Herman Cain~Newt Gingrich in Lincoln/Douglas-type Debate C-SPAN Sat.11- 5: 8 PM EDT

Republican 2012 presidential candidates Republican 2012 presidential candidates Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich met in a Lincoln-Douglas style debate on current economic and social issues facing the U.S.

I actually agree that most of the work defending perry is a waste of time. Frankly, the candidate needs to defend themselves. If they do it well, they’ll survive, if not, they won’t.

Nothing we do here will make a bit of difference. However, I do find input from other conservatives useful (or I used to when conservatives actually voiced considered judgements, now it’s more like campaign central, which is useless. In the former case, arguing with people is a good way to determine truth, or understand the issues better. For example, I actually am much more supportive of giving children of illegals in-state tuition in a situation like that in Texas than I was before I started arguing. Not that I’m going to push for it in my state.

Anyway, someone here mentioned they thought I did a better job of defending Perry than he did. I don’t know if that’s true, but if so, Perry is in trouble, because he needs to defend himself. I’ve been told he’s won 3 elections. I know he had these SAME issues against him in those elections, so I have to presume he CAN defend himself. It’s almost like he thought he wouldn’t have to. Anyway, that will settle itself.

But having discussed this over the past couple of days, I’ll likely stop wasting my time in the attack-Perry threads. I can answer the charges, and ignore the vitriol and childishness, but I don’t see the point.

And I’ve made my arguments against Cain. I don’t want to promote my arguments to their own threads of a blog, because I don’t want them to become fodder for attacks. So I’ll probably be done with those threads as well.

I have a profound fear that if I can see these facts about Cain, so can many people. But the media is not covering it. I expect them to, the question is when. I hope our candidates go after Cain for his lack of real experience — because if he can survive it, it will innoculate him, and if not we’ll have saved conservatism from disaster.

And the nice thing about that will be it won’t matter what I think or you think — either Cain will come out stronger, or will fail, on his own.

Can’t promise I’ll shut down. I do enjoy the arguments. But I’ll most likely be scarce in attack threads for a while. Maybe after the next debate. In any case, we’ve got our final push here in Virginia to try to take back our senate.

Yes.

I come here for discussion that is useful, ultimately. That means discussion that helps to clarify issues and contributes information that people may want to consider.

Sometimes I post to people simply because I know many people are reading the thread, and perhaps these other people are interested in the counterarguments that might be made. IOW, sometimes it’s obvious the person I’m posting to has no interest in an honest or open debate; at the same time, their points help me make my points to anyone reading the thread, so I go for it.

That said, I’m going to be ignoring a lot more of the clearly ridiculous posts (unless, in the great FR tradition, there’s an opportunity for some wholesome humor involved).

I don’t agree that things that happen here have no influence. I think FR is read or at least perused by many pundits. I have seen things show up in widely published pieces that I know had their origin in discussions on FR. However, in general, you’re right: the process is what it is and where go where it goes. It all depends on the candidates.

I think you know the difference between making a substantive point and simply attacking/defending a candidate. So I hope you’ll continue on with that. The problem is that not all posters do understand how to make a substantive argument — they think, for example, that simply whining “why don’t y’all like Perry?,” or unloading a list of conclusory statements about the candidate’s record, or claiming that the reason people don’t agree with them is that they are “uninformed” (or worse), will be engaged in the same way as constructive criticism or praise of policy position. Those, I am going to ignore.

Wow, I’ve seen more than a few insipid remarks here, but that one takes the cake. Sounds like you’re one of the losers who couldn’t change and got left by the wayside.

Thanks for the old ad hominem reply.

Actually what I am is an old creative software guy. There's a pretty good chance you seen some of the stuff I've done, and read about some stuff you probably haven't seen. I'm also a math guy. (Math degrees, SAT scores with closed curves only, you know or maybe you don't)

Here's what Wikipedia says about your beloved six-sigma:

A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of the products manufactured are statistically expected to be free of defects (3.4 defects per million).

So this BS is about manufacturing. Much of the stuff I do has NEVER been done before. (E.g. I was the one who wrote the control software for the first electric brakes that were flown on an airplane; and stopped it too.) Unfortunately the bozos who run big corporations and get sold this six-sigma load really don't view manufacturing very differently from R&D and Engineering; and they have their underlings tell us how to do what we do. The problem is that they haven't a clue. And they don't know how to compose symphonies either.

But what about manufacturing. Does it matter what the cost is of trying to manufacture something with fewer than one failure in every 250,000 units? Not to the Ivory Tower A$$holes who push this nonsense, it doesn't. Sure it's nice not to get any returns. But the company I am most familiar with that pushes this nonsense, manufactures in the thousands, not millions; and half the stuff they ship out comes back for repair. It's a real Dilbertorium.

ML/NJ

If you think Lean is about manufacturing only, you simply don't know what it is. I don't know who you've worked for or what “bills of goods” they've been sold, but Lean is about much more than simply production.

Six Sigma on the other hand has almost nothing to do with production per se and is primarily an engineering design toolkit - and yes, manufacturing engineering as well.

The comment about symphonies is non sequitur idiocy. No one has ever suggested the use of either for purely creative aesthetic endeavors. But then you know that don't you? You were just looking for a chance at a cheap shot.

Hank

"Six Sigma on the other hand has almost nothing to do with production per se and is primarily an engineering design toolkit - and yes, manufacturing engineering as well."

Truth be told, Six Sigma can be applied WAY beyond simply manufacturing. (Seriously, the guy who posted to you is trusting Wikipedia to tell him what it is?!?!?!?) While early adopters primarily applied it to manufacturing, Six Sigma is a PROCESS IMPROVEMENT TOOL that can be applied to nearly any process that can be measured. For example, the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain has used six sigma as one of its primary tools to help it deliver world class customer service. Newt Gingrich is absolutely correct in his desire to apply it to the federal government... applied even half-heartedly, I'd bet it could save billions.

In terms of application, I wouldn't say it's primarily an engineering design tool, although using it in design is a great proactive way to use it. But it's also a great improvement tool to fix processes that are broken, whether by bad design or simply from unforseen degradation over time.

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