Well for a 'minimalist design' they managed to slap their logo feces right there in the middle of the cup for everyone to see. Since minimalist design can mean being stripped to only the essentials, does the logo even have to be on the cup?

Do they think you forgot where you got your coffee, and have to be reminded where you paid $5 for it, and $6 for your juice?

Maybe JUST the red cup and white lid could have been the 'bold statement' Starbucks wanted to make eschewing ALL ties with the consumerism of the holiday season!

After all, the minimum you need is the cup and the lid to keep it from spilling. Even the lid is superfluous if you just stand there and drink your coffee.

Ok,so he's caught in Italy with fake ID, materials for bomb making, had conversations with known terrorists and provided material assistance to others to help them make contacts, and Italy thought the best solution was to chuck him back to Tunisia?

Cause he would NEVER think about trying another country to enter Europe instead, right? Maybe throwing him in an Italian jail for 20 years might have been a wee bit safer for all concerned?

He should be out of a Tunisian jail pretty quickly since they are 79 out of 175 on the Transparency International website. That's assuming he goes to jail there at all. What crime did he commit there? He could have bought his fake ID somewhere else. They likely won't hold him other than to get a stern talking to about being a bad person.

There will be finger wagging, bad words, and a lecture. Yeah. Great plan.

Nicely done!

We used to do something similar back in the 70's with people who drove little Mini Coopers.

Take 6-8 guys, pick up the car and turn it 90 degrees in the driveway. So now instead of facing the garage, the car is facing the fence, the wall, or the lawn.

Just stand around the next morning before school and wait for the owner to come out of the house. Not wanting to execute a 74 point turn to keep from hitting the fence, or wall, or driving into a flower bed to get turned around the right way, he or she would offer us $10 to pick the car up and get it oriented the right way so they wouldn't be late for work.

Back in the day $1.05 bought a pack of smokes, so it was profitable. lol

Hmmmm. You know, I'm checking my post and I don't see myself calling on Starbucks to end any charitable donations its providing. I'm just simply calling them out on their BS reason for making the change to coffee cups.

The linguistic hoop jumping required to come up with a sound byte for explaining the policy usually belies the total crap behind making the decision. The harder you have to work to explain it, and the increasingly obtuse language you do it with, usually sets off the BS detector in people.

If they had simply said "Well look, a lot of people think we're promoting a Christian holiday, and they don't like that. So, we've decided to stop with the snowflakes and reindeer, and just have a blank cup so no one gets mad." It's blunt, honest, and to the point. You can decide if you like the reason or not, and spend accordingly. But trying to tell me that a blank coffee cup 'allows us all to tell our stories'??? Puhleese.

Good on Starbucks for giving $30 million to a worthy program. I fail to see the connection however between their generosity and the cups. They can donate money to whomever they want. PTSD is a very real and prominent topic in the news these days. They are trying to do some good, and well done to them for providing the bucks. If you think some people not buying a couple half caf/decaf, soy milk, no foam, chocolate sprinkles,in a double cup puts this $30 million donation in jeopardy, then you're free to buy a couple more yourself and keep Starbucks from going under. Just because a company is nice doesn't mean it can't also on occasion be stupid.

Insofar as putting MORE trash in the landfills with these 'pretty' cups, I'm confident the company was going to be handing out cups anyway. Adorned with snowflakes or not, the landfills wouldn't be more adversely affected than they are now. Maybe the next time you are in Starbucks, you could ask them to display larger signs about recycling the cups?

Just sayin'...

Since WHEN is cream sexist? OMG

There are no MALE cats on the planet? The comment was meant to illustrate that you can get a little cranky when someone doesn't agree with your posts entirely. Your most recent post kind of makes my point.

I try to resort to logic and common sense when a woman disagrees with me. Thus, I have always been the proud owner of very comfortable 7 foot long sofas as a precaution.

Scratch my nuts? Well, what I do in private is kinda my own business, right? Teach you anything? I wouldn't for a second entertain the notion that you don't already know everything you need to.

My posts are for others who may care to follow the conversation, not to teach you anything. Feel free however to absorb anything you find useful. I do so enjoy being helpful to people in their journey through the cosmos.

<--- slides the saucer of cream over.

