Category Archives: Recent Posts

Recent Posts

An Intentional Balk

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LOL, I love it when these leaders of the sports world make decisions that they believe will save their beloved sport. Good luck! It’s Economics folks, pure and simple, which is a “social” science, so again good luck figuring out what your fan base will do when you enact something. Since I have never been an avid MLB fan, I could care less, but I will enjoy watching what happens. 

By Greg Maresca

In 1968, Simon and Garfunkel wanted to know where the Yankee Clipper Joe DiMaggio had gone. Over half a century later, the suits of Major League Baseball (MLB) have to be wondering the same for their younger fan base.

Economists say demographics are king, and if true, then MLB is in more trouble than the British Royal Family. A survey by Street and Smith’s Sports Business Journal reported the average MLB fan is 57 years old. By comparison, the average age of an NBA fan is 42.

 Baseball like the culture it entertains has its share of problems.

 The game is still popular but is rapidly aging. Declining attendance has also plagued MLB having lost 6.3 million in attendance over the last eight regular seasons.

Those who play the game are shrinking as well from Little League up through the minor leagues.

It is no secret that participation in Little League has declined greatly through the years. All one has to do is look around. The one youth baseball entity that is doing well is travel baseball. Travel ball provides a chance to play year-round with exposure to college coaches and professional scouts. The problem is the costs are out of reach for many families pitting the baseball haves against the have-nots.

Stickball and stoopball were both central components of the urban youth streetscape experience that have now joined Ringolevio, Hopscotch, and Double Dutch as just more relics of the past. What does any of this have to do with MLB?

Plenty.

All came of age like MLB during the first half of the 20th century. We are now in the first half of the 21st century and like anything else, change is in vogue and baseball is an agrarian game from another century.

MLB is trying to adjust, but at what cost?

The homerun is baseball’s signature and in 2019 BC (Before COVID), the regular season homerun record was broken. The strike-out record also fell that year turning baseball into a prolonged version of Gillette’s Home Run Derby. MLB’s response: the 2021 baseball will be slightly “deadened” meaning a 375-foot stroke will be a few feet shorter – enough to keep more balls in play.

 The changes that remain post-COVID include doubleheaders lasting seven-innings each. Positive coronavirus tests saw teams play 55 doubleheaders. These abridged seven-inning games took an average of just over two and a half hours. This change should help address today’s compromised attention spans that can be juxtaposed to a barn cat in June. And with the average baseball game lasting three hours and seven minutes – Houston we have a problem and it is much more than the Astros cheating.

One change suggested was that all television and radio broadcasts would only be able to air just one 30-second advertisement at the half-inning. Greed overruled and the idea was dropped as quick as conducting more Joe Biden press conferences.

After allowing the designated hitter (DH) during last year’s pandemic-shortened season, the National League (NL) will again have pitchers batting. However, this season could very well be the last time pitchers’ bat. The consensus is the DH is the future of the NL, as it has been in the American League since 1973.

 Moreover, all extra innings with start with a runner on second base. This has been successfully done throughout the minor leagues in recent years, but to the purists of the game it’s nothing short of baseball heresy.

The MLB playoffs will return to their previous format with three division winners and two wild cards per league. But when MLB’s collective bargaining agreement ends December 1 expect the playoff field to permanently expand.

There has never been a time where competition for the entertainment dollar is as fierce, so what does MLB do? Propose eliminating 42 of its 160 minor league teams.

The games abiding fabric can be found within the minors, where the prices are affordable and the players accessible. Kids can get on the field during promotions. The minors are not just for player development, but for fan development, too.

Eliminating many grassroots minor league teams which, in and of themselves, carry a longstanding history is baseball’s version of euthanasia.

This is no 7th inning stretch.

 

UPDATE:

As though all these woes are not enough, the MLB Commissars  have decided the MLB should enter the political arena. Since GA has enacted, or are about to, election laws requiring an ID to cast your ballot, they have decided to move the All-Star game and the MLB drafts from Atlanta to who knows where. Reason? They say enacting a requirement for an ID to vote restricts people of color from voting. WHAT? That is asinine. How many actions today require an ID? So people of color can not do anything today that requires an ID because, what — they do not have one? Why? Someone of color please explain that to me.

MLB is dying, as is NFL and NBA. And as far as I am concerned they can all go the way of the Dinosaur. I’ll continue to watch certain  NCAA sports, but it appears there could be some drastic changes coming about from that group of misfits as well e.g.,  some literal college grants a transgender a scholarship to play women’s basketball.. Don’t believe me, watch and see, I guarantee there is a university out there thinking about it and many transgender basketball players filling out their applications as I write.

