Furst Draft

'A bucket full of rudeness and shouting'

Here's an Aug. 21 note to reporter Jeff Hansel regarding our coverage of the health care reform meeting in Mankato on the 20th:

Hey Jeff:

Perhaps we attended different events. The one I witnessed contained a bucket full of rudeness and shouting, to the extent that Dave Durenberger became frustrated by the lack of response to his pleas for civility. Did any of the signs outside the building disturb you? How about the depiction of our president as Hitler, the attempt to introduce abortion into the mix when there has been no bill language saying a government plan would pay for abortions, the signs depicting the allegation that illegal immigrants would receive coverage under a federal plan, etc.

An accurate description of the event should have informed the public about the above antics. I have attended many political events in my life and the event last evening was a sad statement concerning the ability of a civilized society to conduct a fact-based intellectual debate on pertinent issues.

Jay Youmans

I couldn't agree more on Youmans' last line. It's depressing that we can't have a civil, intelligent town hall-type meeting about health care reform without all the Obama-Hitler posters, the shouting about "death panels" and the rest.

Here's a challenge for you: President Bush took a lot of unfair grief during his eight-year term from MoveOn and Michael Moore-type zealots, but can you identify something from Bush's first year in office that's as comparably widespread, coordinated and offensive as the Obama-Hitler posters? Just stick to this one, incredibly offensive and gut-level attack on Obama -- is there something I'm not remembering from Bush's early years?

I can't think of one. I can't remember any attack on a new president as offensive as this. But help me out -- I'm getting old.

I would hope we can at least agree that comparing someone to Hitler is the worst possible insult. Does the president really deserve that? Shouldn't politicians of all types repudiate this type of gutter attack in the strongest possible language?

Kennedy coverage

Several readers have complained that we haven't paid enough attention so far to the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy.

They're right. We probably didn't give it enough prominence on the front page Wednesday -- we put it in the index above the fold and referred to a story inside. We're a Southeast Minnesota paper with a very strong local orientation, so we generally don't put full national stories on the front page, but we could have called more attention to fuller coverage inside.

In Thursday's paper, we had a short local story with just press-release reaction from D.C. politicians, plus a short national story and an Opinions page column.

Today we'll put together almost a full page of coverage. We'll have full coverage on Monday from the Saturday funeral.

Also, we shut off online reader comments on the Kennedy story on the first day -- as you might imagine, conservative and anti-Kennedy nuts piled on with grossly inappropriate comments. That says it all.

At the risk of boring you...

Here's material from a Dodge Center reader on how we and other media are misreporting the H1N1 flu story. Let me start with his first note, addressed to our health reporter Jeff Hansel, following our P-B Dialogues meeting last month with top local health officials:

You, Mr. Hansel, have failed your professional and ethical responsibility to be INFORMED and to INFORM READERS on issues in you area - Health. Yet the articles you write seem to indicate a perverse need to 'parrot' a 'party line' and avoid distastful truths.
 
A prime example is your failure to tell readers something as simple as there's no law requiring vaccine producers to indicate ANYWHERE what's in a given vaccine they make.
Thus, there's no legal requirement for the 5 government contracted Swine flu vaccine makers to specify the presence of Squalene, Mercury, Aluminum, diseased African Green Monkey kidney cells or LIVE virus in their vaccine! Do you realize there's NO legal requirement Baxter, Novartis, etc. ensure their Swine flu vaccines aren't deadly/dangerous to patients - and have been thoroughly tested?
 
Is it acceptable to you, Mr. Hansel and Mr. Furst as a husband/father/son to have your government and medical pofessionals compel children, pregnant women and the frail elder to UNKNOWINGLY receive a dangerous, untested 'rushed to market' vaccine for a flu virus EVERY SMART MEDICAL PROFESSION KNOWS doesn't exist in nature, NEVER HAS AND WAS IN FACT 'ENGINEERED' (regardless of the reason or by whom)!
 
If you gentlemen and your Board of Directors do not see the need to INFORM your readership of the above facts and PROTECT THEM FROM INJURY then you all need to resign - and smash all our mirrors before you do - so you don't every have to look at yourselves and feel professionally ashamed... Given your silence, I fear for your families.
 
It is high time all of us ACT to protect ourselves and each other. The politicians won't!
 
Thank you
 

Joseph Conrad

I responded thusly:

This is a very bizarre note, Mr. Conrad. If you have reputable sources for these wild allegations, send the information and we'll check it out.

He followed up:

Jay:
 
They're far from 'wild allegations'. Go to:
1. www. Natualnews.com
2. www.Rawstory.com
3. www.legitgov.com
4. www.Alternet.net
5.www.OpEDNews.com
6.Check out the US Patent Office to see information linking Dr. Robert Purcell of the NIH as co-patentholder with Dyncorp. for the patent for African Green Monkey Kidney cells as a (swine flu) vaccine additive.
7. Finally, chck the GDR and UK equivalents of the US's JAMA for addtional info as well as articles in the Christian Sience Monitor, UK's Telegraph and the GDR's Speigle.
 
In addition, you should also check the 'Talking Points Memo ' website and the award-winning www.guerrillanewsnetwork.com website. Together you will find the substantiation for my remarks. Keep in mind I've been a forensic Business & Financial Analyst for almost 30 years because I aways check my math THRICE & Measure TWICE to Cut ONCE.
Email me again if the above doesn't fulfill your needs.
 
Cordially,
 
Joseph Conrad  

If you see anything in here that you think is worth a local newspaper pursuing, let me know.

