The Perfect Short Wedding Dresses

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 The Perfect Short Wedding Dresses

Strapless Short Wedding Dresses

Elegant Short Wedding Dresses

Elegant Short wedding dresses, also means elegant wedding dresses, are getting more and more popular now. Thus a short gown should be the good choice of summer wedding, beach wedding or any other informal wedding event. The first model we want to mention about is not that short, it shows your ankles but it feels definitely great on you. This dress has a straight cleavage and over the corset there is a layer made of transparent material with medium sized sleeves.

 Elegant Short Wedding Dresses

Elegant Short Wedding Dresses

Conservatives, Katrina and Alabama

I was listening to All Things Considered and heard parts of a story from Alabama.  Here is the summary:

The death toll from this week's tornadoes has topped 340 — and 28 of them came from one small Alabama town. Very little of Rainsville, population 5,000, remains. And yet, survivors continue the difficult task of picking up the pieces. One family, the Hamiltons, struggles to figure out what to do next.

It was heart-wrenching hearing about how they lost everything.  The lady said they needed a trailer or RV sent down to live in while they rebuilt, because they couldn't stay with friends forever.  That reminded me of this email, which my boss received from one of our wingnuttier clients a few years ago.  It claims North Dakota had a major blizzard and the people there didn't need government money or assistance like the folks from New Orleans.  According to Snopes.com, this email has circulated around a number of times, with Muskegon, Michigan, Cedar Rapids, Iowa and Colorado as the supposed site of the disaster.  Of course they are places with primarily white populations, unlike New Orleans.  Also, in all the cases except for Cedar Rapids, the people's homes weren't destroyed. Also, Snopes (that damn liberal site, the same client sent us an email saying Snopes was liberal, and couldn't be trusted because they used FACTS) pointed out that the National Guard was called out to deal with the blizzard in North Dakota.  I am curious if the same racists who circulated this email will reconsider, now that a large number of white folks are now homeless and in need of help.  I doubt it.

Of course, a tornado is much different than a major flood/hurricane, as private homeowner's insurance covers tornados, but government-subsidized insurance covers floods. Regardless, white bigot conservatives will most likely continue to insinuate that white people don't need government help, but useless, lazy blacks are the only people who benefit from government spending. I do not agree with any of those descriptions above, I am just trying to summarize what I hear when conservatives talk about government.

Scary Chart and the Endgame

John Mauldin over at the Big Picture:

I have written repeatedly about the Endgame in the weekly letter, as well as in a New York Times best-seller on the same topic. By Endgame I mean the period of time in which many of the developed economies of the world will either willingly deleverage or be forced to do so. This age of deleveraging will produce a fundamentally different economic environment, which the McKinsey study referenced below suggests will last anywhere from 4-6 years. Now, whether this deleveraging is orderly, as now appears to be the case in Britain, or more resembles what I have long predicted will be a violent default in Greece, it will create a profoundly different economic world from the one we have lived in for 60 years. This makes sense, in that the prior world was defined by ever-increasing amounts of leverage. Outright reductions in leverage or even a significant slowing of the rate of growth is a whole new ballgame, economically speaking.
In all this I have explained the various options facing the developed world, but I have refrained from putting forth my own estimates as to what will actually happen and what the environment surrounding that outcome will be. That is about to change. I have been giving this a great deal of thought and research. While my conclusions will be somewhat controversial (I know, surprise, surprise), with enough to offend almost everyone on some point, I hope that I can muster enough clarity to help you think through your own personal views and how you will respond to what I think will be yet another crisis on the not-too-distant horizon. Whether that is Crisis Lite or Crisis Depression is up to us and the politicians we elect. I argue that we need to choose most wisely, because we are at a crossroads that is as critical as any since 1940.

Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Two today, both ag related: First, Pigs have 'evolved to love mud', at BBC:

That analysis has led Dr Bracke to propose that mud wallowing, like rolling, could play a role in reproduction in pigs.
But more fundamentally, Dr Bracke suggests the behaviour could have evolved in pigs' most ancient relatives.
"We all evolved from fish, so it could be that this motivation to be in water could be something that was preserved in animals that are able to do so."
For many animals, this would be too dangerous, because watering holes are ideal places for predators to ambush their prey.
"But pigs, like many carnivores, are relatively large animals with enlarged canine teeth, so they would be better able to fend off an attack."
So rather than pigs needing to cool down in mud because they do not have [functional] sweat glands, Dr Bracke thinks that they "did not evolve functional sweat glands like other ungulates because they liked wallowing so much".

Second, Why Is Damning New Evidence About Monsanto's Most Widely Used Herbicide Being Silenced, at Alternet.  If Don Huber at Purdue is correct about Roundup, we've got a serious problem on our hands:

But Huber says this is not true. First of all, he points out, evidence began to emerge in the 1980s that "what glyphosate does is, essentially, give a plant AIDS." Just like AIDS, which cripples a human's immune system, glyphosate makes plants unable to mount a defense against pathogens in the soil. Without its defense mechanisms functioning, the plants succumb to pathogens in the soil and die. Furthermore, glyphosate has an impact on microorganisms in the soil, helping some and hurting others. This is potentially problematic for farmers, as the last thing one would want is a buildup of pathogens in the soil where they grow crops.
The fate of glyphosate in the environment is also not as benign as once thought. It's true that glyphosate either binds to soil or is broken down quickly by microbes. Glyphosate binds to any positively charged ion in the soil, with the consequence of making many nutrients (such as iron and manganese) less available to plants. Also, glyphosate stays in the soil bound to particles for a long time and can be released later by normal agricultural practices like phosphorus fertilization. "It's not uncommon to find one to three pounds of glyphosate per acre in agricultural soils in the Midwest," says Huber, noting that this represents one to three times the typical amount of glyphosate applied to a field in a year.
Huber says these facts about glyphosate are very well known scientifically but rarely cited. When asked why, he replied that it would be harder for a company to get glyphosate approved for widespread use if it were known that the product could increase the severity of diseases on normal crop plants as well as the weeds it was intended to kill. Here in the U.S., many academic journals are not even interested in publishing studies that suggest this about glyphosate; a large number of the studies Huber cites were published in the European Journal of Agronomy.
If Huber's claims are true, then it follows that there must be problems with disease in crops where glyphosate is used. Huber's second letter verifies this, saying, "we are experiencing a large number of problems in production agriculture in the U.S. that appear to be intensified and sometimes directly related to genetically engineered (GMO) crops, and/or the products they were engineered to tolerate -- especially those related to glyphosate (the active chemical in Roundup® herbicide and generic versions of this herbicide)."
He continues, saying, "We have witnessed a deterioration in the plant health of corn, soybean, wheat and other crops recently with unexplained epidemics of sudden death syndrome of soybean (SDS), Goss' wilt of corn, and take-all of small grain crops the last two years. At the same time, there has been an increasing frequency of previously unexplained animal (cattle, pig, horse, poultry) infertility and [miscarriages]. These situations are threatening the economic viability of both crop and animal producers."
Some of the crops Huber named, corn and soy, are genetically engineered to survive being sprayed with glyphosate. Others, like wheat and barley, are not. In those cases, a farmer would apply glyphosate to kill weeds about a week before planting his or her crop, but would not spray the crop itself. In the case of corn, as Huber points out, most corn varieties in the U.S. are bred using conventional breeding techniques to resist the disease Goss' wilt. However, recent preliminary research showed that when GE corn is sprayed with glyphosate, the corn becomes susceptible to Goss' wilt. Huber says in his letter that "This disease was commonly observed in many Midwestern U.S. fields planted to [Roundup Ready] corn in 2009 and 2010, while adjacent non-GMO corn had very light to no infections." In 2010, Goss' wilt was a "major contributor" to an estimated one billion bushels of corn lost in the U.S. "in spite of generally good harvest conditions," says Huber.
The subject of Huber's initial letter is a newly identified organism that appears to be the cause of infertility and miscarriages in animals. Scientists have a process to verify whether an organism is the cause of a disease: they isolate the organism, culture it, and reintroduce it to the animal to verify that it reproduces the symptoms of the disease, and then re-isolate the organism from the animal's tissue. This has already been completed for the organism in question. The organism appears in high concentrations in Roundup Ready crops. However, more research is needed to understand what this organism is and what its relationship is to glyphosate and/or Roundup Ready crops.

