Best seat belt ad ever!

Embrace Life – always wear your seat belt

The best seat belt ad I’ve ever seen. This should be on television around the world.

 

The Way I See It: The Pendulum Swings

The pendulum does like to swing, that is for certain.

As a Canadian witnessing politics in America, it’s interesting to see certain patterns.  Always toward the end of a president’s term, certain media outlets will cry fowl, in a hope to turn the opinion of the voting public.  At the same time, other groups will sing praises for said president.  The rest of us just like to go out and blame the media for the shortcomings that take place.

That’s happening right now.  With ‘Tea Parties’ taking place across the U.S. crying foul against Obama’s plans, right from the stimulus package on down to health care.  Republican groups like to disparage the Canadian example of health care, saying it doesn’t work at all.  While it does have it’s problems (no system is perfect), I think I made my own point when I said Canadian health care won’t work in the States.

There’s also the problem that some people don’t realize.  Attempting to classify a political ideology with an economic one.  Such as Democracy with Capitalism.  Or a Dictatorship with Socialism (or Communism).  Democratic governments with socialist views do exist and do work in the world.  Not perfectly, but they do work.  From a governmental level, we have social programs in place that help people in need.  Examples can be brought forward of those exploiting the system for their own benefit, and those can be found in both the public and in government offices.  Is that the problem of the program?  No, it’s the fault of the person, and that person should be punished as is the case with the law.  In Canada, social programs have been in effect for decades, since the Dirty Thirties as a matter of point in fact (those would be the 1930’s).  Those programs over the years have had to evolve.  Some for the better, some not so much.  But each of these programs had to evolve.  And they will still have to evolve and change as the years go by.  Social attitudes and norms will always change how we look at things.  And social programs will have to change to adapt.

Such as gay marriage.  You can debate that to your hearts content, but right now the movement is to see the legalization and recognition of same sex marriage throughout Canada.  Alberta being the last bastion against that.  All the arguments can be brought up against same sex marriage; biblical, natural order, so on and so forth.  But it’s not going to mean a thing to those who have a different outlook on life, and different ideologies.

The same can be said for the way health care is treated.  Is Canada’s system better than the States?  No.  Is the States better than Canada’s?  No.

Probably by now most of you are saying huh?  But when you look at each system, Canada’s works as best it can for Canadians.  Not every Canadian will get covered 100% of the time, but in many cases it’s there when we need it.  In a similar sense, the U.S. system works as best as it can.  But from the point of view of Canadians, it’s pretty screwed up.

Right now the pendulum has swung the other way, and there’s questions if Obama will be elected to a second term.  Right wing voices happen to be very loud right now, but are they in the majority?  The same news groups that praised Bush, now slam Obama, and vice versa.  From up here, it’s rather entertaining in a way, because we see some of the benefits, and some of the downsides, and don’t understand why the battle continues.  For health care, there’s arguments for both points of view, and those can be found easily, and said much better than I can.

I wonder, though, how many in the States realize how much of a socialist nation Canada is in comparison.

Until next time…

…keep ’em flyin’.