Originally posted 2021-04-03 09:52:54.

Recent Posts

What’s Wrong?

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A Majority of White Democrats Have Become Non-Christian

And what that means for America.

While this article may be somewhat dated, I found his information vital  as well as his predictions concerning the future of religion in America and the impact it will have on our once great nation. See what you think and please feel free to give me your comments.

By Daniel Greenfield

In Obama’s first year in office, 68% of white Democrats described themselves as Christians, 7% claimed to be members of other faiths, and 24% said that they had no religious affiliation.

A decade later, only 47% of white Democrats call themselves Christians. 10% are members of other faiths, and 42% have no religion.

A majority of white Democrats have ceased to be Christian.

The Obama era transformed the country and the party. It’s often observed that the Democrats of the JFK era are not the Democrats of today. But forget 1961, an era that is receding into the shadows of history. The Democrats of 2019 are not the Democrats of 2009. We are a different nation because of it.

The results of the Pew survey are startling and yet unsurprising. They explain why the Democrat debate stage included a cult leader and a call to go after churches and synagogues that don’t back gay marriage.

Not even Obama would have proposed such a thing in 2009. But much has changed since then.

Obama was born in 1961. 67% of Generation X was Christian. Millennials are now a quarter of the electorate and they are evenly divided between Christians and non-Christians. Generation Z represents another 9% of the electorate and it’s been described as the least religious generation ever.

Beto O’Rourke’s proposals to confiscate guns or go after the tax-exempt status of traditional religious organizations only seem radical to older voters. They’re not radical to the younger voters he’s courting.

O’Rourke, Sanders, and Buttigieg all endorsed abortion until the moment of birth. As has been noted, this position is far more radical than the one Obama ran on. But so is the 2019 Democrat electorate.

While Buttigieg and Booker try to tap into lefty pseudo-religious politics, O’Rourke dispenses with the phony religion by appealing to the new rising demographics of the Democrats. And, despite the headline, those demographics are not only white. The decline among minority Democrats has not been as dramatic as among white Democrats, but the number of black Democrats who describe themselves as Christian still fell from 84% to 74% from 2009 to 2018-2019. Hispanic Christian identification among Democrats declined from 82% to 71%. Among Democrats as a whole, only 55% identify as Christian.

That’s down from 72% in 2009.

Generational shifts will see older, more religious Democrats making way for a new generation. Before long a majority of all Democrats will no longer identify as Christians or as religious believers.

The Democrats have not only adopted values that are fundamentally hostile to traditional religious believers, but the demographics show that they are living out those values. And, as Beto O’Rourke demonstrated, see less reason to hide them or to pay lip service to religiosity in an irreligious party.

At current rates, Catholics will form a larger share of the GOP than of the Democrats. Protestants, who made up 46% of the Democrats in 2009, have declined to 35%, falling from nearly half to a little over a third. 1 in 5 Democrats have never attended religious services.

Republicans and Democrats are no longer divided by their approach to religion, but by religion itself.

And this loss of any common set of values has tremendous implications for the conflicts tearing the country apart. Democrats and Republicans have less in common than they ever did before, including during the conflict that tore apart the country and left 620,000 men lying on the nation’s battlefields.

What were once debates over issues increasingly became cultural divides, generation gaps, racial conflicts, and now, religious divides, that are becoming impossible to bridge. Americans find it harder than ever to compromise on the issues or to even care about the issues, because their differences and divisions have become the real issue. Everything else is becoming a mere marker of the divisions.

The changing Democrats demographics did not come out of nowhere, but the swiftness of the sea change within a decade is also a forerunner of the changes that will transform politics as we know it.

Republicans will increasingly face a Democrat opposition that does not have a different vision of religion, but that treats it at best as an odd superstition, and, at worst, a destructive and evil set of beliefs.

The First Amendment, already under assault, will face the same attacks that were visited on the Second.

The Second Amendment is under siege because a sizable percentage of the country, primarily living in urban and suburban areas, sees no legitimate reason why anyone would want to own a gun. That is the essence of the gun control argument. Everything else is propaganda, narrative, and meaningless noise.

The Democrats are on track to becoming a political party whose base sees freedom of religion as an equally outmoded historical relic envisioned by old, dead white slave owners who had strange beliefs. They don’t and won’t see why anyone should have the right to have hateful beliefs or read hateful texts.

What will religious freedom look like when the average Democrat views religion the way that he does firearms?

We are about to find out.

America is not entering uncharted territory. It’s following in the footsteps of Europe. In the UK, only 3% of 18-24 year olds identify as Anglicans, and only 5% as Catholics, among 25-34 year olds, 5% identify as Anglicans and 9% as Catholics. 64% of 18-24 year olds say that they have no religion, as do 57% of 25-34 year olds, and 60% of 35-44 year olds.

