I’m going to get a little off the travel topic for just a moment and talk about Obama.  And there isn’t a lot to say except “he’s incredible”.  Here is my take on why.  Unlike Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger, he got his fame from politics, not his politics from fame.  And look at the results, I think it would be a hard argument against the fact that when pulled off properly, this way is just more respectable.  Obama is socially on top of his game, he can read emotions, he is careful, and he articulates with the clearest of communication that is only positively amplified because of the clown that preceded him.

I’m going to enjoy the next 4 to 8 years.  It could be the last time in a long time because the trends now are that we are going to have a Patricia Heaton or Al Franken as a leader soon.

I don’t remember Bush doing anything like this.  Barack Obama has set up a Change.gov site to learn about his agenda, his staff picks, and even sign up or apply for a job.  Even if you want to argue about the effectiveness of this site, I don’t think anyone can argue about his planning and motivation at this moment.  He’s already taking actions showing us how involved he wants to be.

Weekly Update:
I’ve created a new Italy Travel Button you will see tomorrow hopefully.  I’m starting to advertise a bit on Facebook, and we’ve seen the site traffic up a little bit.  I’m also working on getting another author to create some posts, but it’s not set in stone yet. Have a good week.

I’m not going to use this site to throw support for any candidate, but I will use it to promote Scott Hansen. I’ve been following Scott’s work on his site ISO50.com for over a year when I first saw his Svenska posters. Then about a week ago when I found out he was designing a poster for the Barack Obama Campaign, I was pretty stoked to see how it would turn out. Not disappointed. Not at all. Whether you like Obama or not, you have to admit this poster is sweet. Scott has a form I haven’t seen before, part retro, part muted, part new age digital. It works. I would guess most backpackers and travellers are Obama fans so that’s why I can justify having a post that has nothing to do with backpacking or travel.