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Obama becomes Herschel Walker's worst nightmare with line of the year

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The hard sell approach

 

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Can integrity and politics co-exist?

 

The Biden Administration's National Security Strategy Hits the Right Note on Africa

Executive Summary

Insofar as Africa is concerned, the Biden administration’s National Security Strategy, echoes in large part its previously issued strategy towards Sub- Saharan Africa. Like the Africa strategy, the NSS recognizes Africa’s potential impact on world affairs now and in the future because of its youthfulness and level of education and technological expertise, and that the 54 countries of Africa comprise one of the largest voting blocs in the UN. Africa’s growing population and vital natural resources, when combined with the African Continental Free Trade Area, give Africa the potential to be a transformative driver of global economic growth. The U.S. commits to enhanced U.S.-Africa partnerships to address global issues such as climate change, pandemic preparedness, violent extremism and terrorism, and global health.

Acknowledging African Agency

The National Security Strategy does, however, go a step or two further than the Africa-specific strategy. It specifically mentions the importance of supporting women’s rights—albeit in connection with countering terrorism. The strategy underscores the importance of Africa in world affairs and commits to working with individual countries, such as Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, as well as regional groupings like the Africa Union, civil society, and the diaspora, in a spirit of partnership, and in line with the goals of Africans themselves, while at the same time continuing to push for respect for human rights, curbing corruption, and addressing autocratic behavior. The strategy also promises support to African-led efforts to address ongoing conflicts, increasing terrorist activity, and humanitarian crises in places like Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Somalia, and the Sahel and to work with African and international partners to deal with the root causes of terrorism.

The administration commits to support for economic growth in Africa through private sector investment, including working with African governments to create business/investment friendly environments that are essential to attracting investors, and creating jobs across sectors. This also includes efforts to bolster U.S.-Africa trade and create new opportunities for U.S. businesses.

The Proof, However, is in the Implementation

Like the Africa strategy, though, the proof will be in the implementation. The issues of staffing of our embassies in Africa must be addressed, and the potential of economic programs like Prosper Africa, Feed the Future, and Power Africa have to be operationalized and implemented on the ground. The United States also needs to be acutely aware of how our actions are interpreted on the ground. For example, the statement in the NSS that the United States will continue to press partners about human rights, corruption, or authoritarian behavior and impose costs for coups and press for progress on civilian transitions, is weakened when we continue our close relationship with the autocratic leaders, such as the president of Equatorial Guinea in order to counter China’s moves in his country.

It’s too early to do more than say that the strategy says all the right things. Now, we wait and see if the administration does all the right things.

It's past time for Congress to properly fund the Department of State

 

The State Department Authorization Act, the law that provides the legal authority for the Department of State and other foreign affairs agencies is the most effective way for Congress to influence our nation’s foreign policy, which ensures the national security and prosperity of every American. Despite its importance to the lives of our citizens, a State Department Act has only passed Congress twice in the past two decades, once in 2002 and again in 2021. This means that for the better part of twenty years, Congress has passed up the opportunity to reorient our foreign policy, revitalize our diplomatic and development work force, and adequately represent the interests of their constituents in how the U.S. engages with the world. At the same time that it has abrogated its responsibility in this important area, Congress regularly passes annual legislation authorizing the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community, further de-emphasizing the critical role diplomacy and development play in U.S. foreign and national security policy.

            Both the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have signaled an interest in passing a State Department Authorization Act this year, and committee staffs are in the process of drafting legislative language for the 2023 bill.

            Failure to regularly pass this critical legislation harms our national security, weakens our ability to respond nimbly to new global threats and opportunities in a complex landscape, and handicaps the work of our U.S. diplomatic and development professionals by delaying or denying much needed reform and modernization efforts. It also contributes to the militarization of our foreign policy as more and more foreign policy decisions are made through the National Defense Authorization Act. This is an abdication of Congress’s critical job of representing the American people in the foreign policymaking process by providing regular and formal accountability and oversight by their duly elected officials, further divorcing the citizenry from critical questions of war, peace, and America’s role in the world.

            The last time Congress passed a State Department Authorization Act prior to 2021, Saddam Hussein was still in power in Iraq, the Euro was just coming into circulation, and Netflix was a mail order DVD service. The world is currently experiencing a moment of rapid, wide-ranging, and dangerous change that requires a robust and sustained response of all of the tools of our national security policy; defense, diplomacy, and development. We cannot afford to allow any of these tools to become obsolete.

