matthearn.com

Hey, Ross Perot is still around! Missed that guy, and his special brand of crazy.

Richard over at Honest Hypocrite is pissed, and with pretty good reason:

About the time when we seem to be getting Linus calmed, a manager (the unfriendly one) comes over and tells us in the most officious manner possible that some of the other patrons have been threatening to leave because of our crying baby, and some parents take their children outside to calm them, and isn’t teething tough.

Wow. I can honestly say, I’ve taken Charles and/or Josephine to any number of restaurants, and I’ve never had anything like that happen. Richard has asked for responses and advice, but before I do that, I have qualifications and caveats:

1. When I think my own kids are disturbing someone else’s meal, it drives me insane. Ruins dinner for me, even if the other patrons don’t say anything.


2. Conversely, I’ve never been bothered by someone’s baby, other than my own, crying at dinner. I’m routinely pissed about other people’s kids’ behavior, but that happens all the time, not just at restaurants. Babies cry; that’s how they roll. Maybe Linus is particularly loud, but I doubt it.


3. I have two kids, and I know their moods and behavior pretty well; if I think, based on factors like previous behavior, time of day, nap status, food status, etc., that the one or other of the kids is going to be a pill, we won’t go. This isn’t to say I haven’t guessed wrong, and I’m certainly not making any assumptions about Richard and his wife’s ability to gauge Linus’s behavior, I’m just saying that by and large I’ll do just about anything to avoid the above situation, so perhaps that’s why it hasn’t happened to me.


4. I’m pretty selective about where I’ll take my kids. Red Robin? Sure. Walter’s Steakhouse? No. Friendly’s? Of course. The Corner Bistro? Maybe for brunch, but never for dinner. I see kids taken to these places and it feels awkward to me, even if they are well-behaved. Now, I know nothing about Bensi’s. I’ve never heard of it. It might be the kind of place where I’d look at it and think “Of course, kids, no problem.” Since Richard mentioned there were other families with kids there, I’m inclined to think it’s a bit more of a family restaurant, and perhaps the complaining diners were just douche-knuckles.

Okay, enough caveats and explanation. Here’s my take: given that Linus was merely crying, and not running rampant through the restaurant, and there were enough other children there to qualify Bensi’s as supposedly-kid-friendly, I’d say the customers who complained were out-of-line. I’d also say the manager who complained was waaaaaay out-of-line. If something like this had happened to Sarah and me and the kids, here’s what the responses would have been:

Me: “Really? Are you kidding me?”

Sarah: “F%&# you, @?#hole.” ::rips off manager’s face and makes it into a drippy chapeau::

And then we’d pack up and leave without paying. We’d also probably jury rig some silverware so we could hang a stinky diaper above the table candle.

AAAAAAAAAAA! Are you kidding me?

“Congress would make it mandatory, absolutely require, that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner,” McCaughey said to Thompson.

“The bill expressly says if you get sick somewhere in that five-year period, you have to go through that session again — all to do what is in society’s best interest or your family’s best interest and cut your life short.”

Is there no shame in the modern conservative movement?

More on yesterday’s police topic here: Disorderly conduct: conversation about Gates arrest precedes arrest.

I’m sure everybody’s already heard everything they need to know about Henry Louis Gates and his run in with “the law” last week. I think most folks agree that Gates was in the wrong for basically being a dick to a guy trying to do his job, and that Officer Crowley should not have arrested him. I can’t say I’m terribly surprised about the arrest, either.

In my limited experience with police officers, I find that they’re humans. They’re good most of the time, and occasionally they are bad. But here’s the thing: they have extraordinary power over citizens, both legally and extralegally. (I don’t mean “illegal;” what I mean is that the aura of power gives them the ability to make people do things, whether they have a legal basis for asking or not. If a cop on the street tells me “Sir, please move out of the way,” I move out of the way without asking her what right she has to ask that. Most people do, I think.) When that power is abused, it needs to be punished.

I also think, and have nothing but anecdotal evidence to back this up, that whatever police say about serving the community and making the world a better place, a big part of the job that they like is the authority. They like bossing people around. When those people resist, even if they have a legal right to do so, cops feel insulted and scared. They also have no problem escalating a situation unnecessarily, which is why some states have had to enact rules preventing police officers from getting involved in lengthy car chases. It also helps explain situations like this.

I don’t think Officer Crowley is racist. In fact, I suspect Professor Gates was the reason race played any role in his arrest. If you have to break into your own home, you have to expect somebody might call the cops. In fact, you want them to call the cops. (I’ve had to break into my house a number of times after forgetting or losing my keys, and not once have the police showed up to see what’s going on. It’s not a very safe feeling.) When the cops show up, you break out the ID, answer a few questions, and wish the officers a nice day. You don’t accuse the police of being racist, and you certainly don’t get into a screaming match with them. Don’t ever give a police officer an excuse to arrest you, because that’s exactly what will happen.

