Finding a Laugh in a Political Quagmire - What to do? What to do? See Simone Giertz

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If there is one thing we all need in the heat of this bizarre political campaign, it is a good laugh.  John Blais, Publisher and President at Chronicle Media, LLC saved me from the political malaise about to overwhelm me this election season.  Simone is a great antidote everyone should try.

Need A Useless Robot? Simone Giertz Is The Queen

NPR Staff

Simone Giertz makes robots.

And while they're technically adept — they do work — they don't actually work very well.

Giertz has found fame online via her useless robots, including one that's been viewed more than a million times online.

But it's not just the fame she's going for. She tells NPR she wants other people to get into robotics.

"To me, the goal of building useless and ridiculous robots is more — I mean, in some way, it's like a personal goal because I think it's really fun, and I think having fun is super important to create things," she says.

That's evidenced by her accompanying "making of" videos to some of the machines (there's some salty language in this video).

And if you browse the comment sections of the Internet at all (or work on the Internet), you might be interested in her "Comment Assistant."

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Obamaville May 25 - Hillary and her Emails - Where do we go from here?

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Are government officials lying about the Clinton email controversy?

For the first time since the Hillary email affair broke last year a government official appointed by President Barack Obama, the Inspector General of the State Department, has confirmed Clinton violated the rules of the government by refusing to turn over emails when she left office, and by maintaining her own private server independent of the secured government system.

How convenient that the President is in Japan when the report was released today.

Immediately after the release, the Hillary defenders took to the airways to attempt to mitigate the impact on her already swollen unfavorable and non-trustworthy poll numbers.  Sadly, the mouthpieces continue to say anything to divert attention from the truth.  I wonder if proven wrong by an upcoming FBI report if they will resign from office for lying to the public.

The attempted cover up of what took place on that server could be the lead story of the 2016 election and has the potential of overshadowing whatever Donald Trump has and will accomplish during the long and painful campaign.

The sharp intensity of the Clinton surrogates attack on the Inspector General's report was breathtaking and is a good clue as to whether her server outcome is going to be bad or good.  The determined effort by the surrogates to say Hillary was doing nothing more than previous Secretaries of State like those of Bush and Bill Clinton, was a clever tactic but has little to do with what Hillary did.

Each presidential administration issues their own rules and regulations guiding appointees like Clinton on how to handle emails.  The Obama administration, to their credit, had far more detailed rules than previous administrations.  According to Obama's Inspector General for the State Department, Hillary broke the rules.

Also according to the IG report, she knowingly violated the rules by never seeking approval for a private email server from the State Department, or the White House, a serious charge since she has repeatedly denied violating any rules.  The fact Hillary and her staff refused to meet with the Inspector General during the investigation, while all previous Secretaries of State did meet with the IG, is highly suspicious.

Far more ominous was another related news story that broke today about the Romanian hacker recently extradited to the USA at the request of the FBI, who did a plea bargain with the FBI and pleaded guilty of hacking the private emails of several top ranking government officials.

Among the claims of this convicted hacker was his admitted hacking into Secretary Clinton's private email server.  Could that be why they extradited him?  Was it ironic or just a coincidence both stories broke today?

As stunning as today's revelations may be, they could pale in comparison to the FBI investigation still underway.  As far as we can tell, the FBI still must interview the Romanian hacker and Secretary Clinton before they issue findings.  Unlike the Inspector General report, the FBI investigation can lead to criminal charges.

Here are potential major actions that could result from the ongoing FBI investigation.

• Indictments of Clinton staff members for jeopardizing national security.

• Confirmation that foreign entities hacked Clinton's server.

• Confirmation that classified national security memos were hacked.

• Proof of a deliberate effort by Clinton staff to keep the server from government oversight.

• Proof that classified memos were deliberately transferred from the classified server to the private Clinton server.

• Proof that the same server was used for Clinton Foundation activity with foreign entities or State Department waivers.

 

Now before the liberals of the nation start popping pain relievers just thinking of the consequences of any one or all of these potential outcomes, let it be said NONE of them suggest, imply, or otherwise say Hillary Clinton is guilty of anything as President Obama so aptly put it as reported in the liberal friendly The New York Times.

