FacePalm Friday
Welcome to this week’s edition of FacePalm Friday.
This is where your hosts will list their top picks for this week’s FacePalm moment—something they learned or read about this week that caused the FacePalm to happen (you know, the expression of embarrassment, frustration, disbelief, shock, disgust or mixed humor as depicted in our Rally FacePalm smiley).
We invite you to add your FacePalm of the week to our comments. Go ahead and add a link, tell a personal story, or share something that triggered the FacePalm on the subject of child welfare or adoption.
Your Host’s Selections:
(1) Katie Davis who has the 14 13 orphans in Uganda she’s adopting and that wretched book Kisses from Katie is on p. 70 of this week’s People magazine.
She had 14 but she got angry that the biological mother came to reclaim one of them, so this high school educated girl “has” 13 children though she is in her 20s.Best interest of the child? I think better can be done.
she is not!
(2) “AP” opening her own embryo adoption shop
I just posted about this article this afternoon here but didn’t mention the facepalm: “At the White House that day was Maria Lancaster and her daughter, Elisha, who was adopted as an embryo through Snowflakes, the embryo adoption division of Nightlight Christian Adoptions. In 2008, Lancaster opened the doors of her own embryo adoption agency, which is a branch of Cedar Park Church, an evangelical congregation near Seattle.”
Guess she is glad to be part of the assembly line 
(3)”Redemption” an adoption story article
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/redemption-an-adoption-story/ is a story about a Marshall Islands adoption. At the end of this adoption story sprinkled with “redemption”, the reader is asked to click “like” if you want to end abortion. Again, this story has absolutely nothing to do with abortion. The couple did not adopt aborted children, they adopted live children-their mothers did not abort.
Abortion is not the opposite of adoption! Stop recycling this nonsense! 
(4) US couple used European agency for Long Adoption Process and it Made a Headline
I guess any agency will help if they can make 
! Must have been a slow news day…
(5)India Op Ed doesn’t seem to understand corruption or unsafe homes.
Another one that claims that the problem in adoption is red tape
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/devesh-kapur-tyingadoptions-in-red-tape/485951/
(6)How Do You Raise Pro-Life Children? Adopt!
Again, Stop recycling this nonsense!
(7) Selling “pregnancy cards” to fund your adoption
http://www.etsy.com/shop/pregnancycards
(8) Jane Aronson has an all about me adoption day post…again
And she reveals intimate details about her child and that she did not follow Vietnam’s rules for adoption as they do not allow homosexuals to adopt, but the general public wouldn’t know that if they just read her pieces. I wonder how she explains that part of her adoption stories to her kids?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-jane-aronson/arrival-day-for-an-orphan_b_1870873.html
When she writes, it’s all about 
The Clanton family that “accidentally” nearly killed their newly adopted daughter from Ukraine by dropping her into the Erie canal while strapped into a stroller encouraging other families to consider adopting internationally (!):
http://myreallifebyyvonne.blogspot.hu/2012/09/dreams-of-adoption.html?m=1
Although the police investigation is ongoing (according to media reports), a hardware store is donating materials to adapt the Clantons Florida home to the needs of Selah (who walked, ate and breathed without assistance at a bad Ukrainian orphanage), who is now in a persistent vegetative state (with a trach, a feeding tube, etc).
A family with 10 kids, that does not meet the USCIS minimum income requirements that has “social worker shopped” to find one that will allow her family to adopt another high-needs, special needs Bulgarian child:
http://theblessingofverity.com/2012/09/the-kindness-of-the-lord-updates/
And encouraging other families who live below 125% of the US poverty line (below $58k per year income for a household of 12) that they too CAN and SHOULD adopt internationally since the Lord will provide, ie they too can beg donations from strangers.
I don’t understand how any of these people can get approval from the US government when they don’t meet this “criterion”. Obviously there aren’t any criteria-all can be waived. The system is a bad joke.
Exemptions. That are dispensed on what appears to be a scarily regular basis by USCIS.
It is perfectly reasonable that USCIS requires PAPs to demonstrate that they are able to care for an additional child, which includes FINANCIALLY. What’s the point of having a really bare-bones financial requirement if you’re going to WAIVE it??
(and maybe it’s just me, but how on earth do 12 humans live on less than $58k a year?? I’m by no means a money guru, but I like to think I’m pretty responsible financially… But I’ve no idea how one could do it without, say, food stamps, and particularly in the case of that family, who according to their blog has iffy insurance and a single adopted kid that requires $1200/month of specialized formula. Right out of grad school, almost 10 yrs ago, I made $55k in manhattan…and my budget for me, myself and my daschund Siggy was REALLY TIGHT. Just for me and a 15 lb dog. No clue how 12 people can live on pretty much the same $$$).
The Anerican college student volunteer at several Ukrainian orphanages who 1) got very sick, was hospitalized and banned from visiting several SN orphanages (so as not to infect ill and immuno suppressed orphans) who visits different orphanages anyways and 2) publicly muses about leaving Ukraine (as her visa expires) and immediately returning in order to continue visiting (and potentially infecting) said SN orphans:
http://blogging4theleastofthese.tumblr.com/post/31655818663/urgent-visa-situation
This student also takes and posts photos of orphans on her blog, encourages folks to Dopt them and provides photos and private medical info on Ukrainian SN orphans to Reece’s rainbow and RR PAPs on a continual basis.
Ew! We were not allowed to bring our children to the orphanage due the fact that they could not trust that our (vaccinated) kids may infect the children in the orphanage! I have also heard of unvaccinated volunteers going to some of these countries and bringing back measles to the local US population. I know of 2 situations in my area in the past 7 years like that. I always urge everyone to get all the recommended vaccines but with the craze to adopt quickly, I think that has dropped off the radar in recent years.
When $48k to adopt a single Russian child with SN just isn’t enough:
http://love–conquers–all.blogspot.ca/2012/09/an-update.html?m=1
(the pap claims she needs an additional $4k; this is the lovely lady who claimed to have no savings and no credit cards and was 100% dependent on begging for cash from strangers and supernatural beings to comple the adoption. Yuck!!).
The PAPs write that:
That’s really all i got right now. What we really, really need…is a miracle. We need a lot of money, on short notice, and I’ve spent 9 months fundraising….everyone I know who is willing to help, already has, I have no one to turn to to help us get this money. If there is someone out there looking to change a life, or help a stranger in need…I hope they’ll find us, and find Kenzi’s story, and be the guardian angel she needs. Prayer is really all I have left, and I hope you’ll all pray with me.””
APs who happily admit that they ILLEGALLY arranged a meeting with the Biomom and Ukrainian Grandma who visited their girls regularly at the orphanage (heck, Grandma WORKED at the orphanage so she could see the girls daily) to convince them to let them adopt said girls (which they did; the girls now live in the US):
http://martitimes.blogspot.ca/2012/09/battling-worlds-toughest-mudder-to.html
This charming couple is raising money for their friends and fellow AP/PAPs who adopted 3 unrelated Ukrainian girls in 7 months (!!) to adopt 2 more Ukrainian girls, despite having exactly ZERO of the $$ cash on hand to do so. I mean, why let the 3 already adopted girls, home barely a year (1 kid) and less than a year (2 kids) settle in when you can add yet MORE CHILDREN via ADOPTION right now:
http://debraandrayinparadise.blogspot.ca/2012/08/decision-making.html