SATURDAY

City Council Befuddled By Request to Rename Street for Negro

First off, my use of Negro is in no way intended to be insulting or offensive to African-Americans.  It is expressly intended to be insulting to the members of the Troy, Ohio City Council.  Council rejected adding a secondary name to a street in Troy to honor early Troy civil rights activist Lucille Wheat.  Here is the story:

A city council committee on Thursday unanimously declined to recommend council authorize adding a secondary name for Elm Street. The action effectively rejects a request by Wheat's son, Sidney Wheat, to rename the 2-1/2 block section of South Elm Street between West Main Street and McKaig Road for his mother.

Lucille Wheat is recognized as a key civil rights figure in Troy during the 1950s through the early 1980s. She founded and chaired the Troy Community Action Committee, headed the Troy NAACP in 1966 and co-authored with Lois Davies a seminal book on race relations Troy title, "Some Self-Evident Truths."

Sidney Wheat made the request in January to Troy mayor Michael L. Beamish, saying it was a way to recognize Lucille Wheat for her efforts. The Wheat's family home was located on South Elm Street, near the corner of West Main Street.

In early February, Beamish made an alternate suggestion: adding an secondary name in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the entire stretch of Elm Street from McKaig Road to the northern city limits. The Buildings, Streets and Sidewalks Committee agreed and made a positive recommendation on Beamish's alternate suggestion.

But in the face of questions from Wheat and others, the item was pulled from the Feb. 7 council agenda and sent back to committee, where it has languished until Thursday. Committee chairman Jarrod Harrah blamed scheduling conflicts for the three-month delay in bringing the item back to committee.

Thursday, Harrah and fellow committee members Bobby Phillips and Tom Kendall said they could not back naming South Elm Street for either King or Wheat.

Harrah said streets are usually reserved for persons of note and also said developers of residential areas name the streets. He also suggested renaming a street was insufficient to honor Wheat and that a plaque, perhaps on the commercial building that now occupies the site of the former Wheat home, should be added instead.

"I just don't think a street does her justice," Harrah said.

Phillips noted that Wheat has already been enshrined in the Troy Hall of Fame (in 1984). "I question how many awards a person should have," he said.

Kendall said he has "never been a big proponent of renaming streets," at least partly because it could potentially open the city up to receiving a flood of similar requests.

"At this point, I think we should leave it as it is," Kendall said.

Wheat, 73, a life-long Troy resident, appeared at the meeting with his wife and expressed disappointment in the committee's position.

I have to agree with Mr. Wheat's quote at the end of the story:

"I had hoped for a better outcome, and more sincerity, than I'm hearing," Wheat said

I was not familiar with Ms. Wheat's work in Troy prior to this newspaper article.  I will look for her book at the library when I get a chance.  Apparently, she rubbed some people in Troy the wrong way.  I find it entertaining that instead of honoring a local person, the mayor suggested naming a street after Martin Luther King.  It is also entertaining that they took two months to review and rewrite the city's street naming policy, but they failed to come up with any worthwhile excuses for why they would reject the street renaming request.  This wasn't a case where the street name would change and force people to change their address, it was for adding a secondary sign with Ms. Wheat's name on it.  In neighboring Tipp City, they added a secondary sign to honor George W. Bush because his bus went down the street on the way to giving a political speech at an invitation-only event at the high school.

The changes in the street renaming policy:

After a line-by-line review of the new policy, which included several new sections, the committee made several minor changes.

New to the policy is a section saying that consideration for renaming will not be given to anyone who has already been recognized with an honor or award. Another addition to the policy states that individuals or groups requesting the renaming "shall bear all renaming costs."

Both of those issues were cited by committee members Thursday as factors in rejecting Wheat's request.

I tell you what, if the city is concerned about the cost of the signs, I will pay for them.

It is notable that the portion of street for which the secondary name was requested is in the historically black portion of Troy.  South Elm Street and North Elm Street were referred to as Slabtown and Hollywood.  I don't remember which portion was which, I only remember being told those were the names by my grandparents.  Anyway, I thought a city council in a city which has historical markers seemingly every 20 feet in honor of Clayton Bruckner and the WACO Aircraft Company would be interested in honoring a local civil rights activist.  I would assume that Clayton Bruckner didn't make certain white folks uncomfortable about their latent racism when he was alive.

In a side note, WACO went out of business in 1947, but the city is proud of their association with the company.  The company made some very neat aircraft in the 20's and 30's prior to making the "flying coffin" gliders used in airborne operations in WWII in Sicily, in Normandy and in Operation Market Garden.  As a veteran of the Airborne in World War II told me, "We lost a lot of good boys in those gliders."  He had no fond memories of the gliders.

Update:  I would also like to propose renaming Dye Mill Road in the vicinity of the city wastewater treatment plant after the Mayor and Council.  That area generally smells the same as this Council decision.  I will also pay for those signs.

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Wedding Cakes With Cherry Blossoms

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 Wedding Cakes With Cherry Blossoms

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Wedding Cakes With Flowers

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Tattoo You

Ok...me.

That's right, once again I have stepped into my own personal quicksand and emotional bear trap.
I was joking with a girlfriend that I need to tattoo this on my forehead, so I'll see it every single time I brush my teeth:

It's not about me.

Right here.  That's where it needs to go...

