Ryan James O'Sullivan

This coming week (November 28th to be exact) will mark my daughter’s first birthday. It is amazing to look back over the year and realize that it has flown by at impossible to comprehend speeds. Older parents with children who’ve moved away will often say cliche things like “enjoy your time now while you can” and for most people they take that as “when your kid gets to be a teenager they’ll be a smart ass and you’ll want to kill them” but I’m starting to appreciate that that is not at all what experienced parents mean.

Once this year is gone it will never come back, all the first and wonderful experiences will be memories to be cherished but never to be relived. I will never again get to experience Paige standing for the first time or the first day that she crawled to the gate at the top of the stairs when I came home from work and started calling out “da da da da da”. I have so many precious memories but I feel as if I’ve missed so much because of the hecticness of life that I’ll never be able to get back as well.

This year has been filled with so many fantastic moments that sometimes while they were happening the depth and impact of them were impossible to comprehend.

This pace started immediately in the hospital. One of my favorite pre-birth memories was calling my boss Dave and leaving him a voice mail message that “it” was going down. I wish he still had that voice mail because it captured how nervous, excited and truly terrified I was as the realization hit while I was on the phone THAT THIS THING IS HAPPENING.

Paige’s actual birth was also kind of symbolic of this break neck speed of life as well – Tammy’s labour was quick taking only a few hours and the actual pushing phase only took seven and a half pushes. That half push is a funny story. The doctor wasn’t even fully set up when Tammy gave what should have been the eigth push, Paige literally fell out of the womb with the doctor, the nurse and myself all diving in to catch her – it was quite a sight.

Paige is Born!

All of a sudden the world was a different place. Somehow there was a piece of me reproduced and existing as a part of this world. This beautiful little child (weighing in at only 5lbs by the time she had lost her initial birth weight) was mine. My responsibility, my ward, and my true legacy in this world.

Since that day I’ve watched with fascination as every day she has become more and more her own person with her own distinct traits. We’ve had so many incredible times one of my greatest fears is that I’ll forget some detail as I age. This whole journey has been so amazing I wouldn’t give up a single memory for anything.

My highlights from this year:

• the first night when she fell asleep in my arms
• the first time she pee’d on me (rite of pass non?)
• the first time she said da da
• the first time Tammy called me at work because the baby was overly cranky and the sound of my voice and talking to her on speaker phone calmed her down
• just in the last two weeks when she started hug and cuddling
• the first time we took a nap together. Every weekend Paige and I try and get one nap in together. I never sleep a wink because I can’t stop the urge to do everything I can to protect her when she’s so vulnerable in her sleep
• the first time she bit my nose and I realized that was her way of giving kisses (it still is – very odd)

Now as Paige approaches a year old she’s starting to become more independent, more cheerful and more loving with each passing day. She is almost always happy and those around her cannot help be drawn in by her loving smile. I cannot begin to say how proud I am of what she is becoming and I hope Paige you’ll read this one day and be reminded of how I treasure every smile, every babbled word and every minute of every day I’ve been able to spend with you.

I love you Paige – Thank you for this year and all that you have given me and your mother.

I didn’t get to vote in today’s election but the impact it will have on me and more importantly to a new father – on my daughter – will be profound.

Much has been made of the history made today and I’m sure we’ll see a lot more of it in the days to come. I cannot pretend as a white man to fully understand what this means to an African American. I can only imagine and hope that this is a step in the right direction to heal the wounds of generations of intolerable and inexcusable slights. I can only hope that today is the beginning of a brave new world where barriers between people of differing backgrounds can continue to crumble. I can only hope that we as a society can come together and work together towards the common goals to make this world a better place for all of its inhabitants.

After tonight it is my hope that as a global community we can all come together and begin to heal the wounds of the last 8 years. It is time for America’s foreign policy to move in a new direction – a direction of peace and international cooperation that will make the world a safer place for everyone. The threat of terrorism is real but chasing unrealistic goals and making the stupid decisions of a bully will not make the world a safer place for anyone. The cost of this agenda has been immense: Personal freedoms have suffered, the rule of law has been left bruised and battered, and the place of America at the world’s table has never been weaker; fear has driven the political agenda for too long in directions that we can ill afford. Tonight America you put a stop to this – you said enough is enough.

My early criticism of Barack Obama was fairly party line – he lacked substance, he is full of pretty speeches, the man has no policy or managment track record to support him on. This campaign proved that he does indeed have the management sense and his policy documents have been sound – to call someone who’s run a near perfect campaign built on an agenda of idea-driven change lacking a management track record is a joke – and I was wrong I admit that now freely.

