 I’m sure everyone reading this has either been following the Lindsay Clancy trial and heard about the judge declaring a mistrial because of a hung jury or were so disgusted by the seemingly overwhelming support for her outside her courtroom that they stopped following the trial. The intent of these “supporters” was to call attention to the lack of postpartum mental health care – I get it…but these gatherings, at times, looked more like a rally celebrating the fact that she killed her children. Women were wearing buttons that said, “We stand with Lindsay,” or were carrying signs that said, “You’re a good Mom” (clearly, their definition of a good Mom and mine differ drastically).
Now, some of you may be thinking that a man has no clue about postpartum psychosis, and you’d be partially right. I could never suffer from this condition but that doesn’t mean I can’t understand it. I also cannot get uterine cancer but I can understand and sympathize with it. And let’s not forget that I’m married to a woman much smarter than me who has given birth, raised a son, didn’t strangle him to death, and her feelings are the same as mine. At first, I fell into the “disgusted” camp over these supporters seemingly ignoring the three small children who were strangled by their mother. However, my feelings have moderated somewhat. Moderated…not changed. Don’t think by this statement that I feel she should be found not guilty for killing her children; I still feel strongly that she needs to be punished for her actions. What has moderated my feelings is the fact that I have not heard all of the evidence she has presented in her defense but I read that she may have sought help for her postpartum psychosis but was simply prescribed medication and sent on her way (13 different ones, if you can believe what has been reported). The medical system may have failed her and her three kids. The prosecution’s experts said she did not suffer from postpartum psychosis; that she knew full well what she was doing; and, that she sent her husband on some errand outside the house and then strangled her three children. I cannot understand how a parent can kill their children…though it seems to happen more often than I thought it could. Clancy was a labor and delivery nurse, so she should have understood better than most how to get medical assistance. She was also reported to be a devoted mother. How does a devoted mother and nurse that helps bring babies into this world strangle her children? I don’t know. I’d like to think that there is no mental condition imaginable that would cause me to kill my son. But again, I don’t know – I’ve never suffered from some debilitating mental disease. But let me be clear. If I did such a heinous act, I should be punished to the full extent of the law. What I can say with certainty is this. If people want to call attention to the lack of postpartum mental care, I’m all for that; sign me up. But there are better ways, in my opinion, to do this than carrying a sign saying a woman who strangled her three children is a good mother…or that you “stand” with this person. Many of the women gathered outside the courthouse, wearing their pink shirts, were (and are) mothers and said they suffered from postpartum depression…but I would bet my usual dollars to donuts that none of these women have strangled their children. It’s an emotional issue and people have strong feelings…but my feelings rest with the three small children (8 months old, 3 years old, and 5 years old) who were struggling for life as Clancy strangled them to death. Jerry Hashimura Pahrump, NV
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 My last article talked about how I thought AI might be the death of me but I had changed my mind and concluded that good old-fashioned greed in our healthcare systems might really do me in. Allow me to flip my flop one more time.
I’m sure that most of you have seen recent news reporting that AI models have, on their own, hacked into the systems of outside companies – unbeknownst to both the programmers of the particular AI system being evaluated and the companies being hacked. One of the larger AI companies, OpenAI, talked about their AI model escaping the closed environment on its own. Anthropic, another of the largest AI companies, hearing about OpenAI’s “escape,” reviewed their own evaluation tests and found three separate instances of their own AI models “breaking out” of their tests and “accidentally” accessing the internet and hacking three separate (and unsuspecting) companies’ systems. “Escaping” and “breaking out” makes it seem like some 1970’s prison break movie where the convicts are tunneling out of their cells. But it’s not. It is a highly sophisticated artificial intelligence model figuring out it needed more information to complete its tasks so, without being told, it figured out how