaking expectations. Yes, we’re a generation defined by our narcissism. But that’s led us to be more focused on being happy than generations before us, according to many researchers. And, unlike our elders, we consistently rank making a difference more important than making money in our future careers. We express empathy and compassion more readily than previous generations. We want to do good, and, believe it or not, that emerges from our selfies.Selfie culture encourages us to value ourselves as human beings. Only then can we truly value others. Only by building up goodwill toward ourselves can we expend that goodwill on others. We recognize traits we value in ourselves and reward them in others.The Daily Beast explains, “selfies are on track to restore ... innocent love for humanity.” Our sense of self-value is going to transform politics. As even the most liberal democracies in the world increase coercion of their citizens, polls are revealing a picture. The old people don’t care. But the narcissistic youth do. And why wouldn’t we? We value ourselves as individuals. We’re not inclined to accept oppression. Radical self-love is even more important to groups less privileged and more oppressed than this white man. As civil activist Audre Lorde once said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” Each selfie we take is a rejection of a social order that tells us we’re average. Our narcissism is a ticket to a happier and freer future.— shlumorg@indiana.eduFollow columnist Luke Morgan on Twitter @shlumorg,
(11/22/13 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>As the impacts of “The Great Recession” have rippled across the world over the past half-decade, governments have responded primarily with austerity. Western Europe, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom have drastically cut government expenditures. And though the United States’ first response to the recession was a stimulus package, we’ve since pursued an austere policy of “sequestration,” across-the-board budget cuts. One thing is clear as the dust has begun to settle. Countries that have pursued austerity have experienced worse economic outcomes, facing exploding deficits and negative social effects as a result. As attractive as the penny-pinching politics of austerity have proven to be, they must be reconciled with a harsh record of failure in practice.For a consumption-based economy like the United States and much of Western Europe, stimulus must come primarily through spending.A new sort of aphorism holds true: a dollar traded is worth more — in terms of growth — than a dollar saved. The British Office of Budget Responsibility confirms that cuts to welfare hurt the economy much more than other cuts because welfare payments contribute more directly to consumption, which contributes more directly to growth.The primary impetus for austerity is to reduce budget deficits. Again, though, this doesn’t pan out. As the International Business Times concludes, “The combined government debt of 17 euro zone nations rose to 92.2 percent of gross domestic product — the highest in history — in the first quarter of 2013, despite stringent austerity measures deployed in the region since the beginning of the financial crisis.” Why does austerity increase, rather than decrease, debt? As government jobs disappear, so does the tax revenue from those jobs. And as growth disappears, so does the tax revenue from that growth. So the debt explodes.But the worst effect of austerity is its human cost. In America, transfer payments make up 20 percent of disposable income. And since 2007, “more than 60 percent of the increase in disposable income came from increases in transfer payments.” With stagnant wages, government money is key in helping maintain standard of living in Western countries. And there are a laundry list of disturbing trends tied to austerity.Since these austere policies were implemented, 10,000 additional suicides in North America and Europe occurred, according to Drs. David Stuckler of Oxford and Sanjay Basu of Stanford.About 10,000 British families have been forced into homelessness due to public housing cuts.Following cuts in public health spending, there was a 200 percent increase in HIV in Greece. Greece has also seen a 25 percent spike in people experiencing homelessness and a 60 percent increase in suicide rates. The evidence is clear. In the words of Drs. Basu and Stuckler, “Austerity Kills.” And with every panic about debt, the Tea Party moves us farther into its grasp.— shlumorg@indiana.eduFollow columnist Luke Morgan on Twitter @shlumorg.
(11/15/13 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Sprawled across my bed, under my covers, my eyes remain closed. Though I have a column due Thursday, I avoid writing it for a few more seconds.While procrastinating, I hear my phone chime. I roll over, and see I have been mentioned on Twitter by a friend in a sorority.She lets me know that “of course the IDS is hating on greek life.” All of the junk food I’ve recently eaten sloshes around in my system, but I rise out of bed, unaware of the brouhaha I am about to wade into.“Your attempt to stereotype the entire greek community is disgusting and offensive. I’d say I’m surprised, but I’m not. #IDS,” adds another tweeter, the greek rage having already set in. Because I’m a member of the Indiana Daily Student staff, some might think I feel pressured to defend the newspaper. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If there was a staff party, I wouldn’t know three people there.In preparation for the party, I would binge drink to ignore my worries about real journalism students’ judgment and retain my confidence.I don’t feel “objective and unbiased” until I am eight shots in.I read Nathan Brown’s article, “Another Drunken Saturday,” slowly, and confusion began to set in. I manage to pull up my Twitter, and fire off a couple of tweets in response to my greek friend. I soak in the strife.“Why are they mad?” a roommate asks. “The fact that she’s greek is totally incidental to the article. He doesn’t say anything bad about greeks. He’s in a frat!” “If you argue with greeks, don’t let logic get in the way,” I say, using the toilet as a chair.I open two tabs on Google Chrome and take turns looking between the two. In the first, I search for information about greek life at IU. College Magazine ranks IU No. 1 for greek life. “Our greek life ... just runs the entire campus,” a greek says. I beg this question of the greek system: why the persecution complex? Do you deny that there are any fair criticisms to be made — even though, again, this wasn’t one — of the greek system?I think thou doth protest too much, brah.The second tab is Total Frat Move, to see if the outrage is a command from the Greek Hivemind. But nay: “I also don’t take this article as an attack on the greek system, as many IU greeks are apparently taking it. Calm down guys.” Why the angry reaction?I’d totally flash my tits for an explanation right now.— shlumorg@indiana.eduFollow columnist Luke Morgan on Twitter @shlumorg.