Yuh...see, because, it always so is, I make it so (Just like Jean Luc Picard! But not so elegantly. Not near....).  And, yeah, by posting I'm continuing the cycle..I know I know...you see how I get stuck?!
But I need to remember it, chant it, memorize, do homeschool copy work:

it's not about me its not about me its not about me its not about me it's not about me its not about me its not about me its not about me it's not about me its not about me its not about me its not about me it's not about me its not about me its not about me its not about me it's not about me its not about me its not about me its not about me it's not about me its not about me its not about me its not about me it's not about me its not about me its not about me its not about me it's not about me its not about me its not about me its not about me it's not about me its not about me its not about me its not about me...

Anyhow, you get the idea.  One of my favorite mama trauma bloggers had a post all too similar up like this, except hers really wasn't about her, it was about someone else who was terrific and a link to their post.  I am sure I've stolen it in some lesser form out of my tortured memory today....See, still, not good.  Go read her blog tho, if you want insight or profundity or just a breather from some of the tough time in parenting land....

Because, no, it's not about me.  So if it's not....why can't I step out of it all, parent more SIMPLY, take the breather that the concept offers...and stop the hard and hurt of it all on the bad days? Parent the behavior and not the emotions.
Why can't I just let go?
Simple huh?
Apparently...not so much.

Tattoos....looking better all the time.

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Celso Car graffiti art

car graffiti art .. I was very impressed with the art on this one. Celso car graffiti in the desert.

full graffiti art

Ready for the Weekend

I think this song summarizes my mood, and it was also my grandma's favorite song toward the end of her life.

Cutting Government Spending, Stupidly

From Stuart Staniford, via Gregor, cuts to the Energy Information Administration:

Here is the press release announcing the amount of savings:

Immediate Reductions in EIA's Energy Data and Analysis Programs Necessitated by FY 2011 Funding Cut

WASHINGTON, DC - The final fiscal year (FY) 2011 budget provides $95.4 million for the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), a reduction of $15.2 million, or 14 percent, from the FY 2010 level.
"The lower FY 2011 funding level will require significant cuts in EIA's data, analysis, and forecasting activities," said EIA Administrator Richard Newell. "EIA had already taken a number of decisive steps in recent years to streamline operations and enhance overall efficiency, and we will continue to do so in order to minimize the impact of these cuts at a time when both policymaker and public interest in energy issues is high," he said.
EIA must act quickly to realize the necessary spending reductions during the present fiscal year, which is already more than half over. The changes in products and services identified below reflect initial steps to reduce the cost of EIA's program. Additional actions are being evaluated and may result in further adjustments to EIA's data and analysis activities in the near future.

Cutting statistical data for energy production in the U.S. and worldwide to save $15.2 million dollars?  That is absolutely stupid.  That works out to a nickel per person in the United States.  Maybe that wouldn't be an issue if we don't face very serious energy problems, but how about scraping around between the cushions of our couches and seeing if we can find a quarter or two.  But I'm sure that idiot blowhards like Rush Limbaugh don't think the government should know what the hell is going on in the world.  Rush and his ilk are enemies of humanity.

The Lowest Payroll in Baseball

Joe Posnanski on the Kansas City Royals:

And then there's the most startling one of all -- the folks are Royals Authority did a post with the rather frank headline: "Kyle Davies Is Historically Awful." It seems a harsh judgment for a nice guy like Kyle. but it's also pretty much indisputable. I like their numbers, but I'll try to do it even more simply:

Highest ERAs in baseball history with 125-plus starts:
1. Kyle Davies, 5.59
2. Jimmy Haynes, 5.37
3. Kevin Ritz, 5.35
4. Scott Elarton, 5.29
5. Jose Lima, 5.26

Three Royals on that list. Hmm. Anyway ...

At 125 starts, Davies has the fifth-highest WHIP ever -- and he comes by it honestly. His 4.29 walks per nine innings is absurdly high. His 10.21 hits per nine is, historically, even worse. His 78 ERA+ -- which adjusts ERA by era -- is the third worst ever behind Phil Ortega and Wade Blassingame. He has the sixth-lowest WAR. He is one of only 19 pitchers to start at least 125 games without throwing a single shutout. Over his entire career, major league hitters are hitting .286/.364/.461 which means he basically turns every hitter in the game into Ron Santo.

Here's my favorite one: Davies has a 32.8% quality start percentage -- meaning he throws a quality start fewer than one out of three times. That is the lowest percentage since 1950, which is how far back Baseball Reference figures the stat. No starter in the last 60 years has been LESS likely to throw you at least six innings and give up three or fewer runs.

That is just brutal.

Was the Civil War a Tragedy?

TNC and J.L Wall are discussing the Civil War.  TNC makes the case that the war is not a tragedy because it ended slavery.  Wall reflects on Shelby Foote's trilogy:

And yet, I read Foote’s history and find, with his narrator, tragedy.  This is not the tragedy of an avoidable war; recall that, for Foote’s narrator, the war’s opening is not tragic but exhilarating.  The narrator is more interested (on the surface, at least) in the military narrative of the war than in its causes, results, or the question of moral justification, so it is an exhilaration borne of generalship and a sense of the heroic more than from history’s greater narrative propelling the nation toward the end of slavery.  Though that last, too, is present, if in such a way that becomes more apparent as the Narrative progresses.
By the end of Gettysburg, as I have mentioned, exhilaration has given way to frustration, disgust, and tragedy.  Rather than a misguided quest for glory, Jeb Stuart’s meandering during the first days of that battle are depicted as a lost child’s desperate search for his father.  The scales begin to fall and the South’s “great” men are revealed to be self-serving (Bragg; the Hills; Hood; Stuart; etc.), blindered (Lee), or brutalizers of questionable sanity (Forrest; Quantrill).  Longstreet, perhaps, has a measure of redemption in him—but while he, shaking his head at Gettysburg, is the only one who can see the reality of their military efforts, he is merely resigned by honor of some sort to stick around for the ride.  Davis is compared from the outset to Lucifer; the image reappears near the end of Volume II as the Rebellion itself, for a moment, takes on the trappings of that angel’s against God.
The comparison is introduced through a letter written by William Tecumseh Sherman, himself a brutal warrior once relieved of duty on account of questionable sanity.  Yet he comes in (so far, at least; his march to the sea is not for some hundreds of pages) for less condemnation than his colleagues on the Southern side.  The reason is tied to the type of tragedy the narrator sees in the war at this point—and, I think, to the kind most who read of it sense: not that it had to be fought at all, but that it continues without an end at hand while terrain, technology, and the incompetence and “honor”* of the so-called great-men lead to increasing casualty rolls.  Sherman’s goal, clearly stated, is a faster end to the war; the narrator knows he will help to bring it.

I would agree with TNC that in spite of the war's costs, the benefit of ridding a nation, which was supposedly founded on freedom, of slavery, was well worth the cost.  There is definitely much tragedy to be found in this war, and its aftereffects today.  But a nation without slavery is worth it.

