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Jersey sure : Mark Steyn on Trump and dancing Muslims, not Israelis. ( My words for the latter not Steyn's ).
Jersey Sure
by Mark Steyn
Steyn on America
Steyn on America
 |
| The new New Jersey |
I have a strong dislike of the current fashion among American's
decrepit and unreadable newspapers for "fact-checker" columns, because
the practice attempts to cloak run-of-the-mill hacks in an aura of
dispassionate authority that they do not, in fact, possess.
Pictures added by me and NOT Steyn - TGFP.
Case in point: The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler, who has awarded "four Pinocchios" to Donald Trump, for claiming to recall seeing "thousands" of Jersey City Muslims celebrating on September 11th 2001. Mr Kessler wrote:
Kessler has spent the day re-writing and re-re-writing that confident assertion. As of now, that last sentence currently reads:
When Kessler says "nothing that we can find", he didn't have to search very hard. After a two-minute Google search, Powerline's John Hinderaker turned up the following:
What demented fringe conspiracist website would traffic in such nonsense? Well, in fact, it was Glenn Kessler's own newspaper, The Washington Post, which published the story on September 18th 2001. Is it an "unconfirmed report"? Well, Kessler's colleague, Post reporter Serge Kolvaleski, said in a 2003 email that he got the story from the Jersey City Police Department and "confirmed the JCPD's information via interviews of eyewitnesses of the celebration".
Was Kessler aware, while researching his "fact-check, that a Washington Post reporter had interviewed "eyewitnesses of the celebration"? As it is, a so-called "fact-checker" who claims "an extensive examination" turns up "nothing that we can find involving the Arab populations of New Jersey" was apparently ignorant of the fact that his own newspaper had carried such a story. Called on his omission by John Hinderaker, Mr Kessler turned defensive:
As John Hinderaker pointed out, the phrase "several people" does not occur in the Washington Post 2001 story, so Kessler is putting quotation marks round a non-quotation, which seems a rum thing for a fact-checker to do.
One Pinocchio for you right there, Mister J-School Ethics!
The Post says only that "a number of people" were detained and questioned.
So now we're no longer arguing about whether there were even any reports of any New Jersey residents celebrating 9/11, but merely the number that were doing so.
Glenn Kessler's current version of his story now bears little relation to its original form, but John Hinderaker cuts to the chase:
Kessler has yet to respond.
A further Washington Post column, by Howard Kurtz on October 9th 2001, reminds us that, whether or not the story was on TV, it was widely reported on New York radio:
Another obscure fringe hate-blog that referenced the "celebrations" was a site called The New York Times, reporting from Jersey City on September 30th 2001:
As "rumors" go, they were widespread. The San Francisco Chronicle, reporting from Jersey City on September 22nd 2001:
He claimed to be unable to find any reports of "the Arab population of New Jersey" celebrating on September 11th 2001, whereas his own newspaper carried such a report, as did other prominent newspapers and broadcast outlets.
Were there "thousands" celebrating?
Probably not.
But hundreds? There are those who saw such things and stand by what they saw today. And Mr Kessler's own colleague at the Post claims to have interviewed eyewitnesses.
More to the point, these reports rely not just on supposed eyewitnesses, but on a police record: persons were "detained and questioned". Kessler's colleague also spoke to the Jersey City Police Department, which Kessler apparently has not. If he'd like to, the chap to have a word with is Captain Edgar Martinez, who back in those days handled public relations for the JCPD.
After all, if it's true that "police detained several men", there would be a record of it that Captain Martinez would be able to confirm.
Judging from the comments of the Jersey City mayor, there's evidently some political pressure to make whatever happened disappear down the old memory hole, but I don't believe they'd outright lie to Glenn Kessler, would they?
The past is a foreign country, wrote L P Hartley*, and the immediate post-9/11 period was a very different land from today's America.