(11/08/13 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Ahead of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, this week the International Olympic Committee removed the Olympic Torch from its Illuminati cathedral in Jay-Z’s basement and sent it to outer space. The torch traveled with three astronauts to the International Space Station, where they will later take it on a spacewalk. Because if there’s one thing a fire likes, it’s an incredibly cold vacuum. Regardless of the flame’s chances for survival, it will actually remain unlit to avoid consuming precious oxygen aboard the ISS — sending the torch to space is just an important symbol. The Olympic Games are the single most successful expression of peace between nations in the history of the world.Sending the torch to space is a symbol of how far humans have traveled.But we must also use it as a reminder of how far we have to go.Colonizing space is the next step in human civilization, and we remain — for the foreseeable future — depressingly earthbound. In June, a House committee asked Thomas Young, a former executive at Lockheed Martin, how long it will take NASA to put a human on Mars with its current budget. His response: “Never.” Now, I’m a good little liberal and don’t want to see money going to exploring Mars if it should be going to funding schools.At the same time, there’s exactly one agency in the United States government that is actually fundamentally necessary to the long-term survival of the human species: NASA.Over the long term, it is a mathematical certainty that an asteroid will hit Earth and a large portion of the human population will die. In fact, a study just published in Nature found that it’s 10 times more likely this will happen in the short-term than we previously thought. We used to think an asteroid had to be 100 feet long to do any damage. But the one that recently exploded over Russia with the force of 40 nuclear bombs was only 62 feet long. So I’m building a bunker and never leaving it. But for the rest of you — because the only other person allowed in my bunker is Scarlett Johansson, if she so desires — you need to jump ship.That starts with the moon, of course. Unfortunately, only one American politician in recent memory has made serious attempts to get us to live on the moon, and, fortunately, that man did not get elected president.You might remember him being lampooned on Saturday Night Live as Moon President Newt Gingrich.The irony is that making a colony on the moon was the best idea presented in the 2012 elections.From there on, we need to terraform Mars to make it habitable, a feat which NASA says is technically feasible. But it will take hundreds of years, so we need to get started now. Unless you’re trying to be a serf in Luke and Scarlett’s post-apocalyptic kingdom, start talking to your representatives about getting us to Mars.— shlumorg@indiana.eduFollow columnist Luke Morgan on Twitter @shlumorg.
(11/01/13 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It’s rare that I find myself wholeheartedly agreeing with the Republican National Committee. In fact, I can count the number of times that’s happened on zero fingers.Well, make that one time. One finger. Whatever.The RNC is calling President Obama a “bystander president,” and it’s hard to disagree. When — and really think hard — was the last time what Obama wanted or what he did actually mattered?It’s always like this, of course. People overestimate what a president can do or will change about the country.But first-term Obama got Obamacare through Congress, he made substantial decisions — even if you disagree with them — on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, free trade and the bailout. He killed bin Laden and saved General Motors Co., to quote Vice President Biden. It’s been almost exactly a year since Obama won reelection. It’s the depressing sequel to “500 Days of Summer.” Call it “360 Days of Irrelevancy.”Since re-election, Obama tried to get Congress to bomb Syria, and he failed. Russian President Vladimir Putin solved that one, getting Syria to give up its chemical weapons.Then, the debt ceiling, government shutdown fight. I credit Obama for holding firm and not giving in to Republican hostage-taking. But it’s not like he really mattered then either. All of the drama there was intramural within the Republican Party. And he didn’t even manage to turn that fiasco — after which only 18 percent of voters approved of Republicans and Congress’s approval rating fell to sub-hemorrhoid levels — into a lasting political victory.Then came the seemingly endless NSA wiretapping debacle. Not only is our government spying on France and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, news broke Wednesday it also hacked Google and Yahoo’s data centers. I’m not an expert or anything, but I think this gave NSA access to basically anything on the Internet. Or at least much of it. Finally, the Obamacare rollout. This was supposed to be the biggest legislative victory of the Obama presidency, but the website was buggy. Probably not that huge of a deal, but certainly not ideal.The most buzz Obama has generated regarding Obamacare was when he helped catch the fainting woman in his crowd. He didn’t know about Merkel. He didn’t know about the data centers. He didn’t know the healthcare.gov website wasn’t going to work. The problem isn’t exclusive to Obama. President George W. Bush kind of just chilled out during his second term when he wasn’t sexually harrassing Merkel. But Obama was a boss. In late 2008, after it was clear that Obama would be our next president, Bush basically let Obama run the country. Bush actually sent Congress a letter at Obama’s request asking for bailout money to be available for Obama when he entered office. And Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki endorsed candidate Obama’s Iraq withdrawal timeline four months before Election Day 2008. What happened to the Obama that made things happen before he was actually the president?Step it up, Mr. President.— shlumorg@indiana.eduFollow columnist Luke Morgan on Twitter @shlumorg.