I think Wall's analysis of the narrative arc of the trilogy is quite interesting. Nothing bothers me more than talking to Southern partisans today, and hearing them defend the Confederacy's actions throughout the war.  It really galls me when they say that slavery was not the root cause of the war.  They don't seem to be able to appreciate the tragedy Wall is identifying in Foote's trilogy.  It makes arguing with a Republican about politics seem easy.  Of course, often when arguing with a Confederate apologist, you are arguing with a Republican.  The paradox that the party of Lincoln is now the party of the Confederacy is one of history's great ironies.  Read both TNC and Wall's posts, they are excellent.

Consolidating Schools

Dana Goldstein gets to one of the key points as to why people fight tooth-and-nail against school consolidation (h/t The Dish):

Currently, New York State has some of the most regressive school districting in the country. Due to a system that has changed very little since the early 19th century, there are 697 school districts in New York. 
In Florida, the state closest to New York in terms of population, there are just 74 school districts.
Politically, consolidating school districts is very controversial, even though larger school systems are often able to offer more course options and other perks. In large part, this is because consolidation is a full frontal attack on white privilege and class privilege. Currently, the ability to pay Katonah property prices and taxes earns a family the right to prevent their children from attending school with the children of Mt. Kisco's Guatemalan day-laborers. Some people move to Katonah instead of to Mt. Kisco for exactly that reason.
To be sure, neighborhood school zoning can lead to de facto segregated schools even within districts that encompass entire counties. But there are many good examples of progressive large school distrcits. Montogomery County, MD has made great strides in educating both affluent and low-income children in part because of the community's and administration's conviction that this should be a shared responsibility. 

The other thing which goes unaddressed is that people assume that because suburban school kids test well, the reason is because the schools are good, as opposed to the concept that the cost-of-living might just segregate out students who would struggle with the tests.  Just because test scores overall might be lower, the kids scoring high on the tests would still get just as good of an education, but parents are uncomfortable with the concept.  It is a strange concept to think that Florida only has 74 school districts in the state, while my county (out of 88) has 9 school districts in it.

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Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today's link: Boom and bust signals ecosystem collapse, at BBC:

The Peter Lake food web contained four key components. Insects such as fleas ate tiny water-borne plants, small fish such as golden shiners ate the fleas, and much bigger largemouth bass ate the little fish.

Beginning in 2008, the researchers began to add more bass, and more than a thousand hatched the following year.

Sensing the threat from these predators, the golden shiners began to spend more time in the shallows or sheltering under floating logs.
Larger fleas moved in, eating the floating plants (phytoplankton).
But the changes were anything but smooth, with wildly varying numbers of fleas and phytoplankton seen at different times.
Eventually, by late 2010, the ecosystem appeared to have finalised its transition from one stable state to another.
This second state, dominated by fleas and largemouth bass, is similar to the situation that had existed for years in neighbouring Lake Paul.
This lake showed no major changes during the three years, indicating that the changes seen in Peter really were caused by the addition of bass.

I would guess that most people in western Ohio understand that large population increases of blue-green algae in Grand Lake St. Mary's signals an ecosystem collapse.  Some just don't want to believe why that is occurring.

Why Do Christian Conservatives Like Ayn Rand

In his review of the box office failure of Atlas Shrugged, Mark Howard asks the same question (h/t naked capitalism):

The affinity for Ayn Rand by the Tea Party has always been a bit of a mystery. Sure, there is a shared hostility for government, particularly when it endeavors to fulfill its Constitutional obligation to provide for the general welfare. Both Rand and the TP’s despise efforts to aid society’s less fortunate, whom they believe deserve to suffer. But how do predominantly Christian, patriot, Tea Partyers justify their idolization of an anti-American, atheist who regards compassion as evil and selfishness as the pinnacle of human values?

Ironically, a key theme of the book and the film is the rejection of society by the wealthy business class who mysteriously disappear. There is a correlation to that plot point in contemporary America as we have already witnessed the disappearance of business luminaries like Bernie Madoff, Ken Lay, Jack Abramoff, Dennis Kozlowski, Bernard Ebbers, and John Rigas, to name a few. It doesn’t appear that society has suffered from their absence. Yet there is another industrial titan who not only hasn’t vanished, he is masquerading across the airwaves as a presidential candidate. I’m not sure Ayn Rand would approve of this, however, the popularity of Donald Trump at Tea Parties is perfectly understandable. He is the ultimate manifestation of Randian politics: a greedy, conceited, selfish bully. But for every Tea Party supporter there are probably twenty other Americans who wish that Trump would “go Galt.”

It would be nice if the Tea Party were to go Galt.  Unfortunately, they wouldn't be able to cut it on their own, they depend way too much on government support.

Setting Fire

Today is the feast day of another of my favorite saints, more so now than ever: St. Catherine of Siena.
Siena also happens to be one of my top two favorite towns in Italy, I loved it there!
So much to say about this saint, but this quote from this amazing holy faithful pushy humble strong woman, Doctor of the Church, really sums it up:

"If you are who God made you to be, you will set the whole world on fire!"
-St. Catherine

Why Leaders Can't See Disaster Coming

Via Ritholtz, Paul Farrell's 7 reasons why leaders can't see the next catastrophe:

Farrell enumerates seven reasons this always has, and is likely again, to lead to more trouble. He advises you to not forget any of the following elements:

1. Many, many experts did predict and warn of the 2008 meltdown years in advance.
2. Wall Street banks, corporate executives and Washington politicians are short-term decision-makers.
3. Most business, banking and financial leaders are short-term thinkers, focused on today’s trades, quarterly earnings and annual bonuses. Long-term historical thinking is a low priority.
4. As a result, it is virtually certain that America’s leaders will focus on upbeat, good news and always miss the next meltdown because warnings of a coming catastrophe are ignored.
5. Warnings from the few with a long-term perspective will always be dismissed during every investment cycle and every future recession/recovery cycle. Always. It’s in their DNA, trapped in their brain cells and demanded by their followers.
6. If you are a typical left-brain Wall Street or corporate executive, it’s virtually certain that you will miscalculate the timing/impact of the next meltdown, the next big collapse that’s off your radar. As a result, your company’s assets are at risk of suffering massive losses that are “predictable, not random.” But because you’re in denial, you will not deem it necessary to take steps to protect your assets.
7. If you’re a right-brain thinker, your longer-term historical perspective will give you a clear advantage in preparing for the next crash and the depression that follows.

File this away, and look back at it in a few years — I like to do that with Outlook or Yahoo Calendars, and get a pop message. This one is scheduled for 2014 . . .

I get the feeling something bad may happen before 2014.  I guess we'll wait and see.