Freedom of religion cannot survive under these conditions. And indeed, that is the case in the UK.

People have to believe in something and being convinced that their children will die because people won’t stop using plastic bags and straws is a belief. It’s the sort of belief that leads to genocide. As is the conviction that religion, nationality, and every non-approved identity must be stamped out for equality.

The decline of religion is not leading us to a more tolerant world. Instead, it’s intolerance that’s rising.

And that’s inevitable.

Tolerance for differing beliefs originated from religious differences. America has freedom of conscience because it was founded by settlers and colonists fleeing religious persecution who then had to determine how to deal with religious dissent in their own ranks. The ideological fanatics driving the Democrats come from a leftist radicalism that has never learned to cope with political differences.

It lacks the toolset of tolerance. And does not even recognize that it applies to political enemies.

The Democrats have embraced a new idea of diversity that applies to every possible variety of skin color and sexual combination, as long as its members unwaveringly share their beliefs on every single issue. Their politics embraces everything, and as everything is politicized, the only remaining dissents allowed are on matters so trivial, or obscure, that they cannot be politicized. This is the new tolerance.

In a decade, the Democrats were almost incomprehensibly transformed. And the country with them.

To understand why America is being torn apart, why its political norms are shattering, and talk of civil war is in the air, we must begin with the fundamental transformation, not of the government, but of us.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Originally posted 2021-03-31 14:16:19.

Current Events, Recent Posts

The Border Issue

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In case you have not been keeping up what’s going on at the southern border; I know it’s hard because DHS is not allowing any reporters anywhere near the border. But, they couldn’t stop my very favorite Senator Ted Cruz, the only one BTW who is pushing term limits knowing he will be out of a job. Albeit, they definitely tried to stop him from seeing the conditions and filming under the guise of “respecting their dignity” — yeah right. You will have to copy and paste into your browser. Why isn’t the MSM shouting to the rooftops, oh, I forget, they don’t care as it’s a Biden issue.

https://t.me/realx22report/1320

Originally posted 2021-03-30 13:29:12.

Recent Posts

For Sale Cheap

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Was going to take a break since it’s Palm Sunday weekend, but I received this in an email from a friend today and It really struck a chord with me so I ask if I could pass it along  on my blog. I did make a  minor change; his card is not as old as mine. LOL

I’m selling my white privilege card.  It’s over 80 years old, but is in mint condition.  It has never been used, not even one time.

Reason for selling is that it hasn’t done a damn thing for me!  No free college, no free food, no free housing, no free medical, no free utilities, no free anything. I actually had to go to work every day of my life while paying a boatload of taxes to carry those who chose not to work!

If you are interested, I prefer cash but would be willing to do an even trade for a Race Card, which seems much more widely accepted and comes with countless benefits if you fit the profile!

Interested?  Contact me on my Non-Obama cell phone that I pay for every month…  Serious buyers only “The problems we face today exist because the people who work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living.

My number is:

Originally posted 2021-03-28 17:27:41.

Current Events, Recent Posts

Leftism in Today’s USMC

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Received this in an email from a highly respected retired Marine Colonel friend of mine. They are his words, not mine, but I wholeheartedly agree with his assessment.

“I wonder how much longer this Marine will be tolerated by the present “leadership.” When they see he is an attorney maybe they will be careful as to how to shut him up. What’s going on is very difficult to believe.”

From an opinion piece in Newsweek, Saturday 20 March 2021

In the Marine Corps, we don’t have quotas, but we do have goals. And Marines accomplish goals,” my officer-in-charge told me and a few other brand-new second lieutenants, each of us assigned to temporary recruiting duty while awaiting orders to Quantico. The captain then told us we had to sign up a certain number of college-enrolled racial minorities and females. No need to be too strict on physical fitness or academics, he said. Just bring them in.

That was in 2009. Discrimination of this sort has been an ingrained yet lamentable part of the military’s recruitment, retention and promotion practices for many years. But my fellow officers and I couldn’t have imagined that, 12 years later, our disagreement with these policies would get us labeled “racist,” “sexist,” “bigoted” or “extremists” worthy of “eradication” and “elimination” from the USMC. Yet the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps said as much in his February 22 “core values” memo.

I’m now a major in the Marine Corps Reserve and a member of a formerly all-male infantry battalion.* This past weekend we had our monthly drill period. A few days before drill, the command told us that all scheduled training on Sunday morning was canceled and replaced with a “stand-down to address extremism in the ranks.”

It was left-wing political programming, as direct as it sounds.

