The Gremlin's Wings

A quick note: the skin on my blog was corrupted in the update to WordPress 3.0. I had to switch to another. I hope I can switch back, because I quite liked that old skin… Oh well. Change sometimes is for the better.

Speaking of, I should mention my situation lately. Hence the last post being done in April, when it is now late June. Two and a half months late on my newest entry, which was going to be about the Hollywood trend of shock-gore horror films instead of suspenseful horror films but I am not so sure about it right now.

Well, in my personal life, things have been going rather well lately. If you have not heard yet, I now have two jobs and a new apartment to boot. Yep, Adam had to move. Continuing in the tradition of moving to places that are accessible on foot to all work venues, my new place is about a twenty minute walk away from both places. I was insistent on this place instead of others for this very purpose. Yes, I am still working for Zellers… and now I am working for one of my old employers as well, answering telephones and generally being the helpful person that I am (though I bet that several people in my life would like to dispute this).

Has it been a change? Yeah. Life lately has been about constant change. I mean, just three months ago, I had no job, no money and a bleak outlook on life in general. My Employment Insurance (Americans: think unemployment benefits) ran out in May, right when I was at my most vulnerable point. If you think moving is hard, try planning a move then finding out that you are going to be over a thousand dollars short in your moving and rent budget. I owe my parents big time for helping me through that rough patch, both financially and emotionally.

June definitely was a changing month for me. I now live in a great new apartment (where the landlord will not try to screw me out of a damage deposit, like the last one did), I have two jobs, two wonderful kids, a smile on my face and a positive outlook for the first time since January 2009. I am so happy, I have taken to saying when people ask me how I am I respond: “If I was any better, I would be twins.”

So now you know how I am. How are you? Leave a comment below and tell me.

So now to catch up on world events… what should I next spread an opinion about? BP’s major screw-up in the Gulf? Nah… done to death already.

The title of this post, “Black History Month Is Racist”, may be something that is a fire-starter. I am not trying to marginalize the struggles of the past, nor put down any of the people who currently identify themselves as African-American, black or whatever you may call yourself. You have pride in yourself and what you perceive as your own racial group. This is more of addressing racism than anything else.

Racism. What a really ugly word. You know, I never really got the whole race thing. So someone has a different color skin than me. Big whoop. That just means their ancestors lived in a different part of the world than others. Does that really make a difference to me? No.

So why does it to so many others?

February is Black History Month, a celebration of what I believe the politically correct term is people of African-American descent celebrating their great people and accomplishments. Singling out the accomplishments of an individual is great, and I have no problem with this. There have been some great achievements done by many, and people celebrating accomplishments should be a great reward indeed. However, what I do have a problem with is dedicating an entire month to remember that which divides people into distinct groups within a society where we are all supposed to be just… people. By drawing awareness to the differences in between us, there runs the risk of people going ahead and drawing a line in which people can start to take pride in, and in pride, people can breed racism.

Is this a healthy thing, or more detrimental?

True, everyone is a little bit racist sometimes. It does not mean we go around committing hate crimes. (If you have not got the joke yet yet, click the image.)

Is it healthy to all of a sudden have a Asian History Month as well? Hispanic History Month? Do we have a White History Month? Strangely enough, yes, America has the first two, and a Jewish American History Month to boot. I only found out about that particular tidbit after I looked at the Wikipedia article for Black History Month that the other two months exist.

I know this seems like a very weird statement to make, but I believe events like Black History Month only underscore the racial divide in North America that people believe exists. I know there is some very racist people in places of North America, and I know Black History Month is designed to educate those who may be exposed to racist teachings, but I ask: What good does Black History Month do? Why is it important to draw that out in one month, instead of taking that concept of education and putting it to work all year long? I can not see a clear advantage to an education system that teaches one racial profile for a month, then the rest of the history later on.

And here is the biggest question: does it work, or does it draw a line that makes people’s differences all the more apparent?