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Obama Says Hillary Clinton Wouldn’t Intentionally Endanger U.S. With Emails

By MICHAEL D. SHEARAPRIL 10, 2016

WASHINGTON — President Obama said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that while Hillary Clinton had been careless in managing her emails as secretary of state, she would never intentionally do anything to endanger the country.

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Ever the clever lawyer, he specifically said "Intentionally" which suggests there might have been "unintentional" endangering of the country.  Of course, he failed to mention the national security of the nation is compromised no matter whether it was intentional or unintentional.

Now, the extreme outcome of this investigation may be:

• She lied to authorities by failing to disclose or get approval for her private system.

• She compromised national security

• There were blatant conflicts of interest when the Clinton Foundation sought waivers from the State Department to accept money (millions of dollars) from foreign nations on "restricted" lists and she granted the waivers.

If any of these come true suffice it to say her campaign may well be over.  There are those of us who long held the belief the only reason Bernie Sanders remained in the campaign when the outcome was never in doubt was because he thought one of these potential results from the FBI investigation would give him the nomination.

However, because the FBI has just entered a plea agreement with the Romanian hacker who claimed to have hacked her emails, much investigation work remains.  In addition, the FBI has not called Hillary in to testify yet but has indicated it will happen.

There is a good reason to delay the FBI results until after the Democratic National Convention in sixty days. As it now stands, Hillary will be declared the nominee at the convention, as there is no hope Bernie can overcome her Super Delegate stockpile.

If the FBI releases their report before that moment, it could derail her presidential bid and Bernie would most likely be the nominee by finishing second.

However, if she wins the nomination at the convention and then a devastating FBI report comes out forcing her to withdraw as the nominee, what happens?

Both the Republican and the Democratic parties have rules in their bylaws governing how to fill the vacancy. The Party Chair calls a meeting of the National Committee, and the Committee members at the meeting vote to fill the vacancy on the ticket. A candidate must receive a majority of the votes to win the party's nod.

There are 447 members of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) including 75 at-large members nominated by the Chairman (Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz) and approved by the full DNC.  The DNC is composed of the chairs and vice-chairs of each state Democratic Party Committee and over 200 members elected by Democrats in all 50 states and the territories.

The DNC is the epitome of the political party establishment and only two people rank higher than Debbie Wasserman Schultz, President Barack Obama, and Vice President Joe Biden.

Now think of the consequences if Hillary resigns from the ticket after winning the nomination, and remember there is nothing normal about this 2016 election process, so anything is possible.

Since it is after the convention, it matters not that Bernie Sanders finished second.  The matter of selecting a replacement candidate for president falls into the hands of the Democratic establishment.

Barack Obama will have the most to say about the replacement, and his loyal second in command Joe Biden is the most likely choice to replace Clinton.  Why Biden, because the whole world knows a socialist like Bernie can never win election in America, nor will he ever get the chance.

Once Hillary gets the nomination, his hope is gone because the establishment will not pick someone who spent the last year bashing them.  Besides, many Democrats regretted that Joe Biden passed up his chance to get in the race and believe if Hillary stumbled, then Biden would be the nominee.

Call it fate, call it coincidental, call it Divine Providence, Joe Biden would finally get his chance to be president and he did not even have to run in the primary.  Biden may be the only Democrat capable of battling Trump head-to-head.

Besides, who better to defend the Obama legacy than Obama's right hand man in building it?

Sorry Bernie, you are out.

As Lewis Carroll so aptly put it in Alice in Wonderland, "Nothing is as it seems."

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Obamaville May 24 - The Election - Trump's Greatest Reality Show - America's Greatest Test

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In one corner - The most experienced candidate ever to run for President Hillary Clinton

In the other corner - The most outrageous inexperienced candidate ever to run for President Donald Trump

For those of you who take the 2016 presidential campaign so seriously that you are blinded by hate, overwhelmed by fear, and terrified by the thought of losing, well, I really do not know the antidote to help you make it through the long, dark night.

Had President Obama been successful in legalizing marijuana perhaps there might have been a joint strong enough to help but such was not the case.  You might consider an extended vacation in Colorado where you could remain on a Rocky Mountain high until after November.  Then again, you might consider securing an option on a nice home in Nova Scotia to settle in if you lose.