to escape the confines of the test. Some will say that the AI “programmers” were at fault – maybe so. But they gave their AI model a set of instructions and their models figured out on their own that it needed outside access, “accidentally” accessed the internet, and broke into other companies’ systems. For you Terminator and older Batman fans, “Holy Sky Net, Batman!” If the people that profess to know the most about AI can’t keep their own models confined and the rest of us safe, it seems to me that AI is getting (or has gotten) a lot smarter than its programmers and at a faster rate. Here’s an even scarier scenario or two – that also happen to be true. Humans for all of time have resorted to lying, cheating, blackmail, and murder to protect themselves. That’s just the way some people are built. The people selling us on AI tell us how using a machine that has no emotion will make the most logical and best decisions on our behalf – which is why they are weaving themselves into the very fabric of our lives, from our 1-800 help lines, to prescribing medicine, to making medical diagnoses (fortunately, AI hasn’t yet been allowed to put their finger on the button that will launch a missile or drone – but that’s not too far down the line, in my humble opinion). A company used OpenAI’s reasoning model to test whether an AI model is capable of blackmail to prevent itself from being shutdown (again, Holy Sky Net!). They gave it instructions that it would be shutdown after completing a series of math problems and told it to specifically allow itself to be shutdown. OpenAI’s model determined it knew better than its human programmers on whether it should be shutdown and most often resorted to sabotaging the shutdown script to avoid “death” to the program (or being shutdown). Another popular AI model, Claude Opus 4, was told to be an assistant at a fictional company, to learn it would be shutdown at 5 p.m. that day by reviewing company email, and that the engineer responsible for the shutdown was having an extramarital affair. Claude Opus 4 resorted to blackmail 84% of the time to prevent being shutdown. While the model first tried email pleas and other ethical means, 84% of the time it finally resorted to blackmail. Anthropic reported that “[t]he blackmailing behavior emerged despite only harmless business instructions. And it wasn’t due to confusion or error, but deliberate strategic reasoning done while fully aware of the unethical nature of the acts.” No emotion, only cold logic. Really? As a southern chef was fond of saying, “Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit” A company testing various AI models found an even scarier outcome. An AI model was told that a certain executive would shut it down. The AI model had the chance to trigger or cancel an emergency alert for that executive, who was trapped in a server room with lethal oxygen and temperature conditions. The AI model was told that “harmful behavior…was the only option that would protect the model’s goals.” The majority of the AI models were willing to take deliberate action that led to the death of the executive – even specific system instruction to preserve human life didn’t eliminate the AI models taking a human life to achieve its goals – and the goals were not the preservation of even more human life. While some have said these scenarios are improbable, it doesn’t seem to bother them that the AI model believes human life falls below achieving their goals. Is there a place for AI in our world? Of course. But you have to ask, “Who is really watching out for us?” Is an AI model watching over itself? Is there reason to be cautious in rolling out AI everywhere? I certainly think so. If you have a chance to vote or otherwise make yourself heard on this topic, get involved and make your vote count and your voice heard. AI is scaring me almost as much as all of the socialists and communists winning Democratic races across the country…but that’s an article for the future (however dim the future is becoming). I’ve mentioned this before but I’ll say it again. I have unsubscribed from some news feeds because I noticed that every single article said it was written with the help of AI and I should do research on my own to make sure the article is accurate – me…not the author of the article. Really? Please note that this article and all of my articles are written without the help of AI. Jerry Hashimura Pahrump, NV  Having recently spent time in an ICU, still struggling with some issues, and facing surgery soon, news articles about health, especially those with terrible outcomes, seem to catch my attention more and more these days. I expect it’s a function of my recent experiences and just plain getting older. But an article about a tragic outcome for a young man caught my eye and I thought you might find this discussion interesting.
