I do not even know what “redux” means. It just sounds cool.

Anyways, who punk’d the New York Times and Sarah Palin?

Fake French fry comedians.

While Sarah Palin laughed off her ordeal, she received much ridicule from the New York Times and their sycophantic liberal readers.

However, critics of the New York Times may have the last laugh. Not only did the New York Times publish a fake email from the mayor of Paris, they may not survive economically through 2009.

24 / 7 Wall Street reports:

6) The New York Times (NYT) has to repay $400 million in debt in the first half of 2009. It does not have the money. It plans to mortgage its headquarters, but it is uncertain what that will bring in an uncertain real estate market. The firm’s Boston Globe and regional newspaper operations lose money, so they will be hard to sell. NYT is controlled by the Sulzberger family which has super-majority voting shares. That won’t matter much when the company runs out of money. Another big media operation, perhaps News Corp (NWS) which owns The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, will come in and auction off what it can and keep the flagship New York Times newspaper and NYTimes.com website.

Please do not bail out the New York Times, Mr. Rupert Murdoch.

Let them rot.

Hat Tips: InstaPundit and Michelle Malkin

New York Times

Earlier this morning, we posted a letter that was signed by Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, sharply criticizing Hillary Clinton. This letter was a fake. It should not have been published.

Maybe the New York Times will also apologize for publishing America’s secrets.

To steal a line from Dan Rather, the letter is false, but accurate.

breitbart.com

“What title has Ms. Kennedy to pretend to Hillary Clinton’s seat?” the letter in Monday’s editions said. “We French can only see a dynastic move of the vanishing Kennedy clan in the very country of the Bill of Rights. It is both surprising and appalling.”

Basically, the only reason why Caroline Kennedy is running, and the only reason why she will win, is because she has the money to run.

Democrats and Republicans are both not enamored with Caroline Kennedy:

Representative Gary Ackerman, who is not in favor of Caroline Kennedy, says that Caroline Kennedy has been “Sarah Palinized”, but what liberals fail to understand is that Sarah Palin has more political experience, as well as more executive experience, than Caroline Kennedy (and Barack Obama).

The best way to fill Hillary Clinton’s seat is to hold a special election. Let’s give the people of New York a chance to choose their next Senator with as little as pay-to-play corruption as possible.

Hat Tips: Hot Air and Hot Air Headlines

Gain Collins stupidly writes in her new New York Times column:

Thanksgiving is next week, and President Bush could make it a really special holiday by resigning.

Seriously. We have an economy that’s crashing and a vacuum at the top. Bush — who is currently on a trip to Peru to meet with Asian leaders who no longer care what he thinks — hasn’t got the clout, or possibly even the energy, to do anything useful. His most recent contribution to resolving the fiscal crisis was lecturing representatives of the world’s most important economies on the glories of free-market capitalism.

Putting Barack Obama in charge immediately isn’t impossible. Dick Cheney, obviously, would have to quit as well as Bush. In fact, just to be on the safe side, the vice president ought to turn in his resignation first. (We’re desperate, but not crazy.) Then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would become president until Jan. 20. Obviously, she’d defer to her party’s incoming chief executive, and Barack Obama could begin governing.

As a bonus, the Pelosi presidency would put a woman in the White House this year after all. On the downside, a few right-wing talk-show hosts might succumb to apoplexy. That would, of course, be terrible, but I’m afraid we might have to take the risk in the name of a greater good.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air expertly takes Gail Collins to task by stating that Collins shows a remarkable ignorance of the President’s schedule, the Constitution, and America’s government. Also, Nancy Pelosi, if she were the President, would have to select her Cabinet members and other White House staff. Nancy Pelosi would have to wait until Congress confirmed the nominations of her Cabinet. If Gail Collins fancies herself as a feminist, she would like Nancy Pelosi to take orders from the next man who will be President and let Barack Obama be the President-by-proxy. Yes, that will go over well with women’s rights groups.

Gail Collins continues to write in her column that her plan would be disadvantageous for Barack Obama! Collins admits that Barack Obama would be rushed into his Presidency and that his transition “will not be the best in history”. Why would she write this idiotic entry if her call for President Bush’s resignation serves no purpose? Does she want to embarrass the New York Times even further? Columns written by stupid liberals such as Gail Collins is the second reason why the profitability of the New York Times has slumped (and the first reason is because the New York Times fits to print America’s military, political, and government agency secrets).

Gail Collins, representing all liberals, once again admits the stupidity of liberals and liberalism.

breitbart.com

US special forces have conducted about a dozen secret operations against Al-Qaeda and other Islamic militants in Pakistan, Syria and other countries under broad war-waging authority given them by the administration of President George W. Bush, The New York Times reported on its website.

Citing unnamed senior US officials, the newspaper said the authority was contained in a classified order signed by then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld in early 2004 with the approval of President Bush.

The order gave the military permission to attack Al-Qaeda and other hostile targets anywhere in the world, even in countries not at war with the United States, without any additional approval, the report said.

Under this authority, a Navy Seal team raided a suspected Islamic militant compound in the Bajaur region of Pakistan in 2006, The Times said, citing a former top CIA official.

What’s more, military planners were able to watch the entire attack “live” at CIA headquarters in Virginia through a video camera installed on a Predator aircraft that was sent to the area, the paper said.

Another raid was conducted by US special forces in Syria last October 26 in cooperation with the Central Intelligence Agency, the report said.

There is no information about the remaining secret military strikes, but officials made clear the list of targets did not include Iran, The Times pointed out.

The paper said, however, that US forces had carried out reconnaissance missions in Iran using other classified directives.