How long ago it seems this campaign for the ages started with a line up of highly qualified Republicans in the shape of governors, senators, former senate candidates, males, and a female, quite an all-star line up.  Many thought it was the best and most qualified field of candidates ever assembled. Of course, the GOP had two former presidents ready to come to the aid of the heir-apparent of the GOP dynasty, the Bush family.

On the Democratic side was the pre-emptive favorite to win it all, a former White House First Lady, senator, secretary of state, and career politician who just happened to also be a multi-millionaire.  Waiting in the wings was another former popular president known for his wit and charisma who expected to whisk his wife back into the White House, Bill Clinton.

The Democratic field was "fixed" for Hillary but the Republican field was expected to be a blood bath between the conservatives, the more conservatives, the radical right-wing conservatives, and those who wore both suspenders and belts, along with a quiet little voice from a libertarian in the wilderness named Rand Paul for diversity.

The odds on favorites to square off in the fall election were Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, the legacy candidates with the blue blood and access to a couple of billion dollars for the campaign.

Then someone opened the gates of Hell, most likely an innocent bureaucrat who was tired and pulled the wrong lever.

The Outcasts Emerge

One should expect the unexpected when two certain losers in the eyes of the news media and politicians materialize on the scene.  One was wrapped in gold and stepped out of an escalator from heaven while the other suddenly appeared through a fog of socialism and appeared older than Moses.

The news media laughed and immediately condemned them to the scrap heap of presidential trivia mocking their intent and ridiculing their credentials.

I mean, Trump, the Republican candidate, never ran for political office before.  Fact is he was a Democrat before he filed and a long time contributor to left wing causes including previous campaigns of Hillary Clinton.

His claim to fame, he build VERY big buildings and was more or less a billionaire.  Most knew him as a reality talk show host who gave bombastic a new definition, knew almost nothing about what a president does, and considers his best advisor to be the person facing him in the mirror.

On the Democratic side came a candidate who was not even a Democrat but a registered Independent riding his own wave of socialism for the masses, and standing for about everything America hated.  A socialist might be a Stalin, Hitler, Castro, or some figment of our imagination but not a real person in the citadel of Democracy.

We had a history of destroying socialism in wars and elections since 1776.  As if not being a Democrat and being a rabid socialist were not enough to get the Democratic nomination, add to that the fact Bernie Sanders was also as old as Moses and Jewish to boot.  If elected, he would be the oldest person ever elected to the presidency.

America prides itself in being modern and the last three presidents were all part of the Baby Boomer generation, meaning they were born after the Great War.  We think young and spend a fortune trying to act young so the prospects for someone old enough to be our grandfather, well not quite, winning the election was outrageous.  Our national slogan seemed to be "Young is fun and old sucks."

Enter the time machine and come to the present.

The pre-emptive president Hillary Clinton is coming upon the last primary elections of the presidential year and lo and behold, pesky old Bernie Sanders is still around drawing tens of thousands of young people disenfranchised by Hillary to campaign rallies and causing a rather significant number of worry lines in the already battle tested face of Clinton.

As for the Republican challenger to the Clinton machine, perhaps even more remarkable than Bernie, is the brash and brazen golden boy from Queens who virtually destroyed the entire field of highly qualified Republicans on the way to the nomination.

The impact of Bernie Sanders on the election is rather historic while the impact of Trump on the election just might be cataclysmic.

You see, Bernie was a conventional politician, even a sitting Senator, an indentured member of The Establishment, who used the system to poke holes in the Clinton mystic.  I suspect because he was from Vermont, and the first socialist mayor of a big town, few people ever heard of him.

Trump, well he had other ideas on how to win.  Having never run for office before, he had no loyalty to conventional rules, experience, or consultants.  In fact, he had no clue what they might be.

What he did have was a sixth sense of the mood of the public and he tapped right into a sense of frustration and disgust with the political establishment and the news media establishment by the people.  Whether by design or accident, he knew people were not interested in experience or flowing promises and policy platforms.

People were mad as Hell, and there was no better person to lead them in their anger and frustration than Donald Trump, the outsider from politics, the man who got things done.  He may not have the answers, he may twist facts and exaggerate, but they could count on him to fight for the little people against the ironclad political establishment running and wrecking our nation.