            As a former official with 20 years of experience in the U.S. Army and 30 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, serving here at home and abroad, I implore the Congress to step up and do what we the people elected them to do. Pass the State Department Authorization Act without delay, this year and the years to come. That we’re already a month into the new fiscal year and yet again nothing has been done beyond introducing the bill in committee is a demonstration of why public confidence in the Congress is at an all time low.

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Doing Business in Africa

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The Biden Administration’s New Africa Strategy

American Diplomacy Project offers plan of action for new generation of American diplomats

 Washington, DC, September 8, 2022

It has been nearly 100 years since the U.S. foreign service was created through the Rogers Act, which fundamentally reformed America's foreign services in the years following World War I. 

Since the formation of the U.S. foreign service, America has had 17 presidential administrations, experienced a population swell of nearly 300% and watched the world’s political geography radically change.

Over the years, numerous studies and reports about modernizing the U.S. foreign service have been produced and then quickly shelved at the Department of State and in libraries around the country. 

A new set of blueprints for change, fueled by engagement with Arizona State University, was announced Thursday at an event at ASU’s Barrett and O’Connor Center in Washington, D.C.   

The American Diplomacy Project–Phase II proposes concrete change, offering a plan of action for a new generation of American diplomats to meet the demands of American foreign policy today.

 

Beginning this past January, a group of dedicated former U.S. ambassadors and other foreign-policy experts, led by co-chairs Marc Grossman and Marcie Ries and coordinated by ASU's Leadership, Diplomacy and National Security Lab, have convened to create actionable steps to revive, reform and reimagine the U.S. foreign service for the 21st century. 

“Twenty-first century challenges are different from those the country faced in the past. Our diplomacy must be flexible, strategic, able to manage risk and have a plan to surge in a crisis,” said Grossman, the former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and a career foreign service officer. 

Ries, who served as U.S. ambassador to Albania and most recently as U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria during a 37-year career in diplomatic service, said the work of the American Diplomacy Project is focused on the people who do the work, as well as the institutions that serve diplomacy.

 

"Our diplomats are being asked to advance American interests in ever more complex international environments posing new and unique challenges,” Ries said. “This project aims to provide them with the edge they need to succeed, including more in-depth professional education, clearer authorities, management flexibility and the ability to surge when necessary.

“We have been very intentional that our work must not only define what needs to be done, it needs to say how we can do it. We have developed a set of blueprints that include detailed descriptions of how to implement the proposals, including specific legislative and regulatory language. What we aimed to do is connect new ideas to new law and regulations.

“Most critically, to give the State Department the capacity to move quickly in the event of natural disasters and political turmoil, ADP II provides a blueprint for creating a national Diplomatic Reserve Corps that mirrors, on a smaller scale, the military reserves.”

The four blueprints for a more modern U.S. diplomatic service are: 

Mission and mandate:

• Enhance the authority, responsibility and accountability of U.S. ambassadors worldwide.
• Hold U.S diplomatic leadership, career or appointed from outside the foreign service, to the highest standard of foreign policy and international leadership expertise.
• Empower the State Department and the foreign service to play a far more substantive role in the creation and implementation of U.S. foreign policy.
• Foster a stronger relationship between America’s diplomats and the American public.

Professional education and training:

• Define, implement and sustain an education and training complement for both the foreign service that is 8% of the total workforce.
• Invest in more robust diplomatic education and training to secure a dedicated, expanded career workforce with critical professional knowledge, including broad leadership and language skills.
• Create diverse institutional experience within the foreign service both at home and through rotational opportunities abroad to draw on the whole of government and private-sector capacity.
• Prioritize both mid-career continuing education and extended training for higher-level positions to expand the pipeline of qualified professionals for leadership.

Modern and diverse personnel system:

• Create and staff nimble, multifunctional teams and individuals positioned where needed — right people, right places, right numbers, right skills.
• Develop a recruitment strategy directly targeting a young, diverse workforce representative of the American people.
• Grow greater professional opportunities for family members accompanying foreign service officers on missions abroad.

