Just What High School Students Want: More Tests
July 28, 2009
Great, so now, on top of Algebra and English, Port Chester students will have to study up on the symptoms of syphilis…but aren’t tests usually free?
“Like any other high school we have teen pregnancy so when a young lady comes down we can offer a test and guide her and refer them from that point,” Superintendent Donald K. Carlisle said.
Carlisle said it’s simply an extension of the comprehensive health services already provided to students. Students requesting the tests will be able to receive them without needing parental permission. Parents would also not be advised of test results.
OH! That kind of testing. Douchebag Report apologizes. We were thinking of something rather different.
Debra Gerson, a physician with Open Door, the group that runs the program, said that kind of confidentially is essential.
“There are times when they don’t feel safe and they really need to have a place where they can come and disclose,” Dr. Gerson said.…But school officials said this is just the reality of taking care of students in today’s world.
“I think this is progressive and I see this as a positive,” Carlisle said.
The Open Door clinics are federally funded. Among the services they provide are immunizations, physicals, and vision and hearing screenings.
So our federal tax dollars are being spent to perform tests on your children whose results will be kept secret from you. Not everyone is pleased.
The school board president was the lone vote against the measure. In a newspaper interview, Anne Capeci said, “I would like ‘Open Door’ to use the medical facility downtown and not use the school as a quasi-maternity clinic.”
Horizon Management Group: For All Your Moldy Apartment Needs?
July 28, 2009
How much is a Tweet worth to you? For Horizon Group Management LLC, one Twitter Tweet is worth $50,000.
That’s the amount of damages specified in a lawsuit against Amanda Bonnen, one of their tenants, after she complained about mold in her apartment via her Twitter account, abonnen (The account has been deleted at this time):
“Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.”
In Cook County Circuit Court, Horizon Group Management filed suit, saying that the false and defamatory tweet, sent May 12, greatly injured their reputation as a landlord.
Horizon’s Jeffrey Michael filed the lawsuit to protect his family company’s reputation.
“We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization,” he said, noting that the company manages 1,500 apartments in Chicago and has a good reputation it wants to preserve.
Well, Jeff, we’re sure that now that everyone knows what a douchebags you and the folks at Horizon are, that great reputation will prevail intact. When this all ends badly for Horizon, will you explain how you had to destroy the company in order to save it?
Speaking of Twitter, why not follow Douchebag Report?
Nancy Pelosi: Douchebag And Proud
July 27, 2009
A profile piece by Politico.com illustrates Nancy Pelosi’s defiant attitude when it come’s to the nation’s unflattering perception of her.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is one of the most despised political figures in the country.
And, frankly, she doesn’t give a damn.
“No, I don’t care,” Pelosi told POLITICO last Thursday, laughing heartily as she walked beneath the Capitol dome and plunged into a crowd of tourists.
While Pelosi may be secure in being despised, she’s somewhat less secure about being trusted.
Mention of the “trust” question halted the click-clack of Pelosi’s heels against Rotunda marble, and she turned to face the reporter who posed the question.
“I don’t know about ‘trust’ — I think I’m trusted,” she said.
“I certainly want to be trusted. I’m not particularly concerned if I’m liked.”
If this is the case, the House Speaker will be disappointed to learn that only a quarter of Americans say that they trust her. It gets worse.
Gallup now measures Pelosi’s unfavorability ratings at 48 percent — with her favorability index registering a paltry 32 percent.
That’s 12 points lower than her numbers were just six months ago, during the first flush days of the Obama administration. And it puts the most powerful woman in the country’s history on a par with Dick Cheney and only a few clicks better than Boehner, an unknown quantity to most Americans.
“Nancy Pelosi is not only vastly unpopular with the American public, but her credibility is waning within her own party,” said Ken Spain, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Fortunately for Pelosi, this unpopularity isn’t career-threatening.
Being speaker is, as she says, an inside job. Pelosi is insulated from the negative effects of low national poll numbers because she answers only to two micro-constituencies — her mostly affluent, overwhelmingly liberal Bay Area district and a 262-member Democratic caucus that respects, fears, follows and largely likes the 69-year-old workaholic.
Her fellow Democrats give her such resounding endorsements as “She’s OK” and “You don’t have to love her, but she’s good”.
Accountable only to the Bay Area and House Democrats, Pelosi has no constituency at CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. In May, she accused CIA briefers of lying to her about how senior Al-Qaeda leaders were being interrogated.
“The CIA briefed me only once on enhanced interrogation techniques in September 2002 in my capacity as ranking member of the Intelligence Committee. I was informed then that the Department of Justice opinions had concluded that the use of enhanced interrogation techniques were legal. The only mention of waterboarding at that briefing was that it was not being employed.”