The result, the election rules, and decorum went out the window along with every rule of survival in politics.  Even our vaunted fourth estate, the press, was steamrolled by Trump because of his free wheeling style and most unusual approach.

Bernie calls for a revolution, Trump already shoved it down the throats of The Establishment, and we have not even reached the conventions to nominate the party candidates.

Nearly a month before the end of the primary elections and two months before the convention Trump finished demolishing the entire sixteen-person field running against him.

Already he has turned his machine gun barrage of charges against Hillary and at times it has resembled the Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago.

No one has a clue as to what will happen the last six months until the election.  Trump has already surged into a tie with Hillary.  Leaders of foreign nations have condemned Trump, and still he climbs in the polls.

America is in for one of the most entertaining presidential campaigns in history as Donald Trump finally gets his wish, to be part of the greatest reality show in history.  If he wins, he most likely faces even bigger hurdles winning over the people and then the leaders of the world.

Nothing will ever be the same in politics and maybe not even in life, as we know it.  Some people have long held the belief that people grow into the responsibilities of the presidency.  Students of history can point to many examples and even our most recent president, Barack Obama, has overcome many issues with inexperience to grow into the job.

The survivor of this raucous campaign, whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, face many challenges if elected president, and will most certainly be tested by our friends and enemies around the world.  Healing America after the election will be the greatest challenge.  For our part, we must help America heal.

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Health Care in America - What you better know! Insights by Dr. Jon Robison

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Dr. Jon and sidekick Lady

Jon Robison

Dr. Jon Robison at salveopartners.com

What Do the EEOC, Wellness Industry, Urban Dictionary, Humpty Dumpty and George Orwell Have In Common?

May 18, 2016

                 "A word means what I choose it to mean—neither more or less.”                                                                                                                            --Humpty Dumpty

Written Together With Al Lewis 

The wellness industry is rejoicing at the EEOC’s final rulings on workplace wellness programs. The results boil down to this. The programs can require participation, compel employees to hand over medical information from screenings and health risk assessments (and even their DNA) and punish them if they don’t comply, as long as the programs are voluntary.

If you are having trouble reconciling the words require, compel and punish with voluntary, so were we. In fact, befuddled by the EEOC / Wellness Industry’s use of the term “voluntary” we went to the source seeking answers.  Google helped us to look more deeply into definitions of “voluntary” to make sure we weren’t missing something. Here are a couple we found:

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                        Dictionary.com -- done, made, brought about, undertaken, etc., of one's own accord or by free choice

·                   Merriam Webster -- done or given because you want to and not because you are forced to: done or given by choice

No less befuddled, we were determined not to give up! We thought: “This definition has got to come from somewhere; they cannot just have made it up. Perhaps a more updated, hip source is needed here. What about the Urban Dictionary?” And sure enough, there we found the answer:

Urban dictionary -- do it or you will lose your job

Now we were getting somewhere. In the eyes of the wellness industry and now also apparently the EEOC, “voluntary” means “coerced, pressured, incentivized, and/or punished.” In other words “voluntary” means “involuntary.” (In the wellness industry, defining things as their opposites is par for the course. Health Fitness Corporation’s Chief Medical Officer has famously described the difference between making “life-saving catches of 514” Nebraska employees with cancer and admitting that these employees never had cancer at all as “semantics.”)

Fascinating! We wondered if there might be any literary precedents for defining this particular word as the opposite of what it really means.

Then we remembered George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Consider Napoleon’s decree that, in addition to an already 60-hour work week, the animals would be asked to work on Sunday afternoons as well:

          “This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself              from it would have his rations reduced by half.”

Lessons Learned

We might take solace in the fact that the EEOC and the wellness industry settled on punishments of "only” 30% (roughly $1800) for employees who choose not to volunteer. Interestingly, one politician didn’t think that punishment would generate enough voluntary participation. He said we should impose penalties for all programs of 50% (now possible only for smokers); he must have been a big Orwell fan.