Here, for example, is bigshot mainstream liberal Jonathan Alter writing in Newsweek (then owned by The Washington Post) that there were Muslim schoolchildren in the New York area who had prior knowledge of 9/11.
[ I both read & saw these stories at the time & referred to them in my video on this as well. - TGFP. ].
But the moment passed, and liberals stopped writing such stories, and then denied such stories had ever been written.
[ Liberal revisionism at it's worst. - TGFP. ].
And year on year more of the specifics of that day were disappeared - starting with the images of the men and women who hurled themselves from the upper floors of the Twin Towers for the chance to spend their final moments falling through clean, bright sky rather than in that hellish inferno.
A soft-focus blur, a generalized sadness, a yellow ribbon or two is all that remains.
Yet there were Muslims who cheered 9/11 in Oslo and in Yorkshire, and if like Donald Trump you live in New York City, you would have read and heard similar stories from your own neighborhood.
There are two competing narratives here. If you loathe Trump, the story is:
Trump's suggestion of terrorist sympathizers among American Muslims is outrageous.
But, if you're minded to support Trump, the story is:
Obama's and Hillary's and Kerry's assertion that there are no terrorist sympathizers among Muslims is not only ludicrous but mendacious and deeply weird in its relentless insistence. Glenn Kessler's "fact-check" confirms the latter.
[*CORRECTED: I originally wrote "E M Forster", which is pretty bad of me, considering I once advised the Hartley estate over a dramatic adaptation of The Go Between.]
Pictures added by me and NOT Steyn - TGFP.
Case in point: The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler, who has awarded "four Pinocchios" to Donald Trump, for claiming to recall seeing "thousands" of Jersey City Muslims celebrating on September 11th 2001. Mr Kessler wrote:
Trump says that he saw this with his own eyes on television and that it was well covered. But an extensive examination of news clips from that period turns up nothing. There were some reports of celebrations overseas, in Muslim countries, but nothing that we can find involving the Arab populations of New Jersey.
Kessler has spent the day re-writing and re-re-writing that confident assertion. As of now, that last sentence currently reads:
There were some reports of celebrations overseas, in Muslim countries, but nothing that we can find involving the Arab populations of New Jersey except for unconfirmed reports.
When Kessler says "nothing that we can find", he didn't have to search very hard. After a two-minute Google search, Powerline's John Hinderaker turned up the following:
In Jersey City, within hours of two jetliners' plowing into the World Trade Center, law enforcement authorities detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river.
What demented fringe conspiracist website would traffic in such nonsense? Well, in fact, it was Glenn Kessler's own newspaper, The Washington Post, which published the story on September 18th 2001. Is it an "unconfirmed report"? Well, Kessler's colleague, Post reporter Serge Kolvaleski, said in a 2003 email that he got the story from the Jersey City Police Department and "confirmed the JCPD's information via interviews of eyewitnesses of the celebration".
Was Kessler aware, while researching his "fact-check, that a Washington Post reporter had interviewed "eyewitnesses of the celebration"? As it is, a so-called "fact-checker" who claims "an extensive examination" turns up "nothing that we can find involving the Arab populations of New Jersey" was apparently ignorant of the fact that his own newspaper had carried such a story. Called on his omission by John Hinderaker, Mr Kessler turned defensive:
@AmFedJournal@jhinderaker "several people allegedly celebrating" does not equal "thousands"
As John Hinderaker pointed out, the phrase "several people" does not occur in the Washington Post 2001 story, so Kessler is putting quotation marks round a non-quotation, which seems a rum thing for a fact-checker to do.
One Pinocchio for you right there, Mister J-School Ethics!
The Post says only that "a number of people" were detained and questioned.
So now we're no longer arguing about whether there were even any reports of any New Jersey residents celebrating 9/11, but merely the number that were doing so.
Glenn Kessler's current version of his story now bears little relation to its original form, but John Hinderaker cuts to the chase:
@GlennKesslerWP Did you know about the 2001 Post article when you wrote your "fact check" or not?Because, if you didn't, you're not much of a fact-checker.
