Good Ol' George

Winston U. Stevens, who lived out on Egg & I Road, was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young "pullets," and a dozen roosters to fertilize the eggs.

He kept records, and any rooster not performing went into the soup pot, or was sold, to be replaced by a younger, more productive bird.

This took him a lot of study and time, as he bought small bells and attached them to his roosters.

Each bell had a different ring tone, so he could tell which rooster was performing, without constantly watching them.
 
He had his son sit out under the shade tree, drinking sweet tea, and fill out efficiency reports by just listening to the various bells. "Very scientific," Winston always told anyone that would listen.

Winston's favorite  rooster, old George, was a very large and fine specimen, but Winston's son could very seldom hear his bell ring and told his father.

Winston was surprised, as he knew George's history. So he went to check-up on him. He saw the other roosters chasing pullets, their bells constantly ringing, but the pullets, on hearing the bells, would run and hide.

To Winston's amazement, George had his bell in his beak, so it wouldn't ring.

He'd mosey over to a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one - talk about saving energy!

Winston was very proud of George, so he entered him in the St. Louis County Fair and Animal Show. George became an overnight sensation with people.

The Judges at the fair were also highly impressed. They not only awarded George the "No Bell Piece Prize," but they also awarded him the "Pulletsurprise" as well.

Clearly, George was a politician in the making.

Who else, but a politician, could figure out how to win two of the most coveted awards in the world by being the best at sneaking up on the unsuspecting populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention.

YES, there is a moral to the story - it is: Vote carefully in the next election, you can't always hear the bells.

Outdated Elements of Government

TJOC: More from Newt. Combine the FBI and DEA. Get rid of the MJ laws; Alcohol is a gate-way drug too! Hum, what about nicotine - there's a few others out there, but big business has government in it's back pocket.

The Food and Drug Administration is destructive of the health of the American people. It is an obsolete bureaucracy with obsolete rules that do more harm than good.

The time has come to think through a 21st century replacement for a 108-year-old bureaucracy.

Two people, Joshua Hardy and Ron Woodroof, personify the problems with the FDA.

Joshua is a seven-year-old boy who became a national story this week seeking compassionate relief for a drug that might save his life but was not available because of the current bureaucracy, which takes 10 to 15 years to approve a drug.

Ron has been dead since September 1992 but he is currently famous because of a remarkable movie, The Dallas Buyers Club, and an extraordinary Academy Award winning performance by Matthew McConaughey as Ron Woodroof.

Both stories illustrate fatal flaws in the current FDA system.

In Woodroof's case he was told in 1985 that he only had 30 days to live. By breaking out of the system he found a series of drugs (many of them vitamins) that helped him live for 7 years -- 84 times longer than his doctors thought possible.

Instead of seeing Woodroof's remarkable achievement as something worth studying and learning from, the FDA and the medical establishment found his activities a direct threat to their authority. The movie is painful to watch both because people are dying and because our government is making their lives harder as they struggle to survive.

In effect Woodroof is told he can't try new solutions because they aren't approved -- even though the approved options will mean certain death.

He keeps pointing out that people are dying but the bureaucratic urgency is reserved for enforcing the establishment's authority.

This same passion for propping up the old order became apparent when seven-year-old Joshua sought help.

Joshua became famous when concerned citizens launched an online petition and got over 20,000 signatures. The drug he needed was available but the small company that developed it was heavily invested in the lengthy, expensive FDA approval process. A bad result for a single high-profile case like Joshua's would be a significant risk to its investment.

The FDA bureaucracy has become so cumbersome and so demanding that hardly any inexpensive drug or drug aimed at a small market (people with a rare disease) can overcome the cost of getting through the process.

FDA approval can easily cost $1 billion dollars.

Small companies literally bet their existence on getting their first drug approved.

This was the situation when Joshua needed the new drug. Technically the FDA might approve compassionate use but the company was afraid to risk its investment in the FDA trials.

A woman named Andrea Sloan encountered the same lethal bureaucracy when she tried to get a new, experimental cancer drug last year. I talked with her oncologist at M.D. Anderson, the largest cancer center in the world. He was totally frustrated by the system. She never got the drug and she died at 45.

Similarly Nick Audin got more than 500,000 signatures through an on line petition. He had three children and yet he never got the drug he needed. He died at 41.

