I’m not sure what news had the greater effect on me in the last 24 hrs. The Maple Ridge gang rape of a 16 year old girl that was photographed and posted to Facebook (this is child porn by the way), the cyclist killed on the highway in New Brunswick, or this story of the US Senate Minority leader who wouldn’t know suffering if it were to knock him across the head with a 2 by 4.

The gang rape is disturbing on so many levels. A young girl drugged and raped by a group of malicious asses, another malicious ass photographing the scene and posting it all over facebook so that this young girl can be re-victimized every time the photo is viewed, shared, and downloaded, and the fact that kids were chuckling at the situation on the news. People don’t understand that once you put something out on the interweb, there’s no return. You can delete it from its original source, but you can’t take it out of every inbox, hard drive it’s been downloaded to, or new source its been posted.

But what has our world come to when classmates are giggling on national television, claiming that it wasn’t really rape?! How do we get our children’s innocence back? How do we ever go back to a day when any sort of violence, especially sexual was a shameful thing for any child to witness, let alone be party to? Will we ever be able to teach the youth of society what a healthy sexual act or relationship is again?! I despair.

I have two children who will soon come of age. As much as I aim to protect, inform and educate my children, I cannot change how their so-called friends interact with them outside of my home (even within it, I’m afraid). There is a desperate need for a major shift in thinking and fast!

The cyclist / truck accident is sad. I wish I could say it were surprising, but so far this season there has been at least one major fatality / month that was most likely attributed to a driver not respecting the cyclists space and rights to be on the road. The greatest trajedy is that these tragic events result in a slew of hate-messages from anti-cyclist citizens who can’t take a moment to consider the full picture.

And finally I must address the statement made by the US Senate Minority leader that people of incomes higher than $250 000 (that’s two hundred and fifty thousand dollars!!!! annually!!!) were hardest hit by the recession.

Angela Glover Blackwell wrote a poignant article about the true depths of poverty as a result of the recession in the United States of America. It is shocking really. I don’t care how much money in relation to their pre-recession income an individual has lost, if they have not gone from having the ability to feed their family, to a state of survival in which everyday is a worry as to how their children will be fed, a roof kept over their heads, medical bills paid… then they haven’t a leg to stand on with this claim of hardship.

How does a man in the position Mitch McConnell is in have the nerve to make such a statement? Even if (and I’m really stretching to give the man the benefit of the doubt here) he actually understands the depths of poverty and how the real buying power of each dollar for someone in poverty is so significantly less than the same dollar in a high earners’ hand.. even if. How could he be so stupid as to say such a thing?

It is news days like this that I feel compelled to find a way that I personally can have some significant effect and see change as a result of my efforts. I am still at a loss for what my strategy should be.