Former sports editor Ira Lacher argues that the “game” of professional football “is becoming more of a troubling spectacle.” -promoted by Laura Belin

It starts again soon. This week, the smack of rock-hard plastic on far softer bone and tissue signals the onset of yet another professional football season. For tens of millions of Americans, it is the culmination of a seven-month foreplay of offseason news, tryout camps, the college draft, the preseason and, finally, at 7:20 P.M. Eastern time, Packers vs. Bears, the start of a five-month orgiastic swoon.

Professional football perfectly defines what most of us believe America is: a society constrained by the norms of civilization and polity but with a savage undertow, which flows for 21 weeks a year, from September through February.

Ira Lacher: “We hear that as Jewish Americans, we must be for Israel right or wrong and that anyone who is not is an anti-Semite. What rubbish!” -promoted by Laura Belin

During the 1960s, many of us protested the war in Vietnam. War supporters immediately accused us of being unpatriotic. “America right or wrong” became the mantra of the hard-hats.

We protested because it was becoming obvious that America was engaged in an immoral war, which was costing the lives of tens of thousands of Americans and Vietnamese, as well as the reputation of America around the world. That didn’t stop those who believed that America can do no wrong from vilifying us as anti-American. As traitors.

But we were not anti-American. We were anti-war. Anti-government. And we were protesting because we loved America. But hated what it was promulgating.

The same phenomenon is happening today. But it involves Jewish Americans and Israel.

Ira Lacher: “Bump stocks and assault weapons notwithstanding, if we seriously want to reduce the number of gun deaths in this country, we need to have a come-to-Jesus debate about guns. But we’re not seeing that debate.” -promoted by Laura Belin

So, Republicans are finally and grudgingly moving forward on gun control. Consider these headlines:

From USA Today: Trump: Congress discussing ‘meaningful’ gun background checks

From Breitbart: Mitch McConnell: ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban ‘Front and Center’ in Senate

From the Washington Times: Trump on gun legislation: ‘Common sense things can be done’

Wow! Guess the public is getting to the president and Congressional Republicans after all. We can breathe easier, now that it seems we’ll be getting some commonsense laws that will at least severely restrict gun violence in America.

Except, no.

Ira Lacher: “If there were ever a real right to own a gun, it has been abused by the number of persons who die by gun in America — 100 times each day, 365 days each year. And like anything we have abused, it is time for it to be taken away.” -promoted by Laura Belin

“Lets eat, Grandma!”

Ignore the comma and the speaker becomes a cannibal.

“… the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Ignore the comma, as millions of Americans do, including our illustrious Supreme Court, and you have what we experience uniquely among all developed nations: repeated mass carnage at the point of a gun.

Ira Lacher reflects on a dispiriting week in U.S. politics. -promoted by Laura Belin

We have a racist president. He heads a racist party. So what do we do about it?

Ira Lacher warns it would be a mistake for the Democratic presidential nominee to promise to take away millions of Americans’ employer-provided health insurance. -promoted by Laura Belin

Looking back at the 2016 election, there were at least five types of Americans who voted for Donald Trump: nativists and xenophobes who consider America a white country; independents who absolutely detested Hillary Clinton; Obama voters fed up with the Democratic Party for apparently tossing them under the bus in favor of big corporations; dyed-in-the-wool Republicans who would have voted for Thanos, if he had run as a Republican; and all of the above: those who couldn’t cope with the accelerating change, already at warp speed, altering our culture, politics, economics, and the very framework of America.

In one analysis of the way people react to change, the first five reactions are all negative: denial, anger, confusion, depression and crisis. Psychologist James Prochaska postulated that there are various aspects of change, from preparation through action. As we go through each of these stages, he said, we can ready ourselves for the next, and put ourselves in the best position to cope with the alterations.

Ira Lacher reflects on the impact of federalism. -promoted by Laura Belin

On the eve of Independence Day, let us take a moment to consider that, like knowledge, too much independence is a dangerous thing.

When the founders declared America’s independence from Britain, they envisioned a nation composed of 13 semiautonomous states, which would maintain a delicate balance with a central government. That Rube Goldberg gadget empowered states to declare which human beings were human beings and which were property.

Ira Lacher: “For many Americans who only experience candidates through email appeals or in prepackaged videos, the debates provided an opportunity to see them as people.” -promoted by Laura Belin

Now that the first Democratic presidential debates have come and gone, what have we learned?