The current system is destructive, arbitrary and at times heartless. Yet the reaction of the establishment is to defend it. The opposition to seven-year-old Joshua getting compassionate relief was captured perfectly in the Washington Post headline "Ethicists Worry Josh Hardy Case May Set Bad Precedent".

The Post described a "backlash" against helping the young boy:

"Is it rite to save 1 child an[d] not the rest?” wondered one commenter on a news forum. “It’s really not fair to the thousands of others that were turned down just because they didn’t make a big public outcry,” said another.

"The Herald-Sun newspaper in Durham, N.C., where the company that makes the drug is based, said it was glad for the boy’s sake that he was able to get the medicine. “But the process leaves us pained,” the editorial board wrote. “This is no way to make health-care decisions.”

"The story of how Joshua Hardy — a first-grader from Fredericksburg, Va., who is fighting off an infection after getting a bone-marrow transplant — got access to an unapproved treatment when others with similar requests were turned down highlights the ethical conundrums facing doctors, companies and regulators in the era of Facebook and Twitter."

The Post quoted one expert who managed to get the problem exactly backward. Consider his line of reasoning:

“You couldn’t get a more troubling and impossible-to-resolve moral dilemma than this one,” said Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Center.

From the perspective of the public and future patients, it’s best for the company to focus on getting the drug approved as soon as possible so that the largest number of people can be helped, Caplan said. But from a patient’s point of view, getting immediate access to the drug is what’s important.

“It’s a trade-off between the public good versus self-interest,” Caplan said. “They conflict. There is no way of getting around it.”

Yet Dr. Caplan has the problem exactly backward.

The focus should not be on the ethics of getting drugs through the slow and outdated system.

The focus should be on systems changes that would accelerate access to the newest, best, and most effective solutions.

Rationing transplants, for example, should be replaced with a dramatic acceleration of regenerative medicine so you can replant your own organs grown from your own cells in a manner that will eliminate rationing and waiting.

People faced with terminal illnesses should have informed-consent access to any drug which has passed a stage-one safety test. If the drug won't kill you and you have been told you are dying, you should have the right to experiment if you choose to live out your challenge (the opposite of the Dallas Buyers Club experience).

The use of placebos (where half of a test group is knowingly given something which will not work) should be ended. First, it is immoral to give people in desperate circumstances a false medicine. Second, with forty or fifty years of clinical trial data and new continuous, real time medical monitoring possible through mobile devices, it is possible to imagine a dramatically different model of testing new therapies. Many more people can be involved, the costs can be dramatically less, and the volume and speed of information flow can be enormous compared to the pre-smartphone, pre-wireless, pre-computer world.

A largely paper-based and slow moving FDA bureaucracy is simply incapable of this kind of modern, personalized model of developing new solutions in healthcare. That is why it needs to be replaced rather than reformed.

Instead of having compassionate access as a rare event requiring massive publicity, we should redesign the system to lower the cost of approval so companies can afford to share breakthroughs even during the testing phase.

Every American deserves compassion and we should design a system to achieve that goal.

Finally there has to be a very inexpensive approval process for breakthroughs with small but important market potential. A drug should not need to be worth billions to merit FDA approval.

Listen to my Breakout podcast next week for much more on this topic.

Remember Joshua and Ron, and demand a new approach to approving drugs and therapies.

Your Friend,
Newt

Thanks Newt

The month of March has not been a comforting one for those of us who are concerned about America’s security. The news in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and right here in the United States is of a world full of threats for which the Obama Administration is unprepared.

In Europe, Vladimir Putin has invaded a sovereign country and annexed part of its territory with little more than verbal protest from the United States and Europe in response. Ukrainian officials reportedly are begging the U.S. for military aid, probably the minimum step Putin would take seriously. We could arm Ukraine without putting a single American soldier at risk, but after nearly three weeks of Russian aggression there, the U.S. has yet to grant the aid request.

Instead, we’ve responded with meaningless gestures--slapping sanctions on the U.S. assets of just seven individual Russian officials. This for invading a European country. As the New Yorker joked, if Putin isn’t careful, we might even freeze his Netflix account next. Barring Russian officials from visiting Disney World is pretty pathetic.

Our failure to respond to Putin’s aggression in Ukraine could have consequences far beyond Crimea’s borders. After America’s weakness there in the last few weeks, we’ll just have to hope Putin doesn’t set his sights on a country like Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia--NATO members that we have an absolute binding obligation to protect with military force. But which of our actions in Ukraine are supposed to convince Russia that the United States is serious and that messing with other Eastern European nations would be a bad idea?