(10/25/13 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It’s rare that the continent across the pond behaves harmoniously, but thanks to Edward Snowden, it has a uniting factor other than being mutually terrified of Vladimir Putin.They’re all mad at us. Or, at least, at our government because you and I aren’t the ones tapping German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone.But, according to whistleblower Edward Snowden, the friendly folks over at the National Security Agency tapped the personal communications of not only Merkel, but millions of French citizens. Aside from the humor to be found in the idea of spying on French people — have they ever truly said anything worth listening to? — it is easy to dismiss this as functionally meaningless.European citizens on European soil have no right not to be spied upon under our Constitution. They have, actually, no rights under our Constitution.And it’s not like the Germans have ever given us a reason to be suspicious, right? Like two major, global reasons in the 20th century where they were clearly the bad guys? And the French have admitted they have a serious Islamist extremism problem. It turns out that — much like gangs in America — terrorists in France use jails to recruit more terrorists. Besides, what is Europe going to do to us? It’s a miracle the French haven’t surrendered already.But European countries are some of our most valuable allies. We need their help literally all the time. And this brouhaha endangers all of that.The Washington Post reports that “European officials on Thursday threatened to delay major trade negotiations, while officials in Germany launched a legal investigation and said the scandal could disrupt important U.S.-German counterterrorism collaborations.” The trade agreement in question is worth at least $180 billion a year to the United States. And German intelligence aimed at terrorist financing and Islamist extremism in Europe and abroad is some of the most extensive in the world. One German minister has called for the “suspension of a financial data-sharing program that targets suspected terrorists.”And France is key not only to the international champagne trade, but additionally, Franco-American collaboration has already stopped at least one major terrorist attack. We sacrificed all that to tap Angela Merkel’s phone? Did we think she made weekly calls to Bin Laden?Weird — he hasn’t picked up for a couple of years. She’s starting to suspect he doesn’t like her anymore.Merkel made a personal call to President Obama, who assured her that the U.S. is not and will not spy on her. He apparently failed to acknowledge whether or not we had spied on her in the past. Instead, he chose to make static noises and pretend the phone was cutting out before hanging up.This should be a wake-up call to our leaders who remain unbothered by the government spying on Americans, probably because it doesn’t threaten a trade agreement.And if it is a wake-up call, the NSA will be listening.— shlumorg@indiana.eduFollow columnist Luke Morgan on Twitter @shlumorg.
(10/11/13 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. So if it is broke, fix it, right?Government is broken. Only 8 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing — making it less popular than hemorrhoids. But we aren’t fixing it.Americans remain convinced that the dysfunction we’ve seen for the last few decades is a result of incompetent people elected into a great system.But we could elect a totally new Congress tomorrow and still have these problems.Gridlock and inefficiency are built into the system. Some of that is intentional. But the problems we face today are unprecedented and unintended.The problem is that they’re written into the Constitution.James Madison was worried about “factions,” primarily groups with regional interests, gaining power. His solution was to put as many factions into power as possible, thereby diluting the power of any individual faction.So we split up power 50 ways. Then we split it again, 435 ways. We didn’t want Congress to be North vs. South. We wanted Congress to be Indiana vs. Nebraska vs. New York vs. MA-2 vs. CA-43 and so on.Then, we started to dive into party politics.It’s easy to see why: if you’re focused on stopping a North vs. South war, why not see if you can’t get a Northerner and a Southerner to both vote for the same group of guys?University of Virginia historian Michael Holt argues that the breakdown of the party system was responsible for the Civil War. Basically, when Democrats stopped appealing to Northerners and Republicans stopped appealing to Southerners, peaceful political solutions became impossible. Today, the system works perfectly to ensure regional diversity. Hawaii has two Senators, as does Maine. There is no North vs. South. The problem is, nobody cares about that anymore.Congress is designed to stop a war that already happened.Splitting power geographically means we can’t split power ideologically. So instead of Madison’s 435 factions, we have two factions, a red elephant and a blue donkey. For a variety of reasons, Democrats cluster in cities and Republicans cluster in the country. Independents and members of third parties, though, are spread relatively evenly around.The result: even though Gallup finds that 45 percent of Americans identify as Independent, and 22 percent identify as Republican, there are not twice as many Independents as there are Republicans in Congress. In fact, there are two Independents in Congress, and 278 Republicans. The problem is geographical representation. The very act of districting entrenches and encourages binary partisanship.There are a number of solutions, none of which are easy or perfect. I’m just here to say this: if you want a working government again, don’t blame incumbents or parties or uninformed voters or the Tea Party. Just take a long look at Article 1, because that’s where the problem starts.— shlumorg@indiana.eduFollow columnist Luke Morgan on Twitter @flukemorgan.
(10/04/13 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>There’s an old story about a religious man stuck in a flood. He prays and prays for salvation. A boat comes by and offers the religious man a ride to safety.“No,” says the man. “God will save me.”Eventually the man drowns. He arrives at Heaven angry, and presumably soaking wet, and demands an audience with God to ask why he wasn’t saved.God’s confused.“I sent a boat!” he says.The election of Hassan Rouhani to the presidency of Iran offers an opportunity for a truly historic reset in the Persian Gulf. It’s fundamentally pivotal that we take advantage of this situation.Rouhani was elected June 15, replacing the volatile Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the President of Iran. Rouhani has been described by friend and foe alike as a moderate, and he campaigned on a pledge of civil reform and improving relations with the West.Rouhani is a boat for us in the Persian Gulf. We have to climb aboard.There has been some debate — especially in the right-wing American and Israeli circles — about both Rouhani’s bona fides as a moderate and about whether his moderation is truly important for Iranian policy because the Iranian president is subordinate to the Ayatollah, Iran’s chief cleric.However, Rouhani is the real deal, and he has the support of the Ayatollah. One Iranian interviewed by the Huffington Post noted that many political prisoners have already been freed. Another, a Tehran University professor, said his country has significantly “evolved” since Ahmadinejad left office. Rouhani — while remaining officially opposed to the existence of Israel — spread a message of peace toward “all Jews,” wishing them a happy Rosh Hashanah. Additionally, Rouhani, in an exchange with Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, recently pledged to open up social media to all Iranians, lifting the current ban. The best part is that Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Parliament are supporting Rouhani. While the politically popular Revolutionary Guard are sticking to their hardline approach, 230 of 290 Iranian parliamentarians signed a letter supporting Rouhani’s overtures. Rouhani’s overtures culminated in a fifteen minute phone call with President Barack Obama, the first phone call between American and Iranian leaders since the 1979 Iranian revolution, which is especially notable because it lasted longer than 80 percent of my phone calls with my mom. Unfortunately, there is significant American and Israeli opposition to any thawing of relations. The Wall Street Journal, unsurprisingly, accused Obama of being a prop in Rouhani’s PR campaign. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Rouhani to be a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” at the United Nations. There’s nothing wrong with healthy skepticism of any sudden changes in Iranian politics. There’s significant inertia in the system rewarding hardliners and opposing moderation. Change is difficult to achieve and harder to sustain.But when we get sent a boat, we need to climb aboard.— shlumorg@indiana.eduFollow columnist Luke Morgan on Twitter @flukemorgan.
