Strarbucks Fires Dwarf

Starbucks is being sued for firing a woman who has dwarfism. After three days of barista training, the woman was fired from an El Paso store on the same day she asked for a stool or small stepladder to perform her job.

If you read the comments (and  do recommend it) make sure you clink the "all" button.  There's a very thoughtful discussion going on there.

Bottom line, IMHO? Starbucks didn't make nearly enough of an effort to find a reasonable accommodation, and has a pretty lousy track record in this department.  And I think it's absurd that the expected reaction should be that if they lose, more companies will be leery of hiring dwarfs or anyone else they might need to accommodate.  It's so absurd.  There are so many ways this could have easily been worked out, but in the end sloth motivated by no more than simple discrimination won out.  The ADA is one of those laws I see as an inherent good and it's signing was one of the non-war related highlights of the Bush'41 administration and it's expansion to include a broader range of people was one of the few thing Bush'43 did right. 

It's equaling amazing and depressing that there remains a group of people in this country who are afraid to ask for reasonable accommodations or feel they need to hide their handicaps (when possible) to avoid discrimination.  I read all the comments in that article, and it really made for a very thoughtful, spirited discussion in which both sides were represented, but really? Starbucks is 100% in the wrong here because they didn't even try to accommodate her or find something that would work.  (Couldn't she have been a dedicate cashier?  Or transferred to a different Starbucks, with a larger workspace? Seems like there usually a dozen with walking difference.) I'm interested to see how this plays out.  Here's hoping they draw the Liberal equivalent of a Hanging Judge. 

Oh, yeah... And the best comment?

What do you expect from a company whose smallest drink is a Tall?

Bob Marshall - Have you heard this guy?

I wasn't planning on postign twice today, but I had to deal with THIS.

Apparenlty Bob Mashall (-R, what else?), a Virginia State legislator from Manassass, thinks that disabled children are God's punnishment for abortions.  His exact words:

"The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children.  In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There's a special punishment Christians would suggest."

I see.
 
So, putting aside that my wife, who happens to be the only woman I've been with in my entire life, has never had an abortion, your explanation for my two autistic sons is... arbortion.
 
God is punnishing me.  What a laugh.  Considering the love I have for them, I'd say that your God would have to do a lot better than that if he's trying to drive the point home.  (But go figure... What do expect from a diety who's spoken almost exclusively through madmen over the centuries?)  What's more, if your God in fact did intend to punnish me by putting this incredible burden on my children then I say that your God is not a just God.  And your God is, in fact, beneath me.
 
Finially, it occures to me that our elected officials sevre us.  They are elected to represent us.  If I lived in Virginia, apparently this pious fraud feels that my family, and my children are not part of his constituency.  You know... makred and curesed by God and all.
 
Senator?
 
FUCK YOU.
 
Take you Old Testament, magical-thinking, superstitious, medieval nonsense and SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS.
 
No God that exsists in the minds of people today (since that's pretty much the only place God exsists anyway) exacts his vengence upon the mother and father by giving them handicapped children.  I thought the last bastion of that kind of cruel, insulting nonsense was currently breathing it's last gasp in fucking INDIA.  Maybe that kind of thinking is acceptable on a remote pacific island, as yet undiscovered by man, or deep in the Amazon amoungst illiterate tribesmen, but this is the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, and the year is 2010.
 
And you, sir, are not fit to serve, in any capacity, in the governing of any part of this great nation.
 
I would hope your next child or grandchild gets cancer, but alas I am a far more just MAN that your GOD is, apparenlty.  As for you?  There is no penalty is too great, no misfortune too severe that may befall you that would earn you my sympathy.  My children are not a curse. And I will never forgive you for calling them such.

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Here's an online petition calling for his resignation.  I've signed it, and I encourage everyone to.