Kessler has yet to respond.
A further Washington Post column, by Howard Kurtz on October 9th 2001, reminds us that, whether or not the story was on TV, it was widely reported on New York radio:
On Sept. 11, callers told New York radio stations WABC and WPLJ that some people in an Arabic section of Paterson, N.J., were celebrating the attacks.
Totally bogus, says city spokesman Bob Grant. He's so mad he has demanded transcripts from the Disney-owned stations and may demand equal time.
Grant is particularly steamed at WPLJ's "The Big Show With Scott and Todd," calling in to chide hosts Scott Shannon and Todd Pettengill. "They called me a moron and I called them mendacious," he says...
Curtis Sliwa, a WABC host also criticized by Grant, says callers told him of a celebration that "they felt was crazy, that was horrible, so we reported that based on the calls." Sliwa went to Paterson the next day and says people told him that the cheering was done by about a dozen bicycle-riding teenagers.
Paterson officials are "in total denial," says Sliwa. "They'd rather shoot the messenger."
 |
| The near silent majority. |
Another obscure fringe hate-blog that referenced the "celebrations" was a site called The New York Times, reporting from Jersey City on September 30th 2001:
Since the F.B.I. raid, community relations in Jersey City -- which has a population of 240,000, 20 percent of whom are Arabs or of Arab descent -- have deteriorated, and Jersey City has become rife with rumors: about Muslim celebrations in the wake of the trade center attacks, about violence against Muslim residents, about who might have been involved in the terror, who might have harbored conspirators.
 |
| The sad oftimes silent majority. |
As "rumors" go, they were widespread. The San Francisco Chronicle, reporting from Jersey City on September 22nd 2001:
A few Muslims have been harassed around town by non-Muslims, and police detained several men seen "celebrating" the attack as the smoke first rose across the river. Folks are worried that things could get worse. On both sides.So this Kessler fellow seems to have got everything wrong.
He claimed to be unable to find any reports of "the Arab population of New Jersey" celebrating on September 11th 2001, whereas his own newspaper carried such a report, as did other prominent newspapers and broadcast outlets.
Were there "thousands" celebrating?
Probably not.
But hundreds? There are those who saw such things and stand by what they saw today. And Mr Kessler's own colleague at the Post claims to have interviewed eyewitnesses.
More to the point, these reports rely not just on supposed eyewitnesses, but on a police record: persons were "detained and questioned". Kessler's colleague also spoke to the Jersey City Police Department, which Kessler apparently has not. If he'd like to, the chap to have a word with is Captain Edgar Martinez, who back in those days handled public relations for the JCPD.
After all, if it's true that "police detained several men", there would be a record of it that Captain Martinez would be able to confirm.
Judging from the comments of the Jersey City mayor, there's evidently some political pressure to make whatever happened disappear down the old memory hole, but I don't believe they'd outright lie to Glenn Kessler, would they?
The past is a foreign country, wrote L P Hartley*, and the immediate post-9/11 period was a very different land from today's America.
Here, for example, is bigshot mainstream liberal Jonathan Alter writing in Newsweek (then owned by The Washington Post) that there were Muslim schoolchildren in the New York area who had prior knowledge of 9/11.
[ I both read & saw these stories at the time & referred to them in my video on this as well. - TGFP. ].
But the moment passed, and liberals stopped writing such stories, and then denied such stories had ever been written.
[ Liberal revisionism at it's worst. - TGFP. ].
And year on year more of the specifics of that day were disappeared - starting with the images of the men and women who hurled themselves from the upper floors of the Twin Towers for the chance to spend their final moments falling through clean, bright sky rather than in that hellish inferno.
A soft-focus blur, a generalized sadness, a yellow ribbon or two is all that remains.
Yet there were Muslims who cheered 9/11 in Oslo and in Yorkshire, and if like Donald Trump you live in New York City, you would have read and heard similar stories from your own neighborhood.
