A Norfolk teacher has resigned after it was confirmed that she was rubbing “holy oil” on students and their desks during school at Jacox Elementary School.
Interim Superintendent of Schools, Michael Spencer, sent a memo on Wednesday to members of the School Board saying, “In early June, a parent reported that a fifth-grade teacher at Jacox Elementary School allegedly was using inappropriate religious practices in her classroom. I interviewed the teacher, and the Office of Pupil Personnel conducted an investigation. The teacher admitted that she had rubbed ‘holy oil’ on students and their desks during the school day. She was immediately removed from the classroom, and she resigned as of June 30.”
There are some close questions of the entanglement of church and state. Rubbing children with holy oil would not be one of those close questions.
Source: Wavy.
Kudos: CCD
Here ya go, Tootles.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/business/18choice.html?_r=1&hp
Insurance companies deciding what level of health care you get based on limiting your selection of plans and doctors so they can claim a 15% price reduction!
“The last time health insurers and employers sought to sharply limit patients’ choice was back in the early 1990s, when insurers tried to reinvent themselves by embracing managed care. Instead of just paying doctor and hospital bills, insurers also assumed a greater role in their customers’ medical care by restricting what specialists they could see or which hospitals they could go to.
“Back in the H.M.O. days, it was tight networks, and it did save money,” said Ken Goulet, an executive vice president at WellPoint, one of the nation’s largest private health insurers, which is experimenting with re-introducing the idea in California.
The concept was largely abandoned after the consumer backlash persuaded both employers and health plans that Americans were simply not willing to sacrifice choice. Prominent officials like Mr. Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton learned to utter the word “choice” at every turn as advocates of overhauling the system.
But choice — or at least choice that will not cost you — is likely to be increasingly scarce as health insurers and employers scramble to find ways of keep premiums from becoming unaffordable. Aetna, Cigna, the UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint are all trying out plans with limited networks.”
Instead of reducing their ridiculous overhead and CEO salaries, bonuses and million dollar spa junkets.
This wouldn’t be an issue if all health care insurance was provided by a single payer not for profit national health care trust because 1) with a single provider you’d have a) the largest risk pools possible and b) be able to provide the cheapest policies possible in addition to having your 2) choice in doctors because ALL doctors and hospitals would be on the plan.
The “health care reform” has not done a damn thing except rearrange the order of the cards in the con game of health insurance three card monty.
Yea Team Insurance Executives!
Change the Fascist Way!
Which is to say they’ve only changed the way in which the insurance company executives “service the account” in the George Carlin sense of the phrase.
Tootles,
Only you would take that as a compliment.
pete,
in re Palin’s running mate, here’s somebody Right up Caribou Barbie’s alley . . .
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/17/man-with-neo-nazi-ties-le_n_650123.html
c everett
george wallace didn’t do to bad in 68, 13.5% total and 46 electoral votes.
i’m hoping the repubs run willard romney and sarah palin takes her cookies and forms a third like wallace did.
though who be palin’s vp pick?
pete: i’m curious tootie, do you really and truly believe that….
why yes, yes she does
Elaine M.: What we need even more is intelligent, open-minded Americans…..
we have a winner!!!!
lottakatz: We definitely need a new, viable third, fourth, fifth etc. political party in this country
I so wholeheartedly with this, but my pragmatic(some would say cynical, who am I to argue?) side says it will never happen. Viable third parties have not lasted through more than an election cycle or two.
With the exception of Nader in 2000 and possibly Perot in 92(I’m not convinced enough of Perot’s 19% would have voted for Bush to change the election but…who knows) third party candidates have quite ineffective on the Federal level.
I think Perot had the best chance to make change happen until he hopped on the crazy train(which, in fact, may not have been so crazy but it shure made him sound like it). But I think as divided as our Country is right now a third party candidate wouldn’t have much chance.
At any rate I feel like Jill, our Country is screwed and all we can do is watch it crash and burn.
Buddha Is Laughing: need a disciple? I can do some cool things with chocolate
Yissil: “Christ” literally means “anointed (with oil).
I didn’t know that, that’s why I love this blog
Naughty, naughty, naughty!
Had the teacher been offering Muslim water ablutions all would be well with her.
Tsk,tsk
i’m curious tootie, do you really and truly believe that if a teacher had performed “muslim water ablutions” (whatever that is) that nothing would be said and the teachers job would not be in jeopardy?
Group Tootie?
I’m flattered.
lottakatz–
Roswell, NM? Land of the aliens from outer space?
*****
“We definitely need a new, viable third, fourth, fifth etc. political party in this country.”
What we need even more is intelligent, open-minded Americans who know how to think for themselves and who don’t try to impose their religious views on everybody else.
P.S. Thanks for the links.