Create the Diplomatic Reserve Corps:

• Remedy the fact that the Department of State, in many ways America’s first line of defense, has no ready, trained and dedicated pool of reserves akin to the U.S. armed forces reserves.
• Aim to develop a 1,000-person-strong reserve corps made up of retired State Department professionals and other subject-matter experts from outside of government.
• Engage diplomatic reservists and foreign service officers in strengthening the bond between Americans and diplomats in the same visible, positive way U.S. armed forces reservists do.

 

“It is fitting that the blueprint for a new American foreign service should come to fruition on the grounds of America’s most innovative university,” said Michael Polt, ASU’s ambassador-in-residence and co-founder of the Leadership, Diplomacy and National Security Lab. “Our vision for a revived foreign service dovetails closely with the mission of ASU itself. We want an organization that is representative of the diversity of our nation; that is nimble and does not see creativity encumbered by perfunctory tradition; and that is deeply connected to the needs of the people it serves.”

The next step for these blueprints is to gain champions on Capitol Hill, in the administration and among the American people to enact the necessary legislative, regulatory and cultural changes needed to provide for a more modern U.S. diplomatic service. That effort is underway, driven by the need to modernize and also by the needs of those on the front line.

 

“While we live in an increasingly complex and dangerous world, successfully navigating it comes down to the individual diplomat on the ground developing and nurturing the necessary relationships to achieve it,” said Ambassador Charles Ray, executive director of Phase II of the American Diplomacy Project. “Even in our technological age, diplomacy remains essentially a contact sport.”

Grossman said although the American public may not frequently focus on foreign diplomacy, they have a vested interest in its success. 

“American citizens expect and deserve to be represented by the world’s most modern and able diplomatic service. We took on this project in gratitude to the U.S. diplomats who today so honorably and courageously serve our country at home and abroad, and to those who will serve our great nation in the future. We want U.S. diplomats to succeed in their vital mission of promoting and protecting America’s global interests,” he said.  

To learn more about the work of the American Diplomacy Project and read the blueprints, visit ldns.asu.edu/american-diplomacy-project-phase-ii 

Originally published at: ASU-supported project presents blueprints for changes to US foreign service | ASU News

 

Sean Hannity accidentally SCREWS OVER Ted Cruz to his face on air

When red and blue became political

 

Frontier Justice: Bass Reeves Deputy US Marshal. Talking with author Charlie Ray

Frontier Justice: Bass Reeves Deputy US Marshal. Talking with author Charlie Ray: African American History in the Old West.

Things that really upset me

 

Losing the love handles

 In 2013, one year after I retired from government service and began working from home full time as a writer, I fell and broke my femur. I weighed 235 pounds at the time, weight that complicated my fall and contributed to the fracture. Once I was off physical therapy and able to exercise again, I determined to lose weight. Whenever I looked in the mirror, I could see signs of the excess weight, most notably very prominent were love handles, those ugly folds of flesh at your waist.

I began a program of weight loss that involved cutting out snacks--except for two days of binge eating each month--and exercising daily, stretching, resistance band exercises, and walking. That got me down to 214 in a year, but I still had the love handles and my arthritic knees still hurt.

When a house fire destroyed our residence, and we moved in with our daughter and her family, I still walked, but not as much, and didn't exercise as much as I had when I was not in a house with three grandchildren. Now, that's exercise, and good exercise, but it didn't focus on the parts of the body I needed to focus on, so the love handles stayed.

You might think I'm being obsessive here, but love handles are a sign of visceral fat stored around your midsection, your core, and that's the fat you really need to get rid of. I decided to go nuclear on those unwelcome folds of flesh. My daughter and her husband were on a keto diet and seemed to be doing quite well. I didn't want to go the whole way, but it struck me that the way to get rid of visceral fat was to do something that helped the body burn fat, not carbs. So, I reduced carb intake and began starting each day with a cup of coffee filled with flavored protein powder and coconut oil, cut out midmorning snacks and reduced the amount I ate for lunch and supper. Within a month, I'd gone from 214 to 205, and a month after that, when I'd gone to what I call my 'fat' coffee, one or two times a week, with a high-fiber, low-carb breakfast of oatmeal or cold oat bran cereal the others--with a weekly breakfast of pancakes with the fixings and no lunch--each weekend, my weight went down to an average daily weight of 194 pounds, the first time since 1978 that it had been that low.

I'm now a month into that and holding, but the nice thing--the love handles are gone. That's a sure sign of less visceral fat. The little twinges of pain in my knees are also completely gone.