As for pretty speeches I’ve come to realize over the last two years that might just be what America needs. There is nothing wrong with instilling a can-do people with messages of Hope or of “Yes We Can”. In dark times people need leaders who will get them to rise up and be better than themselves – I think Barack Obama can be that leader.

So thank you America. As my daughter sleeps soundly in her crib tonight she doesn’t realize it but the world just became democratically stronger, safer and more of a free place. If you ever thought your vote didn’t count for anything – I hope she’ll some day tell you you are wrong.

Summer feels long gone now (we’ve had far too many days near 0 degrees here in T.O) but I’m just getting around to getting my Summer Vacation ATV pictures up. These are pictures from my annual vacation with my dad that we take around Labour Day.

I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to go this year with my knee (we cancelled several other trips earlier in the summer because of the knee) but I’m glad we did. We hit up our old stomping grounds in the Haliburton area and it was nice to see everything from the trail perspective.

Some highlights from the pictures:

Munitions Factory from WW1 in Haliburton

Beautiful Scenery

S T U CK - This became the story of Day 1. Happened three times!

Beautiful Trail

Crossing the River

To see all the files – check it out here.

Andrew Sullivan is one of many American conservatives supporting Obama this election. His ten reasons to support Obama are worth considering for all conservatives.

10. A body blow to racial identity politics. An end to the era of Jesse Jackson in black America.

9. Less debt. Yes, Obama will raise taxes on those earning over a quarter of a million. And he will spend on healthcare, Iraq, Afghanistan and the environment. But so will McCain. He plans more spending on health, the environment and won’t touch defense of entitlements. And his refusal to touch taxes means an extra $4 trillion in debt over the massive increase presided over by Bush. And the CBO estimates that McCain’s plans will add more to the debt over four years than Obama’s. Fiscal conservatives have a clear choice.

8. A return to realism and prudence in foreign policy. Obama has consistently cited the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush as his inspiration. McCain’s knee-jerk reaction to the Georgian conflict, his commitment to stay in Iraq indefinitely, and his brinksmanship over Iran’s nuclear ambitions make him a far riskier choice for conservatives. The choice between Obama and McCain is like the choice between George H.W. Bush’s first term and George W.’s.

7. An ability to understand the difference between listening to generals and delegating foreign policy to them.

6. Temperament. Obama has the coolest, calmest demeanor of any president since Eisenhower. Conservatism values that kind of constancy, especially compared with the hot-headed, irrational impulsiveness of McCain.

5. Faith. Obama’s fusion of Christianity and reason, his non-fundamentalist faith, is a critical bridge between the new atheism and the new Christianism.

4. A truce in the culture war. Obama takes us past the debilitating boomer warfare that has raged since the 1960s. Nothing has distorted our politics so gravely; nothing has made a rational politics more elusive.

3. Two words: President Palin.

2. Conservative reform. Until conservatism can get a distance from the big-spending, privacy-busting, debt-ridden, crony-laden, fundamentalist, intolerant, incompetent and arrogant faux conservatism of the Bush-Cheney years, it will never regain a coherent message to actually govern this country again. The survival of conservatism requires a temporary eclipse of today’s Republicanism. Losing would be the best thing to happen to conservatism since 1964. Back then, conservatives lost in a landslide for the right reasons. Now, Republicans are losing in a landslide for the wrong reasons.

1. The War Against Islamist terror. The strategy deployed by Bush and Cheney has failed. It has failed to destroy al Qaeda, except in a country, Iraq, where their presence was minimal before the US invasion. It has failed to bring any of the terrorists to justice, instead creating the excrescence of Gitmo, torture, secret sites, and the collapse of America’s reputation abroad. It has empowered Iran, allowed al Qaeda to regroup in Pakistan, made the next vast generation of Muslims loathe America, and imperiled our alliances. We need smarter leadership of the war: balancing force with diplomacy, hard power with better p.r., deploying strategy rather than mere tactics, and self-confidence rather than a bunker mentality.

Those conservatives who remain convinced, as I do, that Islamist terror remains the greatest threat to the West cannot risk a perpetuation of the failed Manichean worldview of the past eight years, and cannot risk the possibility of McCain making rash decisions in the middle of a potentially catastrophic global conflict. If you are serious about the war on terror and believe it is a war we have to win, the only serious candidate is Barack Obama.

