Opinion

As the Biden administration calls for an investigation into rising gas prices and begins tapping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help slow rising gas prices, it is important to pull back the curtain on the ideologically driven processes the administration is using to justify these bad policy decisions.

As the secretary of the Kansas Department of Agriculture, I regularly talk with farmers, ranchers, agribusiness owners, and other stakeholders across the state. Sadly, the issues of ag stress, mental health and even suicide have been at the forefront of many discussions over the past three years.

Going through dozen of tubs full of Christmas decorations brings memories of mom, but also makes me wonder why I have so much stuff, as I could never use it all. Mom was the queen of décor and so much of what I still have, she made herself.

Dear Annie: Both my adult daughter and her husband are employed. Since they do not cook, when my husband and I visit them, which is approximately four times a year, they send out for food and ask us to pay our share of the bill, or, on occasion, she will use my credit card to pay for the whole bill. When we go out to eat at a restaurant, I always pick up the check, which I feel is almost expected on their part.

A line in Dr. Seuss’ book “Horton Hears a Who“ haunts readers: “A person’s a person no matter how small.” Ironically, this was penned by a man, Theodor Geisel, who while creating patriotic cartoons in support of America’s war effort against the fascism of Germany and Japan, made Japanese Americans look small with cartoons that depicted them as less than human.

When President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping ended their 3 ⁄2-hour video conversation last month, many headlines and instant analyses focused on the fact that there were no major breakthroughs announced in the relationship.

On Sept. 11, 20 years after the 9/11 attacks, the Taliban held a solemn ceremony at the presidential palace in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul. Prime Minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund raised the Taliban’s white flag and celebrated the group’s victory over the United States. The symbolism was difficult to miss. The extremist Taliban, who were overthrown by the United States two decades earlier, were now back in power.

A common issue among dog owners is that while on walks, your dog barks, lunges or otherwise acts nuts when he or she sees another dog, person, jogger, biker, etc., known as a trigger. The first thing to remember to do is to bring along extremely high value rewards.

With Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday behind us, we are officially in the Christmas season. With the pandemic and the recession, a lot of people have been suffering financial hardships in the past two years, and so all of us are going to get requests for financial help for the neediest. I would respectfully urge everyone to be as generous as they can be given that most of us have had to tighten our belts during the past two years.