I can't say this regimen is for everyone. I can only say that it worked for me.

When faith and facts collide

 

The Story of Mansa Musa

From Being The Poorest Country to Fastest Growing Economy in the World ...

Dealing with being known

 

Dr. Oz's Senate hopes dealt FATAL blow with BOMBSHELL revelations

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African nations don't want to choose sides

 Published in China Daily on August 23, 2022. African nations don't want to choose sides - Chinadaily.com.cn

African nations don't want to choose sides

By YIFAN XU in Washington | CHINA DAILY | Updated: 2022-08-23 07:13

JIN DING/CHINA DAILY

While it's too early to tell if US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's recent visit to Africa will expand US influence there, African countries also want to develop effective relations with China and don't want to be pressured into choosing sides, experts in the United States said.

"We most certainly shouldn't get into an 'us or them' posture with Africans. That creates a no-win situation for everyone concerned," Charles Ray, who is chair of the Africa Program at the US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, and who served as US ambassador to Cambodia and Zimbabwe, told China Daily.

Blinken visited three sub-Saharan African countries－South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda－from Aug 7 to 12. The visit was built on Blinken's previous trip to Africa, but the global environment has become more complex since then.

"This context includes both intense competitions between advanced and emerging powers and the strengthened ability of countries in Africa to contribute to solving global challenges," Landry Signe, a senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development Program and the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a blog.

Ray said, "My recent conversations with African intellectuals tell me that they want effective relations with both countries, and the US-China competition notwithstanding, it is to their benefit.

"I honestly believe that if both sides approach their relationships in Africa in a mature, rational manner, there is no reason the countries there can't have relations with both," he said.

During his visit, Blinken said that the US sees Africa's 54 nations as "equal partners" in dealing with global problems.

Ray said that Blinken's comment on the equal partnership with the nations of Africa is "exactly the right thing to strive for", though he added that it's too early to tell if the trip would expand US influence in Africa.

Alex Vines, director of the Africa Program at Chatham House, a policy institute based in London, said, "I think we will see more African countries not wanting to get pigeonholed and so become nonaligned."

There have been intensive, high-level visits to Africa and other diplomatic activities by a number of countries recently.

Last month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda and the Republic of Congo.

Almost simultaneously, French President Emmanuel Macron visited Cameroon, Benin and Guinea-Bissau.

Samantha Power, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, and US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield also visited African countries recently.

Furthermore, according to the White House, the US will host a US-Africa leaders summit in December.

Michelle Gavin, a senior fellow for Africa policy studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a US think tank, said in a blog that "high-level visits should signal commitment, not just competition" and warned of "two pitfalls".

"First, to make meaningful progress in advancing shared interests with African states, it's important that US officials are sincere when they deny that US attention to African partners is primarily about boxing out Russia or China," Gavin said. "The other danger is to imagine that high-level visits and emergency aid packages, in and of themselves, are enough to overcome long-festering neglect."

In recent decades, China has been investing in African countries and playing a significant role in the region. China appointed a special envoy to the Horn of Africa in January to deal with security affairs and reiterated that it would play an even bigger role for peace and stability in the region.

Ray, of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said, "Not only do I think that the US and China can work together on some issues like climate change and its impact on Africa, but it is imperative that we do work together.

"It is not unusual for countries to disagree on certain issues, but they should not allow those differences to escalate into hostilities. We need to work on our mutual interests and manage our disagreements without becoming disagreeable. As the world's two largest economies and the two largest carbon emitters, we have a moral obligation to our people and the rest of the world to act responsibly."

Ray added that "Africa's young, fast-growing population will impact the world in coming decades, and this must be recognized by other nations like the US and China. As sovereign nations, it is (African countries') right to decide with whom they have relations."

Vines, of Chatham House, said, "I do think that (in) China-West relations, there is a prospect of working together on global issues that impact humanity."

 

Does anyone care anymore?

 

An Analysis of Kenya’s 2022 National Elections

Is it a boy or a girl?

 

Ethiopia: Is There Hope for an End to the Crisis in Tigray?

The frustration of being unseen

 

Jon Stewart vs. Ted Cruz | A Photo Of T**** Without His Makeup

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Revisiting Instability and Violent Extremism in West Africa

DC Street Art

 In 2017, I published a book on street art in the District of Columbia. It can be purchased on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075RT9G6H. This has been one of my more popular books, with over 100 copies of the paperback version selling from 2020 to 2022 alone, which is almost unprecedented for a book of photographs that wasn't from a nationally known photographer.

