Great political strategy, Mr. Ex-President. Drop in on Northern Virginia and New Jersey to inspire votes for the two states’ Democratic gubernatorial candidates, and tell GOP, independent and even Democratic voters that they’re phonies.

Northern Virginia in particular is a hotbed of parental anger where they are confronting school boards that are, in effect, telling parents that shey have no voice in their children’s education. The parents are precisely the swing voters that Democrats are losing because they’re telling parents to figuratively go to hell.

Or like Virginia Democrat Terry McAuliffe  intoned: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” It’s in the running for the biggest gaff in the close election against Republic Glenn Youngkin. So, along comes Obama to double the insult:

“We don’t have time to waste on phony culture wars or, fake outrage that the right-wing media uses to juice up your ratings…

Culture wars, Mr. Ex-President? You and your kind started them. Teaching school children critical race theory. Imposing useless and possibly dangerous masking and vaccination mandates on kids. Completely shutting down classroom instruction to modify your wealthy teacher union mega-donors. Opening up girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms to boys. (Going so far as pretending as one northern Virginia school board did that no girl got sexually assaulted.), trying to silence parents, outrageously launching an FBI probe of “domestic terrorist parents.”

Your kind started the culture wars years and years ago by, among a lot of other things, degrading the importance of fathers in raising competent and loving children, approving of abortion up to the moment of birth, luring children into violent games. And more.

Your kind established these changes and labeled anyone who disagreed with the direction you are leading us as troglodytes, racist and Middle America dopes.

But one thing you said correctly in your speech that you got right:

There is a mood out there, we see it. There’s a politics of meanness, and division, and conflict, of tribalism, and cynicism.

That mood was created in no small part by you. Yes, former President Donald Trump made his own special contribution to the mood, but liberals/Democrats/progressives/neo-socialists have made a part of their platform division, conflict, tribalism and cynicism. You are masters of it.

But the mood out there is indeed shifting, and the northern Virginia parents are igniting it, and it’s breaking into flames all across the country, including in Illinois. They are fed up with the racist and sexist labeling. The instructions from “experts” who are certified as know-it-alls.

Democrats understand and that’s why they are flooding northern Virginia and New Jersey with arrogant big-names.

Here’s another thing that you inadvertently got right in your offensive speech:

You’ll jump into — you’ll jump in front of a freight train, you will wrestle a bear for your kids. So right now, we’re helping to determine what kind of democracy are they going to inherit? What kind of planet are they going to inherit? What kind of economy are they going to inherit? What are we leaving for them? That’s our choice.

That’s our choice. Not the teachers, the school boards, the administrators’. Not governors, like J.B. Pritzker, and their beyond-reason and anti-science lockdowns

You, Biden, and the rest are feeding a dose of autocracy to Americans, and they don’t like the test. It’s gagging, slimy and poisonous. Your time is coming.

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I’m watching Congress debate President Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ budget proposal and I think I’m Lemuel Gulliver shipwrecked in the land of Lilliput.

Play along with me. Shipwrecked among the tiny Lilliputians Gulliver finds a society whose institutions have fallen into corruption, thwarted by contemptible party politics, and absurd wars. (Is this not America, today!?) The Lilliputians, whose small size mirrors their small-mindedness, are avatars for Republicans and Democrats, indulging in petty debates, their political affiliations divided between those who wear high heeled shoes (the progressives) and those who wear low ones (the conservatives). The leaders of the court (McConnell and Pelosi) are those who are best at rope dancing, qualifying them to lead Lilliput to war with neighboring Blefuscu, fighting over which end of an egg should be broken. (Our congress to a tee!)

Next, we find Gulliver abandoned in Brobdingnag, a land of giants. The scale is now reversed, Gulliver a Lilliputian among giants. (Is this not indicative of a once mighty US now reduced in stature?) When Gulliver describes the history of his country to the king of the giants, the monarch denounces Gulliver’s countrymen and women as “the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.” The rebuke comes after Gulliver offers to make gunpowder and cannon for the king, who is horrified by the thought of such weaponry. (Fact: The United States spends more on national defense than China, India, Russia, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Italy, and Australia — combined.)

