Heidi Klum as Kali

Barack The President of USA Obama

Just heard from NBC that its projecting Barack Obama to be the 44th President of USA.!!! A large majority of the country is going to go to bed very happy, including me :)
Lotta black people crying..on TV.

Best US Presidents in History Ranked by a Historian

Alvin Felzenberg ranks US Presidents by 6 different categories. Check out the table.

Top 15 Political Web Sites by Total Unique Visitors

This chart is from an article in WSJ.

Obama's "Defining Moment" Ad

Pretty neat end of the campaign ad presenting what he is going to do if he is elected president.

Obama's Shoes

Blog/News Aggregators

If you need to keep track of what's the latest buzz about in different blog worlds these are the must view sites every day (multiple times, if you need to know everything like me :)).

• Politics: http://www.memeorandum.com/
• Celebrities: http://www.wesmirch.com/
• Technology: http://www.techmeme.com/
• Baseball: http://www.ballbug.com/

All of them are owned by the same group/person (Gabe Rivera) and most likely have a very similar algorithm.

American Consulate in Hyderabad, India

Atlast the US consulate is opened in Hyderabad. There are so many Andhrites coming to USA this decade and its very inconvenient to go to Chennai or someother place to get the Visas and stuff. So, good on the Bush presidency.

From The Hindu:

The new American Consulate General was opened here on Friday by the U.S. Ambassador David C. Mulford. It will begin processing 100 visa applications a day by the middle of December and scale it up to 300 by January next.

The official website for the consulate is here.

An Extremely Abridged History of the George W. Bush Presidency

I found an excellent article that Carlos Lozada has put together on Washpost. Its a collection of various excrepts about President Bush from interviews and books by Washington insiders, one of which I think is noteworthy. Here is what Richard A. Clarke wrote about what Bush was worried about the day after 9/11, in his book called "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror".

September 12, 2001
Later, on the evening of the 12th, I left the Video Conferencing Center and there, wandering alone around the Situation Room, was the President. He looked like he wanted something to do. He grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. "Look," he told us, "I know you have a lot to do and all . . . but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way. . ."

I was once again taken aback, incredulous, and it showed. "But, Mr. President, al Qaeda did this."

"I know, I know, but . . . see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred. . . "

"Absolutely, we will look . . . again." I was trying to be more respectful, more responsive. "But, you know, we have looked several times for state sponsorship of al Qaeda and not found any real linkages to Iraq. Iran plays a little, as does Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, Yemen."

"Look into Iraq, Saddam," the President said testily and left us. --

Nehru with Jackie Kennedy

Found this pic from a BBC 'In Pictures' series. They've found some old pics by photo journalist kulwant roy. This was taken in 1962. I haven't seen nehru without his trademark 'topi'.