Opinion Line (June 23)

It would be nice to be looking forward to our national birthday with anticipation – instead of dread, because of the horrendous fireworks.

June is PTSD Awareness Month. Fireworks are not good for vets or pets. We get the pollution, China gets richer.

Horrible tragedy in Charleston. My biggest prayers are that more lives are not lost in the wake of it due to hatred and revenge. The hardest thing would be to forgive and love, as millions of us were taught as children of God. This and only this will help our healing.

Obama and Al Sharpton are using tragedies in this country to turn white against black and black against white. They want to make it look like all police and all whites are against blacks.

If the president would get his way on gun control, all the kooks would be making pressure-cooker bombs.

Forget ISIS. The far greater threat to America is the gun industry and gun worship-based proliferation of firearms, to the extent that anyone who wants to commit another Charleston can readily do it.

And Wichita proudly flies the Confederate battle flag in its Veterans Memorial Park. Shame on the city.

Unlike Republican legislators and presidential candidates, Pope Francis has evidently read some real, actual climate science.

If the Catholic Church wants to talk about climate change, that is its prerogative. It is also mine to give that week’s contribution to the Salvation Army.

Absence of fathers in families is the main cause of poverty, poor performance in school, gangs and crime. I challenge church, civic and business leaders to offer valuable prizes in a contest for the best plans to get fathers back in families, saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

If it is common belief among Republicans that the Democrats were the cause of the budget gridlock and bad tax bill in Topeka when both chambers have GOP supermajorities, then Kansans don’t stand a chance, as the conservative propaganda machine appears to be the true winner.

It looks like all Gov. Sam Brownback and the Republican Legislature could come up with was another tax on the poor.

Everyone who is upset with his taxes going up and the rich getting left alone will forget at election time. The GOP will just trot out a new bogeyman to get the vote and, like bleating sheep, the gullible masses will vote against the better choice. Baa.

The only way to rationalize Brownback’s behavior – he’s on Koch.

This story was originally published June 22, 2015 at 7:02 PM with the headline "Opinion Line (June 23)."