The Shadow of the Bear

Trump's Real Wall

Is Trump biting off more than he can chew?

From the beginning of his campaign, and even before, Donald J. Trump has been confrontational. As president, he has been continually disruptive, starting feuds all over the landscape, and lashing out at his enemies, real and imagined.

He has insulted the handicapped, women, John McCain, and Gold Star parents, started unnecessary trade wars with China, Canada, and the EU, and issued an ALLCAPS threat to the Iranians in response, not to something they did, but to something they said. He has waged close to all-out war on the media—except of course for his main source of faux (pronounced Fox) news and threatened to reduce the Department of State and our diplomatic corps to less than bit player status in his four-year reality show. He has rolled back environmental and other protective regulations that threaten the environment for decades to come. Except for Putin of Russia and Kim of North Korea, who seem to be his best buds, he’s picked fights with just about every imaginable demographic.

He has, though, picked one fight that might just be his Waterloo. He has frequently and persistently of late undercut and undermined the US intelligence community, expressing a preference for believing Vladimir Putin over them. So far, he has not picked on the military as an institution, because like many draft dodgers of his generation, he is enthralled by men in uniform—as long as they are not him—and, I believe he’s afraid of them. The problem is that none of his love interests, not Putin, not Kim, and not the US military, can aid his hold on power. Putin tried, and even succeeded in helping him gain the Oval Office, but I don’t think there’s much he can do to keep him there or ensure him a second term. Kim can only add more complications to his life, and unless he can somehow install a military dictatorship with himself as figure-head leader while America is sleeping, the military will continue to follow the orders of the commander-in-chief, but they’re not gonna do much for him politically.

The intelligence community, though, and to a lesser extend the federal law enforcement community, can make or break him. He likes to tell us how smart he is, and even if that was true—which it definitely is not—he still needs information in order to effectively use that smartness. By dismissing his intelligence professionals out of hand as he does, and because of his tendency to blab classified information to people like the Russians as he did with the Israeli information, he ensures that they will only give him the bare minimum. The law enforcement community also has information that would be valuable for him to have, but since he’s always attacking them, and never listens anyway, he will continue to NOT have that information.

In the meantime, he keeps wading deeper and deeper into that swamp he swore he’d drain but has instead simply added new creatures. One day, he’ll be so deep he’ll be breathing swamp water, and guess what. He’s not likely to have a hand reaching out to extricate him, because by that time, all the hands that could have helped will have been slapped.

Trump’s behavior for the past eighteen months reminds me of an old saying, ‘Be careful who you step on on you way up the ladder, because you’ll have to pass them on the way back down.’

Interview on 'Novel Ideas'

The link below is to an interview I did with Nick Wales on his site, Novel Ideas, talking about how I started writing westerns.

http://nickwale.org/2018/07/24/writing-to-set-the-staff-straight-meet-learn-and-discover-the-secrets-of-future-western-million-pager-charles-ray/

Is this for real, or just another diversion?

A Tale of Trump's Taxes

Since the administration of Richard Milhous ‘Tricky Dick’ Nixon, U.S. presidents have publicly released their tax returns; a way to reassure the public that they have no financial entanglements that would interfere with their duty to the nation. Every president, that is, except Donald J. Trump.

During the campaign, then-candidate Trump refused to release his returns, claiming that he couldn’t because they were being audited by the IRS—this, despite the IRS stating publicly that an individual had the authority to release his returns even during an audit. There were, if I remember correctly, vague promises that he would release the returns if elected.

Well, we’re over a year and a half into the Trump Administration, and President ‘Dishonest Donald’ Trump still has not released his returns, breaking a 40-year precedent that has been honored since the days of Jimmy Carter.

Why, one has to ask, is he so jealously guarding documents that every senior government official in a position of responsibility is required to provide, and presidents before him have willingly provided? Questions that arose after his sniveling, submissive performance in Helsinki when he shared the podium with his bromance, Vladimir Putin, make these documents even more important, and makes me wonder why the secrecy.

I don’t want to start another conspiracy, so I’ll say up front, I don’t know, and we may never know, but I would like to offer some possibilities for his reluctance to let us see his tax returns.