That is not the only thing I find to be racist, mind you. Most organizations that draw the lines of difference in between people can contribute to racism. We all know the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and a lot of organizations do have the best intentions in mind, but is it a good thing to show people with different colored skin than each other as separate, or is it the proverbial road we are traveling down? For example, the NAACP. I know it tries to do good things with their organization, and I will not try to call them evil or anything… but I start to question its relevance in the world of today, and I also question if it does nothing more than to help draw a dividing line of race in our culture.

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you may notice that I do not think highly of Western culture as a whole. I believe we have gone into a period of stagnation, where we are looking for gratification over development as beings, on the precipice of regressing back to an earlier state of being. Hell, look at the last decade of cultural achievements. The highest grossing movies of the decade are mostly series movies (with the exception of Avatar). Television shows are getting remade, spun off from, and then marketed to death. Connections to the past as ideas and reimagining them is, quite frankly, lazy, and only in a few cases actually done right to the point where it can be called a success.

I wish we could be living in a world past racism towards our fellow man. As I say to others, though, I hate everybody equally, and I usually do not mean that as a joke. It does exist, though, and, if what I read in the news is correct, it is even institutionalized in some parts of North American society.

I can not see a difference in between these people. Can you?

I believe that a society should really be judged on how it treats its worst off citizens. But then again, that is just me talking.

Who is going to listen to me? I am just a lowly Canadian.

(This is an old post that I had kicking around on a different system, and I wanted to keep this one around. If you have already read it, sorry, but if not, it is a small window into what Canadians have to deal with as a country. This was posted back in March 2009, originally… but I liked it, so I decided to put it up again.)

So, apparently I am not losing my job, so I’m not going to be having to look for another one. I have good news in that, because I am sticking around IBM… and I keep a steady paycheque, so I now move on to other concerns.

It has been a while since I have done a full-fledged rant on any particular subject, but this has been stewing in my mind for months, ever since I had heard about this first from a random blog post I had stumbled upon. I am talking about CRTC Public Hearings 2008-11 and 2008-11-1, the move for the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission to start regulating content on the Internet and promoting Canadian content, specifically with broadband video coming into play.

There are many things at stake for Canada as a country in this, which other nationalities might not understand without this paragraph. Unlike a lot of other countries in the world, Canada is right on the border of the United States, and with ten times the population and a hell of a lot more money and broadcasting power than anything in Canada, American media had almost quashed any Canadian-produced content out of existence. That’s when the CRTC stepped in and set it up so that Canadian content would occupy a certain percentage of air time for both radio and television broadcasts. This artificially created a market for Canadian-produced content, which extends to this day. Oh, and they even do something as evil as take broadcasts from Fox or NBC and, if a Canadian channel is airing that same show, switch the signal to the Canadian broadcaster so that we get local ads instead of the American ones. This, of course, peeves off a lot of Canadians, because half the fun of the Super Bowl is watching the commercials… and we don’t get that.

In ’99, the CRTC concluded a study that basically said they weren’t going to try to regulate content on the Internet. From their FAQ page:

In 1999, the CRTC studied the Internet and decided not to regulate it. Access to Internet services was competitive, and both creativity and innovation grew in an environment without regulation. While there was some broadcasting content being offered, most Internet services at the time were text based. The CRTC concluded that the Internet was meeting the objectives of the Broadcasting Act and Telecommunications Act. The CRTC periodically reviews its policies to ensure that the objectives continue to be met.

Fast forward to 2009.

The people at the CRTC have reopened this, as broadcasting on the Internet has taken an upswing and some people have gotten pissy about it, because it’s cutting off their funds. And yes, I said pissy, because that’s what they’re being.

Canadian broadcasters are arguing that the Internet has severely hurt them, in both terms of money and Canadian culture, but it seems that people are using the culture part of it to fight. Take, for example, this sample from actor/comedian Colin Mochrie:

Unlike television, when you are broadcasting through new media, the space for content is practically endless. However, being endless, content can easily get lost. So how do we make sure Canadians can find our own content? How do we make sure Canadian content is featured and given “shelf space”?

The full text of his article can be found here.