Forgetting and ignoring what the national media have said, here’s what I learned from my own and others’ observations from two nights of debate-watching parties.

Ira Lacher: Biden “typifies the quintessential Democrat who inspired traditional Democrats to disaffect to Donald Trump in 2016: the Democrat who betrays party loyalists, and who continually fails to understand that it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear.” -promoted by Laura Belin

“Hide the hooch, Ethel! The Democrats are doin’ it agin’!”

Yes, they are. Joe Biden has foolishly bragged of his close working relationship with Senators James Eastland and Herman Talmadge, two of the upper chamber’s most virulent segregationists. According to the news outlet The Hill, Eastland blocked more than 100 civil rights-related bills during his time as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman.

After another foul ball causes a serious injury, Ira Lacher reflects on Major League Baseball’s failure to insist on more protective netting at ballparks. -promoted by Laura Belin

“The holder of this ticket assumes all risks and danger incidental to the game of baseball…”

This disclaimer, or a variation of it, is known as the Baseball Rule. It is printed on every ticket to all major-league and most minor-league baseball contests. It is intended primarily as legal protection for the ballclubs, an agreement that if a fan is injured by a thrown bat or thrown or batted ball, they can’t sue the club for damages. It’s classic buyer beware, and it has governed attendance at baseball games for generations.

But that era may be entering the late innings.

Ira Lacher argues that Democratic candidates for president should accept invitations to hold town halls on Fox News. -promoted by Laura Belin

Our dog sitter is a wonderful young man with an engaging smile, modest persona and, above all, a tremendous caring spirit. He also watches Fox News.

An estimated 2.5 million Americans get at least part of their prime-time news and information from Fox News. Which makes it a dynamic “D-oh!” why most Democratic Party presidential nominees refuse to accept the network’s invitation to appear in a town hall format, hosted by one of their news anchors, not one of their right-wing talking heads.

Ira Lacher highlights the hypocrisy of New York Times columnist David Brooks. -promoted by Laura Belin

America’s loudest self-apologist is at it again.

Ever since Donald Trump’s election allowed the maggots of Reaganomics to go forth and multiply, New York Times columnist David Brooks, one of the right’s most influential pundits, has been on a flagellation campaign. He has repeatedly chastised the very politiconomic conditions that he and his colleagues brought to bear on Americans, who only wanted to live better than their parents and now find themselves living worse — some considerably so.

And Brooks has done it again with his latest. In Tuesday’s Times, Brooks devotes his latest column to a scholarly paper which says, in effect, that the same people who bought into Republicanism are most suffering its ill-effects.

Ira Lacher argues that Democratic presidential contenders should accept an invitation from a leading social conservative in Iowa. -promoted by Laura Belin

From the moment the first Pilgrim set foot in the New World, the American cloth has been sewn by those motivated by religion. Our uniqueness results largely in part from those who brought their religious traditions with them, and by their descendants, who tailored those traditions to acclimate to their inherited country.

The Southern black church gave birth to the civil rights movement; marchers at Selma included Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Jesuit priests Daniel and Philip Berrigan helped define the Vietnam peace movement. Muslims Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Muhammad Ali rose to the top of their sports. Thousands of others have used their faith traditions to make significant impacts on every aspect of American life. As President Barack Obama told PBS in its 2010 series God in America, “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and non-believers.”

But that ecumenism has been sundered. Since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 declared abortion to be a right, evangelical Christians, anointing themselves guardians of faith, have been determined to make the word of the Lord, as they interpret it, the law of the land.

Ira Lacher: Lawmakers in Canada, the UK, and Germany “have accepted the premise that if you drop a hammer from the 15th floor of a building, you don’t need to look down to know the hammer has fallen.” -promoted by Laura Belin

There’s a new law in Iowa. Under the guise of promoting free speech, it’s intended to give free reign to those who, under cover of the First Amendment, deliver hate language on college campuses.

The legislation reads, in part: “[I]t is not the proper role of an institution of higher education to shield individuals from speech protected by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which may include ideas and opinions the individual finds unwelcome, disagreeable, or even offensive.”

The law permits colleges to restrict hate speech only if that speech contains “a threat of serious harm and expression directed or likely directed to provoke imminent unlawful actions.” But there’s the problem: America, unlike other countries, does not define such language, much less outlaw it.

