Mychal Massie: “Has Obama had an epiphany, or is he still dazed from his shellacking from the American people in the November elections? From the beginning, he was a free-spending Keynesian. Now he’s talking about capping spending and ending earmarks. It’s inconsistent with his advocacy thus far. It’s too much like when Bill Clinton declared that the ‘era of big government’ was over back in his 1996 address. Changing the language without changing the behavior is nothing more than obfuscation, and would signal that the only one Obama seeks to benefit is himself.” (Mychal Massie is the chairman of the Project 21 black leadership network.)

Coby W. Dillard: “President Obama tried to convince us tonight that the state of the union needs additional and new ‘investment’ to be strong. One only needs to look at the investment that was the stimulus to see how spending borrowed money and blowing up the national debt was no solution. The new Congress was elected to stop the blank checks and to rein in a government operating in a manner that would destroy households or businesses. Only when President Obama makes the tough choices regarding removing the barriers to job growth, controlling entitlements and embracing fiscal responsibility will we see out union grow stronger.” (Coby W. Dillard is a member of Project 21 and a founder of the Hampton Roads Tea Party in southeastern Virginia.)

Lisa Fritsch: “If we are really serious about having American students ‘Race to the Top’ to be innovative and compete with the likes of China and India, then we’d better get serious about focusing on teaching math and science like China and India rather than sex education, diversity initiatives and healthy eating habits. And let’s do away with talk of the DREAM Act and wake up to the reality that legal immigration and citizenship is a prerequisite to our innovation and sovereignty. Not until we get serious about protecting our borders and defending our American values can we truly educate, prepare and utilize those who desire to be productive American citizens.” (Lisa Fritsch is a member of Project 21 and a freelance writer and talk show host in Austin, Texas.)

Cherylyn Harley LeBon: “After two years in office and a steady rise in unemployment, Americans are still waiting for a plan for job growth from this president. ‘Innovation,’ ‘education’ and ‘infrastructure’ are wonderful words which are meaningless unless they translate into jobs TODAY. The American people need to get back to work, pay their mortgages and put food on the table. At the moment, we are less concerned about initiatives which will come to fruition in 25 years.” (Cherylyn Harley LeBon is a member of Project 21 and a former senior counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee.)

Deneen Borelli: “President Obama’s energy agenda, as detailed in tonight’s address, is essentially tilting at windmills. He can dream all he wants about alternative energy sources, but Obama will stifle innovations for tomorrow if he hobbles fossil fuels today. Demonizing the oil companies and hampering their ability to produce is going to raise costs, destroy jobs and hurt our fragile economy. Like it our not, our nation needs fossil fuels.” (Deneen Borelli is a fellow with Project 21.)

Bishop E.W. Jackson: “There was no pivot in Obama’s speech this evening. Sure, it sounded good, but the first step in winning the future is not government encouraging innovation. The American people have been innovating since our country was formed. We need to stop the crushing burdens of debt and regulation which inhibit productivity. Only our American entrepreneurs can solve the dilemma we are now in. In order to do that, the government must get out of the way. To quote Ronald Reagan: ‘Government is not the solution. Government is the problem.’” (Bishop E.W. Jackson is a member of Project 21 and the founder of Exodus Faith Ministries in Chesapeake, Virginia.)

I’m sure it began long before our obsession with self-esteem. So consumed we became with making sure our kids’ feelings were never hurt, we lost all reason and understanding and began teaching that exceptionalism wasn’t “fair”. (Oh, there’s the four-letter word that should be banned.)

Was it diversity? We were being indoctrinated that diversity was admirable, that some was good and more was better. Lost in all this was the importance of retaining identity, for without identity how can a child’s self-esteem have a foundation?

I’m afraid it all began a long time ago. Little by little we lost the focus of what made America great.

Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Elbridge Gerry, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison and Edward Rutledge, are only a few of the exceptional people who signed our Declaration of Independence. One trait that made them exceptional was their desire for and understanding of freedom. They didn’t want to be like England or any other. They wanted to be like America.

