FAYETTEVILLE - Retired Master Sgt. Lowell Wesley Stevens Sr., 69, of Fayetteville, died Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2011. Services: Memorial, 12:30 p.m. Monday in Rogers and Breece Funeral Home chapel in Fayetteville. Burial in Sandhills State Veterans Cemetery in Spring Lake. Survived by: Wife, Emiko; son, Lowell Jr.; daughters, Natalie and Cheryl; sister, Frances James; and four grandchildren. - Published in Fayetteville Observer on January 29, 2011
Sgt. Lowell Stevens, top right, poses with other 1st Special Forces Group Soldiers and the indigeneous Montagnard soldiers in Vietnam before a mission into Laos in 1967. - photo courtesy of Lowell Stevens
Lowell Stevens served with SOG - the secretive "Studies and Observations Group" in Vietnam; he completed six tours in Vietnam and went on to become Sergeant Major of Blue Light, the classified counter-terrorist unit that preceded Delta.
After retiring from active duty, Lowell ran Range Control for Camp MacKall, where Special Forces conducts a major portion of their training.
I knew Lowell from the years I spent at SERE; he always got a lot of respect from everyone - the old war dogs and the younger generations alike. He is in that Big Drop Zone in the Sky now.
Egyptian police step up guard at its national monuments today after looters break into the National Museum in an attempt to steal King Tut's treasures including King Tut's gold funeral mask.
While in the museum the looters smashed and broke many of the museums irreplaceable statues and historical pieces including beheading two 2,0000 year old mummies destroying them. Many of the display cases were destroyed and the contents are missing.
Egypt’s top archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, told state television Egyptians on the street had tried to protect the building, but that the looters had entered from above. “I felt deeply sorry . . . when I came this morning to the Egyptian Museum and found that some had tried to raid the museum by force last night,” Hawass, chairman of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said.
Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass speaks to the media over the linen-wrapped mummy of King Tutankhamun
The Left-Wing Mainstream Media has over-reached itself this time:
The Obama Political Machine is obviously in a panic mode - they've seen the poll numbers, they know everything they're doing to the economy and on the international scene is blowing up in their faces, the election last November was a rout that makes Custer's Last Stand look like a Sunday School picnic. State of the Union is report card time and their man gets up there and flubs that - he's got nothing to say and the whole world gets to watch him waffle it.
The fact of the matter is the U.S.S. Obama is leaking like a sieve, but not quite yet dead in the water. In a desperate attempt to save any hope for the future, the Democrats come up with THIS brilliant propaganda theme:
"OBAMA LOVES REAGAN"
The managing editor at TIME Magazine, Richard Stengel, attempts to explain their latest cover; an image of Reagan with his arm around Obama:
"The cover is Why Obama Loves Reagan. It's a Photoshopped image of the two men together. They never actually met, but I'd like to think they'd have a good time if they were sitting down at the White House together and it's basically how Obama from even the 1980s started looking at Reagan as a transformational politician - not in terms of substance, but in terms of style with someone he would model himself after, and that has happened over the last 20 years.
GIVE ME A FREAKING BREAK! DEPARTMENT
Obama HATED Reagan - he even wrote about it in his book Dreams From My Father:
"When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn't answer them directly. Instead, I'd pronounce on the need for change. Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds . . ."
Further on, Obama criticizes Reagan for "verbal legerdemain"; accusing Reagan of duplicity in the gap between his optimistic words and the actions of his administration.
This attempt by the Left to repackage Obama as the new Reagan strains the imagination; one of Obama's stated reasons for wanting power was to do away with what Reagan had accomplished. Obama has nothing in common with Ronald Reagan. If Reagan were alive today watching all this, he'd puke at what's being done to his legacy and to the great work he did as President.
Everybody knows that liberals all hate Reagan, they all despise Reagan, to a man. A singular, constant objective of the Left always has been to revise Reagan history; during Reagan's time in office they berated his economic policy - trickle-down; "a rising tide lifts all boats" - their catch phrase for it was 'Voodoo Economics'. Never mind that his policies actually worked, and led to a twenty-eight year economic boom, unparalleled in the history of the entire world.
Reagan fought the Communists when the rest of the world had resigned itself to turning their collective back to the Red Threat, drop trousers, bend over and grab the ankles. He alerted on the arm shipments into the Western Hemisphere from Communist sources, and in Grenada and Nicaragua he did something about it. What did the Democrats do to admire and support this Cold Warrior? They attempted to destroy him for domestic political gain - Iran-Contra - and a lot of good, decent mens' careers were ruined in the process.
They mock Reagan, suggest he was suffering from Alzheimer's while in the office. Just recently a young wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper informed me that Ronald Reagan was nothing more than a drooling, Disney automaton during his last two years in the Whitehouse - the fact that this kid was in diapers during that time frame illustrates the effectiveness of the Left's ongoing campaign against Ronald Reagan.