There are two competing narratives here. If you loathe Trump, the story is:
Trump's suggestion of terrorist sympathizers among American Muslims is outrageous.
But, if you're minded to support Trump, the story is:
Obama's and Hillary's and Kerry's assertion that there are no terrorist sympathizers among Muslims is not only ludicrous but mendacious and deeply weird in its relentless insistence. Glenn Kessler's "fact-check" confirms the latter.
[*CORRECTED: I originally wrote "E M Forster", which is pretty bad of me, considering I once advised the Hartley estate over a dramatic adaptation of The Go Between.]
How the Bungles loss to the Cardinals will impact the Steelers & the AFC North race.
Last week after the Cincinnati Bengals lost to the Houston Texans on Monday Night Football, I wrote how the door to the AFC North championship was left open, ever so slightly. Many criticized such a sentiment, saying it was highly unlikely the 8-1 Bengals would stumble enough for the 6-4 Pittsburgh Steelers to catch them in the division race. After the Bengals' second consecutive loss, this time to the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday Night Football, the door isn't just slightly ajar anymore, it has been pushed open.
The Bengals' prime time struggles continue, but within the AFC North their lead has dwindled to just two games, and the Bengals will play the Steelers in Cincinnati in just a few short weeks. So, what needs to happen for the Steelers to not just chase down the Bengals in the division, but possibly take the lead? Well, a lot needs to take place, to be honest.
First, the Steelers need to play near flawless football. Losing more than one game, which can't be the Cincinnati game, in their final 6 contests could be a devastating blow, but the equation gets more complex too. Not only do the Steelers need to be nearly perfect in their remaining schedule, but they need the Bengals to, well, continue to be the Bengals of the past two weeks.
The Steelers road to the postseason has softened, but is far from a guarantee. Their remaining games are at the Seattle Seahawks, vs. the Indianapolis Colts, at the Bengals, vs. the Denver Broncos and at the Baltimore Ravens and Cleveland Browns. Not an easy stretch of games, regardless of Andrew Luck and Peyton Manning being question marks for their respective teams moving forward.
The Bengals' road isn't quite as daunting. Their schedule persists of a home game vs. the St. Louis Rams, at the Browns, vs. the Steelers, at the San Francisco 49ers, at the Broncos and vs. the Ravens.
Some will compare the two schedules and simply say the Bengals aren't going to lose enough games for the Steelers to catch them, and that certainly is a possibility. The Steelers' poor division and conference record doesn't bode well for their chances of a tie breaker going their way, which means they need to at least have a one game lead on the Bengals to claim back-to-back division titles.
If the Steelers and Bengals are in the same position when they play head-to-head in Week 14, and Pittsburgh is able to beat the Bengals in Cincinnati, it would make their lead one, but despite the door being opened further after Cincinnati's most recent loss, the Steelers most likely path into the postseason is through the Wild Card and not winning the division. Not that it is impossible, but a lot needs to take place for such a feat to be accomplished.
Crazier things have happened, and with six weeks left in the 2015 regular season the Steelers could certainly make things interesting down the stretc
Early odds in the Pittsburgh Steelers vs Seattle Seahawks week 12 game.
By Jeff.Hartman @BnGBlitz on Nov 24, 2015, 5:00a
The Pittsburgh Steelers travel to play the Seattle Seahawks in Week 12. See who are early favorites in this inter-conference matchup.
The 6-4 Pittsburgh Steelers are making the cross-country trek to play the 5-5 Seattle Seahawks in a rematch of Super Bowl XL, and despite their record the early odds are favoring the home team. The Seahawks possess one of the true home field advantages in the Seattle "12th Man", but rarely does their "Legion of Boom" defense face an offense with the power and prowess like the Steelers.
