Congratulations to the Boston Red Sox, who defeated those pesky Tampa Bay Rays three games to one to advance to the American League Championship Series against either the Detroit Tigers or the Oakland A’s. Not sure who I’d like to see the Sox play – both of those teams are really tough and feature great pitching.

I didn’t watch the President’s Cup over the weekend, with so much football on I doubt many folks did. I enjoy the Ryder Cup because of its history and the quality of the play. There’s just something about the President’s Cup that seems and sounds prefab. Not to mention the fact that it’s seldom competitive.

Great article in this month’s Golf Digest about Tiger Woods and his troubles winning majors. The consensus is that he’s putting so much pressure on himself to pass Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 majors that, come the weekend, he starts pressing and beating himself. I think there’s also a case to be made that Tiger’s soon-to-be-38-year-old body has a lot of golf miles in it, and playing that third and fourth round is not just mentally tougher, but more physically demanding for him as well.

I’m trying to figure out what the Obama administration’s ultimate purpose is in attempting to close off national parks and monuments during the so-called “government shutdown”. Are they just trying to piss people off out of spite? That seems to be the case, but it’s good to see American are not folding like cheap bridge tables in the face of this nonsensical government overreach.

Here’s what I don’t understand, and it may be simply because I’m not a liberal zealot: in the face of all the troubles with the Obamacare roll-out, why wouldn’t the Obama administration allow a one-year delay for everyone to give everyone impacted by it – regular folks, businesses, unions, insurance companies, healthcare providers, etc. time to see it, learn about it, and make their opinions known so it could be rolled out properly in a year’s time? What harm would it have done? You’d gain some good will on the part of regular folks, you would have avoided the whole government shutdown thing, and you might even have avoided the disaster this roll-out has turned into. But like I say, I’m not a liberal zealot.

Check out this great pic out on Dave’s Fish Fear Me blog. Talk about a water hazard! Wait till he sees the cute bunny pic I’ll be posting tomorrow. 🙂

Finally, a big shout-out to my congressman, Rep. Matt Salmon of the Fifth Arizona Congressional District. I’ve been invited to participate in a number of his telephone town meetings but didn’t attend until the one he hosted tonight. It was a great experience hearing from fellow East Valley folks on both sides of the political aisle who were given the opportunity to ask questions and participate in pulse polls. Matt’s a conservative Republican, but he treated everyone with respect and the whole forum was a testament to everything that present-day Washington is not.