So where to start? (cracks knuckles, sips coffee)

1) The newly elected Liberal government made much of how the Conservatives were being 'racist' in assuming everyone was a member of ISIS and delaying them coming to Canada. Guess what? NOW the Liberals are saying, hmmmm, guess we can't get all 25,000 refugees here before the end of the year. Why? Well we have to check them out first. Make sure they won't bring diseases into Canada. Wanna be sure they're not terrorists. We also don't have a place for everyone to live, or work, or go to school. WELL, ISN'T THAT AMAZING???!!! First week, and they've already broken an election promise, and are sounding like the Conservatives. Amazing how REALITY entered the conversation for them. Even more amazing, how the press hasn't called them out on it. But hey, they care, right?
2)Kinda makes sense to provide them with health care should they bring something with them from the old country that didn't appear before they got on the plane or boat.
3) We don't build mosques, the Muslims do. We also fight them if the mosque is going to impact the non-Muslim locals. We don't have 5:00 am call to prayer blasting from the minarets for example.
4) Muslims have indeed tried to get Sharia law enshrined, but they have been successfully thwarted in the courts and at the ballot box. Doesn't mean they won't try again. Just means I keep a clean suit, pressed tie, and shined shoes on hand at all times for the trips to City Hall.
5) 72-75% peaceful guys? Wow, any Muslim I've ever talked to swears 99%of them are peaceful. They have no idea who the troublemakers are, and obviously they are simply ignorant of how Islam works. I try NOT to laugh out loud when I hear this, as it's simply the polite thing to do.

So as Christmas approaches people and companies now have to 'deal with' the uncomfortable reality that SOME of us like, and celebrate Christmas.

To that end, Starbucks has chosen to remove all vestiges of Christmas from its cups, with its VP Jeffrey Fields saying "it wanted to usher in the holidays with a purity of design that welcomes all our stories."

What the what? It's a BLANK CUP you moron, there is NO STORY on it and that's kinda the frickin' point here!!!! How did you become the VP there, and are there other such positions that I can apply for there????

Starbucks Christmas cups have previously featured reindeer, ornaments, snowflakes, and other seasonal symbols. So I can only assume in an effort to avoid their cafes from being suicide bombed, they have opted for a non-Christmas motif. Of course, no one in the Starbucks marketing department seemed to realize that snowflakes, reindeer, and ornaments are NOT RELIGIOUS images, so I would be curious to know whose story WASN'T being told by the previous cups?

Since the cups are currently blank, I suggest you provide your name to the barrista as "Merry Christmas" and make them call you at least twice before collecting your drink. Oh and even better, some barristas will refuse the name, or ask you for ID. Make up a fake business card for your current job, with your name as Mhery Khristmas just in case they try to call you on it. Say your Serbian or Croation. Takes 2 mins with your laser printer or ink jet. Keep your head down in your phone or paper so they can't just make eye contact to invite you over to get your coffee and they must say the name out loud.

Of course the other option would be to take your coffee needs elsewhere, and let them know Christmas matters to you because you voted with your dollars.

So I listened to the entire call and to be honest this program doesn't sound very involved insofar as the taxpayer is concerned.

Refugees get $1000 when they show up. Volunteers help out furnishing the apartment with what sounds like donated items. The refugee signs the lease and THEY are responsible for paying the rent.

They get ESL classes, a one day job fitness session, and a case worker to help them get a job. They are given bus orientation information, and are helped to become self sufficient.

Doesn't sound to me like anyone is handing them a car, a mansion, stockpiles of food, or a $50 an hour job. Sure, you already have unemployed people in the area, and to be fair, the state should have case workers to help you find a job, assess your current job skills, and see if there are any programs you can enroll in to help you get a job.

Are there no such services and programs in Texas to help the locals as well as the refugees? IF not, THEN you have a legitimate gripe. Based on the information provided in the recording, there's no pot of gold here for people landing in the U.S.

Well bunko artists use the web far more effectively than in previous decades when bogus fund raising was done via street corner coffee can collections,and news stories about where to donate money.

People have faked diseases, losing their life savings, have claimed not to have insurance for losses that actually were covered, all manner of sketchy behavior. I think people however just get a little bit more angry when the death of a child is used to scam people. I can only give her the benefit of the doubt, and think she is simply distraught over the loss of her son. Maybe they talked about her getting a new car one day, and she sees this as a promise to him. Who knows.