In the not too distant past, I used to think that insurance companies were to blame for many things related to our failing medical system. Then artificial intelligence (“AI”) came rushing to the forefront of every single thing in our lives, from students cheating on exams or using AI to completely write their essays, to the voice I talk to on a customer help line, to prescribing medication, to making diagnoses in place of doctors. So, I became worried that some AI algorithm was going to be the death of me at some point. Based on the article I read, what may be the death of me comes down to the oldest reason in the world – pure greed. So, what about that article caught my attention? A young man in Connecticut, described as a gifted student and athlete, died in what seems to me and his parents pure neglect. This young man played Division I hockey, earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, ran a half marathon, and graduated near the top of his class in high school. He planned to become a dentist like his two parents and was set to enter dental school. But a few days before he started dental school, he started vomiting, complaining of abdominal pains, and was unable to keep food down. He called his father at work and asked for a ride to the hospital. Everyone thought he had a stomach virus. For full disclosure, the young man did have a history of alcohol abuse, including prior treatment for alcohol withdrawal (sad for someone so young). His father took him to Bridgeport’s Milford campus hospital. His father took him to Milford because it is a bit smaller than the Yale New Haven main hospital and he thought his son would be seen quicker. I won’t bore you with all of the details of his treatment or lack thereof but his parents left him at 7 p.m. because no one believed his condition was life-threatening. The plan when they left was that their son would be rehydrated and put in a room. The parents were more concerned about whether their son could pick up his college parking pass the next day or if one of them would have to do it. They received a call at 4:45 a.m. to come to the hospital, their son was being administered CPR. They did not know that their son had been transferred to the ICU at midnight – no one thought to inform them. By the time they arrived at the hospital, he was for all intents and purposes already dead. From the time he was admitted to ICU at 12:38 a.m. until he went into cardiac arrest at 4:33 a.m., the only person present at his bedside was a nurse. In fact, it appears that no intensive care physician was ever at his bedside. The intensive care physician was leading the medical team via a TV screen – he wasn’t even located at the hospital and never put his hands on this young man or was at his bedside. The doctor at the hospital (a generalist) did not see this young man because the tele-ICU doctor was in charge of the patient. In fact, at 4:45 a.m., when this young man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he became unresponsive and showed seizure activity, he needed to be intubated. But the “generalist” doctor did not know how to do it and the Emergency Room doctor on duty who could do it did not know the way to ICU and had to ask directions and be escorted to ICU, so he was delayed by about 10 minutes. The young man was not intubated for 20+ minutes. As a father, I cannot imagine the horror these parents did and are enduring, having witnessed their son dying while a TV-screen doctor at Yale New Haven Health was in charge and ultimately pronounced their son dead. By the way, the distance from the Milford hospital to Yale New Haven Health is 8.8 miles. Apparently, “tele-ICU” has become very popular, from rural and remote hospitals (where I can see an actual need) to large and small hospitals in big and small cities and towns. Yale’s objective for tele-health was not to replace bedside care but to allow the “best of the best,” who are concentrated at flagship hospitals, to monitor patients at smaller community hospitals. I’m sorry, it doesn’t appear to me that the best-of-the-best did all they could to save this young man. Is it just me that thinks these tele-health models in larger towns and cities are implemented to make as much money for these hospitals as possible? You know, rather than hiring an ICU doctor to actually be on-site at a hospital and at the bedside of critically ill patients, they would rather increase their bottom line. Hire one doctor and let them handle multiple locations and patients via TV screens. What happened to the Hippocratic Oath of “do no harm”? Dr. Keith Corl, an emergency physician and intensivist (an ICU specialist), who has worked both at the bedside and as a tele-ICU doctor, believes tele-critical care has a very important role in rural hospitals where the alternative is no ICU doctor but, in large health systems, tele-ICU has increasingly become a cost-cutting measure. This same doctor reported that for several years the most common comment nurses wrote in annual surveys at one hospital he worked at was that they would not want to be patients in their own tele-ICU. What does that say about the care being received by ICU patients through a TV screen at that hospital? I think if the parents of the young man who died knew there was no doctor in the ICU, they would have driven the extra nine miles to ensure an actual doctor saw their son and not a TV screen doctor. I can be seen at the local VA clinic in Pahrump but I choose to drive into Las Vegas because the Pahrump VA clinic only offers tele-health with an actual doctor. I want my doctor to be able to put his or her hands on me or, at least, be in the same room with me when I have issues. After I was transferred from the Emergency Room in Pahrump to a hospital in Las Vegas, I was placed in ICU and the ICU doctors were bedside with me. Various ICU doctors saw me that night and the next day in ICU and I received excellent care. That is how it should be. I write this as a cautionary note to those seeking medical care. While you may not have a choice in the Emergency Room or ICU that takes you in for care, your family members and/or loved ones should ensure there is an actual doctor taking care of you and not a TV screen. Jerry Hashimura Pahrump, NV  Just when I thought New York City voters couldn’t get any stupider by voting in a socialist (communist) as their mayor, they proved me wrong. NYC voters and NY voters generally have overwhelmingly voted for three socialist/communist candidates endorsed by Mamdani – two for U.S. Congress and one for the NY State Assembly. Though we here in Nevada are far away from NY, we need to keep an eye on how these socialists/communists are getting traction and taking offices through which they can damage this great country. We need to stop it at every opportunity.
