A New Obama Ad Takes On McCain’s Association With CEO’s and Golden Parachutes:

Sarah Palin has caused the new President of Pakistan to have a Fatwa issued against him after their meeting in New York City was described as ‘flirtatious’ [source]:

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari seems to be heading towards fresh trouble as the prayer leader of the Lal Masjid in the heart of Islamabad has issued a fatwa against him. Maulana Abdul Ghafar, the prayer leader, seems to be irked by Zardari’s “you’re gorgeous” compliment to US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin during a meeting.

When Zardari was asked to keep shaking hands with Palin for the cameras, he said, “If he’s (the aide) insisting, I might hug you.” He said the act was un-Islamic and unbecoming of a head of state of a Muslim country.

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The Article: Why was the Marriott Targeted? by Tariq Ali in Counterpunch.

The Text: The deadly blast in Islamabad was a revenge attack for what has been going on over the past few weeks in the badlands of the North-West Frontier. It highlighted the crisis confronting the new government in the wake of intensified US strikes in the tribal areas on the Afghan border.

Hellfire missiles, drones, special operation raids inside Pakistan and the resulting deaths of innocents have fuelled Pashtun nationalism. It is this spillage from the war in Afghanistan that is now destabilizing Pakistan.

The de facto prime minister of the country, an unelected crony of President Zardari and now his chief adviser, Rehman Malik, said, “our enemies don’t want to see democracy flourishing in the country”. This was rich coming from him, but in reality it has little to do with all that. It is the consequence of a supposedly “good war” in Afghanistan that has now gone badly wrong. The director of US National Intelligence, Michael McConnell, admits as much, saying the Afghan leadership must deal with the “endemic corruption and pervasive poppy cultivation and drug trafficking” that is to blame for the rise of the neo-Taliban.

PBH finally cracked the 500,000 unique hit mark, after lots of ebbs and flows over the past year (it actually took a year and a half to reach this mark, though there has only been consistent blogging for 6 months of that time). We’re proud (for the most part) of the product we’ve put out and appreciate everyone’s comments and patronage. We’re looking for more bloggers, so if you are interested, drop a comment below or email alec. A full summary of the most popular posts is below:

Top 20 Posts By Hits

1. The Main Page with 35,491 unique hits — Who knew? Our main page is the one with the most hits over the past year and a half.

2. Donkey Love

Sarah Palin’s video blog revealed:

Sarah Palin, with a 10% favorable rating, now has the lowest approval ratings of any candidate in the 2008 election [CORRECTION: The graph and data actually shows that Sarah Palin's net approval rating went from over +15% to -10% over the past 2 weeks]:

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