If she's just playing people to profit off her dead kid, she should be run out of town on a rail. We all know there are scummy people out there, we'd just like to think they have some line they won't cross. Well, surprise!

I'll never understand by the way the 'memorial' t-shirt that people sell of dead kids or family members. Do you really want to see your dead kids face a couple years down the road being used to wash a car? Wiping the grease off a lawnmower? Being sold for a $1 at a garage sale?

Saying her kid would have wanted her to have the car is kinda like the whole Rev. Creflo Dollar scam, saying that God wants him to have a new plane, and can you please donate $10 million brothers and sisters? Flying economy to Africa is NOT what the good Lord intended for me to do....

Put your feet in a bucket of water, put your hands on the back of the TV set, and FEEEEEL the power! Praise Jeebus.

Thinking they might find one body more than the manifest. Maybe a suicide bomber crawled into the cargo hold with a dead man's switch on the device.

He holds a detonator circuit 'open' by pushing and holding a button. When he reaches altitude and passes out from lack of oxygen, the button is released, the circuit completed, and instant detonation.

Could also have been a bag slipped into the system after the passengers bags had already been cleared, via the internal baggage handling/clearing process.

Since cargo containers were supposed to be more bomb 'resistant' than in the past, one would think this would need to be a slightly larger charge than one assumes would be used.

Since the plane was only on the ground for an hour, it greatly reduces the list of suspects. Hopefully there were security cameras trained on the loading area to see how the bomb gets on board.

So Trump lives to fight another day. Clever to have Larry David heckle Trump saying he wanted to collect the $5,000.

No wildly funny bits, but I don't think the writers banged him up too badly. The final skit with the 'porn' stars pretending to do a Trump commercial was kind of good.

Obvious 'shots' at Trump were the drunken uncle character. I guess he was meant to represent the Trump demographic. Second one was the dad as music star skit, where Trump comes in at the end acting like a fast talking hustler. Guess they were trying to portray him as a huckster. Well, all politicians are asking you to buy their schtick, so no surprises there.

The Donald understands publicity though, and he seemed to take it all in stride. We'll see if he calls it unfair tomorrow, or if the cast and crew suddenly start leaking stories about him being a douche to work with.

It's always been easy to believe that cops treated inner city people like crap. The average middle class 'white guy' can go through his whole life and only meet a cop once or twice in his life for either a minor traffic infraction or a garage beak in. Rarely, does he confront a street cop, on the wrong side of town, at 2 am, so he has no frame of reference.

The stereotypical 'bad' police/public interface is seen as the arrogant white cop, dealing with a mouthy, angry, young black man, who in feeling that the police state has become oppressive, vents his anger. Cop gets pretty fed up in about 6 seconds, beats the kid down, and trumps up a charge to book him on. In the recent past, with the advent of personal video devices like cellphones, we can see this dynamic happen more often than we have seen it in the past.

The issue for most urban dwellers however is that the vast majority of urban police departments have a sizable rank and file of non-white officers and administrators. So why does this continue to happen?

Cops no longer 'act' white or black. They all 'act' blue. In so doing, both white and black cops have developed the Us vs Them mindset. In high crime areas, it's a character trait that cops see as a survival tool. Everyone is a danger unless they can prove otherwise.

Search YouTube for a recent video of Toronto TAVIS police intimidating a citizen who is trying to video an arrest of two others. They get right in his face, obstruct his attempts at filming, and want to try interrogating him. The person filming is clearly streetwise and refuses to get sucked into a confrontation.

The cops? Black. The person filming? Black. The neighborhood? Black. Well known in the city as drug and gang plagued. I grew up in that city and had great respect for the cops there. Now? After numerous brutality cases, bad shootings, and videos of unprofessional conduct, I don't.

I will predict that the cops will try to prevent people from reaching the theatre on premiere night simply by directing traffic around the venue such that the 'stars' will maybe have to walk a couple blocks to get to the venue.

Being mobbed for autographs by film fans, they may need the cops (or more likely their bodyguards) to 'make a hole' in the crowd to get them to the theatre in time to do interviews, etc.