Aside from the self-serving albeit admittedly highly creative use of the English language, here are the problems with these guidelines:

·          It has been proven that forced voluntary wellness programs (the “pry, poke and prod” variety of programs) have not paid and cannot pay for themselves;

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            Even the so-called best programs –the ones that win the Koop Award -- show trivial risk reduction (before adding back in dropouts and non-participants), and fabricate their savings figures;

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             Screenings and HRA’s are more likely to lead to overdiagnosis and overtreatment than to health improvement;

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          Many workplace programs--like those for weight loss--are completely ineffective, that is, when they are not busy harming employees;

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         Thirty years of consistent and definitive research that the incentive approach being recommended does not lead to sustained behavior change and engenders a wide variety of iatrogenic consequences;

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           These type of programs are highly unpopular with employees, which means they are much more likely to diminish than enhance employee engagement.

The real question here is not how much employers can punish employees who refuse to submit to forced “wellness or else” programs. The real question is: are these initiatives a good idea? And the answer, according to all the research not financed by the wellness industry itself, is a resounding NO! So how about asking Congress to put an end to involuntary, voluntary wellness programs, and instead allow only truly voluntary, voluntary ones?

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Health Care in America - What you better know! Insights by Dr. Jon Robison

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Dr. Jon Robison and sidekick Lady

Jon Robison

Dr. Jon Robison at salveopartners.com

Top 10 Reasons To…JUST WALK AWAY!

May 23, 2016

Business is certainly booming for wellness at the workplace. Especially since the passage of the wellness provisions of the Affordable Care Act, new employee wellness promoting entities are popping up like dandelions in the spring.  And more and more companies are spending considerable amounts of money on these programs. In fact, in the next few years, the workplace wellness industry is predicted to grow by almost 8 and 1/2% annually, leading to revenues of more than 12 billion dollars in the United States alone. Unfortunately, as health care expert Leah Binder wrote in Forbes in 2014:

“This rapid escalation in employer investment has spawned a “Wild West” kind of market for wellness and disease management, with thousands of vendors overwhelming employers, often touting exaggerated claims of effectiveness.”

With this in mind we propose some simple guidelines (with links for additional information) to help you just walk away from proposals (suggested by vendors, consultants, brokers, relatives, etc.) that are more likely to interfere with rather than enhance employee engagement and well being. From the least to the most egregious we propose;

The Top 10 Reasons to - JUST WALK AWAY:

10. Someone tells you they can save you money on health care costs                                by instituting bio-metric screens and/or HRA’s at the workplace.

 9. Someone suggests that you will have a better chance of showing savings from       employee wellness programs if you use VOI rather than ROI.

 8. Someone uses the terms participation and engagement interchangeably.

 7. Someone suggests that a healthy organizational culture has to do with gym            memberships, broccoli in the cafeteria and stress management programs.

6. Someone suggests that pry, prod, poke and punish “wellness or else”                        programs will improve engagement and lift employee morale. Also:                        http://www.firstreportnow.com/articles/debate-employer-sponsored-                  wellness-programs

5. Someone offers you an employee weight loss program, contest, competition,         app, or a secret weight loss berry from the Amazon. Also:                                            https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/poodle-science-what-can-teach-us-weight-      health-jon-robison?trk=mp-author-card                                        

4. Someone suggests that they can show you how to turn extrinsic motivation            into intrinsic motivation with or without a magic wand.

3. Someone suggests that in order to get employees to participate in wellness            programs you need to be more aggressive or stern with them, make                        participation mandatory or perhaps have them find another job if they don’t.

2. Someone cites Katherine Baicker’s 2010 wellness ROI publication as proof            that wellness saves money. Also http://ift.tt/1xB22Hb

And, without  a doubt, the current number one reason to just walk away!

1. Someone suggests that your wellness program is voluntary even though you pay employees to participate and/or fine them if they don’t.

We hope this list will save you from spending time and money on initiatives that have only minimal efficacy and a high likelihood of iatrogenesis.  So, the next time someone proposes one of these to you, remember the immortal words of the hit single of the American baroque pop band - The Left Banke – rated by Rolling Stone as #220 of the 500 greatest songs of all time -  and - Just Walk Away - Renee. (Four Tops cover Here)

ps - As we continue the process of ushering workplace wellness into the 21st Century, please feel free to add your own reasons to just walk away – and, in the interest of saving time and energy, I am guessing someone will want to add - just walk away – if someone (like me) suggests you should just walk away(for any of the above 10 reasons).

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