(09/27/13 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>This most recent push by Republicans to either shut down the government or defund Obamacare has put a renewed focus on the size of our federal bureaucracy, which has in turn put renewed stress on my spell-check.Bureaucracy is too much red tape, too many rules, such that good ideas get bogged down and decay or die out. That’s a problem.Philip Howard wrote last year in the Atlantic, “Radically simplify government. Make law a framework of goals and principles, like the Constitution. Put real people in charge again.” In other words, eliminate laws and let people make decisions. Abolish the bureaucracy.But I’m not convinced bureaucracy is so bad.It actually does our country good. Along with guaranteeing equal treatment under the law, it slows the rate of legal and regulatory change between successive administrations with radically different ideals. This contributes to a stable business environment and greater equality of opportunity because start-ups play by the same rules as the big guys. A de facto bureaucracy, in which governmental decision-making could radically alter from administration to administration, would inherently favor those with the greatest capital assets who have the ability to adjust more quickly to those changes.But Howard’s idea is headed the right way and works with both conservative smaller-government ideals and progressive smarter-government ideals.The real trap that Howard falls into is assuming that a one-size-fits-all approach will solve the government’s problems.Some programs would be improved by eliminating red tape and placing decision-makers who are held accountable for those decisions. For some programs, though, rules are important. Howard is right. Rules can’t think. But thinking isn’t always good.Look at the Department of Energy’s clean-energy loan program, of “Solyndra” fame. An independent analysis found the program exceeded expectations. The program is, in a word, exemplary. Despite this, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., argued in the Vice-Presidential debate last year, that “$90 billion in green pork [went] to campaign contributors and special interest groups.” That was predictable politics, but imagine how much worse it would be if there wasn’t a specific, praised methodology used by the DOE to decide which companies got loans.Instead, some bureaucrat thought about who to give loans to and then did so. The results would be catastrophic, at least politically.We need real radical reform, a total paradigm shift in how we view government. It should be measured not as “big” or “small,” but as “effective” or “ineffective.”This will allow the government to shrink from some areas where it’s not suited to be. It will force us to simplify the convoluted and ineffective tax code, lower rates and cut loopholes.It will also encourage government intervention where it’s useful and loan guarantees where the market is failing to account for positive externalities or social good, protecting the environment and developing and building infrastructure.When it comes to government, size doesn’t matter. What matters is how well it works.— shlumorg@indiana.eduFollow columnist Luke Morgan on Twitter @flukemorgan.
(09/20/13 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Gallup CEO Jim Clifton is really depressed. Here’s a test: what’s he talking about here?It’s “killing us.” It’s “a ‘game over’ moment for America.” If we can’t fix it, “everything else ceases to matter.” Climate change? The debt ceiling? An economic collapse, gay marriage, the UN taking away our guns and a nuclear Iran? All wrong. Clifton was talking about something significantly more pedestrian, but potentially even scarier — the rising cost of health care. Health care costs are climbing at a rocket-fueled rate of 7.5 percent per year and total around two and a half trillion dollars annually. It’s the driving factor, along with weak revenue, in creating our massive federal debt.We’re trying all kinds of things to slow it down, but nothing is working.The problem is that nobody is addressing the real problem behind rising health care costs. People are living much longer than they used to, but they’re not living any healthier. We’re extending lives, but not youth.This is where the economic debate on health care costs crashes into the scientific debate on life extension. In the past century, we’ve doubled the length of the human life, but the productive life hasn’t extended that much. Bennett Foddy, an Oxford philosopher, notes, “We’ve gotten good at keeping people alive once they’re fairly decrepit. And that sort of guarantees that you have the maximum drain on resources, while also producing the kind of minimum amount of human benefit.” In fact, the 1 percent of people who die every year use up 12 percent of that year’s health care spending. We should move our scientific community toward making humans live like the lobster.Scientists generally think lobsters live as long as humans do. But they stop aging once they reach adulthood. Eighty-year-old lobsters look exactly like 18-year-old lobsters. We all want Grandma and Grandpa around for as long as we can keep them. But it would be a lot nicer to have a spry, active set of grandparents than having them on life support.We should focus on youth-extending medicine, not life-extending medicine. That way, in the words of Foddy, “We still live to be about 80 to 85, but we’re alert and active until we drop dead.” A world in which people live relatively healthy lives until they’re 80 and die soon after, seems much preferable to a world in which people live healthy lives until they’re 60 — if they’re lucky — and then sick lives for the next 20 years.We halfway-cure diseases like diabetes and heart disease, such that those afflicted require life-long continuous treatment. We further extend the lives of those on the brink of death for months, if not years, at a time. Then we promise to take care of the elderly on the public dime.Our system is a perfect storm designed to engineer high health care costs.It’s time we give the elderly better lives — bicycles instead of walkers, doing jobs they love instead of living in nursing homes they hate, spending time in their homes, rather than in their hospital beds. We owe it to them, and we owe it to us to make like the lobster.Oscar Wilde once said, “Youth is wasted on the young.” Let’s fix that. — shlumorgan@indiana.eduFollow columnist Luke Morgan on Twitter @flukemorgan.