Let it be known right now that I have great respect for this man. He truly is a funny comedian, and a great actor. However, I’d also like to point out that I know of him from the American version of “Whose Line Is It Anyaway?” and “The Drew Carey Show”. Serious, that’s where I first saw him – it was before I started to regularly watch “This Hour Has 22 Minutes”, which I caught on reruns afterwards.

I’d also like to point out that I lost respect for him after I saw this quote:

Third, if the CRTC is going to create space for Canadian stories in new media, there must be stories to fill that space.

To that end, a levy should be imposed on Internet and wireless service providers to fund new media production, modelled on the levy on cable companies.

Yeah, f*** you too, Colin.

America, you’ve got it right. Most Internet video content is ad-supported, and can usually sustain itself. YouTube, for example, inserts text ads in to support its massive bandwidth fees, and is impressive for its user-driven content. If this goes through, Internet connection fees for EVERYONE in the country will skyrocket, with no real reason other than to “support Canadian content” which it is MY choice to view or not view.

This will kill Canadian web development, and send us back to 1991 for web development technologies. I will cut off my 10 Mbps cable Internet connection, down to the lowest I can find because using the Internet would be pointless if I cannot view the content that I would like to see… either that, or I’m just going to proxy around every single block that ever comes up.

You want supported content for Canadians? Create a Hulu-like service in Canada, that charges a monthly fee to watch high-quality video feeds of Canadian and foreign broadcasts.

You want Canadian content? MAKE GOOD CONTENT! I’m going to use one example, Rick Mercer, who could EASILY compete with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert if people would give him the chance. Corner Gas was pretty good, though a little too topical for people’s tastes – focusing on a small town in Saskatchewan -

Problem is, the company he’s working for, the CBC, is cutting back because of an advertisement shortfall. Since this is a mostly publicly supported company, the funds that came from the federal government were insufficient to help with this. Canadian content will further continue to suffer, as Mr. Mochrie’s arguments had said, but not because of the Internet but by the reluctance to act by the sitting federal government, and yes the economic recession which has caused advertisers to cut back. Yes, way to go Harper, throw more people on the unemployment line in the middle of an economic recession. (And yeah, I expect to be flamed for that. Come on, Conservative supporters, do your worst!)

The point is not to artificially inflate Canadian content by making ISPs charge users more to provide the same service that they have enjoyed for years, but Canadian content providers have got to start putting out competitive products that can and will do well in domestic markets, while still being marketable in foreign markets as well. The Americans did it by taking risks on shows that might have good content… and Canada must follow suit and do similar things, and promote them effectively.

That is, IF they truly care about Canadian content on the Internet, and on TV and via the radio. The way to do it is not by cutting back, it’s by increasing in tough times, and experimenting with new technologies. An on-demand CBC radio schedule would be one way of doing so, turning from the old AM broadcasts into iTunes podcasts, for example.

Start innovating. Go cutting edge. Stop living in the past, embrace the future, etc. Obviously what you’re doing isn’t working, so start coming up with a different business model, or expect to see all Canadian content go up in smoke.

- Me, Myself and I

National borders aren’t even speed bumps on the information superhighway. ~Tim May

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

(I could not resist the Futurama reference, sorry. Here is something a little classier for you.)

May you not screw up 2010, especially if you are a world leader. It is a new decade, a new time for discovery, change, and, as some like me want, a return to some of our space race ambitions: the exploration of space, to seek out strange new worlds, and to push the boundaries of human understanding of the universe, our world, and ourselves forward.

May you have a journey of self-discovery along the way.

I would like to eventually get married.

Is this a surprise that I declare this? Probably not, but maybe it is for those that may be uninformed about me. I’m not exactly the most sociable person around, true, but I think that there’s a Mrs. Gremlin out there for me. Some people spend all their lives searching for that special someone, and they may find them. I prefer to look at the positive side that I can find my Mrs. Gremlin, and I still have many years ahead of me, more than what I leave behind. At least, I hope I do. Have I found her already? Yeah.