I would also suggest they'll block access to nearby parking facilities and will threaten to ticket and arrest limo drivers who try to stop and let people get out of their cars while on the street. Claims of impeding traffic come to mind. Of course if I'm going to write the driver a ticket, EVERYONE has to stay in the car. I'll question each one of you individually. Did YOU ask the driver to let you out? Did he do it himself? Did you threaten him with his job if he didn't? The idea is the cop wants to know if it was a criminal conspiracy to stop the car, and thus he can lay additional charges. Interviews take time you see. So 6-8 people per limo? Hmmm. This could take a while.....

In addition, if theatres have paid duty cops for security, bet that anyone attending his movie will be forced to go through pat downs, electronic wanding, and will be told at the last second that cell phones will not be allowed in the theatre, thus forcing everyone to run back to their cars to dump them and then run back to avoid missing the movie.

Cops will happily mess with you for all kinds of reasons. Based on the number of theatre shootings do you think cops would be criticized for being 'extra safe'?

If I deny the rich and famous access to the venue and make them go around the block a couple times, do you think maybe some of them go home? All that has to happen is a cop claims to see a suspicious person, maybe with a gun, and we have to keep the place on lockdown. We wouldn't want QT getting shot in front of 50 cops right? How can he complain about his own safety?

So how does oh I dunno a 2 hour delay sound? We'll need to send in SWAT, the bomb squad, a couple dogs, maybe a HAZMAT team to test the air quality.... you get the idea. We can do this alllll daayyy Mr. Fancypants Hollywood Director. Still don't want to apologize?

Awwww,look, all TV trucks are leaving. That's a shame QT. I guess they have a deadline to meet. So sorry you couldn't have your red carpet interview recorded for posterity after banging back a couple Jagermeisters in the car.

Have a nice night!

Just a random thought in passing. Maybe someone familiar with the American vetting process can speak to this. One of the obvious avenues of discussion on the whole Hillary e-mail thing has been her claim that she never received or sent any 'secret' or 'classified' documents.

WHAT IF the biggest secret is that she wasn't cleared to handle secret documents? Based on access that Slick Willy would have to her server, and the ability for him to look over her shoulder at home, maybe she was deemed an unacceptable risk to handle classified documents?

If her staff got the documents first, stripped off any classification tabs, and then forwarded the email to her, she has not technically 'received' a classified document.

In addition if she was always orally briefed, or 'read in' on secret information, then she could make her own notes for later transposition and storage on her server as a reference tool. Thus she eliminates the e-mail trail, still has the info to do her job, and since a Secretary of State failing a security check would be a scandal, maybe THAT'S what she is so desperate to hide?

Would be one weird explanation for all the cloak and dagger, but it fits the narrative put out by State, Clinton, and the WH.

I know the intel community says they found over 100 documents with classified info, but the State Dept. claims that's a matter of opinion, and not fact, since departments have different thresholds for classified information. In fact, I saw a story today where the intel folks upon review by a more senior staffer have walked back one of the emails as no longer having classified info.

So, is it even remotely possible that the reason she had no classified documents is because she wasn't allowed to have any?

Hmmmmmm.

<---- burning incense, waving a smoking sage wand around to cleanse the lack of respect from the international body politic, so that we may all love each other, hold hands and sing Cumbaya. (rolls eyes)

Pfffft. Instead, lights a Camel with no filter, reaches for a coffee made by an old man in the Nostalji Doner coffee house in Ankara, and horks up a loogie for world peace.

There's one way to start your day....

So, Gov. Moonbeam wanted to see if he could cash in down the road when oil prices eventually go back up.

Personally I'm thinking he was looking for a water source to tap and then grow weed for the state.

If the work done for Jerry was legal, no problem. Good for him in using his taxpayer paid resources. Just realize now that a couple hundred more such requests will likely filter in starting on Monday morning. These guys are going to be busy for the foreseeable future, as every private land owner goes hunting for resources they can exploit.

Of course the question becomes, if some poor schmuck finds a previously unknown oil reserve of say a billion barrels, would the state let him keep it, or does it expropriate the land, saying $50 billion would lift the state coffers out of the toilet.

Do historical documents 'suddenly' appear in state archives that dispute actual ownership of the land?

Hmmmm. Can't let the unwashed have access to that much cash.

Clock Boy from Texas. He's already been to the White House, right?