That possibility is just one reason Americans should be alarmed that neither the President nor the Democratic led Senate has mustered a serious response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In fact, after Speaker Boehner and the Republican led House passed aid to Ukraine with a massive bipartisan majority, Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid sent his members on vacation rather than approving an aid package to Ukraine last week.

Bob Schieffer on CBS imagined how the post-Senate adjournment conversation might have gone between Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart:

“Ohhhh," said the Russian. "So the Senate is not as worried about this so-called crisis as you are."

"Absolutely not so!" said Kerry. "Harry Reid, the Senate leader, has assured everyone the aid package is the very first thing the Senate will deal with when they get back from vacation in a week or so."

"Excuse my limited knowledge of how your government works," Lavrov said. "But vacation from what?"

Schieffer was being facetious, but his point is serious. For years now, the American government has failed to respond appropriately on critical matters of national security.


The current crisis in Ukraine is certainly one such case. Another was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal last week: a report by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission which concluded that “the U.S. could suffer a coast-to-coast blackout if saboteurs knocked out just nine of the country’s 55,000 electric transmission substations on a scorching summer day.” The challenge of replacing giant transformers means the resulting power outage could last months--a situation that might bring the country close to societal collapse as well as economic disaster.

Alarmingly, someone--we still have no idea who--has already practiced destroying one of these substations in a professional, astonishing attack on a California power station last year. As the Journal reported and I have discussed in a recent newsletter, a team of snipers destroyed 17 transformers in less than 20 minutes in the middle of the night last April. The crime remains unsolved.

Congress has known about the vulnerability of our nation’s electric grid for years but has done nothing. It has failed to pass commonsense measures like Rep. Trent Franks’s SHIELD Act, which would strengthen the grid against an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) that would, like the destruction of electrical power stations, plunge North America into darkness for months.

An EMP could come from something as simple as a strong solar storm or as complex as a small nuclear device detonated at high altitude.

Anyone who finds the later scenario unimaginable hasn’t been watching the coverage of Malaysian Airlines flight 370. The use of a commercial aircraft for violent purposes, as investigators are considering in the MH370 case, is one of the possibilities those of us who warn of EMPs worry about.

My friend Bill Forstchen has written an amazing novel, One Second After, imagining the aftermath of such an attack. It is frightening enough that it’s clear we should do everything in our power to guard against EMP events. But much like going on vacation in the middle of a major crisis in Europe, Congress can’t seem to take simple steps like those in the SHIELD Act to harden our critical infrastructure.

The events of the last few weeks remind us how dangerous and unpredictable the world can be. Americans deserve leaders who take our national security at least as seriously as their own reelection efforts.

Your Friend,
Newt

Senator Rand Paul

TJOC: Listen up America!

Senator Rand Paul spoke this week at a stronghold of the left-wing academy, the University of California, Berkeley, and he got a standing ovation. He did it by making an argument that any conservative can embrace and extend much further.

Senator Paul’s address critiqued the surveillance state and the substantial threat it might pose to Americans’ privacy. And certainly, the government’s intelligence capabilities are far greater than most Americans understood before a series of illegal disclosures in the last year.

Most people are probably comfortable, more or less, with our intelligence agencies having substantial capabilities for national security purposes. But when we learn that the CIA has hacked into the Senate Intelligence Committee’s staff computers--the committee charged with overseeing the CIA--it is no doubt time for a real conversation about the power of these agencies and checking their excesses.

The issues Senator Paul raised and to which Berkeley students responded so favorably, however, are just one example of a much greater challenge.
As Paul said in his speech, “I think I perceive fear of an intelligence community that’s drunk with power, unrepentant and uninclined to relinquish power....They’re only sorry they got caught.”

“Power must be restrained,” he continued, “because no one knows who will next hold that power.”

He makes the right point. But these words apply don’t apply just to the NSA and the CIA. They apply to the entire sprawling federal bureaucracy, which is out of control everywhere you look.

In fact, Senator Paul’s criticisms apply even more to the rest of the federal government. At least the NSA and CIA are giant bureaucracies predominantly occupied with keeping us safe. Most of the others are predominantly occupied with controlling us, in more and more aspects of our lives.