John Adams at a very young age wrote of his dreams that someday America would be the greatest nation on earth, not to look down on others but to draw them up unto this country’s greatness. Adams’ dream came true. America did become the greatest nation on earth, doing more to help other people than any other nation. It came from liberty, the freedom to excel, the desire to be the best of the best. It was called exceptionalism. It is what made America a magnet that draws others to come here. Why do we want to extinguish the magnetism?

As I sat yesterday and watched the President of Mexico, Felipe Calderone, stand at the stage of the greatest legislative conclave on earth, the symbol of liberty and everything great, and ridicule America while members of that Congress stood in applause for such treasonous, anti-American sentiments, I wondered if the above mentioned exceptional men had been sitting in that audience, what their reaction would have been.

As President Barack Obama stood outside the White House with Calderone, in what certainly appeared to be an affirmation from our President of his hatred toward America, I pictured George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson gathered amongst the bushes of the Rose Garden, standing in utter disbelief.

Tom Remington

As much as I admired Ronald Reagan and consider him to be one of our finest presidents, I would not advocate having his face put on any paper money denomination. If we feel it necessary to change up the faces, then I might suggest we head in the opposite direction from putting more recent dignitaries on bills to those of past history.

Being that history really isn’t taught any longer in our schools, this might be an opportunity to place some of our other founding fathers – Jefferson, Madison, Adams, etc.. We do have pictures of men who were not presidents – Hamilton ($10.00) and Franklin ($100.00).

Or maybe we could remove all pictures and begin a series of placing the Bill of Rights beginning with the First Amendment.

But what’s the real issue here? Simple, actually. It’s called distrust. Yes, President Reagan and President H.W. Bush spoke to the children (which I was opposed to) but was there an uproar? Hardly, although some on the left opposed it. Was there a huge distrust of those two gentlemen?

On Sunday I told you about Doug Giles’ reasons he thought Americans didn’t want the President talking to their kids.

Call us common senseis weird, but when a person—president or otherwise—spurns our desires and he and his top advisors wildly misspend our money, mitigate our liberties, urinate on our values, and call us a**holes, Nazis, terrorists, Astroturf and retards, well, said person and his pals will not only fail to receive our respect or votes, but they have forfeited the privilege of addressing our kids—or our dogs for matter.

Put a different way (not in the style of Doug Giles) is Thomas Sowell, who this morning begins his column by saying:

The most important thing about what anyone says are not the words themselves but the credibility of the person who says them.

And this is what the whole issue is concerning Barack Obama addressing our kids at school. We simply do not trust the man and for me and millions of others, that’s reason enough to object to this action.

The media, still drinking the Obama Kool-Aid, refuse to understand the difference and they have let their ignorance and bias show again. Yesterday the White House released the text of what President Obama will say to the kids today. The press, and I suppose millions more Americans, actually believe that is what President Obama had originally planned to say to our kids. Of course it’s a rewrite!

You can call it more distrust on my part but there is absolutely no reason to think otherwise, especially in light of the fact that we know the “lesson plan” that was originally presented to the school departments and how they wanted teachers to help with the indoctrination.

The biased press has taken it upon themselves to use the rewritten Obama text to demonize those of us who oppose the lecture. Even this morning on the Today Show, former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, seemed to be sipping on Obama’s Kool-Aid, by saying essentially that it is ridiculous that anyone would oppose this speech by Obama. Please!

As more and more Americans are getting it and are willing to speak up, Obama’s systematic take over of our rights and freedoms is now running into bumps in the road for him. We have seen that the President doesn’t take not getting his way very well and all the more reason to oppose his policies when we don’t agree with them. Our freedom is worth saving!

Tom Remington

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan”. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.mThe students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that.

Washington, D.C. – This year’s edition of the liberal National Urban League’s annual State of Black America report fails to effectively challenge the Obama Administration, is unnecessarily dreary and makes recommendations that would be harmful, say members of the conservative Project 21 black leadership group.

“It is long past time that groups such the National Urban League should be given a pass as they blame poor personal decisions, lack of personal preparation and the realities of life on a phantom bogeyman of conspiratorial dictates designed to impede black progress,” said Project 21 Chairman Mychal Massie. “If they are going to point fingers, they should not exclude pointing fingers at themselves. They cannot claim 100 years of making a difference in the lives of blacks while simultaneously claiming that blacks aren’t succeeding as quickly as every other group of Americans.”