Ira Lacher discusses the appeal of South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who has recently moved up in Iowa and national polling of the Democratic presidential field. -promoted by Laura Belin

By conventional wisdom, Pete Buttigieg shouldn’t be a top-tier presidential candidate. At 37, he’s only two years older than the constitutional minimum age to be president. As mayor of a small city in Indiana, he hasn’t the national political experience to reach for high office. As a gay man with a husband, he defies the mold that the president of the United States has to be some “Marlboro Man.” And as a Christian, he risks turning off secular voters who feel that Christians’ agenda runs counter to progressive Democratic ideals.

And yet, Pete Buttigieg has vaulted to rock-star status not despite all of the above but because of it. He’s done it because he’s not afraid to wear his genuineness on his sleeve.

Ira Lacher weighs in on the Mueller investigation report (based on the limited information currently available). -promoted by Laura Belin

No collusion.

Well, what did we expect?

Ira Lacher: “America doesn’t dream big anymore. Even before the ascension of Donald J. Trump, or the Tea Party, or the Contract with America, we set our sights ridiculously low, the way we do when driving in fog.” -promoted by Laura Belin

Saw the new Apollo 11 documentary Saturday night. And I noticed two things immediately: how so many people were fascinated by an event that took place half a century ago . . . and how many of them were young people. It wasn’t just nostalgia that drove a crowd to a movie theater on an awful weather day.

Ira Lacher weighs in on the “vitriol” spewed after Green Book won this year’s Best Picture award. -promoted by Laura Belin

Do you remember the controversy about The Shape of Water, specifically how it relies on Cold War clichés, bashes the U.S. military, and stereotypes the disabled? Neither do I.

Or the furor over the way Spotlight completely overlooked the scores of charitable endeavors of the Catholic Church? Must have missed it.

Ira Lacher reflects on the stakes for presidential candidates, nearly a year before the Iowa caucuses. -promoted by Laura Belin

“It gets late early out here.”

Yogi Berra is credited with that observation about the final month of the baseball season, when the lower-in-the-sky sun of early fall casts longer shadows over more of the field.

Managers will tell you a win in April is just as important as a win in September. But when you don’t win in September, you have fewer opportunities to make up those losses.

Heading into March, there are about eleven months to go before Iowans tell the world why so-and-so should be the Democrat to oppose Donald J. Trump. Eleven months may seem like a long time. There are unanticipated world and national events to come, revelations to be made, gaffes to occur.

Ira Lacher comments on signs of growing youth activism: “The revolution will not be televised. But it may be streamed, Instagrammed and tweeted.” -promoted by Laura Belin

“The revolution will not be televised,” Gil Scott-Heron wrote in an iconic 1970 anthem that many of us digested over and over while we considered what should happen with America.

My generation marched to end the Vietnam War and police brutality, advance the Equal Rights Amendment and other “socialist” causes. We said we want a revolution, but well, you know, there were the needs of getting jobs, starting families, buying homes, putting children through college. The ideals of revolution transmogrified into the reality of Reaganomics, fear of being blown up by terrorists and the creaks of advancing age.

But if recent events in New York City are an indication, the revolution may be stirring once again.

Ira Lacher: The 2020 election will belong to the most popular, the rock star, the candidate who can best energize a crowd, make them believe. -promoted by Laura Belin

If you read Gary Hart’s op-ed in Sunday’s Des Moines Register, the best president is someone who is mature, well-seasoned and experienced. “The newest, the cutest, the funniest, the quickest wit is interesting but irrelevant,” he writes, in a not-so-offhanded dis of rock star candidates such as U.S. Senator Cory Booker, who spoke Saturday to a mostly young, SRO crowd packed into Des Moines’ Kum and Go Theater.

Former sports editor Ira Lacher turns his attention to baseball. -promoted by Laura Belin

We interrupt this political season for some important news:

FLASH — Major League Baseball probably will adopt the designated hitter for both leagues beginning in 2020.

Bleeding Heartland welcomes first-person accounts of campaign events. Today Ira Lacher reports from a meet-and-greet with newly-declared presidential candidate Marianne Williamson. -promoted by Laura Belin

Marianne Williamson commands a room with the acumen of a megachurch preacher. The guests at her meet-and-greet February 1, many of whom admitted to being Williamson fans long before she declared her intention to seek the Democratic presidential nomination, were ready to give witness.