Every year, unelected bureaucrats write literally thousands of new rules. In 1949, the Code of Federal Regulations was 19,000 pages long. Today it is 170,000 pages. Between 1993 and 2012 alone, the government added 81,000 pages to the Federal Register. There is hardly a day that goes by when we do not violate several of these rules simply because it is impossible to know and to follow all of them.

Many of the rules are actual crimes, and these too are growing in number. Since the early 1980s the number of criminal offenses on the books has grown by nearly 50 percent, according to the Heritage Foundation.

As Harvey Silvergate describes in his book Three Felonies a Day, having so many rules to choose from gives the government (and federal bureaucracies in particular) endless opportunities for control and abuse. And we know that they exercise that power routinely.

The IRS has been systematically blocking conservative groups from obtaining tax-exempt status. They’ve demanded lists of Tea Party donors in the middle of an election season. They’ve asked a pro-life group about “the content of the members’...prayers.” The Justice Department has been conducting criminal investigations of journalists who report classified information, trampling the first amendment (while the administration does nothing about serious national security leaks that support the President’s image). Even seemingly innocuous agencies like the Fish and Wildlife Service conduct heavily-armed raids on private companies over tiny matters, as Gibson Guitar experienced a few years ago.

Senator Paul is right about the power-hungry, out of control nature of federal bureaucracies. But the American people have far more to fear than just the loss of their privacy.

Your Friend, Newt

More from Newt

Rarely do Americans get so vivid a glimpse of their government at work as former Health and Human Services official David Wright offered in his resignation letter at the end of February. The letter, which the Science Journal published on its website this week, is a detailed diatribe about just how dysfunctional the bureaucracy has become at every level.

Until recently, David Wright was director of the Office of Research Integrity, a division of HHS that investigates misconduct in federally funded scientific research. Wright was a professor at Michigan State University before he took the post at HHS two years ago--a post in which he now describes his predominant responsibilities as “the very worst job I have ever had.”

The reason, he writes, was that he spent at least 65 percent of his time as director “navigating the remarkably dysfunctional HHS bureaucracy” for spending approvals and permission to execute even the basic functions of his office.

Wright describes how bureaucratic higher-ups micromanaged his office so thoroughly that he had to seek these approvals “almost item by item.” There, he said, “people who are generally poorly informed about what [his office] is and does decide whether our requests are ‘mission critical.’”

Wright describes how, in one example of this insanity, he needed to convert a few audio tapes to CDs for an important presentation he was preparing. The bureaucrats whose approval he required waited two days before denying his $35 request.

It’s clear that Wright’s two years in the bureaucracy were a wake up call even for someone who expected his share of hassle. “I knew coming into this job about the bureaucratic limitations of the federal government, but I had no idea how stifling it would be,” he writes. “What I was able to do in a day or two as an academic administrator takes weeks or months in the federal government.” This is saying something, since university administrations are not exactly known for their speed and efficiency.

Whatever we decide we want the government to do, we want it to actually be able to do it. Unfortunately, the entire bureaucracy is as dysfunctional as David Wright describes his office at HHS--and not just incompetent, but also, as he points out, “secretive, autocratic, and unaccountable.”

The same dynamics Wright describes in his resignation letter help explain why Obamacare and its many new layers of bureaucracy were always a bad idea, and why the launch of the law has been such a failure. They also reveal much about why, for instance, the Pentagon procurement system has been broken for decades and its dozens of accounting systems can’t talk to each other; how NASA spent $150 billion in ten years without developing a vehicle capable of carrying astronauts into space; how the IRS sent 343 tax refunds to a single address is Shanghai and 655 to another address in Lithuania.

Wright says he came to believe that inevitably, “public bureaucracies quit being about serving the public and focus instead on perpetuating themselves.”

“I’m offended as an American taxpayer that the federal bureaucracy—at least the part I’ve labored in—is so profoundly dysfunctional,” he says. “...I’m saddened by the fact that there is so little discussion, much less outrage, regarding the problem.”

David Wright is correct, and Congress should hold hearings on his story and should solicit those of other federal employees. We desperately need a breakout from bureaucracy, which has grown frighteningly out of control in the federal government as well as in many states. As I discuss in my book Breakout, I believe communications technologies like the smartphones offer us an opportunity to circumvent many layers of bureaucracy and to take some of its functions literally into our own hands.