This year’s National Urban League report, like past reports, dwells on negatives. National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial, for instance, says, “The election of the first black president does not mean we can all now close up shop and go home.” This echoes Morial’s predecessor, John E. Jacobs, who wrote in the 1993 edition that black Americans were faced with “bleak despair countered by fresh hope” upon the change of presidential administrations.

Among essays by entrepreneur and publisher Earl Graves, Jr. and scandal-plagued U.S. Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), the report makes specific recommendations on policies pertaining to education, health care, homeownership and employment, among others. Some of these recommendations, as categorized in the National Urban League report’s executive summary, are constructively challenged by Project 21 members.

In the area of health care, the National Urban League recommends government-run universal coverage. As Project 21′s Massie points out, this sort of health care has failed abroad and would fail in America as well.

“Do we need the people who run the DMV in charge of the emergency room? That’s what you get with government-run health care,” said Massie. “Creating a new health care bureaucracy would stifle innovation and limit choice.”

“If you want an example of what may happen, look no further than the ‘Urban Health Initiative’ created by now-First Lady Michelle Obama and Obama political guru David Alexrod at the University of Chicago,” noted Massie. “Their plan seeks to divert residents away for the university’s elite hospital to county hospitals and clinics. This shocking plan is now being reconsidered after the Chicago Tribune reported that Dontae Adams, a 12-year-old dog bite victim, was given only a shot and some painkillers at the university hospital. He was told to seek follow-up treatment the next week at a county hospital. His mother immediately took him to another hospital on a bus for reconstructive facial surgery that same day.”

Massie added: “What happened to Dontae might be a common occurrence for all under government-run health care. What Americans need are more choices and the ability to make their own decisions when it comes to their medical needs. That’s what the NUL should be asking for.”

Regarding homeownership, the NUL report suggests funding educational initiatives and credit counseling, something that might find them at odds with some activist groups of which they are usually allied that have opposed such programs in the past as akin to “redlining” because they might target certain areas and populations.

But NUL also supports an expanded Community Reinvestment Act – the regulation that mandates risky mortgage lending situations and is blamed by many as the catalyst for the subprime mortgage crisis.

Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli said: “Government aid and intervention should not replace an individual’s responsibility to exercise good judgment. Achieving the American Dream of homeownership begins with understanding the terms of the contract and meeting those obligations. Expanding the Community Reinvestment Act risks inflating another housing bubble that would further hinder our country’s economic recovery. For the National Urban League to encourage more risky loans at this point is reckless.”

On education, the NUL suggests retaining the Bush Administration’s “No Child Left Behind” standards policy, but does not adequately speak out in favor of popular school choice and charter school programs that explicitly spotlight and seek to remedy failing government-run schools by denying them a captive student body. NUL suggestions still look to government as the best administrator of education despite its poor track record.

“The status quo on education has not worked and it never will work,” said Project 21 member Kevin Martin. “While the National Urban League is focused on what the government can do, they are not speaking out enough about what parents can do. Education is the civil rights issue of our time, and vouchers, charter schools and similar alternatives to the failed government approach need to be encouraged.”

Overall, Project 21′s Martin noted: “The black community does not need to be protected from capitalism, as the National Urban League’s report seems to imply. The black community needs to embrace capitalism. The free market is where true opportunity lies.”

Project 21, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research, has been a leading voice of the African-American community since 1992. For more information, contact David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or project21@nationalcenter.org, or visit Project 21′s website at www.project21.org/P21Index.html.

Six years ago I wrote a book called “Uncle Sam’s Plantation.” I wrote the book to tell my own story of what I saw living inside the welfare state and my own transformation out of it.

I said in that book that indeed there are two Americas. A poor America on socialism and a wealthy America on capitalism.

I talked about government programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS), Emergency Assistance to Needy Families with Children (EANF), Section 8 Housing, and Food Stamps. <<< read the rest of the story >>>