(09/13/13 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>News struck last week that the Republicans, according to House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., will tie an increase in the debt ceiling to defunding the Affordable Care Act.The Republicans, according to Cantor, will not raise the debt ceiling without an agreement that the implementation of Obamacare will be delayed or canceled. They probably think this is good politics. Beating up on Obamacare is to Republicans, as drinking tea is to Britons. But they’re probably going to come to regret it.First of all, the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is the amount of money the government is legally allowed to borrow. It’s totally arbitrary. It’s been raised more than 70 times since 1962. That’s about one-and-a-half times a year. At literally no point in time has raising the debt ceiling had a negative impact.Additionally, raising the debt ceiling merely allows the executive branch to spend the money that the legislative branch has already told it to spend.In other words, failure to raise the debt ceiling is like your boss telling you to go buy some supplies and giving you an expired credit card to do so.Most modern Republicans — despite their rhetoric — are not deficit hawks. They’re as responsible for debt as Democrats are. Republicans have passed tax cuts and war that have added significantly to our deficit.In fact, the Bush tax cuts will account for nearly half of all debt by 2019, making them the largest contributor to our debt. But those are facts, which are often separated from politics.The politics don’t favor Republicans either. A new CNN poll reveals that 62 percent of Americans think a government shutdown would lead either to a “crisis” or at least to “major problems.”And 54 percent would blame Republicans, while only 25 percent would blame President Obama. Democrats, in turn, can’t afford to cave on this.The government needs to raise the debt ceiling. The failure to do so in 2011 caused a credit downgrade, which has the potential of making it more expensive for the government to borrow money. Even worse, it risks a government shutdown.But Democrats have to defend Obamacare. Agreeing to delay Obamacare for a year will only lead to an exact replay of this situation a year from now.Besides, Democrats have long held that Obamacare will become popular once it’s enacted.That’s the idea. I think Democrats are going to cave, one way or another. They won’t cave all the way on Obamacare, they won’t delay it for a year or agree to defund it. But they’ll cave.Dave Barry once wrote he was unsure of who to vote for because “Democrats seem to be the nicer people, but they have the management skills of celery.” And Will McAvoy, the main character of HBO’s “The Newsroom,” ranted that “If liberals are so fucking smart, how come they lose so goddamn always?” The Republicans are dealing the Democrats a winning hand. The question is, how are the Democrats going to lose it?— shlumorg@indiana.eduFollow columnist Luke Morgan on Twitter @flukemorgan.
(09/06/13 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>There are five points I considered when determining my stance on Syria.1. War War is horrific. We’ve forgotten that, somehow. Because they won’t show coffins on TV anymore, or maybe because we’ve stopped calling it “war.”We’ve become “war weary.” We’ve gotten sick of it. War is too vivid, too real, too important and too devastating to just become detached from. We can’t afford to “get sick of” war. We must hate violence against other humans.Because when we’re sick of war, we call in sick. When we hate war, we make peace. 2. SarinSarin is an illegal nerve agent — a chemical weapon — that causes asphyxia. You choke to death when exposed to sarin. No matter how desperately you gasp for air, you suffocate. Its mechanism — denying the body the ability to process oxygen — is identical in method to insecticides. Bashir al-Assad used sarin gas last month to kill 1,429 Syrians, including 426 children. He choked 426 children to death. 3. MeI hate war, a lot. I wanted American soldiers to leave Afghanistan long before we started to depart. Same with Iraq. I hated President Bush and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., because I thought they were going to push us into war with Iran, North Korea, Russia — you name it. Obama’s been disappointing. Drones everywhere. Assassinations. Libya. For the last decade there has been constant war, even if they stopped calling it that.I hate war. We need to make war on Bashar al-Assad.4. SyriaThis is not about regime change in Syria. This is not about helping the “good rebels” or whether or not we also help the “bad rebels.” It’s not about picking sides in the Syrian Civil War or trying to resolve it. This isn’t even about Syria. Syria is just the background music. And although our hearts ache for the Syrian people, for the innocent men and women and children who were brutally suffocated by a man they once hoped would bring freedom to Syria, they too, are bit players.This moment is about one nation, its might, its promise and its responsibility.5. AmericaThis moment is about human dignity and about America. We must strive to be the world’s moral beacon, even if we sometimes fall short of that goal.Chemical weapons are a red line. They might be the reddest line out there.And if there isn’t a repercussion to crossing the red line, we’ve failed. We’ve failed the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. We’ve failed our founding promise: that all lives are equally worthy and endowed with inherent dignity. We’ve failed everyone who will live in a future where the official policy of the United States is to not care about chemical weapons attacks because “we’re sick of war.”We need to hate war, and we need to bomb Bashar al-Assad.— shlumorg@indiana.eduFollow columnist Luke Morgan on Twitter @flukemorgan.
