Drug names, guns, single-parent homes

Zostavax, Gilenya, Seroquel XR, Humalog, Xarelto, Livalo, Dulera, Eliquis, Restasis, Orencia, Prolia, Januvia, Renuva and so on.

What job could be more challenging than coming up with names for prescription drugs — particularly those that appear to have side effects that are worse than the ailments they are supposed to treat?

I think members of The Kansas City Star editorial board are a bunch of hypocrites for wanting Republicans to hold their 2016 National Convention in Kansas City. The editorial board consistently bashes both Republicans and conservatives.

And we all know how biased The Star editorial board is against any other world view but its own. So, why would Republicans want to bring their money to Kansas City?

Kansas City is the last city in America where Republicans should spend their money.

What rationale is there for gun ownership? Foreign invasion? Safety?

Hardly.

Self-defense should not be a necessity, and individuals’ “decisions to shoot” deserve more than a moment for deliberation.

Beyond sport or civil peace maintenance, I find it hard to justify gun ownership.

Registration and licensing is proper for driving an automobile — and the auto doesn't carry the same lethal potential or intent. Let's protect children and society.

Can the National Rifle Association forever have no conscience?

The high incidence of teen pregnancy, often leading to a new generation of poverty for the young mother and her child, is a critical factor and must be addressed.

How can we reduce the number of people living in poverty without addressing this issue?

In the sport that is the favorite of both George Will and me, baseball, there exists a wealth of statistics, a dizzying amount actually. In Will’s world, that of punditry, statistical accountability is close to nonexistent.

So, every time I read one of his columns, I tend to remember his two most recent and most famous predictions, that Mitt Romney would demolish President Barack Obama by an electoral vote count of 321-217, and that Richard Mourdock would be elected U.S. senator in Indiana. The elections proved that Will knew not of what he spoke.

He was not just wrong but spectacularly so, embarrassingly so.

So, when Will wrote his Feb. 27 column, “Democrats distracted by feel-good, errant issues,” attacking those who are worried about man-made or even man-abetted climate change, it is a virtual certainty that, like his earlier predictions, he is wrong.

If George Will were a free agent in baseball, his value would be next to nothing because his statistics clearly show that he rarely connects.

People’s religious convictions should be respected but not made a basis for laws governing everyone, including those who do not share that religion.

People should be judged by character, not by color, creed, gender, sexual orientation, economic class, physical or mental ability, or ethnic heritage.

Capitalism needs checks and balances like any economic system, and those checks and balances are not punishment for success but safeguards for justice.

Most people who collect public assistance do so temporarily.

The only Americans justified to complain about illegal immigration are Native American tribe members. Beyond that, people who come here to work and better their lives should be rewarded, not punished.

Health insurance for every American should be administered by the government so people can be free to pursue careers without forgoing employer-provided coverage.

The decision to continue or terminate a pregnancy belongs with the pregnant woman alone.

Civil marriage existed long before Christianity, and therefore, extending civil-marriage rights to same-sex couples is common sense and does not force churches to perform weddings.

For this, I am called a bleeding-heart, wild-eyed, religion-bashing, man-hating, liberal harridan who wants white, middle-class straight men to disappear.

So see, things are tough all over.

The people of the Ukraine as well as the people of the United States are paying the price of having a weakling in the White House (3-3, A1, “Crisis in Ukraine puts U.S. to test”).

President Barack Obama warns Vladimir Putin of the consequences of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. Oh, I bet that had Putin shaking in his snow shoes.

About two years ago, North Korea sank a South Korean military ship. We did nothing to aid our ally.

On Sept. 11, 2012, our embassy in Benghazi was attacked. Four diplomats including our ambassador were killed. True to form, the U.S. did nothing.

Now Russia has troops and tanks in a neighboring country.

Not surprisingly, the Russians expect us to do nothing. If we won’t stand up to second-rate countries such as Libya or North Korea, what makes people think we will stand up to Russia?

It is too bad the Olympics are over or Obama could mimic his spineless hero, Jimmy Carter, and boycott the Olympics like in 1980.

It takes a lot of chutzpah for Republicans to block spending on unemployment compensation and on the Affordable Care Act implementation and expansion of health-care insurance for millions of uninsured Americans. Republicans were not opposed to spending trillions of dollars on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq while keeping a large tax cut, as if tax revenues have nothing to do with paying the expenses of war.

Never before has the U.S. fought a war with a tax cut because it did not make sense. It still doesn’t.

I wonder how long it takes to understand that the tax cuts of 2001 did not generate the jobs that were promised and that this approach was an example of what George H.W. Bush described as voodoo economics before he was silenced by being chosen to join Ronald Reagan the 1980 GOP presidential ticket. In fact, these shortfalls of revenue contributed to the Great Recession beginning in 2008.

The fact is that when taxes were higher in the past, jobs were created at a greater rate than has been the case since 2001. But greed is now in the saddle, and is undermining the economy and public confidence in the future.

Taking property by force is evil, whether done by law or with a weapon.

Slavery and the income tax have characteristics in common. Both benefit the powerful. Both rely on force and fear for the continuation of the system. Both claim to be necessary for economic survival of government.

Many FairTaxHR25 advocates focus solely on the spectacular economic growth that would occur with its passage.

The primary justification for the FairTaxHR25 is to end the current tax structure. Such focusing allows the evil of the income tax to be ignored as advocates and opponents do battle.

Numbers and studies can be twisted; not so with the moral truth. The moral truth embodied within the income tax structure is this: Men and women are not free when they are forced to surrender their treasure either by law or through threat of violence.

Worse than the theft of treasure is the silencing of the citizen who finds himself or his business targeted because of personal opposition to those in power. With new regulations, the Internal Revenue Service intends to silence 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations who oppose government.

FairTaxHR25 would end the IRS and income tax. Learn more at www.fairtax.org. Tell your congressman to support HR25 and end the evil.

This story was originally published March 4, 2014 at 4:30 PM with the headline "Drug names, guns, single-parent homes."