Gilda Radner’s famous “Roseanne Rosannadanna” character was famous for the line “Oh never mind” after a long rambling rant on Saturday Night Live.

Richard Gonzalez, Chief Operating Officer of Abbott Laboratories (market cap $108 billion) has a Bachelors Degree from the University of Houston and a Graduate Degree in Biochemistry from the University of Miami. Except he really doesn’t.

Niaspan, Abbott’s potential blockbuster drug, was going to be the next big thing in cardiovascular care – except a study published after it hit the market showed it didn’t do anything to prevent heart attacks.

Is there a link between a COO who fudged his credentials and a drug his company over-hyped? Do we care if Harvard jocks cheated on tests or if Derrick Rose faked his ACT score to get into Memphis costing the school its NCAA trophy?

I’ve been grappling with these issues since I read Phil Rosenthal’s excellent column in last Sunday’s Chicago Tribune about Gonzalez’s reported degrees. Maybe I wouldn’t have cared as much if I hadn’t paid a lot of money for Niaspan pills and struggled with its side effects until I heard it was ineffective in its primary goal – to reduce the risk of heart attacks.

I have generally looked at resumés as plausible fictions. I care more about the tone and footnotes than the “credentials.” I am also very interested in what is omitted from a resumé – jail time, drug abuse history, ADD, illness and recovery, psychotherapy, religious observance, sports team preference, physical fitness, underwear preference. OK, laugh, but I care if a person has a sense of humor and a basic candor and honesty. I know Human Resources prefers the bland and measurable to the touchy feely stuff. I care about the person more than the credentials. So, my question is: If you fake the credentials do you necessarily disqualify yourself for a job – even if you are caught?

Richard Gonzalez, Abbott Board Member, is scheduled to be the CEO of AbbVie, Abbott Laboratories’ pharma division that is being spun off from the rest of the company. Gonzalez must be considered a topnotch executive to get this job after 30 years at Abbott. He made $5.5 million in compensation last year. His Board is not kicking him out because of the college degree flap like Yahoo! did with Scott Thomson and Bausch and Lomb did with Richard Zarrella. I see the point of forgiving a mistake. Like Gilda Radner’s Saturday Night Live character, Roseanne Roseannadanna, used to say – “Oh, never mind.”

But then there is that little Niaspan thing – the big drug that couldn’t. Can we draw a straight line between Gonzalez and Niaspan?

“Oh, never mind.”

Questions: Is embellishing a resumé a big deal?

If you found out your most valued employee had not divulged a drug abuse history what would you do?

The new PADS Permanent Facility for the Homeless in Country Club Hills, Ill.

For 10 years, once a month, I would leave my comfortable bed at 4:45 a.m., drive through the winter slush to a local Jewish temple, and schlep mattress pads off the floor where 50 homeless guys had snored the night away in warmth and awkward camaraderie.

I did it not out of a soaring sense of compassion for the hapless poor of American society, though those feelings did warm me on those frigid mornings, but because my friend Jerry Levine, oil industry lobbyist and book reviewer extraordinaire for Today’s Machining World, suggested I do it. The volunteers used to go out for breakfast after the homeless men were out the door, some headed to jobs, many meandering down the streets to the local McDonald’s or White Castle to idle their lonely days away.

Today I will celebrate the official opening of the PADS Permanent Facility for the Homeless in Country Club Hills, Ill., a $20 million dollar permanent site where the homeless, evicted, displaced folks seeking shelter can find a safe place to stay temporarily–maybe several months–and hopefully pull their messy lives together.

After my heart attack four years ago, I stopped doing my monthly shelter stint, but Jerry and I continued having breakfast regularly. He has given me an insider’s view of how this testament to the best of America’s spirit of volunteerism and charity somehow survived the venality of American political infighting and the sloppiness of Government bureaucracy to somehow pull the money together for this amazing edifice for the poor of the South Suburbs of Chicago.

Jerry Levine, writer of the “Book Review” for Today’s Machining World and advocate for the construction of the new PADS facility for the homeless in Country Club Hills, Ill.

I know the project would never have been built without Jerry’s untiring effort and unshakable belief in the need for shelter for the sad, tortured and often just luckless among us.

Of the 20 or so towns in the area, exactly none of them wanted a permanent homeless shelter in their community. “Not in my backyard” was the view of the local mayors. For almost 15 years, the shelter volunteers talked up various sites, but nobody would take a chance on their local political future to advocate for a group that had no clout and probably didn’t even vote.

But four years ago, a bizarre event that could never be anticipated took place. Dwight Welsh, a white mayor, in a virtually all black town, Country Club Hills, had an epiphany. His mother was dying and he claims that on her deathbed she told him to build the homeless shelter in his town. Crazy story, but Welsh made it his mission to fulfill his mother’s dying wish. He needed a plot of land to be donated that was big enough and accessible by public transportation. And it had to be isolated enough so neighbors wouldn’t go nuts about the structure killing their property values.

And Walsh knew he had the perfect piece of ground for the project. A developer wanted to build an outlet mall on a strategic parcel near two Interstate highways in the village. The owner of the property, a wealthy black funeral home operator, needed to keep Dwight Welsh happy if the Outlet Mall was ever going to be built. Dwight cajoled three acres out of him and then the race began for the government money to build the project. If you had the land and the permits, the money was out there in various government vaults if you knew how to work the bureaucracies that controlled it. Jerry told me that there were consultants who made a career out of playing the game of unlocking government money. When you find the right consultants, lawyers, architects and politicians you can stitch together the funds if you have the site.