The one comparable offense which the Seahawks see twice a season is that of the Arizona Cardinals, who just went into Seattle two weeks ago and handed Russell Wilson and company their 5th loss of the season. The Steelers offense with Ben Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown, Martavis Bryant, DeAngelo Williams, Heath Miller and Markus Wheaton is enough to give even the best defensive coordinator headaches, and will look to pick up where they left off before their bye week, with back-to-back wins and consecutive games of scoring 30 points.
Nonetheless, despite the Steelers' offense and their 5th best scoring defense, the early odds have the Seahawks as 3.5-point favorites to start the week. However, the early line starting at 3.5 is on the low end of several other sports books. The highest spread sees the Seahawks as 5-point favorites, while the majority see Seattle as 4-5-point favorites.
Surprising numbers for a Seahawks team who has struggled, but has the friendly confines of home field standing in their corner. The Steelers don't travel cross country well, and have only won once in Seattle in the 1980s. Pittsburgh will look to reverse that trend this Sunday in the land of Starbucks and Silicon Valley, but if the Vegas odds tell fans anything, it is they see this game being a close contest between two teams who are playing for their postseason lives.
The Steelers and Seahawks game is set for a 4:25 p.m. EDT kickoff, and will air on CBS
The Pittsburgh Steelers travel to play the Seattle Seahawks in Week 12. See who are early favorites in this inter-conference matchup.
The 6-4 Pittsburgh Steelers are making the cross-country trek to play the 5-5 Seattle Seahawks in a rematch of Super Bowl XL, and despite their record the early odds are favoring the home team. The Seahawks possess one of the true home field advantages in the Seattle "12th Man", but rarely does their "Legion of Boom" defense face an offense with the power and prowess like the Steelers.
The one comparable offense which the Seahawks see twice a season is that of the Arizona Cardinals, who just went into Seattle two weeks ago and handed Russell Wilson and company their 5th loss of the season. The Steelers offense with Ben Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown, Martavis Bryant, DeAngelo Williams, Heath Miller and Markus Wheaton is enough to give even the best defensive coordinator headaches, and will look to pick up where they left off before their bye week, with back-to-back wins and consecutive games of scoring 30 points.
Nonetheless, despite the Steelers' offense and their 5th best scoring defense, the early odds have the Seahawks as 3.5-point favorites to start the week. However, the early line starting at 3.5 is on the low end of several other sports books. The highest spread sees the Seahawks as 5-point favorites, while the majority see Seattle as 4-5-point favorites.
Surprising numbers for a Seahawks team who has struggled, but has the friendly confines of home field standing in their corner. The Steelers don't travel cross country well, and have only won once in Seattle in the 1980s. Pittsburgh will look to reverse that trend this Sunday in the land of Starbucks and Silicon Valley, but if the Vegas odds tell fans anything, it is they see this game being a close contest between two teams who are playing for their postseason lives.
The Steelers and Seahawks game is set for a 4:25 p.m. EDT kickoff, and will air on CBS
Seahawks not expecting Marshawn Lynch to play Sunday.
Adam Schefter@AdamSchefter
Seahawks not expecting RB Marshawn Lynch to be available Sunday vs Steelers. Awaiting word Tuesday on abdominal injury and possible surgery.
Per ESPN's Adam Schefter, the Seahawks are not planning on having Lynch available for them this Sunday. Lynch is currently in Philadelphia, PA seeing a specialist regarding his reported sports hernia. Surgery is still possible, which would sideline Lynch much longer than just Week 12.
The Seahawks were able to have success on the ground without Lynch in Week 11 with Rawls running the football. Rawls was able to collect 209 yards rushing and a touchdown against the San Francisco 49ers last week en route to a Seattle victory.
The Steelers will certainly have their hands full with Rawks and Russell Wilson, but if their defense has a strength it is their rush defense. The Steelers average only 93 yards on the ground per game, and are coming off a Week 10 performance where they held the Cleveland Browns to 15 yards rushing. This will certainly be a matchup to keep an eye on this Sunday, but it looks as if the matchup will be Rawls vs. the Steelers defense, and not Lynch.
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