You know, marriage is a true oddity. It is about the commitment of two people to each other, how they will love each other for all time, etc. Marriage and weddings is a religious ceremony repeated across many faiths; even for the non-religious and the atheists it can be a big production, though. It is one thing that most people across the globe can say that they have in common, that weddings are prevalent in societies. The ceremonies may look different, but the process is almost the same if you look at all of them. The general gist is people joining their lives together. Most of the time, I would assume this is because of another force: love.

I can’t go through a post on marriage without talking about love, and explain a few of my views on this particular subject. Whether you believe love is a wonderful thing that links people together, or a biological reactionary to the human need to procreate, it is essentially present in our lives. It is a passion for something that cannot be easily denied or forgotten, and leaves an incredible impression on our psyche, one that I would dare say would be something that shapes us the most in our lives. We associate most of our relationships through our passion we have for others and ourselves, and the direction we go in life can be heavily influenced by the aforementioned passion we can show for things. To borrow a quote from a Hugh Grant movie:

Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion… love actually is all around.

(TANGENT: Love Actually was an impressive movie that openly discussed love in an entertaining fashion. I would recommend it… but if you are a male, grab a woman before renting it. Definite chick flick, but it’s not as obnoxious as others. Also, rent it in the month before Christmas for maximum effect, preferably within a week or two. You’ll see why.)

Note my use of “passion” instead of “love”? Passion, rather than just being a purely physical thing trashy romance novels try to portray, is actually a general term that should be behind love… and hate, really. Nick Scipio said it best: “The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.” The same passion you use for love can easily translate to hate, but the lack of passion, the lack of any intense feelings, or indifference, is at the polar opposite of the emotional spectrum. This explains propaganda so well, as the entire point of it is to erase all indifference and set the subject in a passion that is controlled in a way that is favorable to the presenter. Case in point: any political smear ad campaign ever done.

Now that I have gone off and talked about love, the point I was trying to make was that love is part and parcel for a marriage to work. An expression of two people (leaving out polygamists, sorry) to the commitment of lifelong love and partnership is getting married, and who am I to stand in the way of two people expressing that? I ask myself that in this subject, and I cannot really say that I am justified in any way to stand in the way of this, unless I believe that the couple, on a case-by-case basis, does not love each other. Yes, I take that part of wedding ceremonies seriously; you do not?

A few years back, there was a similar debate to this in the United States of America about certain people marrying other certain people. It was against God’s nature, perverse, unholy… you name it, there was an argument against it. What am I referring to? A man of dark skin marrying a woman of white skin… or was it white man, black woman? I know one was frowned upon, even illegal for a long time, within the States. Some places it is still frowned upon and discriminated against, but that is because the people that do are brought up that way and do not know any better. (They are still wrong, though, in my opinion.) Is it illegal anymore? No.

So if the same arguments are being used today for same-sex marriages, did the Bible change?

Did someone find a new scripture?

Did Pope Benedict (whom I always associate with eggs) suddenly come up with a new Bible that specifically says that weddings between people of different skin color is OK, as long as they’re not the same sex?

Actually, that last one has always confused me. WAS there a new bible that specifically forbade two people from expressing their love for each other by getting married? I am not a Christian, true, but I have problems believing that an all-mighty God that is forgiving and loves everyone suddenly hates people that openly admit attraction for the same sex. Did Jesus all of a sudden hate little Billy because he found out he liked looking at Tommy instead of Jill? I just… I do not get it. As far as I know, there is nothing specifically in any part of the Bible that says a marriage is only in between a man and a woman. Marriages had been going on for years before the New Testament was written; it’s only natural the Bible includes at least one marriage ceremony.

(Also, I would like to point out that the Bible as read today has been edited at least once a century. Oh, right, and it’s been translated from Latin. Languages change over 2000 years. Perhaps not Latin, but English does, definitely. Just saying that people reading and translating could have made errors; the Bible may be the word of God, according to Christians, but the Bible was not written in your language first, it was written in Latin or Aramaic. Some impact may be lost in translation, and other via just humans over the years that admittedly sin and seek forgiveness for their sins; nobody is perfect, after all. Whoa, heavy tangent… but I have a strong idea that you may want to question things before trusting them fully.)

