Romney's Big Night - Again - And One More Thing

Regardless of whether or not Mitt Romney wins Ohio tonight, he will increase his delegate lead. He started the day with a 173 to 76. When the delegates are totaled after Super Tuesday, I believe his lead will increase his lead by 140 delegates or more, given the proportional representation in many of the states. (A little coaching from Karl Rove on that one.) He is running a national campaign that the other candidates cannot match.

Of interest is that Sarah Palin voted for Newt Gingrich. Wonder what some former fan girls think of that? (Do I mean you Sarah?) Is Sarah Palin secretly rooting for Romney?

In other news, Dennis Kucinich, lefty extraordinaire, lost in Ohio due to redistricting to another Democrat Rep, Marcy Kaptur. I have seen Kucinich on TV a number of times and almost always disagree with his inanity but can never bring myself to personally dislike him.

And One More Thing

The media portrays the race as Romney vs Santorum, but Gingrich is closer to Santorum than Santorum is to Romney in the count. From the RealClearPolitics delegate count site:

Romney - 404
Santorum - 161
Gingrich - 105
Paul - 61

Romney remains at 55% of the delegates available so far.

Trump Turds

Donald Trump may be known as a real estate tycoon, deal maker and for his eponymous towers, but Michele Malkin reminds us of the crony capitalist sources of his wealth, namely that Trump is a serial eminent domain abuser.

While casting himself as America’s new constitutional savior, Trump has shown reckless disregard for fundamental private property rights. In the 1990s, he waged a notorious war on elderly homeowner Vera Coking, who owned a little home in Atlantic City that stood in the way of Trump’s manifest land development. The real estate mogul was determined to expand his Trump Plaza and build a limo parking lot — Coking’s private property be damned. The nonprofit Institute for Justice, which successfully saved Coking’s home, explained the confiscatory scheme:

“Unlike most developers, Donald Trump doesn’t have to negotiate with a private owner when he wants to buy a piece of property, because a governmental agency — the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority or CRDA — will get it for him at a fraction of the market value,. . .
. . .
Trump has attempted to use the same tactics in Connecticut and has championed the reviled Kelo vs. City of New London Supreme Court ruling upholding expansive use of eminent domain. He told Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto that he agreed with the ruling “100 percent” and defended the chilling power of government to kick people out of their homes and businesses based on arbitrary determinations:

Nice to see Trump talking up Gingrich; if that doesn't kill tea party support for Newt, I don't know what will.

A Quick Note on Newt Gingrich's Palestinian People Comment

Newt Gingrich's comments below brought him controversy and attacks from the Palestinians themselves as well as other Republican candidates.




That his remarks are accurate doesn't appear relevant to those criticizing him. A succinct history of the term, Palestinian, makes that clear. However, I think that a people are who they decide to be, for reasons good and otherwise. One might believe that the Arabic peoples who are descendants of settlers of the territory that is now Israel could have made other choices about their national identity. They did not and that is now a fact that must be dealt with. There was no American people until after the revolutionary war. The main allegiance of people was to their state and not the United States as a whole initially. This is evidenced by the fact that prior to the Civil War, sentences might be constructed that begin "The United States are. . ." whereas after the war, the usage changed to "The United States is. . ." I believe wholeheartedly in the invented people know as Americans.

Gingrich's comments show that he can't resist showing off; trying to impress his interviewer with just how smart he is on a subject clearly of interest to that audience. Rather than thinking clearly how he might use the opportunity to further the interests of the United States, especially in the event that he becomes President, Gingrich veers into immaturity with a true but irrelevant comment sure to ignite controversy.

In my view, Obama suffers from the same malaise of short-sighted and egotistical behavior, but just isn't near as smart as Gingrich. We don't need an immature conservative President. Regardless, I am hoping for Newt to clean up his act, and show that he can act Presidential. I'm not supporting him, but if he is the nominee, I want him to be in a position to beat Obama.

Newt Gingrich Called Me

I got a call from Newt Gingrich tonight, not the man himself, of course, but a recorded message from him. I have noticed that the tactics that campaigns use in direct mail and fund raising telephone calls differ from what they use on television and in press releases. For that reason, I often report on calls like this to shed light on the process.