Here's Ronald Reagan's Farewell Address to the Nation, some ten months after leaving office:
Sounds lucid enough to me . . . and listen to the glorious things the Ron Bomb is saying: he's celebrating patriotism, love of country, American Exceptionalism, and deploring the fact that a portion of this has been lost amongst the younger generation.
Obama, on the other hand, has made a career out of badmouthing his country, and shaking hands with such well-known America haters as hate-spewing preacherman Jeremiah Wright and the terrorist Bill Ayers:
"GOD D*MN AMERI-K-K-K-A ! ! !"
"I DON'T REGRET SETTING BOMBS. I FEEL WE DIDN'T DO ENOUGH."
So now that Obama's lost his mojo, what's a closet Communist gonna do to save his political bacon? Who you gonna call? The ghost of Ronald Reagan.
Richard Stengel continues: "A lot of parallels. Reagan obviously lost both houses in that midterm election. His popularity went down to 35%. But the economy in Reagan's case came back that next year, came back at 7% GDP growth. If Obama gets half of that, he's lucky. But the other difference is, I mean there are a lot of similarities but one difference is you always knew where Ronald Reagan stood. I mean for 25 years he was talking about government is the problem, not the solution. And Obama doesn't quite have that same clear through line that Reagan has. And he's trying to get that. You can't say the opposite of that, that government is the solution, not the problem. And in the story, he talks about how there needed to be a correction to the Reagan correction. And that's what he's trying to do."
These people hate Reagan, they despise Reagan, they're against everything that Ronald Reagan stood for, and now they're trying to make Obama the next Reagan. Yet Stengel himself admits that Obama wants to reverse Reagan. The body always rises to the surface; the truth always comes out.
CONTRAST AND COMPARE:
Ronald Reagan's message was that America is a shining city on a hill, whose best days are still ahead of her.
Barack Obama apologized to France and Europe ("America Has Shown Arrogance" speech Strasbourg, France, April 3, 2009.); apologized to the Muslim World ("We Have Not Been Perfect" interview with Al Arabiya, January 27, 2009); apologized for the War on Terror ("We Went off Course" speech at the National Archives, Washington, D.C., May 21, 2009); apologized for Guantanamo ("A Rallying Cry for Our Enemies" speech at the National Archives, Washington, D.C., May 21, 2009)
Reagan's message was that Government is not the solution to our problems, that Government IS the problem.
Obama insists that Government's mission is to "spread the wealth around". In cavalier style he signs off on the greatest government expenditure in the history of the Republic - GREATER than the total sum combined government spending in the entire history of the Republic - and shrugging it off, he dismisses the citizenry; "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, . . . they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion . . . to explain their frustrations."
THERE IS NO COMPARISON
Obama loves Ronald Reagan? Sorry, I ain't buying it . . .
For New Yorkers and those in my part of New Jersey across the river, snow has fallen eight times since December 14, an average of once every five days, 56.1 inches in Central Park as of Jan 27th, and people are, shall we say, taking notice?
Along with the snow come power outages, disrupted bus schedules, air travel delays, commuting by car becomes an auto body repair business bonanza, schools shut their doors, and some people die from weather-related accidents or just from trying to shovel the snow from the driveway.
Having battled the “global warming” hoax since it was first perpetrated in the late 1980s, I have had the good fortune to make friends with many of the world’s top meteorologists and climatologists who joined in the long effort to educate people to the fact that there never was a rapid rise in the planet’s overall temperatures.
Even so, some mainstream media news outlets have continued to file stories incredulously blaming the winter snow storms on “global warming.” The hoax for too many media folk has long since become a religion in which blind faith replaces the objective fact obvious to everyone. It is cold. There is snow. Lots of it.
Indeed, the Earth has been in a cooling cycle since around 1998 as verified by meteorological satellite and other data. Piers Corbyn, an astrophysicist and leading forecaster, said “We’re now headed for a Maunder minimum of very low solar activity. The globe will be much cooler until about 2035, so there will be a lot more of these cold winters in Europe and the USA.”
Considering how the climatologists and meteorologists of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been telling everyone for decades of a coming warming, why should we believe Corbyn and others predicting decades of cold weather? Corbyn studies solar cycles and they determine how warm or cold the Earth is.
It’s the Sun, Stupid
Corbyn’s astonishing record of accuracy has put his native England’s meteorological service to shame for deliberately misleading the British to believe the “global warming” hoax. Not given to vague talk, Corbyn recently said, “The claim that 2010 is the second warmest year on record is delusional, irrelevant and disingenuous. Warmist (warm is cold) explanations for extreme events are as useless as saying ‘Wet days cause rain.’”
It is useful to keep in mind that U.S. agencies such as NASA and NOAA have been issuing similar politically correct and meteorologically incorrect “global warming” claims for years.
Consider weather events just since the beginning of the year.
For the first time since 1945, the maximum daytime temperature in North Korea has remained below zero for nearly a month. In neighboring China, the snowfall in northwest China was accompanied by extreme cold and a snowfall that flattened or damaged 100,000 homes. All around the world there have been similar reports, including sunny Italy that set new cold records, -48.3 degrees on January 19.