The passion I see in fighting marriages in between same-sex partners, I acknowledge. Obviously, there is some passion in this subject, though I do not understand it – how is marriage cheapened by two people whom do not believe in the same thing as you but love each other getting married? – and I do not personally agree.

So everyone out there, can we agree on dropping any modifiers from the word “marriage”? According to common law, marriage has no modifier anywhere else, why should those of the same sex that are marrying be called something different so that “your” term is not cheapened? Ownership of a concept and a word that has been around for thousands of years and predates the Old and New Testaments, practiced around the world just seems to be stupid to me. If a church does not want to perform the marriage, fine. Making others not perform it? Seems like a case of “I’m imposing my morals on others, believe in what I believe in or DIE!” to me. I thought that sentiment was waning, but apparently I was wrong.

Live and let live. You will live longer.

I’ve seen a few articles around the Internet, and people going off and saying that people should pull out of Afghanistan, and I feel the need to comment on this. Why? Well, you’re on my site, right? I believe what is said here needs to be said, and needs to be said now, before someone does something stupid.

Out of all the military actions that have happened over the past few years, in my mind there has been only three I have ever supported:

• Operation Desert Storm – the first tango in Iraq was completely warranted, for many years beforehand and should have been done earlier, right after Saddam Hussein gassed his own people and then threatened to do the same to Isreal.
• The campaign against Yugoslavia – Genocide of ethnic Albanians? Yeah… no.
• Afghanistan

Why Afghanistan? Well, there’s any number of reasons that I could list; the most popular ones are routinely listed by world leaders. “Al Qaeda could still be there! The Taliban is evil!” And so forth. I, however, differ from this opinion, and I would like to go through in a few details why there should be troops in Afghanistan.

Before I do so, a small history lesson.

Back in the 80′s, when the Soviet Union was still in power, Afghanistan did some stuff that really pissed off the Soviets and they decided to do a full-scale invasion of the relatively poor country. Their campaign lasted a while, but thanks to the efforts of some very familiar names working together, the Soviets were ground to a halt and their campaign ultimately failed. Those names? Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, and the US government, whom supplied them with weaponry and technical training in how to fight in guerilla warfare tactics, successfully using the same strategy that defeated the US in Vietnam in the 70′s.

Afghanistan has never been a real “country” in the modern definition of the word. Rather, it was a rather loose association of tribes that fought as often as they were at peace with each other. But because world leaders said it was a country, bam, it was a country.

Sometime later, the Taliban came along, overthrew what little government was there, and began making the population follow an fundamentalist Islam teaching that basically turned back the clock on social progress in that country by about fifty years. I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty, because people have different customs and different views on religion than I do. I’m not here to dictate religious views to others on this planet, just express my opinion.

Anyway, they offered bin Laden protection, blah blah blah, WTC bombing in 2003, Clinton firing cruise missiles into the mountains, yadda yadda, 9/11 and the “war on terror”…  most of this stuff you know. Anyway, history lesson over with.

Now, we’re eight years into whatever we are doing in Afghanistan. Have we won? Sort of.

Unlike previous wars that have been fought in the area, the US and their allies did something smart that saved allied lives: they bombed the crap out of main Taliban fortifications, then let the local insurgents do the grunt work of clearing the area. Now, note I say “save allied lives” instead of “saved lives”, because the losses amongst these people are impossible to account for. Anyway, relatively quickly, the main Taliban forces were crippled, and they abandoned the government and fled for hiding, and really, this is when the conventional war stops and the guerrilla warfare starts.

Oh, look, remember that training I mentioned earlier by the US? It’s now coming back to bite them on the ass.

It is technically still a war – damn you dictionary definitions of war – but guerrilla warfare is not fought and won with conventional troops and tactics, which is something the military has forgotten. They have become reliant on technology too much to “save lives” and “reduce cost” that they forgot what type of warfare they are fighting against.