“We have a 40-year record of an economic monstrosity that has affected the sinews of our civilization,” she told a room full of about 50 Des Moines residents who gathered to hear the woman described as “Oprah’s spiritual guru” explain why she was running.

Ira Lacher: “If a major party candidate can’t rally registered voters around its candidate, it’s not the voters — it’s the party.” -promoted by Laura Belin

Michael Bloomberg is “actively weighing a president run,” according to The New York Times, and liberal Democrats are having a shit fit.

That’s because the former mayor of New York City, who changed his party from Republican to Democrat in 2018, describes himself as pro-business, anti-recreational pot and pro-stop-and-frisk. He doesn’t want to break up Wall Street, as Senator Elizabeth Warren has called for. He’s also expressed skepticism about some media reports of sexual harassment.

Former sports editor and referee Ira Lacher‘s take on one of the most talked-about events of the past week. -promoted by Laura Belin

We interrupt this nascent but already red-hot political season for a far more important matter — so important that The New York Times made it a front-page story in its print edition of Tuesday, January 22:

“Fans Can See Every Angle, but N.F.L. Officials Can’t. Why?” (Upon further review, editors changed the headline on the website to: “When the Whole Country Reviews a Play, Referees Can’t Always Join.”)

Ira Lacher explains the difference between opposing the Netanyahu government’s policies and opposing Israel’s right to exist. -promoted by Laura Belin

There will be controversy.

There will be arguments.

There will be accusations.

There will be widening of rifts.

What there won’t be will be honest dialogue.

The new Congress is less than a week old, the new Iowa caucuses season is barely a week old, and doubtless we have many political thrills, spills and inanities ahead of us. But it doesn’t seem too early to offer some advice to our crop of newly elected Democrats in Congress and those with their hands on the presidential hats they are about to toss into the ring.

I say this while speaking from a high level of discourse, taking the high road and coming across as an adult, which most Americans say the person with the nuclear button should be. OK:

Please shut the fuck up.

I know the Soviet Union had rule by gerontocracy. But this is ridiculous.

Yes, yes, it’s fourteen months before the Iowa Caucuses, and so much can happen during that time. But the new Iowa Poll by Selzer & Co for the Des Moines Register, CNN, and Mediacom had me reeling. It concluded that most caucus-intensive Democrats prefer as their favorite 2020 presidential candidates Joe Biden and Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — with a combined age of 222.

Quipped former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, “It appears we’re going to have an old-folks’ home.”

I get sports. I watch sports. I’m a fan. Many of us are. When we see men and women do amazing things while wearing shirts with the names of the communities we belong to, it makes us feel good.

There are all kinds of psychological studies, like this one, that try to explain why we are so invested in contests that in few ways affect how we live our lives. But the bottom line is, when our teams win, we feel better. We win, a little. And when they lose, we don’t feel as good.

Like the remains of Thanksgiving dinner that will be with us for a while, some random thoughts to digest:

City sidewalks, small-town sidewalks
Dressed in ‘lection day style
In the air there’s a feeling
of Caucus . . .

Yes, the crispness in the air . . . the shortening of days . . . the Black Friday sales . . . they can mean only one thing: Iowa caucus season is right around the corner.

Ira Lacher weighs in on the results in Iowa’s third Congressional district. -promoted by desmoinesdem

“Don’t give yourself any kine horas.”

My Yiddish-speaking aunt would admonish me thusly every time I told her of my latest accomplishment. The phrase, loosely translated as Han Solo’s “Don’t get cocky, kid,” was the eleventh commandment in traditional Jewish homes. “Don’t get too full of yourself, because the evil eye is always there to put a curse on you.”

So forgive me if I throw cold water on Cindy Axne’s victory over David Young in the just-concluded midterm election. Looking at the election map, there’s every indication that she — along with others who won overwhelmingly in urban and suburban areas but nowhere else — could be a one-term congresswoman. Unless the Democrats get their act together.

Quick takes from Ira Lacher on the Iowa and national election results. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Some takeaways from Tuesday’s midterms:

Ira Lacher was an assistant sports editor at the Des Moines Register during the 1980s. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Remember how we used to eagerly open the Wednesday Des Moines Register the day after an election to get the local and national results? Don’t bother this year.

A personal reflection from Ira Lacher, inspired by the tragic events of the past week. -promoted by desmoinesdem

When I was 22, I left New York and moved to America.