Source.

I know most of my American friends have already decided on who they are going to vote for but I want to throw this out there for my conservative friends who I know are rather torn at the moment on which way to vote this election. I know I know – I’m a Canadian the American election is none of my business. Bullshit. This next presidency will define the agenda of the western super power for the next generation, it will define the world my daughter grows up in – that’s my business.

Two years ago this campaign was a no brainer for me – John McCain would finally be given the chance at the presidency. In 2000 I had spent a weekend with a few other members of the PCYF campaigning in up-state New York for McCain – he was a politician I really admired – he had a strong fiscal conservative voting record and when it made sense to do so he was a willing participant in bi-partisan policy. On social issues he always made me a bit nervous, but most Republicans do – I thought he’d be a good manager of government and wouldn’t be overly activist when he made the presidency so I could live with his stance on those issues.

As we moved forward through the campaign, particularly after the primary, I started to become more and more nervous that the Republican super-social-conservative-evangelical-Christians (I refuse to use the word neo-con ) were starting to have their influence on Senator McCain’s campaign. All of a sudden race, classism and other horrors were starting to drift in to the campaign.

I found myself defending my support to myself and others. Obama has no substance I kept telling myself. McCain is my man. This is just McCain doing what he has to do to win his party’s base that more or less hated him during the primary. Then came the convention and the Sarah Palin announcement – I just couldn’t believe it. To secure a niche in the party McCain had mortgaged his campaign and picked someone for VP who represented everything that is wrong with the Republican party.

For me it was eye opening – more specifically it was time to take off the blinders and give this Barack Obama that so many were raving about a look. What I found wasn’t what the GOP and McCain was selling me. The lack of substance and catchy speeches actually were positive messages of hope in a fairly tough time in our collective history. Underneath the glitzy campaign slogans was policy genuinely defined on the parameters meant to positively impact the middle class and small business.

For years now the U.S has made trickle down economics the cornerstone of its economic and taxation policy. All the while the gap between the rich and poor has been growing at a staggering rate – making the rich the cornerstone of taxation policy has failed and it is time for something different. Now don’t worry here folks, don’t fall out of your chair. I’m not becoming a communist. The fact of the matter is more needs to be done to grow the middle class and more needs to be done grow small business.

On small business John McCain’s policy cites the need to work on domestic oil exploration, health care cost control and reduction to the corporate tax rate. Contrast that with Senator Obama’s proposal which calls for a fund to help start-ups, extending the small business definition by hundreds of thousands of dollars and a decrease in taxes specifically targeted to small business.

John McCain’s policy is a clear nod towards business as usual and I don’t think we here in the Americas can afford business as usual any longer. Domestic oil exploration? What does that have to do with the future of energy being found in a more green solution – clearly where we are going. Obama’s energy platform calls for a rather large fund to be created for small and large businesses alike to work towards finding these green solutions. Controling health care costs? The American health care system is broken. Status quo. Corporate tax cut? More money to those who already have it pretty good (America’s tax rates are pretty competitive). Status quo.

It’s the same old same old.

Whereas Barack Obama’s policies allow more businesses to pay in the smaller small business tax bracket, give incentive tax credits for hiring Americans for small business and make it cheaper for small business to operate. It is a clear plan with clear goals. Make American workers the most valuable labour pool for small and medium business while making it efficient and cost effective to own a business in Amerca.

Senator Obama’s tax policy is centered around the middle class and I think after many years of top tier tax cuts it is high time that, especially during these tough economic times, the middle class be given a break.

The last eight years should have taught us all that business as usual with the usual players can not go on. The Republican party has many great ideas and many great people. But it is time for a correction. It is a time to make the Republican Party go sit in the corner and think long and hard on its future. That doesn’t happen nearly enough in two party systems and you Americans have a real chance to do that this election.

We can’t go on with having science impeded by misguided ideology and special interests, we can’t go on with legislators who don’t understand technology dictating policy on the internet, we can’t go on having special interests and religious institutions dictating policy and we certainly cannot have the United States being a bully in the international community.

There is a lot more to be said, I could contrast policies all day long but you’d likely fall asleep so I’ll leave it at this. Visit both of the campaign’s websites and get to know the issues. Don’t let emotion or party get in the way of seriously considering the future of your country – Foreign policy, taxation, the middle class, health care, and on and on. There is a lot at stake this election and only one man has the ideas to take the country in a new more optimistic direction.

That man is Barack Obama.