We were instructed that there is a Taliban-like threat in the United States called “domestic terrorism.” These terrorists are characterized in part by “anti-government,” “anti-authority” or “abortion-related” extremism and various “supremacist” ideas. None of these terms are defined. The Marine Corps entrusts the government’s HR department to figure that out.

Reporting requirements are key. Do you suspect someone supports an “extremist ideology?” Alert the chain of command. Have you heard a Marine express “contempt toward officials?” Notify the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Don’t handle anything on your own. Just rat them out. After all, “service is a privilege” and it’d be a shame to lose that privilege for failing to do your part to stamp out “extremists.” One PowerPoint slide posed this imperative in stark terms: “Do you want to be a Marine or do you want to be part of an organization that sows disunity and hate. You cannot have divided loyalties.”

Where did all this come from? Soft liberalism has taken root in the military over several decades. These alarming trends are already well documented in James Hasson’s book Stand Down: How Social Justice Warriors Are Sabotaging America’s Military. But in the wake of President Joe Biden’s election—and more precipitously since the January 6 “insurrection”—bureaucratic progressivism has hardened into iron-fisted wokeism.

January 6 provided the pretext that the government, media and Democratic Party needed to drum up paranoia about white-nationalist domestic terrorism. A month later, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued a memo to all Pentagon leadership laying the groundwork for my unit’s Sunday morning indoctrination.

In his memo, Austin announced that the Department of Defense “will not tolerate…actions associated with extremist or dissident ideologies” and ordered all 1.4 million personnel to receive “extremism” training. And he promised it was just the beginning: the “stand-down is just the first initiative of what I believe must be a concerted effort to…eliminate the corrosive effects that extremist ideology and conduct have on the workforce.”

Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Harker followed with his own memo. He announced the objective for the entire Navy Department: nothing short of “eradicating extremism.” How? By rooting out “actions that betray our oaths” like promoting “ideology” or “doctrine” that challenges the “gender identity and sexual orientation” agenda or advancing efforts that allegedly “deprive individuals of their civil rights.”

In other words, advocating for the Biblical view of sex and marriage in law and policy is, according to today’s armed forces, tantamount to oath betrayal.

Then came the Marine Corps’ turn to mouth the right things about “extremism.” In late February, the highest-ranking enlisted Marine issued a memo to all hands condemning our institutional failure to “completely eliminate,” “eradicate,” and “conquer” all “racists, bigots, homophobes, and bullies.” Those people “are not welcome” in the military. “It is impossible,” the memo says, “to be both a good Marine and be any one of those things at the same time.” Again, specifics of “those things” are undefined. The author of the memo and the four-star Commandant leave that to the military’s Diversity and Inclusion Task Force.

Finally, on March 5, the Marine Corps released an official directive: no later than April 2, all “commanders and supervisors at all levels will conduct and document a leadership stand-down in order to address issues of extremism in the ranks.” The commandant included a video with the directive, saying, “We must continuously strive to eliminate any division in our ranks.”

We all know what that means: any dissension on any issue that Biden-appointed top brass says is racist, sexist or homophobic will not be tolerated.

There is no doubt as to where all this is headed. The Pentagon’s swift and coordinated “smiting” of Tucker Carlson, who had the gall to “diss” the idea of sending pregnant women to war—an obviously absurd idea to all but the most politically correct officers grasping for a promotion—makes it very clear.

How did we get here? The truth is that today’s military is running on the fumes of our vastly superior forefathers and the ever-shrinking proportion of each branch that still does truly heroic work and accomplishes truly extraordinary feats. The rest is a bloated military-industrial complex given over to Fortune 500-style corporate progressivism.

And if it’s bad in the Marine Corps, imagine how much worse it is in the other services.

America’s enemies are laughing at us. Frankly, we deserve it. But it doesn’t need to be this way. To get back on top, our military must reject “extremism” training, reverse all the progressive policies enacted over the past several years, return to a true meritocracy and focus exclusively on the only thing that matters: winning wars.

We need a military fit for real warriors—not the social justice kind.

Aaron Reitz is a Major in the USMC Reserve, an Afghanistan War veteran and the Texas Deputy Attorney General for Legal Strategy.

* I prepared this article off-duty and in my personal capacity. The views I express here are solely mine and do not reflect those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy or the Office of the Attorney General of Texas.

For the life of me I cannot understand how a dedicated hard charging Marine, Enlisted or Officer could stay in a Marine Corps such as this?

I agree with my friend’s comments in that I also wonder how the leftist leaders in our once great Corps will handle this Major. Bravo Zulu for him speaking out. Get em’ Major.

Originally posted 2021-03-20 16:25:07.