Today, the local politicians converged on the brand new 5-story building sitting in the prairie next to the Interstates, within walking distance of my office, for a ribbon cutting ceremony.

The local shelters in the churches and temples are still needed but now there is finally a port in the storm for the homeless people to hopefully repair their lives. For my friend Jerry Levine, it is the culmination of a good man’s effort to help people few of us really care about. For the local Mayor, Dwight Welch, it’s the validation of his mother’s wish.

Does the American political system work? Every once in a great while – yes – it does.

Question: Is helping the homeless a proper function of government?

Today I get to celebrate the end of IMTS and the start of the Jewish New Year – Rosh Hashanah. For me these are surprisingly connected events to be treasured and assessed.

My life is a combination of the mundane and the spiritual, but I find it strange and sometimes inspiring how the stuff of business and the practice of my religion wrap around each other so often in my daily life. This hit me at IMTS when I met with a fellow traveler in the machine tool world at the Mazak exhibit. He had sought me out after reading my work for many years. We share a love of this business, a passion for sports and to my surprise, a commitment to Judaism. I know some people wonder why I occasionally bring religion and God forbid – God – into my columns, but he gets it, and out of the blue, he engaged me about my Judaism over bottled water at Mazak.

One of the nice things about doing Swarf for 12 years is that people feel like they know me, which frees them up to expose more of themselves than they normally would to somebody they’ve never shaken hands with before.

We played a little “Jewish Geography.” He knows a couple of distant cousins of mine, at least I think they might be cousins. Then he asked me about my religious practice, which seemed odd with the machining centers cutting metal 20 feet away. Yet he asked with such a matter of fact sincerity that I answered him with more depth and nuance than I would have even expected of myself. Two sixty-something guys who had never actually met sat and talked about how we pray at IMTS in Chicago. There was a refreshing innocence in the incongruence of the moment and it made me sweat with the rawness of the happening.

I usually have a lot of deep conversations over the course of a week. I guess I crave them because they give texture and depth to my days. I was discussing with my wife Risa my struggle to get as much done during my work day that I feel I ought to and she suggested I curtail my serendipitous conversations which sop up my available minutes. My talk at the Mazak booth was one of those. It took me away from some other business connections I wanted to make at IMTS.

But as I think about it today, as Rosh Hashanah is about to begin, I would gladly trade three business card exchanges at IMTS for my 45-minute ad hoc talk that intersected our spiritual connection.

Will that talk transfer into more money in my bank account? God knows – or doesn’t. But in September of 2012, the beginning of my New Year, this is how I look at it. I have a finite number of days left of health and breath. I want these days to be as rich as possible, which definitely has something to do with my business success and my organizational acumen, or lack of it. But it’s the emotional connection that really makes my days precious. If I can find that and savor it at those crazy incongruous times it surfaces, like at the Mazak display, I want to go for it. Screw the “to do” list, give me my moments.

Question: Should religion be off-limits in business?

The election is two months away. Polling data, which has been remarkably accurate during the primaries, is showing a close popular vote, but the electoral map favors President Obama. A Republican must win Florida and Ohio, most likely, to win the presidency because California and New York are solidly Democratic. If Pennsylvania goes Democratic, which is likely according the polls, and Illinois is probably not in play, Florida and Ohio become absolutely crucial for the Republicans to put enough electoral votes on the board to win.

I thought Mitt Romney made an excellent speech to the Republican Convention, but it was too late at night to get a big audience. Viewership was down 30% from 2008. Marco Rubio of Florida made a superb nominating speech, but the talk after the event was about Clint Eastwood’s ad-libbed empty chair fiasco. The fireman from Medford, Massachusetts, who should have had the spotlight, not Eastwood, got little notice 90 minutes ahead of Mitt Romney.

In my opinion, the Republican Convention was a partial success. I give it a B- for effectiveness, because they did little to counteract Obama’s huge lead among Latino voters, about 70-30. If this holds, Romney probably loses Florida, Nevada, and New Mexico. Game almost over.

Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan was a good one, though it defied the popular wisdom that he needed Senator Rob Partman of Ohio to help him win the Buckeye state. The merit of choosing Ryan is that he gives the impression of a person who could be President, and he has a clear economic policy that can help define the waffling Romney campaign. But the Democrats are attempting to smear Ryan on his Medicare stance to push Florida seniors toward Obama.

But I do not think the election is a done deal. Obama’s popularity has slid considerably in four years.

His leadership has been weak. He has not sold his policies to the country. The high unemployment rate is still his albatross. The unforgiving negativity of Republicans in Congress has actually made Obama look good. I do not see the Affordable Heath Care Act (Obama Care) as a major issue in the election because nobody really understands its impact yet. Dodd-Frank, though important to banks, also has little visibility with voters.

What can still win the election for Romney is his performance in the Debates. Al Gore and John Kerry both lost the election in the Debates and McCain did not help himself.

Romney needs to impress America that he will be the leader to take the country to a better place economically or Obama must look cynical or ineffectual to change what appears to be a likely outcome today. Personally, I think Romney must do something stunning to change the 70-30 Latino advantage of Obama. Maybe if he spoke in Spanish to declare his support for the “Dream Act” he could change the election. I think if he plays it safe on immigration he loses the game. No Florida, Democrats win.

Question: What would you do if you were Mitt Romney?