ROGERS — Well, it happened. A tornado hit Rogers on Saturday night.

Guess that old tale about the American Indian chief blessing the city so it would never have a tornado is just that, a tale. Either that or the blessing expired.

There was no warning of the storm, just thunderstorm warnings. Honestly, weren’t most of us more concerned about the Razorbacks getting a victory in before the storms forced the game to be suspended?

It was dark, the storm was rain-wrapped, it spun out of an imbedded supercell — those are the reasons local TV weather people gave for no warning. Funny how they all saw it when they went back and looked.

Whatever. The truth is, despite the great strides made in forecasting storms, there are still those that are missed. Luckily, no one was seriously injured this time.

Let’s hope it is the last time they miss a tornado.

•••

Elections — not one of my favorite things.

I know you may find that odd. Newspapers are all about news-making events. Truth is, however, elections are a lot of work and if ever there is any event that brings out the worst in people, it’s elections.

You may not have noticed, but there is a lot of name-calling and back-biting during elections — all while the candidates are saying he/she wants to work with the opposition.

I’ve been sitting through some endorsement interviews and, honestly, if everyone actually got along as well as they say they want to get along, it would be a peaceful world.

Instead, we have partisanship. Every year I say it can’t get worse, but it does. If you have an “R” or a “D” after your name, it is apparently a requirement that you drink the Kool-Aid — you know, buy into the party line.

The thing is, if you only buy the party line, you might as well quit preaching the concept of getting along. Apparently, being of one party or another automatically means you accept their theories without question. And the art of compromise? Forget about it. I am pretty sure both parties had that word removed from their vocabularies.

There are exceptions of course, but they are few and far between.

Somewhere between the conservatives and liberals you will find the majority of Americans. We are pretty much in the middle of the road — conservative on some things and liberal on others. We would prefer not to have big government, but we recognize someone needs to handle certain matters — the military, health and human services, etc. Not that the government does it very well, but it has to be done and our country’s model just doesn’t have anyone else to do it.

It is this time of the year I advocate the eradication of political parties. I am not sure exactly how this will work at the state and national level, but it does on the local level, so I know it can work in a larger arena.

And if we can’t get rid of the parties, also get rid of the things that waste time and money, such as the conventions. Really? It was a surprise Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were nominated?

Then there are the debates. Why bother? Based on the posts of my Facebook friends — which include an extraordinary number of crazy conservatives and loony liberals — the debates mean nothing. Depending on whether they are Republicans or Democrats, Barack/Joe won hands down or Mitt/Paul were the victors.

People, it cannot be both ways, which tells me the debates change no minds and probably swing few votes.

The political postings are so bad on Facebook — and so goofy on both sides — some of my friends are warning their friends if they don’t quit posting political nonsense, they will defriend them until after the election. I haven’t gone that far, but I have taken to deleting them from my page just so I don’t have to look at them.

Of course, I deal mostly with local races.

I offer local candidates this piece of advice: If you are running for office, find out the issues and develop a plan you can stand behind. Just saying you support something, like infrastructure development, doesn’t say much. Everyone wants more roads, but they want to know how you would pay for them.

If you can’t provide specifics, you sound just the candidates in the national arena — and, believe me, that is the very last thing the public wants.

Leeanna Walker is local editor of the Rogers Morning News and the Springdale Morning News. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/NWALeeanna.