Conservatives Plant A New Insane Conspiracy By Accusing Obama of Common Core Mind Control

via the Patriot Post

The new scandal is the mind control behind Common Core, or “ObamaCore” as the Tea Party calls it. Never mind that it’s not a federal mandate, “It was developed by the National Governors Association, through a panel led by Delaware Gov. Jack Markell (D) and then-Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (R).”

BUT OBAMA I tell you. He tells you what chair to sit in with ObamaCare and now he’s taken hold of our minds by trying to educate Americans. Well, the far right isn’t having it.

Michelle Malkin tells us we are wrong not to be paranoid, for a national data base is being made for kids information (sorta like a Sarah Palin Death Panel, only less effective as a scare tactic due to her smaller platform), “They don’t loathe anti-Common Core parents because these parents are “paranoid.” They fear them because “paranoid” is the political demagogue’s word for active, alert, and well-informed.”

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Yes, if by “well-informed” one means misinformed. It turns out that the data mining is voluntary and has nothing to do with Common Core. Also, like so many things the Right suddenly finds objectionable, it was going on long before Common Core.

The point of the story? Obama scares conservatives a lot and so now they hate education. Prepare to be inundated with “non partisan” fear stories about Common Core.

Common Core is the new conservative Benghazi, IRS (insert crazed, planted scandal here). Conservatives are calling it “ObamaCore”, in what some say is a reflection of their frustrated inability to repeal ObamaCare (something everyone but the conservative base knew was not going to happen, and the Republican leaders stoked those cheap flames of misinformed outrage).

Reid Wilson at The Washington Post explained on Tuesday that conservatives have introduced 100 bills to “slow or reverse” Common Core, “an 85 percent increase over the year before”, even though their paranoia is unfounded.

Back in October, PolitFact rated the mind control fear mongering claims “Pants on Fire”. You see, Common Core is not even a curriculum. It’s standards. “Determining the curriculum is left up to local school boards, districts, and teachers.” So, it’s sorta like mind control only not.

In a long “guide to Common Core” published by USNews on March 6th by Allie Bidewell, the person she uses to lead us through the Common Core maze is Rick Hess from The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI). She never tells the reader that the AEI is a private, conservative, partisan institution or that some AEI members were leading architects of George W Bush’s public policy. Dick Cheney, John Bolton and former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz are associated with the organization — not exactly the folks many would want driving our education policies.

Rick Hess, who is an articulate scholar, also has a Wiki Page that was marked in January of this year as possible spam, “This article reads like a news release, or is otherwise written in an overly promotional tone…” And again, “This article contains wording that promotes the subject in a subjective manner without imparting real information.” But heck, his page is up in time for him to be used as an “non partisan” expert, as his Wiki page claims, so that’s handy when you have a narrative to weave.

Hess, who is big on Libertarianish sounding things like “educational entrepreneurship” and school “reform” brought about by cost cutting (LOL), was the undisclosed conservative lens through which the public got to view the alleged demise of Common Core on USNews. Hess followed up his disguised policy push with a March 26 (today) article in the National Review that reads exactly like the conservative argument to ObamaCare.

On March 20, Hess argued in the National Review that Common Core wouldn’t be an issue in the midterms and if the Tea Party really want to see something done, it will only happen if Tea Party candidates win out over establishment Republicans (very subtle Mr Hess), which he ended with this opportunity for alert Tea Partiers, “… in this case, on how well (or poorly) the fancy new assessments work, on whether the public finds the test scores credible, and on whether parents find the homework and new lessons compelling.”

Just five days later, and voilà! Guess what was trending today (written Tuesday), the day after Indiana dropped out of Common Core? Via Yahoo:

A Facebook update from a father frustrated with the Common Core math program at his son’s school is making the Internet rounds after the father Jeff Severt expressed (via what looks like a kid’s homework assignment) how convoluted the teaching approach is.

How did this note get noticed? Oh, it was posted to the “Patriot Post” Facebook Page and picked up by Glenn Beck. This isn’t mentioned specifically in the article, but it is captioned thusly and the first link goes to Beck. The Patriot Post declares that the time is now for Americans (white Americans it seems) to decide whether to be slaves or freemen. This article is shared right next to a picture of a car with a bumper sticker reading, “Does your Obama sticker make you feel stupid yet?”

The Patriot Post has been endorsed, according to their website, by Senator Rand Paul, Jim DeMint, and Dick Armey.

The Yahoo article notes, “The Facebook post (which by Tuesday had generated 4,400 likes, 4,300 shares, and 700 comments debating the issue) coincides with news that on Monday, Indiana became the first state to formally withdraw from the Common Core standards.”

So the story was posted on Monday, the 24, just 4 days after Hess noted that Common Core’s success or failure would be determined by factors like parents finding the homework compelling. It was written up in Glenn Beck’s The Blaze on Monday the 24th, Yahoo on Tuesday the 25th, and it’s trending by Wednesday the 26th.

DO YOU GET IT YET? COMMON CORE IS HATED BY RANDOM PARENTS AND A WHOLE STATE JUST DROPPED IT. This is just like the proof that the IRS was “targeting conservatives” (also debunked), which was provided by conservatives who had been found guilty of illegally assisting the GOP. (The media didn’t feel you needed to know that last part.) Then followed a summer of lies, later debunked.

If you want to laugh before you cry, read that WaPo article. Wilson explains that this whole big to-do regarding Indiana’s alleged “sovereignty” being protected doesn’t actually mean that they won’t be using Common Core. Or Common Core principles. In fact the new standards look a lot like the old standards, it’s just got a different name. Sort of like how Kentuckians love ObamaCare so long as it’s not called ObamaCare. Wilson notes, “That’s similar to the approach several other states are taking: Pass standards nearly identical to Common Core, but under a different name.”

This is the moment when it’s fair to say we are not actually discussing ideology or ideas. This “debate” is about nothing other than a new way to mask a partisan poutrage over Obama having any power at all, under the guise of alleged objections to policies.

The issue here isn’t whether Common Core is any good or not. Common Core is being pushed by the business community among others and it is not an Obama initiative. The issue is that the public is being duped again about the origins, partisan nature and purpose of the criticisms. And this set up looks a lot like the IRS set up, with coordinated timing of planted sources and claims, that taken together create a publicly accepted narrative that may or may not have any truth to it whatsoever.

Image: From Patriot Post, later reposted on Glenn Beck’s The Blaze and Yahoo


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