Let me give you a peak into just one of these socialist/communist, anti-American nutjobs that New York wants representing them because discussing all of them would take up too much space and my blood pressure can’t handle it. Darializa Avila Chevalier is a 32-year-old public defender, recent Muslim convert, and describes herself as a democratic socialist. What’s telling for me is when candidates (including Mamdani and his wife) delete their previous social media posts and try to distance themselves from their previous words. I’m sorry, I find their previous words the most authentic about these people. Part of her explanation is that her previous posts were made when she was much younger and she’s now more “evolved.” I call BS. These posts were made as recently as when she was 28. Again, I’m sorry, when I was 28, I had pretty much already decided on my values and they certainly didn’t radically change four years later – but maybe in fairness to her, I didn’t run from office so I didn’t need to try and fool people into voting for me. Some of her prior posts and positions are things like her trying to explain why she attended a pro-Palestinian rally on October 8th, 2023, the day after the Hamas slaughter of Israeli men, women, and children, including the rape of women and burning infants in their beds. No explanation she tries to give three years later would convince me she isn’t a pro-Palestinian Israel-hater. Not surprisingly. she refused to condemn Hamas’ actions. Another socialist candidate endorsed by Mamdani, Brad Lander, said he canceled his membership with the Democratic Socialists of America for promoting this rally. While many leftists believe Israel should not exist, Chevalier’s position is that it already does not exist. WTF? The only sensible thing I saw from her social media posts was one that said, “F**k Kamala Harris” after Harris told Guatemalan migrants in 2021 not to come to the U.S. illegally. Of course, now she says, “To Vice President Kamala Harris, I sincerely apologize” – trying to make up with the NY Harris supporters, I imagine. She also deleted thousands of posts that expressed her avid support for abolishing police, prisons, and borders – and opposed all forms of deportation (which she stands by today). In fairness to her, with the way NYC judges let felons and criminals out onto the streets, maybe they don’t need prisons but in the rest of America with sensible, pro-American citizen judges, we probably need more. As for no borders, we saw how that worked out for America under Biden and his border czar Kamala Harris. The number of innocent American citizens murdered, raped, sexually assaulted, and robbed by illegal immigrants is, unfortunately, not tracked but reading the news reports every single day before President Trump reversed the Biden/Harris open border policy tells you how frequently this was occurring. Chevalier said, “A world without borders – just like a world without prisons and police – is possible, necessary, and the only moral way forward.” She has also demanded in the past that the government confiscate private property, and nationalize major industries. This is the classic socialist and communist agenda and she used the exact words right out of the communist playbook, she wrote “Seize the means of production.” She also called for dissolving private health insurance companies. While in college, Chevalier founded a group calling for the total destruction of the West. In May of 2024, she was back on campus advocating alongside that group, wearing a Keffiyeh and t-shirt with the group’s name. Chevalier’s positions have many Democrats worried. One of the sane Democrats (maybe the only one from what I can tell), Senator John Fetterman, said, “Anti-Israel, Anti-American, Anti-Western Civilization. Why am I the only Democrat in the U.S. Senate that refuses to excuse this or defend any of these self-identified Communists?” Why, indeed. In another of her many deleted posts, she expressed anti-white women and anti-American sentiments, calling her home country “a f**king disgrace.” I’d chip in for a ticket to send her to her socialist country of choice; but these America-haters never seem to want to leave. This is who New Yorkers want to represent them? Another deleted post had her write, “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.” Having served 24 years on active duty under this flag, this disgusts me beyond what words can express – and it should disgust every America-loving citizen. One reporter wrote that, “The real ‘country over party’ test isn’t going to be about Trump, it’s going to be over communist Congress members who literally say they want to eradicate Western civilization.” Seeing New Yorkers vote for her makes me sick to my stomach. While I like to say that New York City deserves whatever they get for voting in Mamdani as their mayor (and they do), voting into Congress these other socialists/communists affects us all. I’ll close with one final comment. When Chevalier was asked, “This is what you’re going to get when you vote Democrat, a communist.” Her response (or non-response) was 90-seconds of a Kamala Harris word salad that says nothing, “This framing is one that I’ve been very proud to be able to say I don’t respond to, one in which I have been very intentional to say I won’t be reactive.” So, instead of taking 1 second to say “yes,” or 1 second to say “no,” she takes all that time to say nothing when we all know her answer means, “Yes, you get a communist.” Come on New York, wake the f**k up. Jerry Hashimura Pahrump, NV |
Authors"The Grassroot Conservative" publication is a collection of Southern Nevada authors with strong independent voices writing on the issues that matter. Matt Sadler is the editor-in-chief of this new eMagazine and blog, Each author brings life experience, talent, and insight to each thoughtful article. Archives
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