Not all Lutherans debate gay clergy issue

Fair comment from a reader -- ELCA and Lutheran are not synonymous:

Dear Mr. Furst,

I am writing to comment on the choice of headline I saw in the Post-Bulletin online this evening.  The article was headlined, "Lutherans begin gay clergy discussion in Minnesota."
It troubles me to see the use of the general term "Lutherans" used rather than the specific Lutheran church that the article is referring to.  The article would have been much more appropriately titled, "ELCA Lutherans begin gay clergy......"   While it may be technically correct that some Lutherans are beginning discussions regarding gay clergy it is, as the article points out, one Lutheran church body.  Granted, the ELCA is the largest Lutheran church body, but it is certainly not the only one.  There are also the Missouri Synod, Wisconsin Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Synod and Church of the Lutheran Confessions to name just a few.  I'm afraid that for those readers unfamiliar with the Lutheran church your headline leads them to believe that you are talking about all Lutherans rather than just the ELCA.  It may seem like I'm quibbling over a trivial point, but the various and very distinct Lutheran church bodies exist because they are each different and do not necessarily share the same beliefs.  Truth be told, it is unlikely that any of the other Lutheran church bodies would be having the aforementioned discussions because of their understanding of Scripture.  To give the impression of them all being lumped together is simply untrue.  Perhaps the article's author was unaware of the diverse nature of Lutheran church bodies.  It is my hope that any future articles could be more sensitive to this diversity and clearly represent which Lutheran church is being discussed beginning with the headline.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Karen Buchs
Rochester

Did Franken break the law in Rochester?

Here's a voice mail from a frequent, anonymous conservative critic of the paper:

Jay -- just looking at the picture of Al Franken leaving the Gonda Building -- I'm not sure but it looks to me like he's jaywalking -- so I wish you'd correct that for me and see if I'm right that he was jaywalking. I thank you.

Actually, the caller didn't speak entirely clearly and it sounded like he said the Congo Building. And for the record, while the caller may be technically correct that Franken was jaywalking, that one-block stretch of Second Avenue Southwest is the next best thing to a pedestrian plaza between the Kahler and Gonda. If anyone has ever been ticketed for jaywalking there, I'm Julius Caesar.

Slow news day

More on the most over-exposed story of the summer -- a reader e-mailed this:

A few minutes ago (8:15 a.m., Thursday, August 13th) on his “America’s Newsroom” program on Fox News, Bill Hemmer, opened the story stating that the ExpressJet passengers were confined because the airport had no personnel on duty.  I emailed him at Fox News telling him the airport is staffed 24/7 and asked him to check his facts.  I am dismayed to see Rochester International Airport misrepresented on a national broadcast, and just thought the Post Bulletin should know of it.

Whether you think the airport was blameless, the whole snafu was likely caused by one guy at a commuter airline in the middle of the night -- whatever -- in my opinion, the cable news channels have blown this far out of proportion to the true "nightmares" that afflict us.

Another far-flung reader heard from

A reader from Australia weighed in on Bill Boyne's Commentary page column last week...didn't know we had an audience over there...we should try selling single copies:

Mr Bill Boyne is misleading your people when he tells them that we  (Toowoomba Qld. Australia) are drinking recycled sewage water.
We had a Poll in 2006 on the council introducing it into our drinking supplies and it was defeated . We have not run out of water and never will.
No where in Australia is drinking recycled sewage.
It should be use in industry and some agriculture.
Scientists are divided on the issue of the safety of using this source for the drinking supply.
I urge you to please correct this story.
 
Regards
Rosemary Morley CADS
Phone 0746354078

'Only small town newspapers print this crap'

Here's a note from an anonymous reader, with a clipping of our Olmsted District Court sentencings and dispositions:

    This part of the Post Bulletin is terrible.

    Only small town newspapers print this crap --

    Shows the qualify of the P-B's coverage of interesting and informative articles.

Anyone else feel that way? Admittedly, the Star Tribune and metro papers don't run exhaustive court reports. They wouldn't have enough newsprint, even if they could afford it.

One might argue, though, that the reason papers of our size are much healthier is that we DO report on the ins and outs of courts, public data, etc.

'Come on, give a litle credit to the American people'

Ken Freese of Spring Valley sent this note (hand-written) to the Answer Man:

To: Not 100 percent informed Answer Man,

On Friday, Aug. 7, you ran an answer to buying guns at garage sales and unfairly brought into question sales at gun shows. yes, there is not, to my knowledge, a background check by the state, but there most certainly is a background check if you are a federally licensed firearms dealer.

First of all you must have the federal license, and then in order to make a sale at a gun show or in that shop they must perform an instant check of the person trying to purchase a firearm. By the way, it is called a National Instant Check and it is through the federal goernment.

So there is no need for the states to perform this also, which would be duplicating and costing taxpayers more money.

Next time get your facts correct before printing a public statement such as you did. As a matter of fact you should print a correction, so people are better informed about this subject.

P.S.: Come on, give a little credit to the American people. No one in their right mind would sell a gun to a child at a garage sale or any private sale. Quit being so anti and biased and print a positive article!

I don't think a correction or clarification is needed. The Answer Man could have delved into who can't buy guns and all the other permutations, but that wasn't the point.

Regarding people in their right mind selling guns to a child -- define child. And why not make it a law (and define child) if it's a no-brainer?

OK, just one more...

A voice mail from over the weekend, responding to our front page story Saturday about municipal water systems...I should have transcribed the whole thing, but the operative part is this:

How much of our precious water do we use every day making alcohol?