This contradicts the CIA record on the matter.
A report released last week directly contradicted Pelosi’s recollections of the briefing. The Director of National Intelligence’s report indicated that the speaker was in fact briefed about such techniques used on Zubaydah — one of three terrorist suspects subjected to waterboarding, an interrogation tactic that simulates drowning.
The DNI report said then-House intelligence Chairman Porter Goss, Pelosi — who was the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee — and two aides were told about “the particular EITs that had been employed” on Zubaydah.
Pelosi and her staff, along with some other Democrats, have maintained that House Democrats did what little they could to register objections to the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, but that the Bush administration wouldn’t or couldn’t be stopped.
Why the switch? According to Rush Limbaugh, it’s fashion.
Rush Limbaugh has accused Pelosi of flip-flopping on waterboarding in order to make a “fashion statement.”
“She wears Armani clothes — fashionable; Botox shots — fashionable; she’s against waterboarding — fashionable,” Limbaugh said earlier this year. “Of course, after 9/11 she was for waterboarding! That was fashion then.”
Apparently Pelosi’s fellow Democrats are far more interested in providing political cover for her than digging up the truth of the matter.
Democrats recently marked up the 2010 intelligence bill, and Republican Pete Hoekstra offered an amendment in committee to require the CIA to make public an unclassified version of its records on Congressional briefings. It also would have required the CIA to disclose the information gleaned from those interrogations.
Democrats have spent years demanding a “truth commission” into interrogations, so you’d think such public disclosure would be welcome. Ah, that was when a different guy was in the White House and before Mrs. Pelosi had made her own veracity an issue. Suddenly, she’s all for secrecy. And sure enough, Intelligence Committee Democrats lined up to protect their leader and defeated the Hoekstra amendment on a party line vote. This follows Democratic rejection of a resolution by Utah Republican Rob Bishop to initiate a bipartisan investigation of Mrs. Pelosi’s accusation.
While she may have a safe-seat and a political party who tolerate her leadership, there is a way to get this douchebag out of the Speakership. A Republican majority elected this mid-term election is, well, rather unlikely to elect this limousine liberal as their Speaker.
House Democrats: Are They ‘Retarded’?
July 27, 2009
The term “retarded” has been out of fashion in the medical and educational communities for decades. At this point, it’s most common usage is by under-educated South Boston hoods, which may or may not explain why “A hospital or a nursing facility or intermediate-care facility for the mentally retarded . . .” appears in the House of Representative’s health care bill.
Gates-Gate: Why Obama Always Gets Race Wrong
July 24, 2009
Far from being “post-racial”, President Barack Obama has had a mixed history when it comes to race. This is often because his initial perceptions are wrong, so he has to reverse himself. Far from nuance, Obama brings a clumsiness(to put it charitably) to the topic of race which would be unthinkable for any white politician save his Vice President, Joe Biden.
When Obama first faced the topic of race on the national stage, he faced the revelation that his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was a racist loon. Being Barack Obama, his instinctive response was to face the problem with a speech.
Greatly anticipated, Obama gave a speech so electric, Chris Matthews said it caused a “thrill going up his leg“. Obama clarified his relationship with Rev. Wright.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
So, just so everyone is on the same page, Obama says that:
A) Obama won’t disown his racist pastor.
B) Obama holds his racist pastor as closely as he does his white, racist grandmother.
Two days later, Obama gave a radio interview to Philadephia’s 610 WIP, where he further clarified his perception of his racist, white grandmother (and other “typical white” people).
“The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know – there’s a reaction in her that’s been bred into our experiences that don’t go away and sometimes come out in the wrong way and that’s just the nature of race in our society.”
So given a couple days to think about it, Obama thinks:
C) Typical white people are just instinctively racist.
A little over one month later, Obama announced that he was leaving Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, effectively disowning the Reverend Wright (which raises the question of how closely he held his now late grandmother…and the black community).
So after all that, the answer was actually:
D) None of the above. Drop the antisemetic, racist nutjob like I should have done 20 years back when I first met the guy…
Could we write a news story on race without mentioning a charlatan or two? Of course not, so the next chapter in this story includes Jesse Jackson.
“See, Barack [has] been talking down to black people . . . I wanna cut his nuts out,” Jackson said.
What Jackson was referring to specifically we have no idea, but maybe he realized how quickly Obama would use and discard the black community, given how easily he threw his grandmother under the bus and disowned Rev. Wright.
Obama surrounds himself with people whose viewpoint on race was framed in the 1950s and 1960s and it’s apparent that he shares such a perspective. When speaking of race, as he did at his inauguration, his primary message is always how bad it was back then, followed by what I’ll paraphrase as “but it’s a little better now. We have lots of work to do.”