Ask any survivor of Vietnam, and they will tell you what it’s like.

Anyway, I got kind of sidetracked here. Let’s go over why I support the continued presence of troops in Afghanistan. No, the primary reason is not because my leaders tell me to, or any of the main reasons they list. Here it is:

• Opiate farming

One of the ways that the Taliban, al Qaeda and other groups have been raising money for the past few years is the illegal opiate trade. It is ironic that they wish to end Western regimes while being financed by a farm crop that they primarily sell to the Western world, albeit illegally. Yes, great way to vow to destroy your own customer base.

Opiates are used to create heroin and morphine, among other things. In my opinion, this production should be stopped, or, even better, controlled by the Afghani government (once it actually gets off its ass and controls the place) to supply the worldwide medical field with less expensive morphine and methadone than what’s available now. Hey, look, an economic base for the new government! What a twist!

• Humanitarian

I am a very firm believer in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. I believe that everyone should be granted to the same access to food and shelter that Americans, Canadians, and other countries’ citizens enjoy on a daily basis. Even those in Afghanistan should get it… if they want help from us in establishing this, that is. If they want to do it themselves, I’m OK with that. But the Afghani people deserve the right to choose how they get their basic necessities – food, water and shelter from the elements.

• Prove the propaganda wrong

Too often has the rest of the world shown the Afghani people that anyone there is in it for themselves and confirming the propaganda that they’ve heard for most of their lives: “any foreigners are evil and only wish to destroy you”. Americans and their allies are cast as devils in this play. The George W. Bush administration did nothing to help in dispelling this – in my personal point of view, he hurt the American image abroad more than any other President, including Nixon and Reagan – and right now, it should be the goal of the allied troops to not just fight the insurgency, but to also prove their rhetoric wrong.

• Get Afghanistan their own functioning government

This might sound weird, but democracy might not be right for these people in this area. Democracy in any Islamic country is a joke – as evidenced by the Iranian elections this year – and really depends deeply on religious leaders advocating for the politicians. The Taliban ruled these people for years since the Soviet Union fell, and gave everyone a strict Islamic law. Change, unfortunately, does not happen overnight, and needs to be gradual.

Unfortunately, one of those other gradual changes also means that the government has to be left alone to find out what works best for the Afghani people. Western influence kinda doesn’t help that, but I understand in this case.

• A return on investment

Speaking strictly on a business standpoint, which I am known to do every once in a while, what kind of returns have the Americans, Canadians, British, or any other force in Afghanistan received by being there? Has it stopped further terrorist actions? No. Should it? Probably not.

The returns I’m talking about are more people-based. Have the people of Afghanistan started rebuilding their infrastructure? Can they start sustaining themselves? Can this happen without their own security forces?

• Freedom

The price of freedom is not measured in dollars, but it is measured in the vigilance of men and women whom chose to defend that right for others. No amount of technology or equipment can replace that simple fact. The peacekeeping troops there aren’t guarding just our freedom, but the freedom of the Afghani people as well, whom deserve a shot at it, just as much as we do. To take away those troops is to remove their freedom again, as the Taliban will return and then we’ll have the entire situation start all over again.

(While we’re on the subject of peacekeeping, a shout out to the father of modern peacekeeping.)

I think I’ve gone on long enough. The point is, we really shouldn’t be there just to hunt for someone whom has the unnatural ability to slip away better than Cobra Commander, or for a group of religious extremists that harbored him. They will battle against conventional forces, using the resources they have: their people. Instead of hitting them directly, hit their resources: their people. You don’t do that with tanks, you do that with words and peaceful actions.

It’s the one resource that’s not as fancy as modern warfare, but it helps a lot more.

I don’t know if anyone who reads this has been following everything that’s been happening, but let me bring you up to speed:

• President Obama wants to change the health care system
• People are protesting in dramatic fashions

Wow. I just summed up the entire American system in two lines. Well, I’m outta here.

Just kidding.

