[BartSimpson]

Curtman Curtman:

People tell stories of the days when it was possible to raise a family on one decent income. It sounds wonderful.

It's still possible. All it requires is that mom and dad are not so obsessed with crap they don't need that they can manage on one income.

Lisa and I know a couple where both parents work and the girls go to private schools because the public schools are for sh!t around here. The husband is the #1 breadwinner and the wife makes a gross of about $70k per year. $45k of that goes to the school expenses. Both parents work about 50-60 hours per week.

I keep suggesting to them to have the mom stay home and home school the girls. Then the girls have the attention of their mother while the need for mom's income is obviated by home schooling.

Nope. Mom and dad are addicted to their lifestyle.

Too mmany people have bought into this BS the banks have sold people on which is you borrow money for everything in life and then slave away to keep paying interest to massa.

F*ck the banks. Pay cash for everything. And if you can make it on one income so your kids can get to know their mom then do it!

No one 'needs' a new Mercedes, a huge McMansion, a vacation in the Bahamas, and no one needs any of that bad enough to buy it on credit.

I'm not kidding when I say that the leftists are right on at least this much and that's that the whole materialistic society is a lie. It's a falsehood premised on the notion that you can be happy if you just buy enough stuff you don't need.

That works out well for the retailers and the banks who finance the purchases, but it leads to so many empty lives. I live in an upper middle class neighborhood and I see so many pissed off people driving to work every morning. You can't tell me that they're happy when they act like they'd kill you if it would get their car ahead of yours on the highway. They have nice cars, nice homes, nice clothes, and they're clearly miserable and depressed.

Bottom line is that you can't buy happiness. To the contrary, happiness seems to align with people who don't buy much at all.

All that said, I absolutely agree with the radical notion that a mother should beg off her career and stay home to raise her kids. If the husband has a decent enough job there's no reason why mom should have to work if all her income was just going to extras.

[ShepherdsDog]

Vacation locally(or at least within your own country) and keep that money in the local economy rather than in the Dominican Republic's. Get the kids away from the net and out to the lake for a few weeks or get them involved in clubs.....part of the viciousness in soe of these attacks is because stuff is said fro an electronic device rather than face to face, where the attacker could face some sort of immediate sanction. Lack of consequences seems to embolden and completely kill any empathy.

[Thanos]

Get your kids, girls as much as boys (if not moreso), into some kind of self-defense training. It keeps them healthy, it gives them focus and discipline (which, apparently, too many of these little pricks with their cellphones have absolutely zero of), and gives them the basic opportunity to fight back when the time inevitably comes. There's too many kids out there who, either from the nightmare in their own deplorable families, the shit school systems who keep looking the other way, or from the incessant evil from the bullies grinding them down, have no ability to defend themselves. And too many of them have been brainwashed from a young age into believing that they don't even have the right to do so no matter what kind of viciousness is perpetrated on them. This is total garbage and something should be done so that the good kids don't have to meekly sit back and take it from the rotten ones just because too many voices keep telling them they have to live as victims.

[andyt]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Curtman Curtman:

People tell stories of the days when it was possible to raise a family on one decent income. It sounds wonderful.

It's still possible. All it requires is that mom and dad are not so obsessed with crap they don't need that they can manage on one income.

Lisa and I know a couple where both parents work and the girls go to private schools because the public schools are for sh!t around here. The husband is the #1 breadwinner and the wife makes a gross of about $70k per year. $45k of that goes to the school expenses. Both parents work about 50-60 hours per week.

I keep suggesting to them to have the mom stay home and home school the girls. Then the girls have the attention of their mother while the need for mom's income is obviated by home schooling.

Nope. Mom and dad are addicted to their lifestyle.

Too mmany people have bought into this BS the banks have sold people on which is you borrow money for everything in life and then slave away to keep paying interest to massa.

F*ck the banks. Pay cash for everything. And if you can make it on one income so your kids can get to know their mom then do it!

No one 'needs' a new Mercedes, a huge McMansion, a vacation in the Bahamas, and no one needs any of that bad enough to buy it on credit.

I'm not kidding when I say that the leftists are right on at least this much and that's that the whole materialistic society is a lie. It's a falsehood premised on the notion that you can be happy if you just buy enough stuff you don't need.

That works out well for the retailers and the banks who finance the purchases, but it leads to so many empty lives. I live in an upper middle class neighborhood and I see so many pissed off people driving to work every morning. You can't tell me that they're happy when they act like they'd kill you if it would get their car ahead of yours on the highway. They have nice cars, nice homes, nice clothes, and they're clearly miserable and depressed.

Bottom line is that you can't buy happiness. To the contrary, happiness seems to align with people who don't buy much at all.

All that said, I absolutely agree with the radical notion that a mother should beg off her career and stay home to raise her kids. If the husband has a decent enough job there's no reason why mom should have to work if all her income was just going to extras.

The median gross family income in Vancouver is $67,000. Good luck trying to raise kids if you cut that down to say $40,000 for one bread winner.

[Brenda]

And then dad loses his job, and mom has been home for 10 years and no relevant skills. Then what?

[peck420]

Brenda Brenda:

And then dad loses his job, and mom has been home for 10 years and no relevant skills. Then what?

Adapt, adjust, and move on.

Pretty much the same thing that would be required if either lost their current jobs.

Very, very few people live well enough below their means to handle a substantial loss of income. So if either lost their job, they would probably be hurting, financially, quickly.

[andyt]

If dad loses his job, it just proves he's a ne'er do well anyway. Good people don't lose their jobs. Anyway, lots of $5 an hour jobs in the US - what's wrong with people they can't raise kids on that. Especially if he works two jobs - that's $20k a year, that should be plenty if he doesn't try to imitate his betters and buys a cell phone or TV or such.