I was once on my way to church, came to a red light, and was turning right. The road I was turning onto had 2 lanes of traffic. No one was in the right lane, so I pulled out into it, but I hadn’t notice that cars were parked in it a little ways down the block. So I put my turn signal on to change lanes to the left. A fellow in a dark car wasn’t in the mood to let me in, but I’m stubborn (and a little aggressive behind the wheel), so I muscled my way in. Then he flipped on his lights.

Being a good citizen, I pulled over. The officer parked and got out, and I realized he was in civilian clothes, probably on the way home from work. He walked up next to the window, which I rolled down, and said, in effect, “Sir, you can’t just pull out into traffic like that.”

I stuttered something about how I was turning into the empty right lane, didn’t notice the parked cars, was trying to make a legal lane change. He cut me off and said, “You can turn right on red, but you still have to wait for traffic to clear.”

I started to say “The traffic was clear in the lane I was turning into,” but realized I was disobeying one of my Prime Rules of Life: never, ever argue with a police officer. So I said, “Yes, officer.”

“You don’t get there any faster if you get into an accident, sir.”

“Yes, officer.”

“Be safe, and have a nice day.”

“Thank you, officer.”

That was the end of that. The officer got to throw his weight around a little bit, I got to make it to choir rehearsal without him calling for uniformed backup to detain and ticket me (or worse). It was win-win. You know what didn’t matter worth a lick? The fact that I’m white and he was black. Our races had absolutely no bearing on the dynamic whatsoever.

I’m not saying to acquiesce to everything cops ask. If they want to search your person, car, or home, say no. Just do it nicely.

Another late start today, sorry about that. Let’s go to Andrew for an interesting statement:

Large numbers believe healthcare reform will hurt them personally, but support it for the good of the nation. Obama has tried to argue that it will help most people personally. It’s the worst sales job he’s ever done – because, I suspect, we all know it isn’t true.

The entire point of healthcare reform is that it would help most people personally. Otherwise, why bother? And more to the point, why do 72% of Americans want it done?

My view is that healthcare reform, ideally single-payer, but even in the form of a public plan to compete with existing private ones, would be beneficial to every American. A public option is going to be cheaper because it doesn’t need to spend money on marketing; this in turn can help drive down the rates offered by the private firms. Anyone who can’t get coverage through a private firm can get it through the public option. People too poor to pay for insurance get a subsidy. Everyone will see their premiums drop because of fair competition, and over the long term costs will drop even more because folks will stop going to the emergency room (the most expensive healthcare option) for head colds and arthritis.

The private firms can’t compete, you say? Cry me a river. They’ve been profiting for decades while refusing coverage to sick folks. Screw ’em.

Then we just have to do something about malpractice insurance, which has become expensive enough to drive doctors out of practice altogether.

As much as my old Libertarian soul hates the idea of embiggening the Gubmint, I find that the idea of letting the U.S. Federal Government take over Americans’ healthcare is vastly superior to a system in which the private health companies go out of their way to deny people benefits.

The This American Life crew…has a segment in this weekend’s episode on rescission of health insurance policies – insurers’ established practice of looking for ways to invalidate policies once it turns out that the insured actually needs significant medical care… The story describes a couple of particularly egregious cases, such as a woman who was denied breast cancer surgery because she had been treated for acne in the past, and a person whose policy was rescinded because his insurance agent had incorrectly entered his weight on the application form.

If the healthcare insurance providers are willing to operate under regulations that require them to pay benefits to their customers, then great. If they insist they can’t make any profit that way, then basically they’re saying “we make our profits by letting people die.” To which I respond: eff ’em. I’d much rather deal with a government bureaucracy than a private bureaucracy that stands to benefit by my death.

Andrew has more:

Everyone gets treatment in emergencies and the uninsured get treatment the rest of us pay for in higher premiums. So the basic point remains: does this form of socialized medicine make more sense than socialized medicine which brings everyone into the system, and tries to find ways to lower costs?

An “Aha Moment” on the subject of tangible forgiveness. Video’s about 2 1/2 minutes, but it’s worth it. Key description:

When I was pregnant with my twins, I had the realization of being forgiven for the abortion I had in the past and didn’t have to explain it anymore.

Whatever your feelings are about organized religion or abortion issues, the thought of unloading a heaping helping of guilt appeals to anyone, I think.

Here’s something oddly frightening: did you know that The Prohibition Party still exists? That’s right: there are people so out of touch that, despite what happened from 1919 to 1933 and what’s happening now with the “drug war,” they honestly believe that making alcohol illegal is a good idea.

The website is pretty priceless (animated gifs! lulz), and includes links like “See what the Bible has to say” (warning: immediate sound, like it’s 1997 or something). There’s another site, marginally more professional looking, at prohibitionists.org; it contains a veritable wealth of information about what kind of crazies still live, work, and vote in this country. You know, just in case you hadn’t seen Fox News lately and had forgotten.

Time Magazine produces a simple poll: