Tag Archives: Georgia

Current Events, videos

Half Mast My Flag?

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For the first time in my life, I have disregarded the half-masting of my flag. It will remain two-blocked throughout this entire ordeal of burying the worst president of the U.S. I hated this man when he was in office and continued that feeling throughout his life. I personally suffered the ills of his presidency. His vetoeing the military’s pay raises three years running caused severe retention problems in all the services. When the JCS  pleaded with him to approve a pay raise, his reply was that when he was in the Navy pay wasn’t the thing that kept sailors serving.

I  need not say anything else as Mr. Klein lays it all out very well

Jimmy Carter Was a Terrible President — and an Even Worse Former President

Former president Jimmy Carter, who arrived to observe the upcoming Palestinian presidential elections, speaks to the press during a meeting with then-Israeli President Moshe Katsav in Jerusalem, January 7, 2005. (Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)

By Philip Klein

December 29, 2024 5:48 PM

The truth is that historians have not been harsh enough.
A popular narrative surrounding the legacy of Jimmy Carter is that as president he was a victim of unlucky timing that impeded him politically but that he excelled during his long post-presidential career. The reality is that he was a terrible president but an even worse former president.
Carter’s true legacy is one of economic misery at home and embarrassment on the world stage. He left the country in its weakest position of the post–World War II era. After being booted out of office in landslide fashion, the self-described “citizen of the world” spent the rest of his life meddling in U.S. foreign policy and working against the United States and its allies in a manner that could fairly be described as treasonous. His obsessive hatred of Israel, and pompous belief that only he could forge Middle East peace, led him to befriend terrorists and lash out at American Jews who criticized him.
A former governor of Georgia who had little charisma and national name recognition when he began campaigning for president, Carter ended up in the White House as a fluke. He presented an image as an honest, moderate, and humble southern Evangelical Christian outsider — an antidote to the corruption of the Watergate era. He also benefited from the vulnerabilities of the sitting president, Gerald Ford.
Once in office as an unlikely president, Carter spent his one and only term showing the American people, and the rest of the world, that he was not up to the job.
When he took the presidential oath in January 1977, the unemployment rate was a high 7.5 percent; when he left office in January 1981, it was just as high. Meanwhile, inflation, which was already elevated at 5.7 percent in 1976, the year he was elected, went up in each of his years in office — and reached a staggering 13.5 percent in 1980, the year he was booted out. The only year in the post–World War II period in which inflation was higher was 1947, when the economy was booming and unemployment was minuscule. Put another way, to maintain the buying power that $100 had on the month Carter was sworn into office, you’d need $150 by the time he left the White House just four years later. Under Carter, gas prices doubled, and the supply became so scarce that Americans had to endure long lines at stations to fill up their tanks.
On the international stage, Carter showed weakness, and America’s enemies took notice. Rather than recognize the true nature of the Soviet threat, he preached the defeatist ideology of “peaceful coexistence,” and the USSR steamrolled into Afghanistan. Also under his watch, radical Islamic revolutionaries took over Iran, holding Americans hostage for the last 444 days of his presidency.
It is telling that the defining speech of his presidency was known as the “malaise speech,” in which he spoke not as a leader but as an essayist writing on the “crisis of confidence” in America. He observed: “For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years.” As he built a legacy of scarcity, he criticized Americans for wanting plenty, lamenting that “too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption.”
It should be no surprise that Ronald Reagan’s message of strength and optimism turned 1980 into a complete rout. Carter not only lost 489 electoral votes to 49, but he got trounced by ten points in the popular vote — even though an independent candidate, John Anderson, drew 7 percent.
Carter, who performatively carried his own luggage as president, tried to present himself as humble. But somebody actually humble would have taken the hint by the magnitude of his defeat. The real Jimmy Carter was stubborn and arrogant. He had plans for a second term, and he wanted to see them through despite the overwhelming rejection by the American people. So instead of stepping away, he spent the rest of his life simply pretending that he was still president and pursuing foreign policy goals even when it meant undermining the actual president.
The two most egregious examples of this came in his efforts to stop the first Iraq War and his freelance nuclear diplomacy with North Korea.
In his mostly sycophantic 1998 book on Carter’s post–White House career, The Unfinished Presidency, Douglas Brinkley gave a startling account of Carter’s behavior in the run-up to the 1990–91 Persian Gulf conflict.
Concerned by the looming threat of war after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, Carter pulled out all the stops — and then some — to try to thwart the president, George H. W. Bush. Carter’s efforts started off within the realm of acceptable opposition for a former president. He wrote op-eds, hosted conferences, gave speeches — all urging peace talks as an alternative to repelling Saddam with the use of military force.
But when that failed, he took things to an extraordinary level. Carter wrote a letter to the leaders of every country on the U.N. Security Council, as well as a dozen other world leaders, Brinkley recounted, making “a direct appeal to hold ‘good faith’ negotiations with Saddam Hussein before entering upon a war. Carter implied that mature nations should not act like lemmings, blindly following George Bush’s inflammatory ‘line in the sand rhetoric.’”
As if this weren’t enough, on January 10, 1991 — just five days before a deadline that had been set for Saddam to withdraw — Carter wrote to key Arab leaders urging them to abandon their support for the U.S., undermining months of careful diplomacy by the Bush administration. “You may have to forego approval from the White House, but you will find the French, Soviets and others fully supportive,” Carter advised them.
It is one thing for a former president to express opposition to a policy of the sitting president, but by actively working to get foreign leaders to withdraw support for the U.S. days before troops were to be in the cross fire, Carter was taking actions that were closer to treason than they were to legitimate peace activism.
Carter’s meddling was not limited to the first Iraq War or to Republican administrations. In 1994, there was a standoff between the U.S., its allies, and North Korea over the communist country’s nuclear program. The U.S. was floating the idea of sanctions at the United Nations. Over the years, Carter had received multiple invitations to visit North Korea from Kim Il-sung and was eager to fly over and defuse the situation with an ultimate goal of convening a North–South peace summit and unifying the peninsula. Begrudgingly, the Clinton administration agreed to let Carter meet with Kim as long as Carter made clear that he was a private citizen and that he was merely gathering information on the North Korean perspective, which he would then report back to the Clinton administration.
Without telling the Clinton administration, however, Carter flew to North Korea with a CNN film crew and proceeded to negotiate the framework of an agreement. He then informed the Clinton team after the fact, with little warning, that he was about to go on CNN to announce the deal. This infuriated the Clinton administration, and according to Brinkley’s account, one cabinet member called the former president a “treasonous prick.” To make matters worse, Carter then accepted a dinner invitation from Kim, at which point Carter claimed on camera that the U.S. had stopped pursuing sanctions at the U.N., which was untrue. Nevertheless, once Carter went on television to announce all this, Clinton felt completely boxed in, and he was forced to accept the deal and abandon sanction efforts.
Over time, it became clear that Kim had just used Carter to take the heat off, get economic relief, and buy time while still continuing to enrich uranium in violation of the agreement, which it withdrew from in 2002 after being called out for cheating. Within a few years, North Korea had built a nuclear arsenal. Carter’s effort at freelance diplomacy, in addition to advancing a foreign policy at odds with the administration, squandered a crucial window to stop North Korea from going nuclear.
When it came to unrealized ambitions, nothing frustrated Carter more than the Middle East. He was convinced that, had he been reelected, he would have been able to build on the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt and resolve the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians — even though there were significant differences between the two conflicts. In 2003, he boasted to the New York Times, “Had I been elected to a second term, with the prestige and authority and influence and reputation I had in the region, we could have moved to a final solution.” It was quite a choice of words.
During the pro-Israel Reagan administration, Carter saw little opportunity to advance his agenda, but he perceived an opening when Bush took over. In 1990, he befriended PLO terrorist leader Yasser Arafat, and, Brinkley writes, “Carter began coaching Arafat on how to not frighten democracies by using inflammatory rhetoric: it was a strategy that would eventually lead to the Oslo Agreements of September 1993.”
Throughout the 1990s, Arafat pursued a strategy of talking peace to the world at large while working behind the scenes to continue terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. He was infamous for appearing moderate when speaking in English while fuming radically and inciting violence in Arabic. Throughout this time, he was being mentored by Carter, who not only advised him but even personally wrote a sample speech for him suggesting language to use that would allow him to more effectively gain sympathy from Western audiences. At one point, he went on a Saudi fundraising mission for the PLO at Arafat’s behest. Of course, Arafat had no interest in peace, which became crystal clear in 2000 when he rejected an offer of Palestinian statehood and launched a campaign of terror known as the Second Intifada instead.
Carter’s friendship with Arafat was part of a pattern in which he would chastise Israel in the most extreme terms while ignoring or minimizing the actions of terrorists and dictators whose enemies happened to be Israel. On a Middle East trip in 1990, he visited Syria to meet with Hafez al-Assad and had nothing to say about the brutal dictator’s violations of human rights, but then he went to Israel and blasted its human rights record as it was trying to form a government. Carter met with and embraced Hamas and, in 2015, the year after thousands of rockets were fired indiscriminately at Israel civilians, claimed that the group, which in its charter calls for the extermination of Israel, was the party actually committed to peace and that Israel was not.
In 2007, Carter published Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which was not only one-sided in its attacks on Israel but was filled with inaccuracies and distortions. At one point in the book, he invoked the story of Jesus to liken Israeli authorities to the Pharisees. In the first edition, he included a line in which he asserted that terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians were justified until Israel submits to demands: “It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel.” While he claimed this line was a mistake, he defended the rest of his work and dismissed legitimate criticism as merely coming from Jews.
“Most of the condemnations of my book came from Jewish American organizations,” Carter said in an interview with Al Jazeera, in which he also claimed that Palestinian rocket attacks on Israelis were not acts of terrorism. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed, he further advanced old tropes of nefarious Jewish control. He complained that the pro-Israel lobby made it “almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine” and lamented that “book reviews in the mainstream media have been written mostly by representatives of Jewish organizations.” This wasn’t true, and, further, it means that he described all Jewish writers (such as Jeffrey Goldberg, who reviewed the book for the Washington Post) as representing “Jewish organizations.”
In a speech at George Washington University on the same book tour, he argued that the obstacle to peace was “a minority of the more conservative [Israeli] leaders who have intruded into Palestine and who are unfortunately supported by AIPAC and most of the vocal American Jewish communities.”
At the event, one student asked about the fact that 14 members of the Carter Center’s advisory board had resigned over the book, and Carter had a familiar response: “They all happen to be Jewish Americans; I understand the tremendous pressures on them.”
One of the members to resign was a close associate, Ken Stein, an Emory University professor who had spent decades at the center — as its first permanent director, and then as the Middle East fellow, during which time he traveled with Carter and took notes on their meetings with foreign leaders. In a blistering review for the Middle East Quarterly, Stein wrote, “While Carter says that he wrote the book to educate and provoke debate, the narrative aims its attack toward Israel, Israeli politicians, and Israel’s supporters. It contains egregious errors of both commission and omission. To suit his desired ends, he manipulates information, redefines facts, and exaggerates conclusions.”
Among the examples he gives is an account of a meeting Carter had with Hafez al-Assad, in which Stein was the notetaker. Even though Stein shared his notes from the meeting, Carter’s account of the same meeting in the book was manipulated to make Assad seem more flexible than he actually was.
Stein also included the revelation that “Carter’s distrust of the U.S. Jewish community and other supporters of Israel runs deep.” Stein recalled an interview he once conducted for his 1991 book in which Carter bitterly told him:
[Vice president] Fritz Mondale was much more deeply immersed in the Jewish organization leadership than I was. That was an alien world to me. They [American Jews] didn’t support me during the presidential campaign [that] had been predicated greatly upon Jewish money. . . . Almost all of them were supportive of Scoop Jackson — Scoop Jackson was their spokesman . . . their hero. So I was looked upon as an alien challenger to their own candidate. You know, I don’t mean unanimously but . . . overwhelmingly. So I didn’t feel obligated to them or to labor unions and so forth. Fritz . . . was committed to Israel. . . . It was an act just like breathing to him — it wasn’t like breathing to me. So I was willing to break the shell more than he was.
It probably didn’t help Carter’s mood that, in 1980, he received a lower share of the Jewish vote than any Democratic candidate since 1920.
In the coming days and weeks, there will be an effort to rewrite history and claim that the 39th president was underappreciated and that people have been too harsh on him. But the truth is that historians have not been harsh enough. One of the few silver linings that can be offered about Jimmy Carter is that, thankfully, he was too politically inept to be given the opportunity do even more damage.
Will he survive as the worst president the country has ever had? I don’t know, but he’d at least be runner up to the POS we have now.
I am reminded of the story in General Petraeus’ book about his day of retirement after being fired by Obama. He went to see the president to bid him farewell since Obama saw fit to not attend his retirement ceremony that morning. Obama allegedly said, “General, I’ll bet you can’t wait to piss on my grave.” To which the general replied, “No sir. At my retirement ceremony this morning, I swore to never stand in another line.”
Oh, lest I forget, Happy New Year brothers and sisters!!
Current Events

Boycott Economics 101

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Here I go again. Folks, we need to shut up and do something. It’s time the silent majority, that is if there still is one, start taking some action. Who do these public corporation CEOs think they are that they can make any political statement they so choose and think it doesn’t matter? YES, it does matter, but only if we do something about it. Drink Pepsi instead of Coke. Now there is a company that does so much for Veterans; do some research on Pepsi and see what they do, and they don’t even brag about it. Yet that fool running Coke thinks he can say anything and the dumb, ignorant American will still buy his product. These CEOs monitor their bottom line on a daily basis. If we do as Greg suggests and stop buying  a product, the CEO would know about it in a week — guaranteed. We have the power, but only if we act. Are you willing to walk the walk, or just talk the talk?

 

 

 

 

 

 

By: G. Maresca

When Major League Baseball joined the Cancel Culture by moving their All-Star game out of Georgia thanks to legislation that enhanced the state’s election integrity, talk of boycotting MLB and those that do business with them went vogue.

Politically driven boycotts have deep nationalistic roots. In the 1760s, American colonists exasperated with high British taxation boycotted English goods giving rise to that American revolutionary rally: “taxation without representation.” The civil-rights crusade was initiated by the 1955 boycott of the segregated bus system of Montgomery, Alabama led by Rosa Parks.

In the 1960s, the United Farm Workers boycotted California farmers who employed nonunion workers. After Nike was exposed exploiting foreign sweatshops, sales dropped. However, these two boycotts were about changing business practices.

The comparison to someone burning a $150 Nike football jersey is laughable. Since the jersey has already been paid for such shenanigans only impacts the jersey’s owner. Pseudo-boycotts are identity politics and ineffective.

They are not a solution, but an illusion.

When politics cannot find common ground, boycott. Boycotters must sacrifice. Those who took part in the Montgomery boycott knew their lives would be more difficult.

A sincere and authentic boycott must be logical, organized, and sustained. These qualities are too often lacking in contemporary America.

CEOs do not fear offending the silent majority, who are presumed not to boycott or protest. They see conservatives as submissive and wanting to get along. Political and personal insult are of no substance to them. The time has arrived for the silence to end, particularly when it comes to money. If you want change, spend accordingly.

Companies are not immune to the bottom line; they are its hostage.

If a quarter of the 74 million who voted for Trump started boycotting businesses a long overdue message would be heard and done peacefully unlike how the left operates. The strength of conservative buying power was realized when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for a boycott of Goya and when the Left called out Chick-Fil-A.

In both instances, sales increased.

Economic pain is possible, but it takes a conscious effort. If the corporate world feels the economic heat, change could follow, but keep in mind Rome did not fall in a month.

Neutrality in business is best, but that is lost on Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola who also adamantly opposed Georgia’s legislation. It is easier to vote in Georgia today than it is to check a bag, go through TSA security, and get on a Delta flight that has always required identification.

Coca-Cola promotes racism by telling employees to “be less white” associating whites as being domineering, condescending, and boorish. Imagine the media storm had Coca-Cola asked people to “be less black.” Recall that “New Coke” flopped a generation ago. Today’s Woka-Cola could be its 2.0.

Democrats want to eliminate CO2. Every Coke product and consumer emits CO2. Delta might consider their rising fuel costs in this green era of Biden. Being the Left’s useful idiot is not going to protect them from their extremism, but some must learn the hard way. Their fiduciary responsibility is to their shareholders and customers.

They are failing both.

The power of the bottom line exists, provided it is exercised. It is not complicated. Do not buy from companies who pay more attention to politics and social media than they do running their businesses.

There are no good reasons for any corporation to become involved in politics that don’t directly impact their profitability.  As Michael Jordan said, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” America is already too politically polarized. Corporate leaders could help rather than hinder by not making their brands a political baseball.

Too many conservatives offer up nothing but excuses for not boycotting. The only thing they loathe more than injustice is inconvenience. W.B. Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming,” written in the aftermath of World War I speaks to us today: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

Stop waiting for politicians to collectively change the culture.

Change begins with the reflection you see in the mirror.

MLB Hall of Famer Yogi Berra summarized it like only he could: “If people don’t want to come to the ballpark you cannot stop them.”

Add Ben & Jerry’s to the list of cancel culture, left wing corporations who think they immunize to consumer influence. The ice may be good but it sure is expensive, so buy another brand. Shut their big mouths down!!

Originally posted 2021-04-15 11:14:04.

Current Events, Recent Posts

Coke CEO

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Shut up and run your company

I find it remarkable that of all the corporations and organizations who have come out condemning Georgia’s latest legislation concerning voter requirements, nary a one has explained how the law disenfranchises minority voters. Amazing. I recently read where even CNN said it does nothing to harm minority voting. Have any of these woke companies/organizations even read the law? I seriously doubt it.  Someone, anyone, please explain to me how requiring an ID to vote in the United  States infringes upon a minority’s right to vote. Maybe I’m just out of touch with today’s world, but I don’t think so since the chart below shows an awful lot of “things” that require an ID. How does one exist in today’s world without an ID?? You all know from past posts I consider myself an Economist by education and hobby. I know for a fact that we, as consumers have more power than many of you think. Oftentimes, commenters have asked what we can do to help society get back on track. Well, let me tell you it’s plain and  simple. Spend your hard earned money wisely, that is, do not buy from producers who pay more attention to social media than running their business. Corporations like Coke rely on us for their existence. They should shut their woke mouths and concentrate on running Coke for the benefit of the owners, who are , of course, shareholders! Can you imagine if you forwarded this post to everyone in your address book, and they did likewise, we could really hurt Coke, and perhaps teach that idiot woke CEO, James Quincey, a lesson in Economics!

I recently switched razors to Harry’s, and was about to order some more blades. It’s going in the trash today. We should be together on this Gang. If you read about some company/organization  condemning Georgia for their new ID law, make a comment about on here. Let’s start a list so we all know who to stop buying from or supporting.

 

 

 

 

 

I know switching from favorites can be tough e.g., Tide is but one product of Proctor & Gamble. However, we have to do something rather than sitting round bitching about things. Please join me!

What I Wouldn’t Give for a Shave That Isn’t Woke

From my closet to my bathroom, my house is full of leftist brands. It’s time to do something about it.

From the WSJ

By Dave Seminara

April 4, 2021 4:16 pm ET

Maybe I was wrong to think conservatives should refrain from adopting the bullying, boycotting tactics of the left. I made the case against emulating progressives in these pages last summer as I lamented the rise of the woke corporation, documenting how many of my favorite companies embrace values antithetical to my own. But it’s increasingly clear that the sharp increase in corporate virtue signaling after George Floyd’s death wasn’t a passing trend but a sea change. Perhaps it’s time for conservatives to boycott companies that hate us.

Coca-Cola and Delta, a pair of Atlanta-based companies I’ve patronized for many years, became progressive boycott targets this month for allegedly not doing enough to stop Republicans in the state from passing an election-security law that’s been recast absurdly as a civil-rights violation. The companies haven’t withstood it well.

In an interview Wednesday with CNBC, James Quincey, Coca-Cola’s CEO and virtue signaler in chief, called the law “unacceptable” and “a step backwards,” but didn’t explain why. CNBC host Sara Eisen never asked if he feared a conservative backlash. Instead she pressed him on why Coca-Cola didn’t “publicly oppose this before.”

Mr. Quincey’s comments didn’t placate the woke mob on Twitter, with some insisting that Coke hadn’t condemned the legislation soon enough or forcefully enough. Delta CEO Ed Bastian appeared to be reading from the Coca-Cola script later the same day. His company released a statement condemning the law, and Mr. Bastian said in a memo to employees that the reform was “unacceptable and does not match Delta’s values.”

Opinion: Morning Editorial Report

As the Journal’s editorial board has pointed out, the legislation is in no way a return to Jim Crow, but rather an honest effort to improve election integrity.

Coca-Cola, Delta, Microsoft and other companies my family supports all but called the legislation racist, implying that those, like me, who support it are bigots. As distasteful as this is, I can’t say I’m surprised. When I look around my house, I see many products from woke companies that want me to know how strongly they disagree with me on pretty much every issue of the day.

Start with Patagonia, one of my favorite clothing-and-gear outfitters. The top of its website exhorts visitors to “act now” to stop climate change, warning that “extinction looms for more than one million species of plants and animals.” Maybe so, but what about shoppers who are there just to pick up a $35 “live simply” T-shirt? The homepage tab next to “shop” is “activism.” Click if you dare, because you’re in for a world of lefty indoctrination. Patagonia even endorses political candidates. You won’t be surprised to learn that none of them in 2020 had an “R” after their names.

Moving to the bathroom, I encounter my progressive razors. No, not Gillette. I ditched those in 2019 after the company released a ludicrously woke ad decrying toxic masculinity. But last month I learned that the new brand I’d chosen, Harry’s, had pulled its advertising from the Daily Wire, a conservative website I like. The razor company fled after a Twitter user with 29 followers complained that one of the Daily Wire’s podcasts “is spreading homophobic and transphobic content.” You might think it’d be easier to find a politically neutral shave, given that a majority of men are Republicans and companies generally play to their customer base. But this reality is apparently lost on Harry’s—and Gillette, or rather its parent company, Procter & Gamble.

Another P&G brand my family uses—Pantene shampoo—recently released a commercial about the life of a young transgender girl and her lesbian moms. “She has always been super gender creative, and hair has been a big part of her transition,” says one of the moms. At the end of the commercial, a banner reads, “PANTENE Family is #BEAUTIFULGBTQ—Proud to Support Transgender Visibility.” The ad has about six times as many dislikes as likes on YouTube, but that hasn’t given the company pause. It tweeted that “transphobia has no place in our world or in our feed.”

Maybe Pantene believes that’ll be the extent of the blowback. Many companies take Republican customers for granted. Perhaps they’re right. I still have subscriptions to Netflix, Hulu and Disney+, even though many of their offerings, particularly documentaries, advance left-wing agendas.

But there’s money to be made on standing up to cancel culture. Last summer, after I complained that my preferred coffee company had gone too far left, readers suggested I buy from Black Rifle Coffee Co. “They support Veterans and the coffee is very good,” one reader wrote me. He was right and word is spreading. The company’s revenue nearly doubled in 2020—a year when every other business seemed to be going woke.

Unlike many on the left, I’m fine with companies not taking sides, and I don’t expect every company I patronize to embrace my views. But if Pantene can stand firm on behalf of transgender visibility, perhaps it’s time for conservatives to stiffen their spines, too. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask that the businesses I patronize refrain from actively and loudly despising me.

Mr. Seminara is a former diplomat and author of “Footsteps of Federer: A Fan’s Pilgrimage Across 7 Swiss Cantons in 10 Acts.”

Originally posted 2021-04-05 14:55:57.

Recent Posts

An Intentional Balk

6 Comments

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.