Ohio Taxpayers Subsidize Business Investment More than 48 Other States

From the Dayton Daily News:

Only two states - Maine and Oregon - have lower tax burdens for new business investments than Ohio, according to a new study released by the Council on State Taxation, a business-backed group, in conjunction with Ernst & Young, the professional services firm.
“Competitiveness of State and Local Taxes on New Investment” found that Ohio has an effective tax rate of 4.4 percent on new investment, lower than all states and the District of Columbia, except Oregon, with a 3.8 percent rate, and Maine, with a 3.0 percent rate, the lowest nationally.
The findings contrast with some other studies such as those done by the Tax Foundation, which has issued negative findings about Ohio’s business tax climate. The Tax Foundation in a report last year - 2011 State Business Tax Climate Index - rated Ohio 46th nationally in terms of a favorable tax climate.
The new study, released Tuesday, focuses on capital investments in industries that have location choices for factories and headquarters, not on investments tied to specific locations such as hotels and restaurants.

We're winning the race to the bottom.  Excuse me, big business is winning at our expense.

Ernie Harwell Play Debuts Tonight

Mitch Albom's play opens in Detroit:

Ernie Harwell's life and legacy is about to take the stage. Mitch Albom wrote "Ernie" as a love letter he hopes does justice to the late Detroit Tigers broadcaster.
"I just hope people like it," said the Detroit Free Press columnist, best-selling author, WJR radio host and playwright.
The 90-minute play will make its premiere Thursday night at the City Theatre, a block from the home of the Tigers. Albom said the production he is funding is employing about a dozen people from Michigan.
Will Young, a 71-year-old Milford resident, stars as Harwell in the two-person play with 24-year-old St. Clair Shores native TJ Corbett.

I always liked tuning in to listen to Ernie Harwell on WJR when the Reds weren't playing.  Being involved in firing Ernie Harwell was the dumbest thing Bo Schembechler ever did.

White-Nose Syndrome May Cost Ohio Farmers

Columbus Dispatch:

A deadly disease to bats could become a major financial headache for agriculture, costing Ohio farmers as much as $1.7 billion a year.
A new study is the first to tie a dollar value to the millions of crop-damaging insects that bats routinely devour each year. Now, the night-flying hunters face the threat of a fungal disease that kills most of the bats it infects.
White-nose syndrome, named for the fungus that spreads over bats while they hibernate, has killed at least 1 million bats in 15 states and Canada since it was discovered in New York in 2006.
On March 30, Ohio officials announced that they found the disease among bats hibernating in an abandoned limestone mine in the Wayne National Forest. They fear it will march through Ohio as it has nearly everywhere else.

Not only might the bats not be around to eat bugs, but Fish and Wildlife could put more restrictions on cutting trees during the Indiana Bat mating season or nesting season, or whatever it is.  It is rather spooky how effective the white-nose syndrome is in killing bats.

Kasich Goes Off Again, This Time At Obama

Governor Kasich blew off at President Obama for criticizing the Governor's assault on public-sector unions:

President Obama told Cleveland TV Station WKYC he disapproves of new laws restricting public employee unions in Ohio and Wisconsin. The president said states should not use the financial crisis as an excuse to erode bargaining rights. Governor Kasich responded this way:
Kasich:  “The President of the United States has I think...a 13 trillion dollar debt. Why doesn’t he do his job? When he does his job and gets our budget balanced and starts to prepare a future for our children, then maybe he can have an opinion about what’s going on in Ohio.”
Ohio Democratic Party Chief Chris Redfern said Kasich needs to remember it was Republicans who were in charge when wall street fell. Here’s what Redfern said when he was asked whether he thought Kasich was trying to set himself up for a presidential run of his own.
Redfern:  “Well, I can only hope for a Donald Trump, John Kasich ticket. One fellow has already clearly lost it and the other is on his way to losing it”

I wish I could get the audio to work, because you have to hear it to appreciate how big of a dick Kasich sounds like.  Personally, the last time I checked, the President is allowed to say what he thinks under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, even if said speech criticizes John Kasich.  Also, I think the President is well-aware of the debt issue.  Mr. Kasich might want to know that the debt is currently $14.3 trillion, of which $10.6 trillion was on the books before Obama got there.  But then again, John Kasich doesn't seem to care about facts.  Also, Governor Kasich, where were you during the Bush administration with your campaign for a federal balanced budget.  I think that is a brilliant way to tank the economy when consumers and businesses are currently net savers.  If I were the president, I would also mention that tax cuts for wealthy people and spending cuts for state and local governments are bad for the future, but I'm not the president, and thank God I'm not John Kasich. 

New Democrats Make a Move Up North

From ThreeHundredEight.com, the latest polls show the New Democrats making significant gains in Monday's election:

I think multiple parties in the U.S. could make things more interesting, and maybe tamp down the influence of the crazy Republican base.  We might end up with a strong Southern secessionist party, much like the Bloc Quebecois.  I would guess that the current Democratic party would split into more of a Labor and New Democratic makeup like up north. The question would be whether many moderate Republicans would go to the centrists and away from the nutty right.  It is at least an interesting thought-exercise.

Was President Bush Curious?

Daniel Larison:

But I think people caricatured the president, and the only thing that I couldn’t understand is why this man with such a curious mind, who in briefings always asked the question you wish you thought of, why that quality didn’t come across. And I fully admit that it didn’t come across. ~Condoleeza Rice

I suppose it’s possible that George W. Bush could have had “such a curious mind” and still made all the terrible decisions that he did, but one of the reasons that he received a reputation for being incurious is that he overlooked such obvious, glaring flaws in his administration’s policies that someone with “such a curious mind” should have noticed. He wasn’t very good at demonstrating that he knew or cared to know very much about things. If Bush were as curious as Rice claims, he did an amazing job of hiding it.

I would have to side with Daneil.  Bush didn't strike me as a person who wanted to hear what the other side of the issue was, and consider whether his opinion might not be correct.  He seemed to me to consider rather who the person holding the other opinion was, and if it was somebody he already didn't care for, he'd dismiss it out of hand.  His circle of advisors gave him his information, and nobody else could break through that.  We only got decent policy discussions when his advisors didn't agree, and he had to choose between them.  Sometimes he chose well, (Rice versus Cheney and Rumsfeld in his second term) and sometimes poorly (Cheney and Rumsfeld versus Powell on troop levels to invade Iraq).  I guess at times I can dismiss an argument out of hand, but I try to read opposing views on occasion.  For instance, I want to read Amity Shlaes' The Forgotten Man, to take a look at her attack on the success of the New Deal, but I don't really want her to benefit, so I'll probably get it at the library.  I flipped through it at the library the other day, but I just couldn't put that money in her pocket.  I mad that mistake with Larry Schweikart's A Patriot's History of the United States, and I won't make that mistake again.

Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today's link: Inflation expectations my butt, at MacroBusiness:

But today’s inflation is not in labour or household items. It is in financial assets. Excess liquidity these days doesn’t suddenly appear in product prices and wage claims. It appears in securities markets and, until the irresistible warning of the GFC, housing markets.
In other words, inflation expectations are now operative in capital not labour markets.
I know some will argue that the FOMC watches Treasury markets for inflation expectations in capital. But how reliable is that when the market is dominated by the purchases of foreign governments whose goals are national interest not market related, as well as the FOMC itself? Members of the FOMC have themselves acknowledged the uselessnes of the measure.
The inflation of capital is important because it is one half of the new boom and bust growth cycle that has taken over the global economy (the flip side being the real and perceived shortages in various hard assets, that is, commodities).
If you want to get a gauge of future inflation, you need to be surveying the expectations of capital market traders, not labour market consumers. And if you did your survey after today’s FOMC meeting, expectations would be very high indeed.

In some ways, I think for the Fed that this is a feature, not a bug.  It seems to be the ultimate in trickle-down strategies, feed the stock markets and utilize that wealth effect to grow the economy.  That seemed to be the strategy in the '90's with the tech stock boom and after it popped in the real estate boom in the 'oughts.  Both ended in tears, and I'm afraid all this will too.  I can't decide if the Fed is hoping for inflation to ease the debt problems both in the private and public sectors, or what they want to do to address that.  I don't think causing bubbles to engage the wealth effect works in the long-run, and the potential of peak oil and possible food shortages causing price spikes in an already struggling economy is very disconcerting.  Regardless, we'll have some answers in the not too distant future.

QE2 and Commodities

Marshall Auerback on QE2, via Yves Smith:

Those who point to the success of QE2 make the following observations: In the US, growth accelerated after the implementation of QE2 from a 1.7% annualized pace in the second quarter to 2.6% in the third quarter and 3.1% in the fourth quarter. Inflation expectations ceased falling and began rising back to normal levels. Confidence rose. And the pace of hiring improved meaningfully. In both February and March, private firms added over 200,000 jobs. Since the Fed’s policy began, the unemployment rate has fallen a full percentage point.

But just because a rooster crows first thing in the morning doesn’t prove that this is what causes the sun to rise. These are two separate occurrences with no underlying causation. The very deficits now decried so loudly by the deficit hawks and ratings agencies are likely what engendered recovery, not QE2.

So what has QE2 actually achieved? Little in the way of positive impact, but much in terms of its deleterious impact by fomenting additional speculative activity, notably in the commodities complex — gas and food prices. Obviously, with other determinants of aggregate demand in question, commodity prices and the gasoline price in particular now matter. The price of gasoline is almost as high as it was at its brief peak in May-July 2008. In the past, increases in expenditures on gasoline could be managed by consumers because they had access to credit. That is certainly less true today. Rising fuel prices could tip the economy towards greater weakness. As it now stands, the U.S. economy has been growing around trend (2.7%) and the first quarter was probably below that. Tipping the economy towards weakness would bring growth way below the current optimistic above trend consensus.

Though it cannot be proved, in the minds of many the current wave of speculative and investment demands is tied to the Fed’s emergency measures of ZIRP and QE. Within the Fed itself, a number of inflation hawks have reflected this belief, notably Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher and former Kansas President Tom Hoenig. If so, this inadvertent adverse consequence of QE means that the Fed might be hoisted on its own petard.

QE2 is certainly part of the commodities run-up, but I'm afraid some real supply and demand issues are also involved, and if so, that indicates some serious problems down the road, especially when it comes to our addiction to oil and it's corollary, using food for fuel.  I also think he's right in saying the real problem is that society is too laden down with debt to take on new loans to expand businesses.  We're in a trap of our own making.

Charity Combined With Carbon Credits for Profit

This also via Ritholtz:

Swiss-based Vestergaard Frandsen--makers of mosquito nets and the LifeStraw--has figured out a solution to turning a profit while saving the world.
The company is launching a campaign today that could change the plight of water-borne illnesses in Kenya, while making the company a tidy sum of money. Over the next five weeks, 4,000 temporary employees will distribute the company's LifeStraw water filters to 900,000 households in Western Province--nearly 90% of the entire population--providing 4 million people with clean, safe drinking water. The filters will be provided to the end users for free, and company founder and CEO Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen has invested $30 million of his own money into the project. But he's not worried about losing out--because for each LifeStraw he donates, he's going to be making money.
The campaign is called Carbon for Water. Kenyans boil their water to eliminate waterborne diseases, using wood fires. Those fires generate a large amount of carbon, and eliminating the need to boil water means fewer emissions from Kenya. Because they're providing the means to reduce emissions, Vestergaard Frandsen earns carbon credits for each LifeStraw donated. He will then turn around and sell those credits to companies in countries that have carbon caps and exchanges. "We are using international agreements about climate change to finance the mitigation of CO2 in the least developed countries," he says.
Vestergaard Frandsen estimates that the campaign will offset about two million tons of carbon every year—that means the company will earn two million carbon credits. Carbon trades on the commodities market at between $6 to $12 a unit and, he says: "because the project is based in Kenya and has significant humanitarian and health co-benefits, these credits can be sold for a premium." Vestergaard Frandsen has made a 10-year commitment to Carbon for Water, which means that the project could potentially offset 20 million tons of carbon. Even at the lowest estimates, that means Vestergaard Frandsen will make his $30 million investment back many times over. Which is important, because Vestergaard Frandsen doesn't sell its units retail--at $25, the LifeStraw Family is prohibitively expensive for most end users to purchase. Instead, the company formerly relied on partner nonprofits to fundraise, purchase LifeStraws, and donate them in bulk. It was a succesful plan--in 2010, the company had a profitable bottom line with revenue of about $500 million--but now, he doesn't have to rely on the fickle kindness of philanthropists.
The model isn't the perfect solution the issues plaguing water in the developing world: while not having to collect firewood to boil water helps preserve safety and time of the women and children who typically bear the burden of these tasks, they still have to make trips to the water source. And carbon trade is inherently controversial, and as of now no plans have been announced for what happens to carbon offsets after the Kyoto agreement expires in 2012.

That is interesting.  It all seems like a bunch of hocus-pocus, but it solves a simple problem in a more primitive society.  The problem is that it also puts off dealing with a much more complex problem in a more complex society.  It also highlights the fact that the worst polluters, the U.S., China and India are doing nothing whatsoever to deal with CO2.

