Sometimes I just have to sit back and admire the brutal but stealthy efficiency of the Team Lightbringer narrative driving machine.

When the Secretary of Education announced that President Obama wanted to kick off the school year with a speech to the recruits kids, it set off quite a to-do over here in Bitter Clinger Land.

There was, of course, a very real reason to be suspicious of the president’s motives. Sec. Duncan sent along a lesson plan which I’m sure he’ll tell you the president knew nothing about.

Mierda de toro.

This president shoots more videos than a porn star in Chatsworth to make sure his OFA faithful stay on message. It’s all a top-down, coordinated effort with him so you can bet whatever recession money you have left over that he knew full well what was in the lesson plan.

Once more, here was the sections that made people like me go all “WTF?!?!?”:

Extension of the Speech: Teachers can extend learning by having students

Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.

If the president was merely giving the kids a little pep talk, “Anyone can grow up to be president!” speech, whatever would he need the help of the students for?

Something stunk and those of us who aren’t card-carrying members of “Hope And Gosh He’s Dreamy!” smelled it right away. The stench grew so strong that the administration had the above section removed from the lesson plan that was posted on the Dept. of Education web site. It was a tacit admission that the administration knew these words would justify any trepidation some of us might feel about the president’s motives.

Now that the offending passage has been removed, the Obama faithful are doing what they do best: playing make-believe. This week’s game involves pretending that all of us who can remember WAY back to last Tuesday and the “help the president and make them accountable” marching orders are paranoid.

And so much more.

This is from Tim Rutten in the LA Times:

Those who are whipping up hysteria over the president’s address are playing a dangerous game with an unhinged segment of public opinion.

Gee, I wonder who he voted for?

According to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Obama will “challenge students to work hard, set educational goals and take responsibility for their learning. He will also call for a shared responsibility and commitment on the part of students, parents and educators to ensure that every child in every school receives the best education possible so they can compete in the global economy for good jobs and live rewarding and productive lives as American citizens.”

Sounds innocuous. Who, after all, could be against good study habits, personal responsibility and productive lives?

Again, what were the kids supposed to help him with if the speech is just “innocuous” rah-rah?

No mention of that anywhere in this article though. The Jedi mind trick worked.

This blog quotes me and a some other winger blogs that wrote about the speech.

These guys make me miss the John Birch Society.

Hope. Change. Unicorns.

I get quoted in the comments there too so there are at least two people over there who survived a dangerous brush with reality this week.

My hometown paper had the Associated Press dutifully quoting Gibbsie from his Friday press conference and ignoring the actual cause of the uproar.

Gibbs said former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, both Republicans, delivered similar speeches to students.

But did they tell the teachers to make the kids ask what they could do to help the president?

I keep bringing this up because I’m very, very curious about what they were supposed to be helping with. You know, kind of like a journalist would be if this shoe was on a Republican foot. Oh wait, there aren’t any journalists covering this president. Just members of the Fan Club and they have to check their curiosity at the door.

There’s “Local Angle” sidebar piece with this article that boldly goes where all defenses of President Obama go when there aren’t any facts to be discussed.

Meanwhile, Cathy Mackie, a 58-year-old social worker, said the controversy “is beyond me.”

“Here is a black man who was raised by a single mother. You just know he wasn’t rich. And he rose to become the president of the United States. He’s telling every child out there — Hispanic, black American, Asian — that they have a chance to be president of the United States.”

Mackie said she fears that bias lies at the root of some of the furor. “You can put as much sugar as you want on it, but racism is racism and I’m calling it that.”

Membership in the Fan Club also includes a lifetime supply of race cards with the instruction to “use liberally” printed on the back.

These are just a few examples out of forty or so that I’ve read in the last three days. One thing they have in common is that each one reports on the content of the president’s speech as if it had been made available on the Dept. of Education website. Speculation is being reported as fact while facts aren’t being reported at all.

Paranoia seems most prudent right now.