He's Heeeere...Obama Comes to Ottawa

Just a quick public service announcement to let you know Canada rocks - at least until mid-afternoon.

Canada is the first foreign visit for President Obama, and he touched down as scheduled at 10:30 this morning - just a few minutes ago. If you don't RSS my blog, he may be gone by the time you read this, but that's ok!

He's just here for a few hours, and everyone I've talked to in Ottawa is ga-ga about the visit. There probably hasn't been this level of excitement over a visit like this since JFK came in 1961. Nixon coming up to meet Trudeau was big news too, but Nixon was no rock star like Obama. Should be quite a morning here, and great day to celebrate Canada-U.S. relations.

If you're keeping score, there are lots of touchy issues that I'm sure will get short shrift, such as what to do with Khadr post-Gitmo, how long should Canada stay in Afghanistan, how to justify buying tarsand oil. Lots of important things they could be talking about, but for now, I'm sure the focus will be on getting our economies in order.

And if you want to follow up to the minute coverage, there's CBC's live blog, and if you want to add your two cents to Obamania, check out WelcomeObama.ca.