But the bureaucracy will never reform itself. Instead, it will resist all attempts at reform. The urgent political challenge facing the American people, then, is to replace it with modern, efficient systems that actually work. That task will be a real fight, and will take the help of lots of breakout champions like the newly-radicalized David Wright to make it happen.

Your Friend,
Newt

ThoughtsJustOffCenter: Why do you think that when companies have 'lay-offs,' middle management is the first to go? If you don't touch the 'product' or not running/supplying the money - you're gone. Because you're out of touch with what's happening - that's unless you a 'good people manager.' Yet you're still at risk.

Money - Money - Money - Money

The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

-  A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

-  A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

-  A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

-  A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

-  A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

- - - - -

While this thought is still fresh in our brain... let's take a look at New Orleans...  It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D) was asking Congress for 250 BILLION DOLLARS - to rebuild New Orleans. Interesting number... What does it mean?

Well .. If you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every Man, Woman and Child) - you each get $516,528

B.  Or... If you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans , your home gets $1,329,787.

C. Or... If you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.

Washington , D.C

- - HELLO!

Are all your calculators broken??

Building Permit Tax; CDL License Tax; Cigarette Tax; Corporate Income Tax; Dog License Tax; Federal Income Tax (Fed); Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA); Fishing License Tax; Food License Tax; Fuel Permit Tax; Gasoline Tax; Hunting License Tax; Inheritance Tax; Inventory Tax; IRS Interest Charges (Tax on top of Tax); IRS Penalties (Tax on top of Tax); Liquor Tax; Luxury Tax; Marriage License Tax; Medicare Tax; Property Tax; Real Estate Tax; Service Charge Taxes; Social Security Tax; Road Usage Tax (Truckers); Sales Taxes; Recreational Vehicle Tax; School Tax; State Income Tax; State Unemployment Tax (SUTA); Telephone Federal Excise Tax; Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax; Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax; Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax; Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax; Telephone State and Local Tax; Telephone Usage Charge Tax; Utility Tax; Vehicle License Registration Tax; Vehicle Sales Tax; Watercraft Registration Tax; Well Permit Tax; Workers Compensation Tax; and many more Taxes and FEES.

(And to think, we left British Rule to avoid so many taxes)

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago...

And our nation was the most prosperous in the world.

We had absolutely no national debt...

We had the largest middle class in the world...

And Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What happened?

Can you spell 'politicians' or 'corruption!'

- - - - -

And I still have to "Press '1' for English."

I hope this goes around the USA at least 100 times

What the hell has happened to our country?

ThoughtsjustoffCenter: There are good reasons for taxes; however, we’ve just let it get out of hand at every level of our government. Once the poop is out of the puppy, how the heck do you get it all cleaned up and teach the puppy to poop outside? – TRAINING! It’s about time ‘We the People’ started training our politian's. As a citizen, be accountable, VOTE! With that though, stop voting with other peoples money.

Reagan, Bush, and Obama: A Story in Three Pictures



 

ThoughtsJustOffCenter: This is really no big deal. I've hung my far share of drapery in my life. I've still push a vacuum too, do the dishes, ect. - and there's pictures of me doing these thing too (especially since I retired). Yet, I've got lots more of me camping, fishing, hiking, riding my motorcycle, working on cars, ect. Lots of things everyone does. Why haven't we seen any pictures like that of Mr. Obama? Yes, I can, and do, play golf too (with the ladies sometimes too)! That's the only thing I've seen pictures of him doing for recreation (makes me think ... he is a wuss).

I Agree

TJOC: What follows are "Thoughts From Someone Else," they're not mine, yet I agree with them. ((They are from someone that I haven't seen or talked to in close to 40-years. No - not my Dad or Mom, they both passed a few years back. They're from someone much younger than me.))

So, without further a-do:  TFSE - - - - -

How many students through the 12th grade actually learn reality? For that matter - even College?

Those WEALTHY WHITE PEOPLE, as I've heard every white person in America called also arrived here from another country.  Most arrived via several other countries.  To get yourself, and anyone with you, you Paid.  Your payment many times was with everything you had.  People sold everything that they owned just for a seat on the floor of the bottom of the boat.  Many women and children (sold) gave their bodies up sexually just to arrive in the New Country. 

