By Alan Caruba, Canada Free Press

Obama politicizes the death of brave American Servicemen

Presidents engage in all kinds of ceremonial events. Every Thanksgiving, they “pardon” a turkey so it doesn’t end up on the White House menu. They make sure they are photographed with the winning teams of various sporting series. Every Easter they can be found at the White House Egg Roll accompanied, I have always suspected, by a Secret Service agent in a large bunny costume.

The other evening, shortly after midnight, President Obama made sure to be photographed standing in line with military personnel and some civilians in attendance as the dead, including three drug enforcement agents, from Afghanistan were returned home at Dover Air Force base. Our military casualties are received in a solemn ceremony few except those in attendance ever witness.

Presidents have never participated in this ceremony. The caskets are a too vivid reminder that part of their job is to send troops in harm’s way. President Bush preferred to meet with the families of fallen heroes.

When 241 U.S. military were murdered by a suicide bomber in Beirut on October 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan attended a ceremony at Camp Lejeune to speak of his grief and anger. Three months after the bombing, he pulled out U.S. troops.

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By Michael D. Shear and Jose Antonio Vargas, Washington Post

Obama stages a townhall, with campaign volunteers

President Obama offered a wonkish defense of his embattled health-care reform effort during an hour-long town hall meeting in Northern Virginia yesterday that featured seven questions, including one sent via Twitter and several from a handpicked audience of supporters.

With the president’s health-care ambitions meeting a cool reception on Capitol Hill, the administration is increasingly seeking to pressure lawmakers with evidence of the public’s desire for action as well as proof that the health-care industry is a stakeholder in — not an opponent of — the effort.

“The naysayers are already lining up,” he said in remarks before taking questions. The challenge for opponents, he said, is: “What’s your alternative? Is your alternative just to stand pat and watch more and more families lose their health care?”

Obama made his pitch before an audience of about 200 people at Northern Virginia Community College’s Annandale campus, including students, administrators, professors and local residents. But the real targets of the message were far beyond Annandale, and the White House is hoping to use social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook to reach constituents across the country.

“This is a moral imperative, and it is an economic imperative,” he told the live and online audience as he waded through health-care financing statistics.

Even as he spoke, the Republican Party live-blogged its opposition. “Obama says our economy is in crisis because of health care costs,” wrote Matt Moon, deputy research director at the Republican National Committee. “But his government-run plan will make it even worse, putting our country further into debt.”

In the stage-managed event, questions for Obama came from a live audience selected by the White House and the college, and from Internet questions chosen by the administration’s new-media team. Of the seven questions the president answered, four were selected by his staff from videos submitted to the White House Web site or from those responding to a request for “tweets.”

By Alan Keyes, World net Daily

Obama's team shamefully staged this event with the troops

My father was career Army. When I was about 6 years old he was stationed at Fort Gordon, Ga. We lived in Augusta, home to a golf course that I think was particularly favored by then President Eisenhower. My parents were Democrats, but I remember being hoisted up to sit on my father’s shoulders to get a glimpse of the commander in chief’s motorcade as it went by, with the same sense of pride and excitement that we felt some time later when we stood in the crowd at the National Cemetery to get a glimpse of John F. Kennedy. There has been a great tradition in the American military that respects the idea that our troops don’t fight for partisanship or from loyalty to individuals. They serve, they work, they risk their lives for the Constitution, and for the safety, rights and liberty of the sovereign people of the United States.

Now comes this report about Obama’s recent surprise foray into Iraq: According to an e-mail from a sergeant in Iraq: “We were pre-screened, asked by officials “Who voted for Obama?”, and then those who raised their hands were shuffled to the front of the receiving line. They even handed out digital cameras and asked them to hold them up.”