1.      They show that he’s not nearly as rich as he claims he is, and we all know how sensitive he is on that subject.

2.      They show income from questionable sources such as the Russian mob, or even domestic underworld sources. His flirtation with organized crime figures has been well documented, as has his relationship with Roy Cohn of McCarthy Red Scare fame, who himself had underworld connections.

3.      They show expenses, especially if he used a credit card or third-party payer, that prove conclusively that he’s lied about some of his extramarital liaisons or that he actually did hire . . . ladies of ill repute to stage the salacious Moscow hotel event.

4.      They show investments or debts from Russia that indicates he’s in hock to them up to his eyebrows.

5.      They show money flowing in from unusual sources that can eventually be traced back to Russian intelligence or Putin himself.

I’m not ranking these scenarios, and I’m sure there are other possibilities, but if I had to rank them, items 1,2, and 3 would head my list, simply because they are so typical of the man. Item 4 is not beyond the realm of possibility, while number 5, though unlikely, also can’t be entirely dismissed.

All of this speculation and the constant questions and doubts could be laid to rest if the man would just man up and release his returns. An alternative would be the House Ways and Means Committee Chairman requests the returns from the IRS as he’s authorized to do and let them be reviewed by members of both parties on his committee. At least some of our elected representatives would know what’s what. Not the ideal solution, but better than nothing. But, Rep. Kevin Brady, a Republican from the 8^th District of Texas, ain’t about to do that. Like many of his GOP colleagues, he will continue to support and enable Trump until they go over the cliff.

So, it’s likely we’ll never know. But, it’s such a minor thing. If you’re honest and have nothing to hide, what’s wrong, when you’re the top dog in the kennel, with letting people see what everyone of your predecessors has let them see?

I’d like to see a reporter at one of Sarah Sanders’ press conferences bring this up, just to see how she punts it.

Yeah, he's a real tough guy, all right

Facts and fiction

Can you believe anything this guy says?

Where is Global Leadership when you need it?

With the current US administration’s abdication of global leadership, the world is more in need of effective leaders across the entire spectrum of business, social organizations, and government than it has been since the onset of World War II.

It doesn’t matter whether the objective is negotiating fair bilateral or multilateral trade agreements, dealing with foreign interference in domestic elections, or with the global threat of climate change, leadership that is incapable of communicating and acting across cultural and national boundaries is not only ineffective, it’s dangerous.

Now, there hasn’t been a time since the establishment of organized communities or nation-states that global, or cross-cultural leadership hasn’t been important. But, in the current era, when air travel has reduced the time between the most distant points on earth to hours instead of months, and technology has made it possible to communicate around the globe with the press of a button, the ability of leaders to navigate the uncertain terrain is more important than ever.

It’s always a good idea to define what you’re talking about so that everyone involved in the conversation is singing from the same song sheet. For the purposes of the present discussion, global leadership as ‘the capacity to develop and maintain multiple key cross cultural or international relationships toward a common purpose.’ This definition, by the way, applies to any leadership situation.

How do we recognize effective global leaders? Where do they come from?

For as long as I can remember, the debate over whether leaders are born or raised has raged, with neither side giving in. From my perspective of 50 years of experience in government—being led, observing other leaders, or leading—I’ve found that, while truly great leaders do share some common traits, and some people do have a larger share of these traits than others, no one is really born to lead. Some do perhaps exhibit leadership traits in childhood, but it takes more than possessing the traits to make one an effective leader. Leaders, global or domestic, are developed from among those with the potential and desire to lead, either from within their organization or from the outside. They must be identified, educated and trained, and nurtured from early in their careers.

Leadership education is a life-long process, and one that must be undertaken by organizations an by those who want to become effective leaders.

During my time as the first American consul general in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, I had the opportunity to see global leadership first hand—both effective and ineffective.

One of the biggest US investors in Vietnam at the time (1998-2001) was the sports wear giant, Nike. Nike’s production was done in contract factories run by Koreans, Singaporeans, and Taiwanese, with Vietnamese workers. Cultural misunderstandings in a couple of the factories led to work stoppages and threats of legal action by the government. Worse, though, Nike’s image in the US took a beating. Nike hadn’t taken the step of giving its in-country representative control over the factory managers and hadn’t anticipated the potential for cultural clashes when Confucian cultures like Korea and Taiwan came into contact with the easygoing Vietnamese.

