FRAUD

Republicans never get tired of playing an old election-year game: Trying to keep Democrats from voting.
This time, again, the warning cry has gone out about "voter fraud."
This time, the New York Times reports, members of the GOP's Tea Party wing are bent on challenging a national registration campaign for new voters in America's heartland and other places. To prevent fraud, they say.
They lie. What they worry about is how many new Democrats might be discovered out there.
This year, as is the custom, the Tea Party/GOP campaign is based on fear. It's meant to distract the ordinary voter, of course, but most of all it's meant to intimidate the unregistered, perhaps thus-far uninterested voter.
To put it bluntly, their basic, unspoken, shameful purpose is to keep blacks and Latinos away from voting booths. These fear-mongers think if they yell loud enough about rigid screening of new voters, if they warn often enough about jailing for "fraud," it will particularly discourage minority. Democratic-leaning voting.
What they believe may not be true, and it ought not to be, but they've made it a common GOP tactic.
Years ago, I saw it being tried in Denver.
Local Republicans, warning of potential fraud, dispatched a team of the right sort of people -- "suits" -- out into certain precincts as official "poll watchers" on election day.
Well, if any of these proper persons found any fraud, even a scrap, I didn't see it or hear about it, and I was a reporter watching and listening for that.
The answer, of course, is that there isn't and hasn't been any significant fraud in Denver or Colorado. And probably hasn't been any really significant fraud in America's heartland since the end of boss Tom Pendergast's machine in Kansas City when I was a boy.
Our elections may not please you, but they're clean. Stop worrying.

Cheer Up

Football fans, there's a bit of good news in Sunday's loss to the Raiders. You'll never have to watch the Broncos play a worse game.
Maybe.

fatigue

The Yankees couldn't really help what happened to them this week, losing the American League playoffs to the upstart Texas Rangers in six games. I think the Yankees were just tired.
At least they looked tired, looked their age.
Maybe the most embarrassing moment came when a Yankee pitcher, seeking to give the Rangers an intentional walk. threw the ball over the catcher's head, allowing a base runner to advance from second to third.
The team from the Bronx has been one of my two or three favorites since the days of Lou Gehrig, Dizzy Dean and Ted Williams. But this year I got tired myself, watching them struggle to try to be what they used to be.
On Friday -- playoff elimination day for New York -- Yankee golden boy Derek Jeter led off the game by bouncing out. Shortstop Jeter batted .231 for the six-game series.
For the Rangers, shortstop Elvis Andrus led off the game with a double to left-center and scored a run. He batted .333 for the series.
Andrus is 22 years old and is making a beginning-level salary of $418,000. Jeter is 36 years old and is making $22.6 million.
Team rosters peg the Yanks' average age at 30.2 and the Rangers' at 28.6, which isn't far apart. But for the basic core of New York's championship contenders, individual age numbers are Jeter 36, Andy Pettitte, 38, Mariano Rivera, 40, Jorge Posada, 39, Lance Berkman, 34, Alex Rodriguez, 35, Mark Teixeira, 30, A.J. Burnett, 33.
At least 10 Yankees are paid more than $10 million. Only one Ranger gets more than $10 million, outfielder Michael Young at $13,1, and he is also one of the oldest, at 33.
Ranger catcher Bengie Molina is 36 and designated hitter Vladimir Guerrerro is 35, but the Texas team is loaded with youngsters between 20 and 30.
Of 11 Ranger pitchers, one is 40, two are thirtyish and eight are in their twenties.
So far as I can see, New York has one future star, second baseman Robinson Cano, and no team spark.
The Yankees' days aren't just numbered. They've run out.