It’s a line I have used over the years to introduce myself. I use it in jest, and it gets a laugh. Most folks who hear it realize that New York City and the Northeast are worlds apart from the land between the coasts.

But I never realized how far apart until now.

There are monsters under the bed. And they are coming for us.

They are coming for our hard-earned savings. They are coming for our property. They are coming for our children. They are coming for our way of life.

This is the agenda that the right has been pushing on Americans for the last 30 or so years. And it is working for the same reason my twins, when they were toddlers, were afraid that monsters lurked under their beds.

Ira Lacher asks, “How in the world can we effect the kind of change we so urgently seek when we decline to exercise the one sure method to accomplish this?” -promoted by desmoinesdem

Many of us despair that Brett Kavanaugh, who displayed such a nonpartisan judicial mien during the latter stages of his confirmation process, has become the latest impediment to a progressive agenda. We are livid that Senators Mitch McConnell and Iowa’s own Charles Grassley hijacked the confirmation process for Barack Obama.

And yet, when the ballots are counted on November 6, we almost assuredly will find that far fewer than half of voting-eligible Americans actually realized the most elementary way to reverse this outcome: They didn’t vote.

A challenging question from Des Moines resident Ira Lacher. -promoted by desmoinesdem

I have one question for each and every candidate running for local, state, or national office, for whom we are urged to vote on November 6:

“How are you going to make me believe in America again?”

Ira Lacher: “a dysfunctional party shuts out those who deviate from that agenda. We see this in the Republican Party’s utter purge of anyone who dares break with the ultra-right. And we also can begin to see it in the Democratic Party’s reluctance to accept those who oppose abortion.” -promoted by desmoinesdem

In her September 9 column, Des Moines Register editorial page editor Kathie Obradovich praised Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse for telling it like it is. “[I]nstead of pointing fingers across the aisle or at any other convenient scapegoat,” she writes, “Sasse puts the blame squarely where it belongs: On every so-called lawmaker who has abdicated the job of making laws in favor of the full-time occupation of getting re-elected.”

Getting re-elected is a full-time job, one that seemingly everyone elected to public offices relishes. They put on so much relish that it completely disguises the hot dog beneath: that they were elected to do the people’s work. And they spend their entire lives in search of ever-juicier relish.

But there’s a way to bring balance back. It’s simple and it’s obvious, and Americans — Democrats, Republicans and independents — are overwhelmingly in favor, according to at least one poll this year.

The coming Jewish high holidays inspired this reflection by Ira Lacher of Des Moines. -promoted by desmoinesdem

The Jewish people are about to enter into the annual Ten Days of Repentance — Aseret Yemei Teshuva in Hebrew — in which, by tradition, we take stock of our behavior of the last year. Jews don’t have daily confession; we let it build up over 365 days and then try to purge ourselves of shame, guilt and what many of us would call sin, as we pray to God for another year of well-being.

“For the sins of one against God, God forgives,” says an age-old prayer. “But for the sins of one against another, God does not forgive, unless they have made peace with one another.”

So, as my people make preparations for this season of confession, I would like to confess: I’ve made my peace with Germany.

Des Moines resident Ira Lacher noticed a striking contrast in two commentaries published this weekend. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Page 3 of the Sunday Des Moines Register opinion section told us everything we need to know about the people who are in the top positions in America.

On one hand, there was Rob Tibbetts’ heartfelt plea for decency in the wake of the murder of his daughter, Mollie.

Below it, was Donald Trump Jr.’s pathetic attempt to sustain hatred of brown people.

Ira Lacher shares his perspective on an unpleasant surprise waiting for many Des Moines Register readers on Saturday, August 25. -promoted by desmoinesdem

I was assistant sports editor of the Des Moines Register for four and a half years in the mid-1980s. As my soon-to-be bosses, sports editor Mike Wegner and managing editor Arnie Garson, explained to me during my application interview, if there was one thing that distinguished the Register as “The Newspaper Iowans Depend Upon,” it was our unparalleled coverage of Iowa high school sports.

The second-most important night of the week, besides Saturday night, when we produced The Big Peach sports section, was Friday night during high school football season. We labored mightily to get the scores and stories in from all around Iowa, beginning first with the out-state editions, and ending with the Golden Circle and Des Moines metro results.

So, imagine my shock when I saw the blurb in last Saturday’s paper saying that if you wanted to read about high school football coverage in print, wait for Sunday’s paper!