A Summary of Gold Bugs

At Marketwatch, via Ritholtz:

We’ve been out-Chinese-ed, out-German-ed and India-ed. Those economies are the envy of the world. Chinese banks haven’t made any bad loans and it’s a Shanghai-La as long as you can live on $6,000 a year and aren’t one of the billions of people who can’t speak or move about freely. And talk about opportunity: Who wouldn’t want their 10-year-olds working in a factory stripping copper from old computer monitors? Everyone works.
And how about the Germans. Germany’s export boom will go on infinitely even as the euro rises. The Germans are so rich, they’re bailing out the rest of Europe even though their own debt-to-GDP is 79%.
India is the best place in the world to do business, except for the overcrowding, corruption, dependence on agriculture, and the fact that 25% of its people are below the poverty line. India is running double-digit inflation and has a infant-mortality rate higher than Zimbabwe, Mongolia, North Korea and Namibia. Sad, but it means more farm jobs for the living.
Buy gold.
It’s the only thing that will be valuable when the New World Order shows itself. Right now, the Illuminati, Trilateral Commission and the Freemasons are planning for the end and they won’t be satisfied until they have world. domination or a better public relations firm.
Buy gold.
Because you’re a patriot. Gold hires people. It takes a chance on an idea. It believes that, for all of our politicians and corporate missteps, we have a dynamic country that can compete with anyone. Gold makes a statement. It says “I think the American people work as hard and are as resourceful as anyone on the planet,” and then adds “but for now, I’m just going to hide out in this bunker and eat Spam until someone else has the guts to create a new business with a great idea and gives me a job.”
Gold looks good and does nothing. And isn’t that how it should be? Look at all these people trying to “do” something: putting out fires, doing our taxes, teaching our kids, giving us check-ups, taking care of our elderly, serving us our meals, reporting the news, constructing casinos, delivering our packages, building our roads, making solar panels — what a bunch of morons. They should be buying gold!
Those idiots will know who’s boss when the economy comes crashing down and we’re left in a total state of anarchy. You can imagine the scene: busted businesses, poverty everywhere, road signs in Chinese. They’ll be the ones working for yuan and euros to pay for their government homes and the rest of us will be standing on top laughing at them. We were the ones who saw it coming, loaded up on guns and Oreos, and put our money to good use. Look who’s laughing at our ruined society now. Ha! We were smart enough to heed the words.
Buy gold.

I have a little gold for two reasons.  One, I think shiny coins are cool, and two, gold bugs are crazy enough to bid it much higher than what I bought it at quite a few years ago.  Otherwise, it is pretty damn useless.  At $1500 an ounce, I need to find a bar that will accept 0.00067 ounces of gold to buy a dollar beer, then come up with more for a tip, if I don't want to pay for the transaction in dollars.  Also, the gold standard really makes it hard to grow the economy.

A Populism History Lesson

Joseph Thorndike, via Mark Thoma:

Tax avoidance is legal and tax evasion is not. Simple distinction, but not always relevant, at least not in politics. Consider the recent burst of outrage over corporate tax avoidance generally and General Electric's tax bill in particular. In some years, GE's tax schemes might have escaped public notice. But in other years -- especially hard ones -- they get plenty of attention. And it was ever thus.

Consider the lessons of 1933. Wall Street investigator Ferdinand Pecora hauled J.P. Morgan, Jr. before the Senate banking committee. Pecora had been charged with uncovering malfeasance on Wall Street, but he focused much of his attention on tax issues. In particular, he forced Morgan to acknowledge from the witness chair that he had paid no income taxes in 1931 and 1932.
Morgan provided a reasonable explanation: stock trading losses in the great market crash had wiped out his other sources of taxable income (such losses were fully deductible in those days). But the revelation still shocked the nation, and Morgan's explanation carried little weight with Pecora -- and pretty much none with the general public.

"The country, in 1933, was in no mood for nice distinctions between tax 'evasion' and tax 'avoidance,' " Pecora later recalled. "Approved by the existing tax authorities or not, the public could not see the justice or equity of financial giants paying nothing, while Tom, Dick, and Harry scraped the bottom of their modest purses to meet their tax obligations to the Government.” (Ferdinand Pecora, Wall Street under Oath; the Story of Our Modern Money Changers,1939).

The Pecora investigation sparked a powerful drive to clamp down on tax avoidance, producing (among other things), new limits on the deductibility of capital losses. More generally, it kicked off a decade of high-profile campaigns to boost effective tax rates on the rich, including a remarkably ambitious effort to revamp corporate income taxation from the ground up.

I think we could use some serious adjustments to the tax code, which would boost effective tax rates on the rich and revamp corporate income taxation from the ground up.  Too bad one party is too cowardly to pursue this, while the other is too stupid and bought and paid for.

Pick Theme Wedding Invitations Design

This is the choice of an individual if you want to choose pick a color theme invitations or would like a large text and images on the face of art creativity invitation. Usually people can see the name of the groom and bride in the face of the card printed with the wedding date. With a large number of various invitation cards can be a self-designed or selected from an existing design available in the market with a printer or designer invitation cards. As each event has a card face up to become the face of marriage. There fore the host would always prefer a wedding invitation card that will attract the majority of exclusively good to make the event a huge success.

 Pick Theme Wedding Invitations Design

Pick Theme Wedding Invitations Design

Wedding Invitations With Wedding Photos

A wedding invitation is a letter asking the recipient to attend the wedding. Among the various preparations are underway to make the invitation, invitation card printing wedding card that serves to be the most important. With a variety of activities, to end the marriage of the bride took the final step away from his home to start a new life with the groom in his place. To do so, no invitation was sent to friends and family either by post or by individual basis. This invitation contains a brief description about the date and time with a small note in the name of the bride and groom. Printed in different colors may or may not match the wedding theme. Or perhaps by including a photo of the bride. You can see it in this example.

 Wedding Invitations With Wedding Photos

Wedding Invitations With Wedding Photos

Wedding Flowers

The choice of wedding flowers is the sole decision of the couple. If not, the brides maid should keep in mind the choice of the couple along with the overall theme and color of the occasion. Bridal bouquet is the most beautiful part of the bridal attire. It is a symbol of purity and fertility. A bouquet should be chosen according to the bridal dress and physique and figure such that it should go with and balance the entire look of the bride. There are a lot of different combinations of flowers including the type and color of them.

 Perfect Wedding Flowers

 Perfect Wedding Flowers

Cheshire graffiti font

Cheshire graffiti font

Casio Watches

The Best Casio Watches
Silver Mix with Black Casio Watches
Casio Watches Performance
Elegant Casio Watches
Casio Watches with Tachymeter
Casio Watches Limited Edition
Casio Watches Shock Resist

Casio Sun Watches

Obama Releases Certificate of Live Birth

Maybe that will satisfy Luke Scott.  Anybody want to bet?  I love how these Republican morons say that a Certificate of Live Birth isn't an official Birth Certificate.  I'm not sure, but I think that's what mine says too.  I'll have to check, and I know I can't trust that my mother didn't actually give birth to me in Africa, so I'm possibly ineligible for the Presidency.  I'm sure all the people who have come across this blog are sorely disappointed with that news.

Update: I would probably be nearly as entertaining as Joe Biden, if I was eligible.

Further update: I too "only" have a certificate of live birth, so either there is no reliable proof that I or Barack Obama were born in this country, or it is further proof that there are some stupid people serving in state legislatures (I'm looking at you, Texas, at least on this issue).  I'll go with the latter.

Turn-Keys in Adoption: Family Dinner

 Ah, the family dinner.
A subject that greater minds and bigger hearts than mine have explored and pondered for many years. Indeed, it's  a fixation of modern shelter magazines and cable shows; how to cook and create a wonderland of fantasy meals. 

