But Starbuck’s funded some great park enhancements to a park that is very dear to my heart, and Starbucks provides medical benefits (even to many P/T employees). Yet, they’re basically being undercut by Wal-Mart and every other big box outfit that doesn’t give their employees medical — every single hour of every single day. What bullshit!

Starbucks can attract good employees b/c they treat them well, but they shouldn’t have to compete against Wal-Mart while we all subsidize uninsured workers (!). Starbucks may not be perfect, but there’s no evidence that they have ever pulled the kind of offshore tax-evasion sh*t that asshats like Enron and ExxonMobil have exceled in.

So no, I’m not Howard.
But I think we need to support the businesses that TRY to be socially responsible. Lord knows, Howard makes more money than I think is sane, but he still spreads a lot of wealth around — and with the new Sustainable Coffees, improved focus on environmentally responsible business practices (woohoo!!).

FWIW– I have John Edwards on MSNBC.com in another window; my God, that man is refreshing! Calling bullshit on the tax and corporate policies of this nation — jeezuz, he must give Wall Street the heebie jeebies. You and I have discussed some of his themes in the past; you may want to go check him out online — it’ll lift your spirits.

I know what you meant, but let’s be clear that it had nothing whatsoever to do with any specific, US based coffee company. A company that is a fine employer, provides medical, and offers cheap places for people to meet and visit.

Hope you understand that I don’t want some random reader to wrongly associate a coffee company with evil. Just sayin’.

TheraP @ 156 – See above, I didn’t mean Emergency Room – sorry for confusing you.

http://www.candlesholocaustmus…..php?sid=44

I’ll read what you’ve posted. And the links.

My reply was really more related to what I’ve been thinking about re Rayne’s focus on the word “clinical.” But I think this is all part of the same ball of wax.

Your presence here is invaluable.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/…..GQ2701.DTL

When Welshofer invited Williams to be part of the eventually fatal interrogation of Mowhoush, Williams agreed, but said he had to get a cup of coffee first. Williams went for a second cup of Joe as Welshofer lowered the sleeping bag over Mowhoush’s head.

It was, apparently, no big thing.

Re: the “clinical” aspect, I left a post back on the torture palace thread, but I would think that a lot of what they are talking about is that the tapes showed lots of measurement and, detached from the infliction of what was happening, all the elements of human experimentation.

Some of the reports that have crept out, about how many seconds someone held out on waterboarding, how low heart rates dropped, etc. indicates that you had clinical teams sticking in anal thermometers during hypothermia and otherwise measuring core temperatures, and taking pulse and respirations during sleep deprivation and measuring the extent of limb edema after prolonged stress positions and being your basic Mengeles.

In addion to the torture, it would be a very creepy thing for most people (most people aren’t even comfortable watching the real process at a slaughterhouse) to watch torture – and then people clincally measuring the effects and extent of their torture as they conduct it. Inhumane (torture)coupled with Inhuman (clinically measuring the physiological effects of the torture).