“This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed—why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.”
Even when he made his “typical, white person” remark, his follow up was intended to lessen the blow.
“We have to break through it. What makes me optimistic is you see each generation feeling less like that. And that’s pretty powerful stuff.”
The problem with this circle that Obama has grown up with that apparently they’re all still living in the 1960s. Obama appears to try to bridge the beliefs of ’60s radicals to the 21st century real world. He fails to embrace the concept of the post-racial America that his election is supposed to signify because his beliefs, at their roots, are still tied to the time when he was born.
One only has to examine the end of the Rev. Joseph Lowery’s Benediction at the inauguration to see a prime specimen of an individual who’s still fighting “The Man”.
Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around … when yellow will be mellow … when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen.
Analysis
Obama seems incapable of reconciling the beliefs in unending racism that he has been surrounded with since embracing radicalism in college with the success of his own political career.
When placed on the spot, as he was Wednesday night, his gut instinct is to blame racism. When this makes the situation worse, he’ll stick to his guns…and then reverse himself.
At Wednesday night’s press conference, Lynn Sweet asked Obama a question about the Gates arrest.
Recently, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested at his home in Cambridge. What does that incident say to you? And what does it say about race relations in America?
Obama premised his answer by stating that he didn’t know all the facts, so he was giving an answer based more on his own biases than what he knew about the actual incident.
“I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that [Gates case]. But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.”
Friday morning, the Obama administration was standing by his words, with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs saying that the criticism of the President’s remarks were politically motivated.
“I think the Fraternal Order of Police endorsed McCain,” Gibbs fired back at reporters, referring to Obama’s Republican opponent in the 2008 election. “If I’m not mistaken.”
In a move that demonstrates that while Obama will wait until he’s had two strikes before making the right move, Obama finally conceded to Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley and the Cambridge police union late Friday.
Taking the briefing-room podium just hours after Cambridge police union officials called on Obama to apologize for saying the officers involved in the incident with Gates behaved “stupidly,” Obama conceded that he erred in his “choice of words.”
Obama said he spoke to James Crowley, the sergeant who arrested Gates, “and I have to tell you that, as I said yesterday, my impression of him is that he was an outstanding police officer…and that was confirmed in the phone conversation.”
“In my choice of words, I unfortunately gave the impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically,” Obama said, walking back his sharpest criticism.
But, the president said: “I continue to believe, based on what I have heard, that there was an overreaction in pulling Prof. Gates out of his home and to the station. I also continue to believe, based on what I heard, that Prof. Gates probably overreacted as well.”
While it takes a lot to overcome decades of ingrained bias, most of America has done it, so hopefully Obama can too.
Gates-Gate: Keepin’ It Real(Racist)
July 24, 2009
the nutty professor
DATELINE: Before JULY 23rd, 2009 — Racism is dead in America. In recent history, we observed Julian Bond eulogize the infamous “N” word (9 JUL 2007), Americans came together to elect a President for “change,” and the global (liberal) media praised American voters for demonstrating that we are not an esoteric group of brainless carbon-based lifeforms that judge solely on skin color or ethnicity.
DATELINE: JULY 23rd, 2009 — (Reverse) racism is resurrected in America. We’ve observed Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a respected professor at Harvard University and an ardent proponent of racial equality become unglued at the prospect of living in an America where civil liberties are both CELEBRATED and PROTECTED:
(Equality 101 students, here’s a conversation between Gates and a police officer responding to a call to investigate a break-in at Gates’ own property:)
“I told him that I was ‘Sgt. Crowley from the Cambridge Police’ and that I was ‘investigating a report of a break in progress’ at the residence. While I was making this statement, Gates opened the door and exclaimed ‘why, because I’m a black man in America?’ I then asked Gates if there was anyone else in the residence. While yelling, he told me that it was none of my business and accused me of being a racist police officer.”
But wait, there’s even more from the this nutty professor:
“As I began walking through the foyer towards the front door, I could hear Gates again demanding my name. I again told Gates that I would speak with him outside. My reason for wanting to leave the residence was that Gates was yelling very loud and the acoustics of the kitchen and foyer were making it difficult for me to transmit pertinent information to ECC or other responding units. His reply was ‘ya, i’ll speak with your mama outside.’”
Making matters worse, his target is Sergeant James M. Crowley, a 16-year veteran of the local Cambridge, MA, police force, dedicated to protecting those liberties. Crowley a racist? Here’s an apparent Harvard/Presidential/mainstream media fabrication. In fact, quite the opposite is true:
Nearly 16 years ago, as a Brandeis University police officer, Crowley desperately tried to save the life of Reggie Lewis after the Boston Celtics star collapsed while practicing in the school gym . . .