Elaine, And in Roswell NM high school students want their confiscated fetus dolls returned and are suing to get them back:
http://www.onpointnews.com/NEWS/Pro-Life-Students-Want-Rubber-Fetus-Ban-Overturned.html
—-
Missouri just made it harder to get an abortion by mandating sonograms of the fetus to be shown to the pregnant woman 24 hrs in advance of the requested abortion, a provision that impact low income, youthful and working women disproportionately. This on top of adopting Stupak’s Federal language at the State level. This just adds to the growing morass of hoops women in MO. have to jump through, ‘scuse me, that should be ‘laws and proscriptions women in Mo. have to obey’. I’ve been fuming about it for a couple of days and then received this from the ACLU yesterday:
___
“Subject: Abortion coverage ban from White House
Dear Friend,
We need you to act immediately to undo a disturbing decision from the Obama administration. Remember all the hard work you and other ACLU activists did to defeat Rep. Stupak’s draconian abortion coverage ban during the health care debate?
Well now, the White House has decided to voluntarily impose the ban for all women in the newly-created high risk insurance pools. What is disappointing is that there is nothing in the law that requires the Obama administration to impose this broad and highly restrictive abortion ban. It doesn’t allow states to choose to cover abortion and it doesn’t even give women the option to buy abortion coverage using their own money.
Ask President Obama WHY his administration is restricting coverage for vulnerable women.
Unless the Administration reverses this decision, some of America’s most vulnerable women—those with pre-existing conditions who have been denied health care coverage on the individual market—won’t be able to purchase abortion coverage except in the case of rape or incest or to save the pregnant woman’s life.
You and I know that every woman should be able to decide what is best for her health and her family. A pro-choice administration should know that too.
It’s especially discouraging to impose a ban on women participating in a high-risk insurance pool who are particularly vulnerable and may have a special need for abortion. For example, because of the restriction, a woman with heart disease or diabetes might be compelled to carry a pregnancy to term despite its potentially damaging effect on her future health.
Ask President Obama not to stand in the way of vulnerable women’s health care choices.
It’s urgent that you send your message to President Obama right now. When you do, we’ll also forward a copy to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, whose department is putting this unnecessary and harmful restriction into effect.
Thank you for acting on this urgent matter.
Sincerely,
Laura W. Murphy
Director, Washington Legislative Office”
___
We definitely need a new, viable third, fourth, fifth etc. political party in this country.
A further, detailed rundown:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-16/obama-ban-on-abortion-coverage-sparks-feminist-outrage/
Perhaps she can find a job anointing John Ashcroft. :p
Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr: What are you reading?
Dolores: The Complete Poems of John Lillison, England’s greatest one-armed poet.
Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr: He wrote ‘In Dillman’s Grove’ and ‘Pointy Birds.’ O pointy birds, o pointy pointy, anoint my head, anointy-nointy.
____
Steve Martin is a genius.
“Christ” literally means “anointed (with oil).” Maybe she thought one of the kids was Jesus but she wasn’t sure which one.
If I were to start a religion, I think I would start the practice of anointing with chocolate.
It just seems friendlier.
From WVEC.com (7/16/2010)
http://www.wvec.com/news/local/Norfolk-teachers-resigns-after-holy-oil-controversy-98592299.html
“The teacher, however, says she wasn’t promoting her religion, but that she used the oil as a type of motivational technique.
**********
Get this!
Anti-abortion fetus dolls handed out to Norfolk students
By Steven G. Vegh
The Virginian-Pilot
© May 21, 2010
Excerpt:
NORFOLK
Plastic human fetus dolls – soft, in pink and brown, and about 4 inches long – have been handed out at Oakwood Elementary School by an employee who was put on administrative leave Thursday over the situation.
The dolls, which were distributed over weeks or months, are not authorized by the division as instructional materials, spokeswoman Elizabeth Thiel Mather said Thursday. Mather said the employee will remain on leave until school officials investigate the reports.
Oakwood Principal Sheila Tillett Holas was put on leave today, Thiel Mather said. The division began its investigation after The Pilot asked school leaders this week about the fetus dolls.
The distribution of the life-like forms among grade school children shocked and repelled some parents and teachers and School Board members who discussed them in a closed meeting this week.
http://hamptonroads.com/2010/05/antiabortion-fetus-dolls-handed-out-norfolk-students
Sounds like Norfolk may be the “holy” land!
From Associated Press, 7/17/2010
http://timesnews.net/article.php?id=9024771
“The controversy follows another investigation into complaints that a principal at another city elementary school led staff and students in prayer before standardized tests and pressured people to attend prayer or Bible sessions.”
Holy oil? Was it canola, peppermint, or olive?
But the John Freshwater case (Doe v Mount Vernon Board Of Education) is STILL dragging on, almost 2-1/2 year later!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Freshwater
http://www.mountvernonnews.com/local/freshwater/
Come on folks, there was no harm meant, she was trying to decide which of the little hellions were candidates for exorcism.
Group Tootie:
Please do get back to us with the test results.
http://www.penddraig.co.uk/pen/tests/sanity.htm
Hold on a moment. Oh my mistake. You were tested and the results came back positive.
Group Tootie staying this course invites censure, because in the court of public opinion “Insanity is defined as repeating the same behavior and expecting a different result”.
Naughty, naughty, naughty!
Had the teacher been offering Muslim water ablutions all would be well with her.
Tsk,tsk.
To that I would add, there are some close associations between the entanglement of humor and revulsion. Rubbing children with holy oil would not be one of those close associations.
Sometimes (I’m talking to you, Woody Allen), tragedy plus time does not equal comedy.