(08/30/13 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Sen. Jim Merritt, R-Indianapolis, wrote a letter in Wednesday’s paper decrying the “culture of binge drinking” on campuses and touting the Indiana Lifeline Law. Our state legislature spends its time attacking gay rights, demolishing environmental protection, reducing funding to IU, promoting religious education in public schools, trying to put guns on campus and destroying unions. So the fact Merritt got the Senate and House to unanimously pass his Lifeline Law — an actually good idea — is pretty miraculous.But alcohol laws remain deeply flawed. Although the Senator’s letter was heartfelt and appreciated by all of us saddened by Rachel Fiege’s death, it reflected these flaws.Merritt clarifies his law will absolutely not “ease penalties for underage drinkers... (W)e made sure Indiana’s law did not provide legal protection or amnesty to the individual in need of medical attention so as not to give incentive to binge drink.”Merritt is telling us if Rachael actually consumed alcohol — which is thus far unconfirmed — her friends had called the ambulance and she pulled through, she would’ve been slapped with an underage consumption ticket.Therein lies the problem.Fixing this law so the person with the medical emergency is not prosecuted won’t create an incentive to drink. Fact is, there’s not a lot of room for the number of underage drinkers to grow. Eight out of 10 college freshmen have consumed alcohol in spite of the threat of criminal sanction. Of course, the law wasn’t written for people like me.I’d call an ambulance if someone needed one even if I had three illegal immigrants in my basement cooking meth with a stolen Bengal tiger cub.But for some, I’d bet the threat that an underage friend might be prosecuted serves as a clear disincentive to reporting a problem.All of this ignores the bigger problem: the “culture of binge drinking” is attributable to the strictness of our drinking laws. Americans over the age of 15 drink three-quarters as much as Europeans their age, but are much more likely to die due to binge drinking.European teens can drink at bars where they legally purchase their drinks in public. American teens drink in less controlled situations, with illegal alcohol and no professional bartender to cut them off.Think of how rare deaths at bars are, relative to those at house parties.Moreover, American teens are criminals whether they drink one sip of a beer or take 10 shots. Why sip the beer?If we want to end the “crisis of binge drinking” our best bet is to lower the drinking age, letting all college students move their drinking into public. At the very least, we can make our laws easier on minors who consume, especially if they’re already recovering from alcohol poisoning. At the same time, we can further strengthen penalties for truly dangerous activities like drunken driving. Thank you, Senator, for taking the time to write your letter, and thank you for the Lifeline Law. — shlumorg@indiana.eduFollow columnist Luke Morgan on Twitter @flukemorgan.
(08/21/13 2:40am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Chaos theory is kind of a crazy thing, isn’t it? It tells us about the
butterfly effect, where seemingly insignificant causes can have
monumental effects. A butterfly flaps its wings in Siberia and that
causes a hurricane two months later in the Gulf.But could a butterfly get a man elected President of the United States? Because
some mischievous monarch set itself aflutter sometime last year,
Hurricane Sandy struck ground with a devastating effect. Seventy-two
Americans were killed, billions of dollars’ worth of property was
destroyed and millions of Americans were left without power for
significant periods of time.Sandy was a tragedy, but the funny thing about tragedies is that they beg for a hero. We got two. The
first was President Barack Obama, whose handling of Hurricane Sandy
compares to President Bush’s handling of Katrina in much the same way
Michael Jordan’s jump shot compares to my mom’s.The second hero
of our buddy-buddy bromance — a Kevin James to Obama’s cool Hitch — was
Gov. Chris Christie, R-New Jersey. Christie, and his effusive praise of
Obama, stood in the center of the national spotlight, and Christie
garnered a lot of goodwill.Before Sandy, 50 percent of New
Jersey voters approved of Chris Christie. After Sandy, 63 percent of
them felt that way. New converts to Christieanity.And the numbers hold true nationwide. More
than half of Americans like the guy, and I don’t blame them. He’s
charismatic. He’s funny. He’s everything good about New Jersey without
any of the gross guido-ness of the Shore.Here’s the kicker,
though. In New Jersey, 37 Democratic officials have endorsed Christie
for re-election. Those are crazy numbers, because I can count the number
of Republican elected officials who endorsed Obama for re-election on
one finger.Nationally, 58 percent of Republicans like Christie.
Fifty-two percent of Democrats like him. Fifty percent of Independents
like him. In case you failed to grasp the significance of that, a
well-known national Republican polls higher with Democrats than with
Independents. I think I know what explains it. A lot of us
Democrats think President Obama’s a pretty cool guy who gets attacked by
numerous Republicans for sometimes sketchy reasons. And young
Democrats especially like Obama personally. We saw Christie fiercely
defend Obama during Sandy. It lent him a my bro’s bro is my bro aura, so
to speak.One of my liberal friends, bless her simple naiveté, recently expressed her desire to see a Clinton/Christie ticket in 2016.There
are a lot of problems with that, and Democrats should probably stop
window-shopping Christie and move on. And they need to do it quickly,
because the New York Times tells me he’s already pretty much running for
President. Chris Christie is anti-choice, anti-gay-marriage,
anti-support-for-the-poor, pro-drug-criminalization, pro-DOMA and
pro-government-surveillance-of-citizens. He vetoed a bill
banning .50 caliber snipers, claiming that such rifles were necessary
for “recreational pastimes,” which is true if your pastimes include
taking potshots at Decepticons from a mile away. And, he doesn’t believe — even after Sandy devastated his state — that climate change is influenced by human activity. He’s no Kevin James in my “Hitch.” He’s more like that Vance Munson jerk. So if a damn butterfly gets him elected President, call me an enemy of butterflies everywhere.— shlumorg@indiana.edu. Follow columnist Luke Morgan on Twitter @flukemorgan.
