hit parade

another oda doozy: "We don't need to separate the men from the women in this country ... This government as a whole is responsible to develop policies and programs that address the needs of both men and women."

it's not like we have to play ideological where's waldo with statements like these. she's frighteningly up front about what she and harper have planned, and if you don't think it's the full dismantling of status of women canada, then for the love of god, please don't vote in the spring.

in related news, oh my god. i don't know how to enlarge the site statistic graph to show it here, but what it fucking says tonight is that our site has had over 10,000 hits this month. combined with october stats, we are talking nearly 20,000 hits since launching. that kinda blows my mind.

but our visitors remain rather anonymous, despite our attempts to rattle them out of cages. if there was ever a time for a more overt claiming of the site by its visitors - IT IS NOW. it's go time for anyone who gives the tiniest shit about the federal government retreating from meaningful work on women's equality. bad enough that oda officialized the rumours today by announcing the closure of a bunch of swc regional offices.

but we're dealing with more than feigned concern over rent and utility bills. we're dealing with an aggressive political wave that thinks it's hip to be retro. that's right, we're dancing to the oldies up in here. so backwards is oda's thinking that when defending the closures, she trotted out such mind-fuckingly archaic shit as "What these offices don't necessarily provide is the help directly to women. There was a lot of lobbying groups, there was a lot of advocacy." -- um, Excuse Me? lobby no helpy the women, ya think?

slick of the oda team to make this announcement on the eve of the stupid-ass liberal convention - whatever legs it might have had (thanks, cbc, for making it your 2nd story on the national news) will be totally chopped at the knees by ignatieff et al ad nauseum. so now it's going to take a might provocative angle on our part to pierce through the noise. my first instinct was to ask Why Bother? but then the question became How Can We Not? do we just go quietly under the oppressive cover of all the other more important news, as if this isn't 2006 and there isn't somebody somewhere who gives a good god damn that the minister responsible for the status of women doesn't give a fuck about women?