On Gulliver’s third voyage he ends up on the island of Laputa, where the people all have one eye pointing inward and the other upward, so lost in thought that they must be reminded to pay attention to the world around them; its government aloof from the people it rules. Although the farm fields are in ruins and the people are living in squalor, they follow the laws made by the professors of a learned academy in the city, (we call that Congress presiding in Washington, DC) where the scientists undertake such impractical projects as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. (While the Infrastructure and Jobs Act languishes and the inane wrangles in congress put havoc-wreaking party politics above the needs of the people!)

In the extremely bitter fourth part, Gulliver visits the land of the Houyhnhnms, a race of intelligent horses who are more rational, communal, and benevolent than the brutish and degenerate humanoid race called Yahoos. (Substitute Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, KKK and similar white-supremist, pro-Trump, right-wing extremist organizations). Again, Gulliver describes his country’s government to the head Houyhnhnm, who concludes that the people are no more reasonable than the Yahoos. (Unbalanced and idiotic as in Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, perhaps?).

Jonathan Swift opened his revised 1735 edition of the Travels with a letter from an irate Gulliver convinced that the human species was too depraved to be saved (the Trumpies storming the Capitol on January 6). The book ends with a ranting recluse (if the shoe fits, wear it) warning the Yahoos not to “presume to appear in my sight.”  (They won’t be vaccinated!)

The original edition gave no hint that Gulliver’s Travels was not a genuine travel account. Swift and his friends reported stories of gullible readers who took this hoax travel book for the real thing. I rest my case.

This week my #RADAR is on fire with My Morning Jacket’s ninth studio album. The self-titled My Morning Jacket is the first batch of new songs in six years. “In Color,” the third single, feels a bit like the Grateful Dead or Pink Floyd, so let the jams begin. I can’t wait to pick it apart.

It’s hard to believe that Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash is 40 years old as of August, and this week, the album receives the grandest anniversary reissue treatment. I’m not sure if anyone needs 67 unreleased tracks, but thank god the studio hands were rolling! Also added to the package, a previously unreleased 7th St Entry concert from 1981.

As if there wasn’t enough to listen to this week, the new Felly is out! Last week I raved about his “Bones” single and how versatile he is. Young Fel 2 has 13 songs that you can consume in under 34 minutes.

Another rapper that keeps putting out quality material is BJ The Chicago Kid. “Smooth” shows off his silky pipes, and that original Chi-Town flow.

One of my all-time favorite Oasis songs is “Some Might Say,” off of What’s The Story, Morning Glory? It still sounds fresh some 15 years later on this live version from 1996. The Knebworth Park documentary made its quick run through theatres and the rest of the soundtrack should be out soon.

HalfNoise releases a single that sounds eerily like David Bowie meets Supertramp, and somehow makes me feel like I’ve heard it in on my dad’s car radio in 1978. Honestly, “Last Day On Earth” is nothing short of retro-sounding.

This new stereo mix of Let It Be has me appreciating The Beatles once again. There’s a warmness to the songs, and the vocals seem to pop more. The writing seems so simple yet it leaves you asking, “How do you accomplish a song like “The Long And Winding Road?”‘ The back and forth banter in between takes gives you a window into their writing process, and it seems like they were still having fun, even though they were falling apart. I might need to get the CD, to see how great this package is.

Beirut has a unique sound that takes some getting used to. Once you get bitten by the bug, you’ll appreciate all of their music. “Fisher Inlet Sound” is another great representation of who this band is. The forthcoming album, Artifacts, is made up of EP’s, singles, b-sides, and early work.

Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto bring us a little bit of Bossa Nova called, “So Danco Samba.” It’s such a great vibe that I had to add to this weeks’ list.

Your Jazz Cut Of The Week is from my favorite crooner Chet Baker. But on this version of “My Funny Valentine,” it’s his horn playing that stands out. Listen to this near eight-minute track, and wait for this trumpeter’s solos.

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