[P]eople who know Crowley were skeptical or outright dismissive of allegations of racism. A prominent defense lawyer, a neighbor of Crowley’s, his union, and fellow officers described him yesterday as a respected, and respectful, officer who performs his job well and has led his colleagues in diversity training . . .
“Sergeant Crowley is a highly respected veteran supervisor with a distinguished record in the Cambridge Police Department,’’ said the Cambridge Police Superior Officers Association. “His actions at the scene of this matter were consistent with his training, with the informed policies and practices of the Department, and with applicable legal standards.’’
Yikes! Check out all of this uncertainty and turmoil. Let’s look to our venerable Executive leadership… our “hope,” our “change,” our hearse out of the graveyard wherupon Julian Bond ceremoniously buried the “N” word… Queue Obama — again making a statement without knowing the details:
“the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home”.
Testing 1-2-3… Is this thing on? Obama: Are you serious? Did you see the police report before issuing your own facts of finding? Clearly not… and for insult to injury, Obama offers an insincere non-apology apology:
“Because this has been ratcheting up and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up, I wanted to make clear in my choice of words I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. Crowley specifically,” Obama said. “And I could have calibrated those words differently.”
These words indicate that Obama stands firmly behind his biases, no statements will be retracted despite overwhelming evidence countering any racial profiling claims. This now leads the Douchebag Report to offer a question to Julian Bond, President Obama, Professor Gates, and the mainstream media…
Dateline — where are we now?
Minnesota’s Most Explosive Intern Pleads Guilty
July 22, 2009
Remember Jennifer Nicole Anato-Mensah? Neither did we, but then we try to put the image of grown women throwing temper-tantrums out of our memory with a sense of urgency.
We reported on Ms. Anato-Mensah’s non-genius outburst at the studio of KSTP-TV in November of last year.
The issue was resolved in court yesterday.
If Jennifer Anato-Mensah pays $150 restitution, stays away from the St. Paul TV station and avoids trouble for a year, the charges will be dismissed and her guilty plea will be discharged, Ramsey County District Judge James H. Clark Jr. said.
At least Anato-Mensah and her family recognize how bad it is to make the Douchebag Report.
Defense attorney Al Garcia told Judge Clark that Anato-Mensah “deeply regrets” the incident, which has caused embarrassment to her and her family. Assistant City Attorney James Jerskey agreed to dismiss the criminal damage to property charge as part of the plea agreement.
TXEN Partners: If They Can’t Scam You, They’ll Have You Thrown In Jail
July 21, 2009
The field of extended automotive warranties is full of douchebags out to scam you out of your hard-earned money, but TXEN Partners takes its douchebaggery to a level above and beyond its scum-sucking peers.
One would suspect that something was up when then Missouri Attorney General (now Governor) Jay Nixon filed lawsuits against Service Protection Direct, owned by TXEN Partners, and several other extended warranty companies in March of 2008.
A settlement was reached between the AG’s office and Service Protection Direct, but questions still remain. TXEN Partners changed the name of Service Protection Direct to Protection Direct, a company the St. Louis BBB had received 80 complaints about by May of this year.
The complaints allege high-pressure and rude sales tactics, misleading and inaccurate mailers, difficulty canceling contracts and an inability to obtain payments on repairs that consumers said they believed should have been covered.
A call to Geof Reusch [pictured], the company’s chief operating officer, was not immediately returned.
The agreement, reached Oct. 29, 2008, followed a state investigation into eight sellers of extended auto service contracts, including Service Protection Direct.
Missouri sued six of those companies, including Service Protection Direct, over their sales practices in March 2008 over “misleading notification letters to pressure, confuse and intimidate consumers” into purchasing service contracts “they did not need,” according to the BBB.
As part of the agreement, Service Protection Direct, 300 N. Tucker Blvd. in downtown St. Louis, promised help consumers better understand what it was selling.
But consumers still feel they are being misled, said Michelle Corey, president and CEO of the St. Louis BBB.
“While the intent of the (agreement) may have been noble, it simply does not go far enough in protecting customers and potential customers,” she said.
Enter Charles W. Papenfus, 43, a self-employed Ohio mechanic.
Tracie Papenfus said her husband called a St. Louis telemarketing firm — she didn’t know the name — after getting a mailer stating that the factory warranty had expired for the 1996 Ford Taurus driven by his 23-year-old son. The car, bought as-is for $3,000, hasn’t had a factory warranty for years.