I saw a history show on TV that stated that on average, more than 60% of all travelers died before reaching America.  Many from diseases caused by dead bodies laying near you, and by starvation.  Many white people willingly became indentured servants simply to stay alive in their new country.  Families were separated, some forever. 

How many whites tell everyone, I'm a white, English, Scottish, Irish, German, etc., American?  We should all be proud of who we are.  Don't tell if you aren't asked, is my opinion.  Also, not all blacks are African.  We should simply use Black, white, etc., if it is relevant.  I am NOT profiling if I say that I saw six white people and two black together and the tall black man shot a short white woman with red hair.  Definitive, correct information is absolutely necessary. 

We still sell ourselves.  A college student says that they will live in someone's home and cook, clean, work in the yard, drive people somewhere, etc. for their lodging payment.  Yes, it is a contracted job.  In many instances though they are taken advantage of because they have chosen to leave their family and friends and begin life over.  Or they simply don't know they are being used.  Or how to get out of it. 

Our country is going to pot far more internally than externally. 

Our entire government should be thrown out and restarted exactly as it began before. 

Congressmen and Senators work 3 months every year. 

If you don't finish a job, it waits until next year. 

Wake everybody up.

NO 'rspect"

ThoughtsJustOffCenter: "Misspelling is on purpose."

 

 

How to Start Each Day With a Positive Outlook

1. Open a new file in your computer.

2. Name it “Barack Obama.”

3. Send it to the trash.

4. Empty the trash.

5. Your PC will ask you, “Do you really want to get rid of “Barack Obama?”

6. Firmly Click “Yes.”

7. Feel better?

PS: Tomorrow we’ll do Nancy Pelosi, the next Harry Reid, then Patty Murry, then...


History Repeats - Again, Again, Again, and Again

TJOC: The foolishness of this administration continues the downfall of the United States of America. The supposed money saved by cutting the military budget will be spent to increase social programs that should be cut also. NO - not this administration, they'll continue to put more and more people, that refuse to work, on government subsistence program. Then they'll scream that they need more taxes to spend on their foolishness.

Did I say foolishness more than once? WAKE UP AMERICA!

- - - - -

Obama’s gutting of our armed forces could make us vulnerable to the greatest disaster for the U.S. military in half a century.

The Obama administration announced this week that it would shrink the Army to its smallest size since before World War II. This is a dangerous decision that projects weakness to our enemies and our friends alike.

We should not be fooled into thinking there is some great savings in this reduction. We may cut spending by a modest amount in the short term (money which will surely be wasted elsewhere), but we risk a long term cost that is much greater--one counted in lives as well as in dollars.

Indeed, as Americans we know too well the cost of unpreparedness. More than 2,300 Americans died at Pearl Harbor. Another 12,000 Americans and more than 60,000 Filipinos were immediately taken prisoner in Bataan following that attack, and an estimated 10,000 ended up dying.

We paid the price of weakness again nine years later in 1950, when 75,000 North Koreans came barreling over the 38th parallel unexpectedly and killed tens of thousands of South Koreans who were unprepared and poorly armed). More than 36,000 Americans lost their lives in that war.

The advocates of decline believe we cannot afford our current armed forces. But what we really cannot afford is weakness. Our struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan proved that the need to sustain two wars at once is not a crazy hypothetical.

For half a century, American defense policy has been based on the principle that being strong is safer than being week.

American strength has produced a much safer and more stable world. With the exception of the September 11 attacks (which were conducted by zealots determined to die for their cause), the threat of overwhelming force has worked to keep Americans safe--not to mention the hundreds of millions of people in allied countries around the world whose safety is guaranteed by our strength.

But to be effective, the threat of deterrence must be credible. Obama's plan to cut the Army signals American weakness virtually everywhere. Obama is setting the stage for potential defeats on a scale America has never seen before.

And make no mistake. We will be tested. Our enemies will probe us to see what they can get away with. Our men and women in the military will be put at risk.

President Obama’s decision to shrink the military is rooted in naiveté and a delusion about the world--that all the big military threats disappeared with the Soviet Union. That is wishful thinking. If anything, the world today is more chaotic and less predictable. Today we have less understanding of the threats against us than we did during the Cold War.

We do know that the unexpected can happen. Watch Ukraine and Russia this weekend. Ask yourself. Do you really want America to be as weak as President Obama has proposed? If not, call your Congressman and Senators and let them know.

Newt