pests

Do you know how a worthy national charity can fail to get even a lousy dime from a potential donor?
Ring him up on the telephone. Maybe more than once. Stop him, whatever he's doing. Then hang up before he can reach the phone.
Make him so mad he sputters.
Well, that's me, a grumpy octogenarian, and the American Heart Assn.
The scene: Early evening. I'm sitting in my big chair watching television. The phone is maybe five steps away across the room.
The phone rings. Okay. I'm on it.
While I'm hoisting my aching and protesting old hulk upright, it rings a second time. By ring three, I'm shuffling across the room.
But that's it. Dead line. No fourth ring. Somewhere a computer has hung up.
Aha, you say, so how does this smart-alecky old coot know it was the Heart Association calling? Well, from caller-identification, of course.
Some time ago I got a series of these same hang-up calls. Same source, from two different numbers, 1-866-211-1876 and 1-877-213-5046. Always three rings and out.
Caller-ID fingered the American Heart Assn.
That campaign died out, I guess, but recently it revived with a new number, 1-866-431-5121.
AHA again. Just three rings.
This time I called back and after a brief exchange with a recording got a real person on the line, a nice lady.
Well, she said, she could (and presumably would) put my number on a no-call list.
Okay. I don't know who will prevail there -- a computer-generated solicitation vs. a human-generated no-call list. Just now, while typing, I got another AHA call: this time from 1-866-211-1876. Three and out.
I guess. in a way, I may be lucky. If I didn't have caller-ID (for which I pay a fee every month), I wouldn't even know who was provoking me.
And there must be thousands of other victims out there -- aging, aching and slow, by necessity -- many of them having no way of knowing who's interrupting their lives and abruptly hanging up on them.
Sputtering.

dumbo

How can some politicians be so politically dumb? This week's example: Ken Buck.
Buck, who has been in public life in Colorado for some time, is now the Republican candidate for the United States Senate.
Months ago, campaigning for the GOP nomination, he publicly toadied to the party's wacky right wing. He did so by endorsing such causes as a consumption tax -- a "fair" sales tax -- say 23 percent -- on things people buy, such as food. He also looked with favor, back then, on an anti-abortion "personhood" law that would likely outlaw some forms of birth control.
Well, as the months went by, it has finally dawned on Ken Buck that many, many Colorado voters don't like those ideas, And it might affect how they vote in November.
And so, it has turned out, candidate Buck now considers the 23 percent sales tax just an "interesting idea," according to the Denver Post. And he's grown a bit less aggressive on abortion and "personhood."
After all, you know, it is getting damn close to Nov. 2. We can only hope Buck's weaseling came too late.
But beware. After Nov. 2, Buck and the wacko right will still be committed, long-range, to some form of "fair" tax. That's their code name for a system of finance where rich people pay less and -- you guessed it -- middle America pays more.
They'll be back with more friendly-sounding schemes to gut or kill the graduated income tax. We can't afford to be politically dumb about this.

the game

Two lines of tiny type in Monday's Denver Post leapt out at me. Under the caption "Transactions" they said:
"LA Dodgers -- Announced the retirement of C Brad Ausmus."
"C" is for catcher. And Brad Ausmus is a 41-year-old native of New England who for the past 18 summers has had the demanding, risky, sometimes painful job of backstopping/coaching/encouraging pitchers of the Padres, Tigers, Astros and Dodgers.
Respect is due.
As my friends know, baseball is my game, and I have a special admiration for catchers. It goes back at least as far as Mickey Cochrane and Bill Dickey, and over the years it extended to Johnny Bench, Yogi Berra, Carlton Fisk and many others.
To all-star catchers and to journeymen.
Not that Brad Ausmus is likely to join idols of the game in the great hall at Cooperstown. He doesn't have MVP statistics. He leaves baseball with a lifetime batting average right at .250.
That's one-for-four. Ho-hum.
Even so, he was a brainy, dependable, highly durable, valuable man for any ball club to have crouching down behind home plate, which can be a dirty and dangerous place to work.
He was there, day after day, for almost 2,000 games. And I was delighted to see that on Sunday in Dodger Stadium, on his last day, he went two-for-four.
Years ago, when he won some award, he was described this way: "A good teammate, a great friend, a fine father and a humble man."
I know all catchers don't measure up to that, but I like them anyway.