“He wanted to know, ‘Why are you sending this when we’ve never had a warranty?’” Tracie Papenfus said.
In fact, Charles Papenfus asked that same question several times. He called the firm after receiving the mailer, then he called the company back to complain some more, said Douglas Forsyth, a local attorney representing Papenfus. The call during which Papenfus allegedly made a terrorist threat was initiated by the firm, in a response to a voice-mail message left by Papenfus, Forsyth said.
“They insulted each other,” Forsyth said, adding that Papenfus called the company “a scam” and the telemarketer called Papenfus “a jackass or (an expletive) or both.”
Forsyth said that, several minutes into the call, Papenfus said something about burning down the firm’s building.
Tracie Papenfus said the outburst was unusual for her husband, who she described as “a cool-headed guy.” However, she said, he hadn’t quite been himself after taking prescription painkiller medication for a compound wrist fracture he received in a motorcycle accident a few days before the call occurred. Irritability can be one side effect from those drugs, Forsyth said.
Of course, when the police in Fostoria, Ohio got word that the man who worked on their cruisers had had a verbal altercation with St. Louis’s more notorious scam artists, they immediately set forth on a quest for justice.
Papenfus’ wife, Tracie, said she hasn’t seen her husband since his arrest on June 27, when he was lured to a Fostoria, Ohio, police station with a false story about being suspected in a tavern fight there. Charles Papenfus, a self-employed mechanic who sometimes works on the department’s police cruisers, dropped by the station to clear his name, she said.
Tracie Papenfus said she still can’t understand why her husband is held 450 miles from home at the St. Louis workhouse on a $45,000 bond she can’t afford to pay. (That amount could be lowered at bond-reduction hearing scheduled for Monday.)
That’s right. Not only are the scammers at TXEN Partners rude liars, they’ll also get you thrown in jail in St. Louis. If you’d like to let these guys know what douchebags they are, feel free to give them a call at 1-877-987-PDGO. Just don’t tell them that you’re going to burn the place down…
ABC: Another Bullshit Channel
July 21, 2009
ABC Logo
Just when you though it was safe to surf the lower-numbered channels held tightly by the mainstream media, ABC launches a full-on assault against decency, humanity, parental responsibility and American values. NewsBusters reports:
“How do you tell your kids that mommy is now a daddy? Or that a daddy is now a mommy?” Leave it to ABC to raise these questions on “Good Morning America.” A July 21 segment previewed “Primetime Family Secrets” airing later that night about a transgender woman and the effects of the decision on his family.
Correspondent Juju Chang documented the Prince family for one year. In 2008 Ted Prince became “Chloe” through a sex change and his wife, Rene, stayed with him. The couple has two sons: Logan is 7 1/2 and Barry is 6. Since the family stayed together, the purpose of Chang’s report was to examine all the adjustments that had to be made.
Chang addressed the affects the sex change might have on the children. “Now, developmental psychologists will tell you that if you have honest, open, frank and age-appropriate conversations, the boys will be just fine. Now, Rene, their mom, tells us they are doing great socially. Both Chloe and Rene have been remarkably honest about the enormous strains on their marriage. Parenting roles, spousal roles, intimacy have all been called into question. For now, they’re sticking it out, staying together because as Rene says, what happened to Chloe shouldn’t destroy our family.”
Three words: Sick. Sick. Sick.
The Price Of Getting Screwed
July 21, 2009
stimulus monument
There was never a doubt that the behemoth stimulus spending package known as ARAA, or the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act would be riddled with frivolous expenditures penned by money hungry Democrats. CNSNews.com has started to report on these shocking (yet, not-so-shocking frivolities):
Among the more than 3,000 projects, purchases, and grants made with stimulus money obtained through the Federal Procurement Data System, some of hte projects that have contributed to keeping the American dream alive include:
- $2.2 million to the Seneca Foods Corporation in Marion, NY for “fruit, canned;” the same company also received another contract worth $196,797 also, for “fruit, canned”
- $4.8 million for “frozen, sliced ham”
- $5.3 million for “deli-style turkey breast” from the Jennie-O Turkey company
- $5.5 million for ” canned fruit” from the Del Monte corporation
-$16.8 million on “canned pork” from Lakeside Foods Inc
Among the many things that have been built with stimulus money so far are:
- $971,711.42 to “replace pond liners” at the Garrison Dam National Fish Hatchery in Cole Harbor, N.D.
- $193,077 for a “double-vault toilet building” at the Hoyer Campground in Spokane, Wash.
- $487,944 for “toilet buildings and vaults” in the Pike and San Isabel National Forests
$254,000 for “pre-fabricated restroom facilities” in Atlanta, Ga.
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