Nike did at least have the good sense to hire former UN ambassador Andrew Young to help them develop a solution, to the problem, and I had the rare opportunity of working with him as he did so. After reviewing the situation, he came up with a series of steps that solved the problem, and Nike’s reputation was saved.

This incident highlighted for me the critical importance of global leadership. Global leadership is important, even if you’re sitting in an office in Seattle or Raleigh. It’s important that even small organizations identify and nurture people capable of leading in today’s world—people with an understanding of the diverse factors that can affect an organization’s ability to achieve its goals.

By way of recap, following are the characteristics of effective global leaders:

·         They are able to gain the trust of multiple stakeholders, both internal and external to their organization.

·         They are able to identify key tasks and are devoted to achieving organization goals without disrupting or fracturing relationships.

·         They take personal responsibility for mistakes or failings and share credit for achievements.

·         They leave their egos at home. At the same time, they possess the self-confidence and self-assurance to step up when needed.

·         They value and respect diverse views.

·         They are effective communicators. Sometimes this means the ability to communicate in other languages, but most importantly, it means understand how culture and language effect the organization. They don’t for example, try to market a car named Nova in Spanish speaking markets.

·         They can identify core values that all stakeholders can share and are creative in seeking solutions to problems while maintaining those core values.

·         They remain calm regardless of the situation.

·         They have an appropriate sense of humor, understanding that what might be funny in one culture might be insulting in another.

·         They can deal with any situation.

Believe it or not, global leadership is really just that simple. One wonders, therefore, why is so rare these.

Man Controlled By Russia Says Germany Is Controlled By Russia

Trailer for Tihings I Learned From My Grandmother

Want to Lose Weight? Dole the Rice

Whether we like it or not, we all reach a certain age when keeping the pounds off and conquering middle-age spread is a chore. And, worse, the pains that come with aging—some of which are payback for the things we did when we were younger—means that losing weight is not just a voluntary matter of looking good, but mandatory quest to relieve the pain on aching joints.

I fought off this realization for a long time, but shortly after my 71^st birthday, when I tipped the scales at 230 pounds and my knees—both of them with degraded cartilage and arthritis—ached so much I had trouble sleeping, I knew I had to shed a few pounds.

The problem with that, though, is that I’ve had a complicated relationship with diets. I’ve tried many different regimens over the years, and have managed on occasion to lose a few pounds, but, like a worrisome zit, they always come back. In addition, diets such as the South Beach Diet, or the low- or no-carb diets, require giving up something, and that’s often something I really like, and giving it up only leads to craves, which leads to falling off the wagon, which leads to . . . well, you know the story. I’ve even considered some of those weight loss plans advertised on TV, but only for a few seconds, as their claims sound about as valid as a three-dollar bill. This whole thing is further complicated by the fact that I’ve weighed over 210 pounds since the 1970s.

So, with the new resolve to lose weight, I had to come up with a plan that was unique to me. One that would allow me to take pounds off in a measured way, deal with any cravings that arise, and—most importantly—keep the pounds off.

During the process of mulling it over, I remembered that there have been times in the past when I was able to lose weight and keep it off for longer than a month or two; the times when I lived in Asia and ate mostly local food. I did a little research on Asian cuisine and discovered why that was so. Asian diets are generally based on rice (and sometimes noodles) rather than bread as a source of starch and carbohydrates, and they’re light on red meats, while heavy on vegetables and fruits. In addition, I finally admitted to myself that I was a heavy beer-drinking snacker (pun intended). So, even when I managed to lose a pound or two, I’d inevitably succumb to my cravings for a bag of chips and a cold brew and pack them back on, along with a few friends.

My task was clear. I had to craft a diet that would help me lose pounds, resist the temptation of cravings, and keep those pounds off. It took a while, but I finally did, and I’d like to share it.