About a dozen additional operations have been canceled in the past four years because they were deemed too risky, too diplomatically explosive or relied on insufficient evidence, the paper said.

Before the 2004 order, the Pentagon needed to get approval for missions on a case-by-case basis, which could take days, the paper recalled.

But Rumsfeld was not satisfied with the status-quo and pressed hard for permission to use military power automatically outside the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to The Times.

The paper says the 2004 order identifies 15 to 20 countries, including Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and several other Persian Gulf states, where Al-Qaeda was believed to be operating or had sought sanctuary.

According to the New York Times, the name of the secret order is called the “Al Qaeda Network Exord”.

According to a senior administration official, the new authority was spelled out in a classified document called “Al Qaeda Network Exord,” or execute order, that streamlined the approval process for the military to act outside officially declared war zones. Where in the past the Pentagon needed to get approval for missions on a case-by-case basis, which could take days when there were only hours to act, the new order specified a way for Pentagon planners to get the green light for a mission far more quickly, the official said.

Hopefully, the secret raids were successful in killing and capturing Al Qaeda militants.

Countries on the list where secret raids took place include: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, plus other Gulf states. Secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran were also ordered and executed.

There were missions canceled as well, and some of these canceled missions were reported in the New York Times this past June. This was at the time when the New York Times was (rightfully) accused by the American public for revealing U.S. military and CIA missions in other countries. One of the canceled missions, reported by the New York Times, included the U.S. Navy SEALS and Army Rangers receiving secret orders to capture Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama Bin Laden’s top deputy, inside Pakistan.

Read the entire 3-page article - International Herald Tribune

NewsBusters.org

Okay, it’s probably a small thing to quibble about, but does everybody remember the impressive county-by-county election map that the New York Times published after the 2004 election, showing the United States as a sea of Republican red, with a few Democratic blue counties clustered on the coasts and a few urban pockets?

Well, today’s New York Times has a large map of the U.S. showing county-by-county election results as a sea of Democratic blue, with red areas limited to a few southern states, Arizona and Alaska. It looks like a Democratic landslide.

But Barack Obama did not actually win states like Utah, Montana, Idaho, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, South Carolina, etc., that this map shows as mostly or totally blue. What the New York Times published this year is a map showing the shift in a county’s vote from 2004, not the results. So if a Republican county voted for Bush by 12 points in 2004, but only gave McCain a seven-point advantage this year, the Times paints it as blue, not red.

The Washington Post has a county-by-county results map that looks a lot like the map from 2004, although there is clearly a little more blue this year and the red is a little lighter.

There’s no disputing that Obama won on Tuesday, but the big blue map published by New York Times seems like a way to overstate the magnitude of the Democratic victory — maybe just to give liberals a nice blue souvenir to hang on their office cubicles, or maybe a subliminal way of pushing the idea of a huge mandate for liberal government.

I think this is a large thing to quibble about. I know Florida voted for Barack Obama, and it is “blue”, but internally, Florida is “red”.

Liberals forgot to vote for Democrats across the state of Florida this past Tuesday. They just voted for Obama, turned in their ballot, and left. The majority of Florida is still very much Conservative and has many local city and county Republican governments. Plus, the state government is Republican.

I am sure the same is true for several states that voted “blue”, but are really “red”.

Well, that’s not the headline. However, the headline is, “Exiting Iraq, Petraeus Says Gains Are Fragile.” The article, written by Dexter Filkins, is a proclamation that the “surge” of military personnel in early 2007, ordered by President Bush and supported by John McCain, has worked. Even though violence increased when the first phase of the surge was implemented, violent acts have steadily decreased in the past 12 months.

The surge, clearly, has worked, at least for now: violence, measured in the number of attacks against Americans and Iraqis each week, has dropped by 80 percent in the country since early 2007, according to figures the general provided. Civilian deaths, which peaked at more than 100 a day in late 2006, have also plunged. Car and suicide bombings, which stoked sectarian violence, have fallen from a total of 130 in March 2007 to fewer than 40 last month. In July, fewer Americans were killed in Iraq — 13 — than in any month since the war began.

Still, it’s too early to use the “V” word - victory. General Petraeus says the gains made in Iraq are fragile. The majority of the peace is being kept by 100,000 Sunni gunmen, who were former insurgents, on the Iraqi government payroll at a cost of $25 million per month. Also, General Patraeus refuses to discuss how many American troops are needed to make the fragile gains permanent.

On a personal note, my friend Marcus died this past April in Iraq. I have two cousins and nummerous friends fighting in Iraq. I have friends who have fought in Iraq. My friend Womack just arrived with his Army battalion in Iraq. They are the reason why we will soon be able to use the “V” word.

Perhaps one day Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama will admit that the surge has worked. Perhaps one day all three of these politicians will give credit to our troops for their victory in Iraq.

Hat Tip: Hot Air and The Jawa Report

From the Times Online in the U.K.

..In a further sign of just how seriously the newspaper takes its role as a newspaper of record, the “Gray Lady” also confessed that it had wrongly described John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, as a “former fighter pilot” in numerous stories over the past decade…

…Also today, The Times came clean on having referred to Senator McCain as a Vietnam-era “fighter pilot” when in fact he was shot down while at the controls of an A-4 Skyhawk - technically an attack aircraft rather than a fighter…

This is the most stupid apology by the New York Times! How about apologizing to John McCain for alleging he had an affair with a lobbyist? That’s the apology that’s needed.

Or, how about apologizing for not printing John McCain’s op-ed piece? It’s a good thing Matt Drudge posted the op-ed on his website, where it received millions of views.