[Brenda]

andyt andyt:

If dad loses his job, it just proves he's a ne'er do well anyway. Good people don't lose their jobs. Anyway, lots of $5 an hour jobs in the US - what's wrong with people they can't raise kids on that. Especially if he works two jobs - that's $20k a year, that should be plenty if he doesn't try to imitate his betters and buys a cell phone or TV or such.

Oh Andy, sometimes, I adore you

[andyt]

[Gunnair]

Thanos Thanos:

Gunnair Gunnair:

Yes exactly. Not wanting to run out and lynch teens based on an accusation means that those if us with teen boys have zero moral expectations.

I suspect you have no children of your own. Maybe that's a plus given the morally bankrupt suggestions you make sometimes in your posts.

I know you won't tone it down but your attacks on anyone not in lock step with your opinions because you feel they are some kind of teen boy rape enabler is utterly foolish and certainly sidelines yourself on this discussion. Stay in the background and grind on, but you made yourself irrelevant to mature dialogue.

I suppose, like Kinsella and Anonymous both pointed out, it's an allegation backed up by photographic evidence that the rapists took themselves and then went out of their way to spread as far and wide as they possibly could. And that the RCMP decided to ignore it, even when at a minimum they could have laid some kind of child pornography charge based on the existence and sharing of the photographs alone. Heave all your typical grumpy old snot nonsense at me all you want, on the face of it there was a crime committed and the authority structure that was supposed to investigate, charge, and then punish broke down and failed miserably.

What evidence do you have that the photograph purports rape vice consensual sex? The fact that she's 15? One girl and four guys?

What do you think it is that leads you to conclude it's a depiction of rape whereas law enforcement officials think either otherwise or insufficient evidence?

In end, nail the child porn peddler. That one should have been easier.

[Thanos]

Maybe they should have captioned the pictures a la the ones at I Can Haz Cheezeburger in order to make it easier for some folks to understand.

[andyt]

$1:

Rehtaeh Parsons' mom calls for vigilantes to stop

The mother of a Halifax teenager who killed herself after allegedly being raped and photographed by four boys is making a public plea for people to leave the boys linked to the allegations alone.

Rehtaeh Parsons, 17, died on the weekend after trying to take her life last Thursday. Leah Parsons says her daughter was raped by four boys when she was 15, and then became the victim of bullying and harassment after a picture taken on the night of the alleged attack was circulated.

"I want the justice system to go after those boys for sending those pictures, she was 15 years old," Parsons said. "I don't want people to go after those boys. People are threatening to do that."

Since Rehtaeh's story became public, there has been outrage expressed online. On Wednesday, the words 'Nova Scotia' were trending on Twitter worldwide.

Parsons took to Facebook to tell her daughter's story and shame the unnamed alleged perpetrators. Wednesday morning, an online petition calling for an inquiry into the police investigation had garnered more than 6,000 signatures. By Wednesday night that number jumped to more than 60,000 signatures.

"I don't want more bullying. Rehtaeh wouldn't want more bullying. I don't think that's justice," Parsons said.

She called the police investigation into the case horrible, but said she doesn't want vigilantes to go after the boys, none of whom have been charged.

"I think they need to be accountable for what that they did," Parsons said. "I don't want them to be physically harmed."

The RCMP also matched that message, issuing a warning Wednesday night reminding people not to take matters in their own hands. They asked anyone with information about the case to contact police directly.

N.S. considers new laws
Meanwhile, Nova Scotia's Justice Minister Ross Landry says he's considering new laws when it comes to allegations of sexual assault and distribution of child pornography.

Landry initially said his department can’t second-guess every police investigation, but late on Tuesday he said he was giving officials in his department approval to review the case, and present him with options by the end of the week.

Landry met with Parsons on Wednesday.


"I did assure her that I'm going to discuss with my provincial colleagues and my federal partners the issue of the technology of the imaging and the laws around that and what we could be doing different because in this technological age it's ever-changing and we need to have processes in place and laws in place that address that," he said.

He deflected criticism of his initial response to the case.

"If changing your mind is doing the right thing, then I don't think there's anything wrong with that," Landry said. "I'm never entrenched in my points of view."

A representative from Nova Scotia's Crown prosecution service reiterated that there are not sufficient grounds for charges in the alleged rape case.

Chris Hansen said two prosecutors reviewed all the files they gave to police last October and concluded there's not a reasonable chance of conviction on either child pornography or sexual assault charges.

The province's education minister is also speaking out. Ramona Jennex is asking the Halifax Regional School Board to review its response in the case.

"If there are gaps in the education system that need to be addressed and fixed to ensure more families in the province don't have to go through the same horrific tragedy as the Parsons family, we will do whatever we can to close those gaps," said Jennex.

[BartSimpson]

Brenda Brenda:

And then dad loses his job, and mom has been home for 10 years and no relevant skills. Then what?

The dad goes and finds another job instead of sitting around whining and wondering when someone from the government will come be a parent to him.

An actual man is not defeated by a mere layoff.

[Thanos]

No but most men, despite their own best efforts, are going to have quite a lifestyle change when they industry they work in gets packaged up and shipped wholesale to China or Sri Lanka.

[BartSimpson]

Thanos Thanos:

No but most men, despite their own best efforts, are going to have quite a lifestyle change when they industry they work in gets packaged up and shipped wholesale to China or Sri Lanka.

True. Then you man-up, suck up your pride, and go find a new career. Especially if you have a family depending on you.