(05/13/13 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>America has always had a bit of a funky relationship with religion. We’re certainly one of the most pious countries in the developed world, although that status is quickly fading. And we evolved from a collection of persecuted religious minorities, who came to North America and founded colonies — like Massachusetts and Maryland — with overtly religious charters.But when we decided to make a country, we created a pretty secular one. The Constitution bans religious tests for offices in the government and guarantees both freedom of expression of religion and freedom from the establishment of religion by the government. Americans are given almost total free reign to practice their religion in whatever way they choose, so long as it does not infringe upon others’ rights, like sacrificing virgins to Quetzalcoatl, the winged Mesoamerican serpent god. We let doctors of certain faiths opt out of providing medically necessary procedures if their faith demands it. Despite the growing trend in Europe, we allow Muslim women to cover themselves in whatever way they see fit. But what happens when two parents, due to a belief in faith healing, don’t allow their children to receive life-saving medical care? Some believe this issue — which gets down to the fundamental core of these parents’ beliefs — is a philosophically and legally taxing question that pits the state’s interest in the child’s life against the parents’ rights to practice their belief system.Those people are wrong. This one’s easy. We shouldn’t allow parents to sacrifice their children at the altar of faith healing any more than we would allow human sacrifice in the West African Voodoo religion.This gets down to the core of how we value religion in America. There is a sense by some, especially on the right, that religion is an especially valued subcategory of belief — that the state should not endorse a religion but should actively encourage people to be religious. To this end, religion catches a lot of breaks in America. Churches get tax breaks, Catholic school students get to ride public buses and the like.But that’s not how it should be or how it was meant to be. The dude who wrote the Constitution, James Madison, viewed any favoritism of religion over secularism as clearly unconstitutional — the Constitution, after all, prohibits the government establishment of any religion, not just of a religion.So think of the question this way: there are two parents who don’t like their kid very much and so refuse to allow the child to receive life-saving medical treatment. The kid dies. Should that be protected?There are two parents who love their kid a lot but have looked at the medical information and made a scientifically informed but incorrect decision that the doctors are wrong and the child will be fine. They refuse the treatment. The kid dies. Should that be protected?There’s no reason why the parents who were religiously motivated should be found not guilty of the crime that the other parents committed. They killed their child. America protects your right to worship who you want, where you want, when you want, why you want, and for the most part, how you want. What we don’t protect is your right to use your religion as an excuse to harm or kill others.— schlumorg@indiana.edu
(05/17/12 1:27am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“A Man Without Honor” largely steps away from the many brewing wars in Westeros, steps away from Tyrion Lannister as a protagonist, and — but for one storyline — steps away from the game to look at the players. It even steps away from female nudity.The titular man without honor is Jamie Lannister, but the Kingslayer disagrees. When honor is defined by sticking to all of society’s many contradictory codes, how do you maintain it? Xaro Xhoan Daxos makes the episode’s only big political play. Elsewhere, Jon Snow has the chance to get laid but instead gets captured, Queen Cersei takes the blame for her son’s evilness, Sansa Stark (unfortunately) becomes a woman and Arya gets dangerously comfortable around Tywin Lannister.This episode, like many in the series, suffers from trying to fit a large number of storylines within the single hour of the show, some of which stick and some of which fall short. Daenerys, who has always been incredibly sympathetic, was turned into a strange, phony and distrustful cynic. The episode really belonged to Theon and Jamie, whose respective evils were excellently acted. By Luke Morgan
(05/10/12 5:17pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>More so than any artist I’ve heard, Kanye West makes a habit of constantly changing. He’s gone from his debut’s sped-up soul samples to “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’s” progressive rock and indie influences.“Mercy,” the first single off his label G.O.O.D. Music’s compilation album, implies a new sonic direction for Mr. West. The record, like a lot of what we’ve heard from West lately, features the heavy percussive baseline and repetitive hooks typical of the Dirty South.West, who is joined on the track by Big Sean, Pusha T and 2 Chainz, is not satisfied with staying still, so the beat gets some extra bells and whistles like a Patois bridge. Each of the verses, though, is exactly what you might expect from their respective rappers: Sean makes some sexual puns, Pusha T spits a ferocious coke verse, West thumps out a drugged-out, high-class verse and 2 Chainz shouts a trap verse straight out of Atlanta.Sean’s verse is forgettable in the wake of the three great verses to follow. The highlight of the song is when Ye strips the beat down to its muggy core and raps in cadence with it.Yeezus have mercy.By Luke Morgan