Most of the photos for that book were in digital format on a stand-alone hard drive which was destroyed when my house burned down in 2021, but I had a chance recently to go back to one of the areas where I saw some of the most striking street art, the Shaw Neighborhood of DC. Once the black entertainment Mecca of the District, it was home to notables like Cab Calloway and Sister Rosetta Sharpe and many others. Home to Howard University, where I ran a writing workshop for Rangel Foreign Affairs scholars each summer for the past eight years (except for 2020 and 2021 when the workshops were virtual, Shaw has some of the best street art--in my humble opinion. Even some of the wall tagging is extremely artistic.

Here are some samples taken on July 21 as I walked the streets after finishing my last workshop.

The Rangel Summer Enrichment Program

This month, July 2022, marks the 8th year that I've run the professional writing workshop for the scholars in the Rangel Summer Enrichment Program (SEP) at the Ralph Bunche International Affairs Center at Howard University. Eight years of enjoyable interactions with some of the brightest college students in the country who compete for 20 positions each summer where they come to Howard and learn about careers in foreign affairs. A heavy course load, briefings, field trips, socializing, and of course, my six-week boot camp in official writing.  I enjoyed working with them and hope that they got something useful out of it. This was my last course as my other commitments, and my moving out of the DC area, make it impossible for me to devote the proper amount of time to the program each summer. I will, however, always treasure the past 8 years.

Here are some photos taken on July 22 at the graduation ceremony.

 

Mr. Versatile: A Profile of DSP's Hitmaker Charles Ray

 A profile of me and my writing career Mr Versatile: A Profile Of DSP's Hitmaker Charles Ray (dspublishingnetwork.com)

Honesty vs integrity

 

Old enough to buy a gun

 

Dealing with ethical dilemmas

 

Top-selling western writers at DS Productions

 This painting of DS Productions' top-selling western writers was recently commissioned and imagine my surprise to see myself included in that august group. I'm the hombre on the left in the purple shirt.

When school shootings become routine news

 

Training children & pets

 

The Retreat of Democracy in Africa – Real or Imagined?

The danger of groupthink

 

Living successfully with OCD

 

Crash Course on Diplomacy: Diplomacy for Development

Crash Course on Diplomacy: Diplomacy for Peace

I Believe I Can Touch the Sky: From Poverty to Prosperity in Stories

 

I was born in rural Shelby County, in East Texas, in the 1940s, a time of rigid segregation. Parking in my hometown of 715 people was segregated by race and I went to a separate school where books and desks were hand-me-downs from the town’s white school. The first new textbook I ever laid hands on was a physics textbook in high school when the school district included physics for the first time and had to buy a sufficient quantity for both schools.

     After graduating from high school in 1962, too poor to attend college and refusing to accept the employment available to black people in East Texas at the time, I joined the United States Army to see the world that I’d been introduced to through crinkled pages of old National Geographic magazines.

     In the ensuing fifty-plus years, I rose from the poverty of a small farming town to prosperity, from tending the pigs on our small farm to meeting with kings in their palaces and presidents in their state houses.

     Thanks to the urging of my daughter, Denise Ray-Wickersham, I have finally put down stories from my life in written form—stories that I bored her and her brother with when they were growing up and her children with during the past few years.

     I Believe I Can Touch the Sky: Stories from My Life is not your usual memoir. The focus is not really on me, but on the incidents and events that impacted on me in my life. Short and to the point, much like the novelettes I write, it is a series of stories that stretch back over seven decades. Stories about the famous and infamous, the well-known and the unknown. It is a story of the persistence and patience of a young boy who refused to accept that the pine-covered clay hills were all there was to the world, or that he was limited to what other people said he could do because of the color of his skin.  

    

Available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle version on Amazon. Get your copy today:

Hardcover:  $15.99  https://www.amazon.com/Believe-Can-Touch-Sky-Stories/dp/B0B2J26KVD/

Paperback:  #$7.99  https://www.amazon.com/Believe-Can-Touch-Sky-Stories/dp/B0B2HQ7KLC/

Kindle version:  $0.99  https://www.amazon.com/Believe-Can-Touch-Sky-Stories-ebook/dp/B0B2QV1BW1/