Cut Down, Not Out

Several years ago, a doctor advised me to completely eliminate fried foods, red meat, eggs, and dairy products from my diet to lower my cholesterol. The result: my cholesterol went up, for the simple reason that when I stopped ingesting any cholesterol, my liver went on red alert and started producing more. That taught me a good lesson; totally cutting something out of your diet can be a bad thing. The key is to ingest at manageable levels, or to find a suitable substitute before you toss a food.

For example; I love bread, but an ounce of whole wheat bread has 79 grams of calories and 1.53 grams of fat. Compare that to an ounce of brown rice which has 31 grams of calories and 0.23 grams of fat, and you’ll start to see where I was going.

I didn’t totally eliminate bread from my diet, or red meat, or alcohol. I just brought them under control.

Control the Craving

I knew that if I tried to eliminate certain things from my diet, I’d soon experience cravings that could very well destroy my diet plans. So, I made a note of my favorite comfort foods, ice cream, Snickers™ bars, potato chips, craft beer, and established ‘binge’ periods of once or twice a month, when I would partake of them—not in excess, but just enough to remind myself of what they tasted like. Other than my binge periods, I cut out snacks. No more mid-morning pantry raids, or late evening cookie binges for me. I also cut way, way down on alcohol consumption. Not just beer, but all booze. Now, I drink on special occasions; my birthday, my wife’s birthday, or the occasional business lunch.

I kicked off my new diet in January 2017—figuring I was already so depressed that Donald Trump had somehow been elected president that a diet couldn’t make me feel any worse. My weight at the time was 228, and my goal was to be under 200 in a year, and then to finally get down to around 195.

Compare Foods

If your diet is to work, you need to know what you eating and what you’re giving up. Read the nutrition labels on food. Go on line and look things up. You’ll be surprised at what you’ll learn. In addition to what I previously mentioned about the comparison between whole wheat bread and brown rice, did you know that those instant Asian noodles have only 30 grams of calories per ounce, but 2.58 grams of fat? They’re also very high in carbs, so you might want to go easy on them. Rice, though, even white rice, is lower than bread in calories and fat, so it’s a good starch, and can be prepared in a variety of ways that are really quite tasty.

Eating lots of fruits and vegetables is always a good idea, but be aware that fruits are high in sugar, so you might want to have a doctor evaluate your sugar levels before you binge on melons and apples.

I’m nuts about nuts. Unlike a lot of people, I’m not allergic to peanuts, which are a great source of fiber and protein. They are, however, high in fat and calories, so don’t be a glutton. A handful a day is enough. If you’re allergic to peanuts, walnuts and almonds are good substitutes.

Go easy on the red meat. My doctor advises me to eat it occasionally for the iron, so I have about two to three days a month that are red-meat days, which seems to be working.

Keep Track, But Don’t Obsess Over the Numbers

Keeping track of your weight will help you monitor your progress. But, you shouldn’t fret the occasional uptick in weight. Particularly if, like me, you occasionally binge. As long as the trend is downward, you’re probably okay. In my case, I started my diet in January 2017 at 228. By October, I was down to 206. It took me until April 2018 to hit my mark of 200, and I’ve gone back up to near 206 once or twice since then, but always come back down and kept going down. Near the end of April, I finally broke 200, and have only gone back over that mark once since. It’s mid-July as I write this, and my weight this morning was 197. I can’t tell you how much better I feel than I did two years ago. The pain and swelling in my knees no longer bother me—in fact, the swelling is gone, and the pain’s hardly noticeable. I am wearing clothes I couldn’t button two years ago. And, I have a new spring in my step. I exercise regularly, and with the decrease in knee pain, have been able to expand my exercise routine to include more leg-strengthening routines. My 195 goal is within reach, and the fact that I’ve kept my weight down for nearly two years is a good sign that I’ve finally found a routine that works.

Will it work for you? Honestly, that’s something that only you can understand. But, I’m no iron man, and it worked for me. Maybe you should do what I did. Study yourself and your circumstances, and then cobble together a plan that is uniquely yours.

What I’ve learned though is that to lose weight and keep it off, you don’t roll the dice; you dole the rice.