Newt's call started with a live human being who let me know that although Newt was leading in the polls, the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries would be starting in January, so there was not time to waste in getting campaign cash into the candidates' coffers. (I am using Newt and not Gingrich, because his paid callers were not using his last name either.) He then put on a recording of Newt's which had the following main points.

• Now that he is the front runner, Gingrich has been subject to a smear campaign from left leaning media. This is to be expected, because he is the candidate they fear most.
• Three things distinguish him from other Republican candidates, all of whom would make a better President than Barack Obama.
  
• Gingrich is the best debater, and therefore will crush Obama in Presidential debates in October. This crushing will lead inevitably to Obama's defeat.
  
• He has proven leadership experience. He cited his ability to get welfare reform done as a bipartisan deal with a Democratic administration.
• He claimed that the breadth of his solutions was more compete than any of his opponents. [This is not necessarily a good thing IMHO, and shows his penchant for always pointing out that he is the smartest kid in the class. Since I was actually the smartest kid in the class, I don't enjoy the competition.]
• He chided fellow Republicans for their attack ads against him, and pointed out that Obama will have a billion dollars of campaign cash and free media from the likes of MSNBC to attack Republicans next fall. He said we needn't give them any help.

After the call, a woman came reminding me that true conservatives always knew that Newt's superior credentials and ideas would cause him to rise to the top of Presidential polls. She wasn't actually that eloquent, seemingly barely able to read her script. She proceeded to ask me for a $100 donation. At least it wasn't a three dollar raffle ticket to have dinner. I had heard enough by that point, and told her I was supporting Ron Paul, just to see if I could get a reaction. She just plowed on with her script, so I hung up.

As these things go, I believe Gingrich wasn't really flying anything under the radar, good for him. I am pretty unenthusiastic about my choices; but I actually think that Gingrich could beat Obama, if and its a big if, he didn't self destruct in the interim. Unfortunately, the risk averse bet would be to go with Romney, but hedging one's bets don't produce big pots.

More On Gingrich and Lean Six Sigma -UPDATE

I noticed I received some search engine traffic because of a previous post on Newt Gingrich's endorsement of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) for the federal government. I loathe LSS, but I didn't explain why. LSS is a process improvement methodology already widely adopted by the Department of Defense. How could I be against process improvement? I'm not. I'm against a cumbersome bureaucratic approach to process improvement that actually prevents the outcome it purports to achieve. If you applied lean thinking to the LSS formal methodology, you would toss most of it overboard as non-value added, to use the vernacular.

My personal experience is that LSS events always fail to deliver results, but process improvement projects that have a specific goal usually succeed. Why is that? Because one of the Seven Habits is to start with the end in mind. LSS has no particular end in mind, because it is focused on process. But process is only a means to an end, so LSS is doomed to failure.

But of course, it lives on, like some zombie religion that you can't seem to kill off, no matter how many lives it wrecks. Its adherents display all of the personality traits of cult victims, hence KT's hilarious video in the previous post and my tweet that I thought that Newt was a Christian.


KT has a post where he quotes an anonymous industrial engineer at GE regarding LSS and process improvement.

It used to be that I (a trained industrial engineer), in the normal course of my day, would observe quality or process problems and take appropriate action to analyze and correct them. I could often do this very rapidly so that we would enjoy the benefits of the changes immediately. But with the introduction of Six Sigma, such a logical system is no longer possible.

With Six Sigma, if you don't run the gantlet of Six Sigma paperwork (charts, reviews, critiques, etc.) for every little thing, you're wasting your time. You see, now at GE, the litmus test for any employee is Six Sigma credit, a fact that I noticed while completing one of my first Six Sigma projects in order to earn my Green Belt certification.

Read the whole thing.

Exit question: Is Newt really serious about lean six sigma, or is it actually a devious plot to bring the entire federal government grinding to a halt?

UPDATE

In the comments, KT says:

I think Newt read about it or was told about it by some corporate consultant and he fell in love with it. Newt's got lots of great ideas, but since he never does anything, he can't tell which ones will work and which ones are just blather.

We don't need a conservative version of Obama in the White House. Gingrich may have been Speaker of the House, but that was a while ago, and he has never really had an executive leadership position.

Quote of the Week

From Vincent Carroll in the Denver Post:

Newt Gingrich is a morally challenged, self-important opportunist who last weekend dismissed the House Republicans' Medicare reform with the equivalent of a Bronx cheer.