Danehy

Tom starts off the year with a multitude of queries

Questions I'd love to have answered in 2014:

• Is it true that for the upcoming congressional elections, the Tea Party has settled on the battle cry "Defund Obamacare!" because "We want poor people (who tend to vote for Democrats) to get sick and die!" doesn't fit on a bumper sticker?

• During the week of Feb. 17-23, will Tiger Woods be at the Accenture Match Play Championship at the Ritz-Carlton in sorta-Marana or in Sochi, Russia, watching his honey, Lindsey Vonn, at the Winter Olympics?

• Will the Republican Party possibly be able to go a sixth straight year of intentionally dragging down the U. S. economy just so Barack Obama won't look good?

• Will right-wing talk-radio host James T. Harris get his ears cleaned out so he'll stop yelling all the damn time? Or does he actually think that sounds good?

• Will the United States team advance to the Round of 16 in the World Cup in Brazil this summer? And if it does, will as many as 16,000 real American people be willing to watch the game?

• Will U.S. Rep. Ron Barber challenge Martha McSally in the Republican primary or will he continue to insist that he's a Democrat?

Actually, there's a weird precedent for that. The 1950 race for U.S. senator from California pitted up-and-coming Republican Richard Nixon against three-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas. A slimeball from the jump, Nixon took full advantage of the growing anti-communist mood in the country and referred to his opponent as "the Pink Lady." It was in that same election that the use of the term "Tricky Dick" first appeared. (So effective was the smear campaign and so pervasive was the Red Scare that Nixon's future rival, John F. Kennedy, and Kennedy's bitch-ass father—the scoundrel Joseph P. Kennedy—both gave money to Nixon's campaign.)

Back then, California, long the home of stupid laws, allowed people to run in both primaries. If, by chance, they happened to win both races, they wouldn't have to worry about the general election. It was an early example of the rat-f---ing that came to prominence in the 1972 (Watergate) election. Nixon ran in both primaries in 1950 and then used shameful Red-baiting to beat Douglas in the general.

Helen Gahagan Douglas was married to two-time Oscar winner Melvyn Douglas. After the way his wife was treated in the 1950 election, Melvyn Douglas pretty much despised Richard Nixon for the rest of his life. He wasn't alone.

• Does anybody else think that if UA men's basketball coach Sean Miller were to attempt a smile, he might break something?

• Will oft-injured Kenzie Fowler be able to return to her freshman all-American form and lead the UA women back to the promised land of the College Softball World Series? And will that jerk of an umpire who waited until the World Series to mess with Fowler's mechanics please end up umping beer league slow pitch in Skokie, Ill.?

• Is there anything left for the anti-education Arizona Legislature to do? They've already:

a. Slashed funding for schools far beyond what was made necessary by the Great Recession;

b. Reduced teachers' salaries across the state;

c. Destroyed teachers' unions, which had long been held to be The Great Evil by rich white people who couldn't understand why a teacher couldn't get by on a starting salary of $28,000 a year and/or needed legal protection from the capricious, petty and often vindictive actions of school administrators who, more often than not, are just trying to cover their own asses;

d. Refused to give teachers the Proposition 301 money that is guaranteed by the Arizona Constitution! It was only after being smacked around by the courts that the legislators restored the funding. But then the whiny little maggots turned around and slashed funding from another source, leaving public education in even worse shape than before;

e. Continued to allow charter school administrators to spend state tax money any way they want with no oversight whatsoever (imagine the outcry from the public and the Legislature if any other department in the state tried to get away with that), and;

f. Expanded the socialistic welfare program for the rich and well-off by pushing for a voucher program that uses taxpayer money to send kids to private schools.

What could possibly be next? Public flogging of science teachers?

• Will my friend, (Republican National Committeeman) Bruce Ash PLEASE stop using the term "Democrat Party?" Rush Limbaugh does it, but Limbaugh is the poster child for public buffoonery. Ash should know better. I've asked Bruce nicely, I've chided him on the air, I've called him out in this column and still he persists.

Bruce, do you know why I don't refer to people on your side of the aisle as the "Republic Party?" Because I don't want to sound like an idiot.