A Grand Delusion

Doing His Master's Bidding

Putin the Puppet Master

My Political Journey

When the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified and went into effect on July 1, 1971, just four days before my twenty-sixth birthday, I’d already been a registered voter for five years, having voted in two presidential elections and one mid-term. I’d never actually been to a polling place, because I joined the army when I was seventeen, and was never in my home state of Texas for an election. So, I’d been submitting absentee ballots.

Local elections were easy for me to decide. East Texas was, and as far as I know still is, solidly Democratic, and when I was a kid growing up in the piney woods of that region, the Democrats were the guys wearing sheets and hoods and burning crosses—or at least, some of them were. So, unless I knew a Democratic candidate personally, which is not difficult to do when you come from a county with a population of less than 12,000, I either voted for the Republican, or left that part of the ballot blank.

At the national level I voted mainly for Republicans, figuring the Party of Lincoln had my interests at heart; sort of. Of course, if I’d been old enough to vote I would have voted for John F. Kennedy, and when Jimmy Carter ran against Ronald Reagan, I left that block blank. If I’d known at the time what I later learned, I would’ve voted for Carter.

For a long time, though, I self-identified as a Republican because of what I thought I knew about the Republican Party. Gradually, however, reality penetrated my thick East Texas skull. I was serving in Germany during the 1964 election, when Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater played the Southern Strategy during the primary, and was, unfortunately, unaware of it.

Later, though, when Nixon reformed that strategy, and took it a step further by appealing to the ‘Silent Majority,’ my eyes were opened wide. I discovered that a lot of Republicans were as racist as I’d always imagined most Democrats to be.

I’d already been confused with Lyndon Johnson, a Texas Democrat, and JFK’s successor after his assassination, championed and then pushed through congress, a civil rights and voting rights bill that infuriated a lot of the southern Democrats, causing them to defect to Nixon’s Republican Party.

At that point, though, I couldn’t purge those robes and burning crosses from my mind, so I began calling myself an Independent; my way of saying, ‘a pox on both their houses, since I’m not welcome in either one.’

Things stayed pretty much that way until Bill Clinton, an Arkansas Democrat, ran for and won the presidency. Damn! How was it that another southern Democrat seemed to be able to treat all people equal? I began to waver and found myself looking more closely at Democratic candidates in national elections. I retired from the army and joined the Foreign Service in 1982 and had a lot of opportunities to meet some of these guys in person, and what I learned stunned me. There were some Democrats who were racist, homophobic misogynists, and some Republicans who, despite leaning to the right, had compassion (the Bush family comes to mind). But, the two parties had taken entirely different roads. The Republicans had gone so far right they were off the map, while the Democrats dithered on the left, but not all that far from the center. The Republicans seemed to be in the pockets of big industry, and under the thumb of the far, far right, and the Democrats were eating from labor’s lunch buckets. Being more of a centrist, I still clung to my Independent label.

Then, a miracle happened. Young, urban, intellectual voters came out in droves and put a black man, a Democrat, in the Oval Office, not once, but twice, and the Republicans pulled off the gloves and did everything they could to make him fail. They failed to do that, but since the 2016 election, the Republican incumbent has been trying to pull an old Soviet trick and erase him and his achievements from the history books.

There’s one thing about me that must be understood at this point; I have always hated bullies. Despite twenty years in the army, I’m a pacifist at heart, but bullies make me want to fight.

So, during Barack Obama’s first term, I went to my local election office and registered as a Democrat

I guess that makes me a political animal now, but unlike many Democrats I know, I still have friends who are Republican—and, not a few relatives. We still get along; we just avoid talking about politics, religion and sex, flash points for many Republicans, and topics I’d always been taught to avoid anyway.

But, I’ve learned that maintaining such cross-party relationships is not an easy thing to do. It’s not big thing for me because I don’t pay attention to detractors, but the Republican friends of my Republican friends probably wonder how they can continue to interact with me, not only a Democrat, but an apostate to boot. I think, though, that these particular friends are true friends, because they’ve not abandoned our relationship. A few of my false friends did after the first election when they found out I’d gone to the dark side.

That is my political journey, one that continues, and I continue to hope that one day things will go back to a semblance of the way they used to be when hands could reach across the aisle in friendship and cooperation, and people could disagree without being so darned disagreeable.

I just hope I live long enough to see that day arrive.