Just like Al Gore invented the Internet, and Obama invented your small business, Clock Kid will be the next invention of the DNC.

The other candidate? Debbie Wasserman Schultz's hairdresser. That is a serious white girl fro, and that kind of talent deserves recognition!

Not sure what kinda street cred you get, or should even be entitled to, for whacking a defenseless 9 year old.

If he got caught in the crossfire of a couple guys pullin' out pieces and wildly blasting away at each other, that's one thing. Just a wrong place, wrong time scenario. The dad seems to think however his son was targeted, and he's not going to co-operate with the cops. Well, that's his choice.

He's going to have to bide his time however if he's looking for revenge. The cops will be on him like white on rice for the next several weeks to months if he goes looking for payback.

The Sicilians have a saying that 'revenge is a dish best served cold'. In other words, let the heat of the moment pass. Take your time to plot your revenge, and then when you do strike, make it 100 times worse than what was done to you.

With that in mind, I would suggest the Chicago PD adjust the ranks to put more homicide cops on line, and more gang task force cops in the training schedule. The local morgue may want to stock up on supplies. This is the sort of incident that inflames passions, and even gets non-affiliated family members instigating for payback by family members they know are gang members.

Grandmas, aunties, moms, and sisters will all be telling their male relatives how the other side must be crazy to kill a kid, and how they are just rabid dogs that need to be put down. Cops? They at the best of times simply tolerate bangers as part of the job. Given the chance to chew into gangs with the publics approval? Especially if the public is sufficiently horrified to turn a blind eye to some excessive force? I'm sure there are street cops from this area just foaming at the mouth to get some of that action.

I suggest the good folks of Chicago buy a month worth of food, go to the basement, and let the cops and gangs duke it out for supremacy. A 24/7 operation to kick in the doors of known bangers and affiliates and suppliers. Slap em with RICO cases, gun cases, and drug cases. Warrants all around to make it legal, and NOBODY gets a plea deal.

Igor? You've assumed I'm American. Bad assumption. I'm Canadian. Adjust your thinking accordingly.

If you can't deal with the fact that I've called you out on the darker sides of Iranian society, I can't help you with that. Seek therapy if needed.

What I can do is simply point out the arrogance of a country who engages in such behaviours, and is asking the world to treat it as an 'adult' at the negotiating table, when it so clearly behaves like a spoiled 'child'.

Now it wants the world to respect it's 'right' to nuclear power, in a framework that allows it to engage in subterfuge, and will allow it to manifest it's institutional temper tantrums with an atomic mushroom cloud or two? For example Iran has noted it wants to wipe the UAE off the map because they refuse to call the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Iran. Really? Obliterate an entire country because it doesn't like your name for a body of water?

Sure.I don't see any reason whatsoever that we shouldn't allow this sociological experiment in trust to provide devastating weapons of mass destruction to a regime that's used them in the past. You know, using chemical weapons against Iraq.

In addition, we know the Iranians were working on SCUD missile chemical delivery systems. We know that because about a dozen of the Iranian general staff were killed in Syria when a SCUD missile exercise went very wrong. Syrian crews were trying to 'show off' to the Iranians by fueling the SCUD, and filling its warhead with VX nerve agent at the same time. Oooops. Things went boom and dozens were killed by the explosion and subsequent release of the VX.

Oh, and before you pull the "Well America used atomic bombs." card, realize they have been reducing their stockpiles for decades, and looking to maybe one day down the road to be done with nuclear weapons.

The only countries now who 'want' them, are emerging nations such as India and Pakistan. Also two countries with a temper, and who exercise their militaries in an ongoing 'warm' war in the mountains with artillery duels, and the occasional incursion over the border. As water supplies start to shrink in that part of the world, we may one day see a nuclear exchange between the two as they fight over what's left.

Wanna be emerging nations like Libya and North Korea have either acquired these weapons or attempted to. In the case of NK, it threatens to unleash them on almost a daily basis. It, along with Russia wanted to help Iran in proliferating nuclear weapons. Pakistan as well, helped NK get it's bomb. I don't think it's going to help regional stability for Iran to become nuclear. If it does, the Saudis will want bombs, and so on and so on.

All in all, a really bad idea for the Iranians to have access to nuclear weapons as far as I'm concerned. That's logic, not hate.