I'm not gonna attempt to lay down new paths or thoughts; that's above my pay grade.
This post is my ongoing consideration of dinner, supper, and what it means to the family, especially one built through the often messy process of adoption. 

In fact, I have come to believe that the seemingly simple concept of dinner is really, for us at least, a turn key in attachment.
Yep, this is another one of those posts.  I have a series of them, sporadically put up as I need to process things or I start stewing about stuff {go here:trust, touch, transitions, schedules, Christmas, prayer}.

I think that the whole idea of family dinner is one that is super easy to brush off.  We've heard it all before, from our own parents to the modern beta parents on tv: Oprah, Dr. Phil, Dr. Spock, Judge Judy...heck, everybody's got an opinion.  But this forum is mine and thus this blog post is about my meandering musings down the dinner table.

Now, I'd love to say that our family has beautiful Rockwell quality dinners.  That we all sit down in a calm and mannered fashion to an elegant and/or chic table every night and linger easily over interesting and savory local, foodie creative meals that nourish our bodies and souls.  Right.  But if I did, I'd be lying.

Ramare Bearden, Color Screenprint, 1993

 Our dinners are often a jumble; kids needing to be called to the table, fetched from outside,  hollered for repeatedly (yes, we/I holler, it's not my proudest moment).  Kids race to snag the primo chair; which designation will ever remain an unfathomable mystery to us parents.  {Sometimes it's a mystery to the racers too, but the race is on, nightly, nevertheless.}  This frequently leads to some sulking about not claiming said spot and  having to sit in the "stupid" spot.  Dinner is considered and often declared "gross" or "yuk" and the sulk extended.  We parental types try to regain calm by lighting a candle or two and then beginning with prayer, going around the table to nudge each kid to come up with something, anything, to be thankful for this day...all the while reminding the wild small boys to sit on their chair, hands off their legos, cars off the table, sshh, with significant looks and the not infrequent verbal cue.  After that, we try to have real conversation as we dine (ok, we eat).  This effort rarely succeeds; what with two teenage girls and two preteen girls, any variation thereof who can often be found nursing some level of mood. Occasionally, one of the girls might be working an angle to get some yet unknown advantage and thus launch a bright and superficially charming conversational gambit.  Those nights the repartee is especially exciting for the unknown results and volatility.  Otherwise the conversation can be rather stilted attempts at extracting details of the day at school (yes, much like pulling teeth, actually) and continuing to referee sulking players; all the while leaving us two over forty craving scintillating discussion of current events or politics or heck, number theory...anything at all to change it up. (I lied, I will never crave discussion of number theory, evah.)

 Jean Foss, "Family Dinner"

Often enough one or three kids will thank me for the cooking, signaling the end of the meal; a truly lovely and appreciated gesture (always Marta, sweet habit) and then bolt to the beyond of upstairs to escape the ensuing chaos that erupts after dinner.  Then the dishes are clattered to the counters and sinks, reminders of dish night assignments handed out, and the dinner comes to a close as I try to scoot/race the little boys up to the bedtime routine.

Thus we have three phases to our dinners: preparation, partaking, and cleanup.   All of them are key to our family dinner and to the foundation that is laid.  It is the whole of the process that makes the family dinner so important, and yes, a turn-key to adjustment.
I want to say that again: I think the whole of the process: the prep, the sitting/eating, and the aftermath, is important to the bonding and attachment found in the family dinner.

The importance of this meal, it's function as a key for us, is coming more and more clear to me; especially over these past few months of our adjustment to our newest daughter Marta.  She has a need for a very defined order to her days, she counts on it, it is her safety zone.  And the dinner routine, as close to 'no  matter what' we can get, is key to her sense of well being, and thus, attachment.
I daresay it is the same for our other children, young and old, bio or adopted. 

Family dinner counts.

The time to prepare it shows our newest daughter, without words, that this time is important to us as family.  She sees me, as do all  my kids, thinking about it in advance, shopping, preparing it, prepping the table for it.  If it wasn't important I wouldn't bother.  They all know it.
If I can get it together during the day, I try to have the table set and dinner planned and begun to prep as she/they arrive home from school....yes, it's very Donna Reed, but it's very very comforting and secure.  All of my kids, each and every one, ask me, every day within minutes of seeing me after school: "What's for dinner?"  Each one of them need that answer, sometimes I say "I don't know!" But, if I name a meal,  it's an almost visible sigh out of them to hear the answer - even if it's not their favorite.  Because it signifies that I am on it and life is secure.  Now, they won't say it that way, but I see it that way now...because of my newest daughter.  Her life was not secure and dinner wasn't a guarantee or even always an option.  So, yeah, this is important stuff...for all of them, but absolutely critical for her. 
It is a turnkey on so many levels: food, primal sustenance, comfort, family, routine.

Peter Blume, Vegetable Dinner, 1927

The sitting down together is a coming together, a pause in the day to nourish our bodies and us as a group together, to nourish our sense of family.  The kids can't see that, sometimes it's just a chore...for me too.  (I can easily, if I were to choose, skip the eating of dinner, most any day.....)
But beyond that obligation and duty lies great unspoken meaning: family, it's important and this is ours.
And happily enough, that meaning is not reliant on the context of perfection or glossy fantasies of "should be" or "looks like."
I will go out on a cyber limb and even say that the very chaotic mess of our dinners, and it's own particular kind of standard chaos, defines our own family culture and is a feature of this key to attaching into our family. 

The cleanup, well, its not nearly the pretty part.  Not that any part of our dinners every really are so much...but cleanup is a mess and a job.  But by having the kids all take part (they rotate dish duty) and their dad usually giving them a boost of help...they learn that they too are contributors to the family. They don't only take...they too give to each other and the family.  Giving back is part of the key to attachment.  Unless you are invested in something or someone, by serving them in some form (time, attention, effort), it's very hard to have a two way attachment. Now, that's just my opinion...but I hold it close.  I think you love by doing.  I think the best way to help a child learn that they are an integral part of the family is to  have them pitch in and help that family, just the same as the other kids (or to their ability).  

So, who'da thunk it?
Family dinner, be it vichyssoise or burgers, means ever so much more than the calorie count.  And really, it's not even about the actual food or the quality of it; be it fancy french or sub sandwiches.
It's about the whole process of the dinner, as a family.
I think it's one of the better keys in your tool belt as a parent.  
I think that so much of what we do, we feel we have to follow the perfect script or recipe or rules or recommendations.  But the beauty in the messy chaos and routine of the family dinner is that it allows for our unique seasonings and tweaks and settings.  It is our own. 
It is in the very making and prepping and sitting and tastings of it, we find our own selves and each other. 
This is a turn key to attachment for each of us, adopted or not, for healing and blending together as a family.  It is a key that is not a hard metal bit to be clanged about...rather this one is as a red ripe tomato, bursting with goodness, begging to be savored.

Jos van Riswick, Tomato 15x15