Really, the only news worth noting today is the historic health care transformation in the US.  Mr. Obama rallied his supporters on the weekend, reminding them that "Every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made ... And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine.”

Inspiring words … ones that every parliamentarian, elected or appointed, should take to heart.

Wow, he can really rise above the issues and frame events meaningfully, historically and universally, can't he.  He's never just speaking to and about a single issue, but about how we all live our lives.  That's why people really do listen to him. 

I'm so pleased Obama et al. won this battle.  It was hard faught and well deserved.

But I'm also curious to see how America will (uniquely) create, step-by-step, their own public healthcare system.

I know we Canadians like to applaud ourselves for ours, but our system is clearly broken and not sustainable -- it already eats up most of our provincial budgets and in the coming years will leave no $ for any other arena, education, infrastructure, you name it.  Britain has been bested by its efforts as well, and the tiered systems are in evidence there.  I am less familiar with the Scandinavian examples.

So, I'm by no means opposed to Canada's universal health care (I've benefitted from it many times), but we will soon have to pay the piper and admit that our own system is flawed -- and find a way, if there is one, to balance universal access with quality care in a system we can actually afford.

I'm involved in a number of blogs with Americans. A good one is www.jtaplin.wordpress.com. Over the past several months I've been debating with Americans about their upcoming (and now passed) health care bill. They simply do not understand, nor do they get, the jist of universal health care. Words like socialism, communism and government controlled death committees were used with abandonment.  I used comparative data describing health care in Scandinavian countries, Holland, Germany and France, to name a few.  It just didn't fly.

My hope is that their health care bill is, at the very least, a starting point toward "getting it right."  My other hope is that the public will see the folly of the Republican Party and their very nasty, dishonest campaign against this bill.

This is definitely one of those moments that I think we all have been waiting for.  Obama had a vision, he fought for it and he won!  He has demonstrated that he can fulfill his campaign promise of hope which is tremendously inspiring and empowering.