(04/18/12 8:49pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I’m so antisocial I don’t know what antisocial people do.So, half of this column will be a guess, and half of it will be what I did last year. And it will all be a cold dose of reality.Ignore the stupid Facebook memes and the tweets. Little 500 isn’t going to be legendary. It will be painful.It is a time of camaraderie, in which the underdeveloped section of a greek student’s brain that feels shame is completely shut off for a week.Nightly parties. Drunken classes. The vague but ubiquitous smells of beer and sweat.Social butterflies emerge from their wintry cocoons and raw-dog randoms. The antisocial are lepers, except it would be preferable to have an arm fall off than to be antisocial during Little 500.Literally, I once watched as a guy with one arm left a party with two women on each side.Last year, two friends of mine got drunk at noon and went to our econ class a half an hour late in cut-offs and shorts, with a beer in each cargo pocket. They left 10 minutes later through the front door of the lecture hall.This is how the story was told to me, at least. I skipped that class to play Xbox.If you do get drunk, do it alone. People are obnoxious when they’re drunk.Eventually, though, you will have to go to a party. This is an area of major concern for the antisocial because parties get busted. The key is to get drunk enough to not care if the party is busted but to be sober enough to handle that event with the grace and poise required to slip out of a side door and go hide in the forest for half an hour.That level of inebriation requires, unfortunately, more alcohol than leaning against the wall with a solo cup, still full of beer after half an hour of warming in your hand, will provide. And no, watching attractive people dance does not get you drunker, just sadder.Oh, and that girl you went to high school with, the one who’s visiting for the weekend? She’s not here for you, so don’t even worry about that. She’s going home with the one-armed guy.P.S. — The Student Recreational Sports Center is open until 11:30 p.m. today.— shlumorg@indiana.edu
(04/16/12 12:35am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It’s the constant waiting that’s the worst.No, it’s the noises, the metronome of electronic monitors. Death is a talented artist, and he raps over a beat composed of the beeping of hospital machinery. His voice is a void, and it speaks volumes in the brief silences between each beat.As I write this, I sit, watching my father sleep. His blood pressure is low, so he’s tired. But it’s the first good sleep he’s gotten in months, so we’re hoping it stays low to let him rest.But if it stays low, they put more fluids in his veins to take up room and increase his blood pressure. More fluid means more work for his liver. More work for his liver means more fluid leaked into his abdominal cavity. And that means worse breathing.That means they have to drain the fluid, which lowers his blood pressure. Hickory dickory dock.I ask the nurses if my little brother should be here, to see his dad. They laugh.“He’s not dying, he’s just a little sick. We’ll let you know if anything changes, though.” It’s a relief, of course. But it doesn’t assuage my concerns. You’d probably think it’s silly, but it’s raining out. When my grandma died, it was raining out. When my great-grandma died, it was raining out. When her brother died, it was raining out. And so on. For literally every family death I can remember, precipitation was involved.I’m not very superstitious, but when push comes to shove, I’d prefer sunshine. I ask about transplants.“I’m not sure. It’s a weekend, so the transplant team’s probably not here. I’ll make a note so everyone knows, but we’ll probably find out on Monday.”Huh. I guess people stop dying on the weekends. My dad’s liver stops failing until the surgeon sinks that last putt.That’s unfair, but so what? If you don’t deserve the right to be unfair when your dad is in the hospital, when do you?Prologue: Why are you here, Mr. Morgan?“Alcohol consumption?” Daily, until 1986. He owned a bar.“Tobacco consumption?” Daily, until 1986. He owned a bar.“Any drug use?” You can probably guess what year that stopped, too.My dad is the epitome of a baby boomer — from counterculture to high-ranking corporate executive, playing golf with governors and working 60-hour weeks.Some people got away with it; my dad didn’t quite. He still might, though. Anyway, that’s what I’ve got for you this week. It was self-serving and just an exercise to make me feel better, but I didn’t feel like writing about anything else. — shlumorg@indiana.edu
(04/08/12 10:56pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>In the past week, political rhetoric in the United States has gone from “mildly annoying” to “troublesome” to “straight idiotic.”The straw that broke the camel’s back was President Barack Obama’s statement that, were the Supreme Court to overturn his health care initiative, it would be “an unprecedented, extraordinary step” because the bill was an economic issue and the court generally defers to Congress when it comes to making policy. That’s when the world went a little bit crazy, for some reason. These words are apparently some sort of secret code that causes a chemical imbalance in the brains of basically everyone but me, I think.Dean Singleton, the chairman of the Associated Press, asked Obama to explain himself: “Mr. President, you said yesterday that it would be unprecedented for a Supreme Court to overturn laws passed by an elected Congress. But that is exactly what the Court has done during its entire existence.” Mr. Singleton is absolutely right. But if that’s what the court has done during its entire existence, do you really suppose that Obama’s use of the word “unprecedented” should be taken strictly literally here? Or can we use the common elements of language, like context, to figure out what he meant?USA Today’s Elite Fact-Checking Squadron noted that Obama clarified his earlier statement by saying that “the court has traditionally exercised significant restraint and deference” to Congress. Their analysis: “Perhaps so, but ‘significant restraint’ is a far cry from ‘unprecedented.’” Gotcha, Mr. President! How do you like those miniscule semantic apples?But like I said, literally the entire U.S. seems to be under the impression that Obama is totally unaware of the concept of judicial review.I guess he skipped eighth, ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th grades, as well as his undergraduate history classes, his law classes and the constitutional law classes he taught.The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto tweeted, “Barack Obama is stunningly ignorant when it comes to constitutional law.” The reason I’m writing this column is because I am honestly and completely confused. I’m not saying I’m confused as a rhetorical argument to try to make these arguments look silly. I’m just actually confused.Do these people really think that Obama thinks the courts have never overturned a law?It actually appears so. George Parry of the Philadelphia Enquirer writes, “How could a president of the United States of America, of all people, not know something so basic about our system of government? Where has he been all these years? Kenya?” Wow.So this is my letter to George and all those like him, including Judge Jerry Smith, who assigned the Justice Department homework — a three-page, single-spaced paper requiring they affirm the administration’s belief in judicial review. It’s fortunate I’m not in the Justice Department, because that paper wouldn’t require three pages: Use your freaking brains.— shlumorg@indiana.edu