Anyway, Obama wants to bring in this big health care reform for the United States. Some of the numbers are pretty staggering. Let me put up his weekly address because I know Canadians probably haven’t seen this video:

I’m going to comment on this video momentarily. I am not going to get into it right now, but I’m going to provide some resources first.

A couple of other resources I was able to find were:

• A report on health care insurance premiums
• A Wikipedia article on the difference in between Canada’s system and the US system

There’s a lot of rhetoric out there. While looking, I couldn’t find too much raw data compared to people yelling at one side and then the other side yelling back. Twitter’s trending topic of #obamacare is a source of consistent hilarity for me, because as I read down the list, the Republican’s “alternatives” are either keeping the status quo or part of the Democrat’s plan. The real question, I guess, is:

Is the system broken in the first place?

I know at least one person from America that will disagree with me. Her life was saved by experimental drugs that were only available in the United States, and given to er as part of a plan to keep her liver alive. Canada’s health care system doesn’t even have access to that drug yet – out of curiosity, I checked – and is far away from Health Canada acceptance. In one case, I’d say it was a good system. But is it right for everyone?

Is a universal system good for everyone? No, of course not. However, I’d prefer to listen in a rational voice and ask people whom have been through the health care system if they think their health care system is all right.

The way I see the health care systems of both Canada and the United States is kind of like the difference in between Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks (I’m going with Dunkin’ Donuts because most Americans have not discovered what a Tim Horton’s is, so if you’re Canadian, sub out the Dunkin’ with Timmy’s). In a Dunkin’ Donuts, if you want coffee and donuts, that’s the big-ticket items. Sure, there’s other beverages there, and if you want them, they are there, but the focus is on the staple product. With a Starbucks, the focus isn’t on coffee, its about options. Do you want a grande double-whipped no-fat macchiato, or the triple shot no-whip latte with white chocolate sprinkles? As soon as you walk in, you’re presented with 150 different ways that you can receive your a coffee that’s served to everyone. Then there’s different roasts, different flavors, different toppings, different blends… the list goes on and on and on. As a non-coffee drinker, I can’t say whether the choice and options are a good thing or not, but I hear those that can afford to have it every day enjoy it.

America is a lot like the Starbucks in my example when it comes to health care. You have choice of what coverage you have. But, like much of the world, the fine print is where the problem lies. In each plan, do you or your insurance company decide on which doctors you go to? Do they require you to get a second opinion for certain procedures? What happens when your insurance company ends your coverage plan? Is your choice a flavor that takes away the fact that you’re just drinking coffee in the first place?

Am I trying to make a point? Meh… probably. My brain is working in subtle ways today that I find to be… odd. What I would like people to do is come up with their own opinions based upon facts and not other people’s distortions of the facts. President Obama did have a point when he said that critics will try to distract you from anything to do with this subject because people who make money in the status quo want it to stay that way. Who knew that taking the people that didn’t have insurance and giving them a way to buy affordable insurance without forcing those already on insurance to quit theirs is being taken as: “You must take this plan or you go to jail.”

H-uh.

Obama’s statements about how long it’s been debated in the US is a very odd sentiment. Sixty years to try to come up with this. Wow. I guess the differences are only starting to show now, but the problem is really with propaganda. How does one get their message across when there’s ninety different messages being broadcast louder, with twice the emotion?

Is his plan good? I really couldn’t tell you. It has good points, but I’m not an expert. I would just be pointing out my opinion.

Is Canada’s system good? I would have to rate it as an A-. It’s pretty good, but there’s places it can improve as well. The only times I’ve needed hospitals, I’ve come out in better condition than I left in. I’ve had an MRI, three emergency room visits, several doctor’s clinic visits, and twice when my kids were born. (It wasn’t me getting admitted, so they get separate listings.) Ambulance response and billing for services are two big things I have a problem with… but my trifles with that are probably nowhere near an American’s.

The one thing I’d like to ask any American that yells about Obama taking away their health care, or their right to choose… all I ask is that you take a moment and look at the facts yourself. Create an informed opinion before either praising or criticizing the plan. Actually do some research. Please.

It is all I ask, and your life could depend on it.