A few thoughts while watching to see the various forecasts for yet another tropical event here in the desert Southwest begin to come together for mid-to-late next week. Could be bad…

While I’m on the topic of weather, if you’re a weather buff you do yourself a great disservice if you don’t check out Joe Bastardi’s weekly “Saturday Summary” at WeatherBell.com. His long-term forecast is for another rough winter in the Northeast, so those of you who can better start making your Florida plans quick!

I need to get one of these for our backyard. A little scaled down to size, of course!

It’s the final weekend of the 2013-14 PGA Tour with the Fed Ex Cup championship and I, for one, couldn’t care less. At least this means that after Sunday we’ll finally be rid of all those corny and dopey commercials the PGA Tour has been running incessantly for the past few months. I know you can’t please everyone, and the PGA Tour has been continuously tweaking the Fed Ex Cup playoffs to find the right mix, but to me the whole thing just smacks of boredom. There are too many events, and by this time of year only the most avid golf fan is even paying attention. I would have three events and make the final one match play so that there’s real drama from beginning to end. But then again, I’m not an arrogant and pompous, elitist ass like PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem…

It’s still too hot to start playing golf again, but watching LPGA golfer Stacy Lewis do this at the Evian Championship makes me feel better about my own golf game.

Maybe I’m in the minority here, but the NFL is wrong to take Ray Rice‘s and Adrian Peterson‘s ability to make a living away from them. What a bunch of sanctimonious cowards, caving into the demands of the mainstream media! To me it’s up to the Baltimore Ravens and Minnesota Vikings to decide what kind of action should be taken against any player employed by them for off-the-field indiscretions. The NFL is just afraid of the media, and the liberal mainstream media (of course) is playing the role of judge and jury because it gives them something to talk about. I’m not condoning what Rice and Peterson did – a little anger management therapy might be in order here, on both accounts. All I’m saying is let he who is without sin cast the first stone. And believe me, there are A LOT of glass houses out there.

I read about stuff like this happening and it justifies (at least in my view) why the Brits, French, and Germans made a mistake in giving up their colonial empires and returning to the lands of Africa and Asia local power over their own lands. Sure the European powers could be brutal when it came to enforcing law and order, and sure it was a damned expensive proposition in terms of financially supporting their empires, but enforce the law and a sense of order is what they did best, and I’ve yet to see any evidence that the people of Africa and Southwest Asia – and the world in general – are better off today than they were back in the colonial era. The colonial powers knew that the only thing terrorists and terrorist nations understand is overwhelming force; unfortunately, no one today has the courage or will to wipe this kind of thing out.