In the United States, Minnesota shattered its cold records on January 21 reaching an astonishing -46 degrees. In Florida, eight new record lows were set by January 17 and there was snow in every State of the lower 48. And spring will not debut until March 21!
It’s not like this is a new weather phenomenon. As any meteorologist will tell you, the Earth has gone through numerous warming and cooling cycles. In its 4.5 billion years, scientists estimate there have been at least seventeen full-blown Great Ice Ages. In near past history, the last Little Ice Age is well documented, having begun around 1300 and not ended until 1850. Whatever warming occurred since then, however, has amounted to just over one degree, but that was enough!
Reaching its peak in the 17th century, in England the Thames River froze over. The Little Ice Age is credited with bringing down the French monarchy and ruining Napoleon’s subsequent Russia campaign. In America, the tiny army of George Washington weathered a harsh winter at Valley Forge.
As in previous cooling cycles, it was low solar activity that determined the temperature, not carbon dioxide or other so-called greenhouse gases.
People’s lives depend on our government’s ability to measure and forecast the weather. A government that continues to tell people that “global warming” is real and then throws billions of money on “research” to prove it, while issuing utterly false claims, must be forced to acknowledge reality. The same applies to the energy policies on which everyone depends for electricity, a reliable supply of heating oil, and other elements of the infrastructure.
The lies must end. The end of the cooling cycle is nowhere in sight.
We got 18" of the white stuff across that driveway - drifting to THREE FEET in places - and I spent the better part of six hours shoveling it.
"Oh StormBringer! You are mighty Viking Warrior!"
NO - I am DUMB-ASS.
"Why?"
Because my philosophy was to hold off on lashing out to buy the blade attachment with the snowblower for my John Deere until AFTER I'd experienced a Pennsylvania winter first hand, for myself. Then I would know whether or not it was necessary to go that far or not, or whether I could get away with just the usual, $100-dollar-garden-variety snowblower.
Hindsight: I should have lashed out for the $100 job. By the time I dug myself out to where I could venture forth into the hinterland, there was not a snowblower left in the county.
-STORMBRINGER SENDS Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
. . . this is how governments fall, this is what the beginning of movements looks like:
ELBARADEI RETURNS TO EGYPT
Amidst a third day of protests, democracy advocate Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian Nobel laureate who urged the United States to support democracy more strongly, has returned to Egypt.
ElBaradei landed Thursday evening in Cairo, saying he returned because "it's a critical time in the life of Egypt and I have to participate with the Egyptian people."
According to the UK Guardian, ElBaradei was "thronged by people when he arrived in Cairo."
Bear Grylls will be the new Chief Scout of the UK Scout Association. The famous adventurer takes over when current Chief Scout, former Blue Peter presenter Peter Duncan completes his five year tenure in July 2009.
When asked why he chose to volunteer for the UK’s largest mixed youth movement, Bear said: ‘In short, because I love adventure and I love hanging out with good friends. For me this is what Scouting is about.’
I don't know what I admire more about The Bear: the fact that he's a total animal in the wilderness, or how he's managed to make it pay for a living - S.L.
Time to re-think that brilliant plan; "Let's experience an ENTIRE WINTER here before we lash out and get the snow blower blade kit for the John Deere . . ."
Snow & ice storm - power just went out just as I got home. Thank God we made the woodburning stove Priority #1 - that's about all we've got, though. This storm increased while I was away at work - didn't have time to stock up on water for toilet flushing, etc. - I'll have to melt snow - not an easy task. Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
I saw that VC recipient story yesterday. Did you ever see thisstory?
Captain Ivan Cahill, Royal Australian Regiment - the only foreigner to have direct command of an American Rifle Company in Vietnam.
Retired Royal Australian Marine, Col. Ivan J. Cahill, left, presented with the title Honorary Marine by Maj. Gen. James B. Laster, commanding general, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, at Camp Hansen, Okinawa, on Nov. 19, 2010
Photo courtesy of Col. Chuck Ikins, USMCR (Ret)
Vietnam-era photos of Capt. Cahill with U.S. MarinesHERE
Meet Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith - Australia's most recent recipient of the Victoria Cross.
The Victoria Cross is the highest award for valor for Commonwealth countries:
UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
As Australians prepare to celebrate Australia Day (26 January), an Australian SAS "Digger" has been recognized for his extraordinary courage under fire in Afghanistan.
Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith was decorated with Australia's highest military award - the Victoria Cross - an honour he shares with just two other living Australians.
Having already received the Medal of Gallantry in 2006, with the Victoria Cross he has just become Australia’s most decorated soldier.
The 32-year-old was honored for his heroics in Afghanistan last June. With his patrol under heavy fire, the SAS sniper charged the enemy. Within minutes, he'd single-handedly taken out three Taliban machine gun positions.
Sean Linnane is the pseudonym of a retired Special Forces career NCO (1st SFG, 3d SFG, 10th SFG). I served with honor on five continents; I continue to serve in other capacities.
