The Game

October 23, 2012 - 9:24am -- swingbug

I spent last night working on a sewing project for Halloween. When I was in my sewing cave, I had the presidential debate streaming on my iPad. When I needed space to lay out fabric for cutting I was in the living room with the baseball game on. I bounced back and forth between the two for an hour and found myself drawing quite a few comparisons between the two competitions.

In particular, I found myself wondering if the candidates can walk up to each other after the final inning and say, "Dude, that was a nice save you made there."

Perhaps not.

But while we're talking elections, I do want to remind everyone that we have one coming up in two short weeks. I don't know many people who haven't set on their candidate for president yet, but there are an awful lot of propositions to get through, and I've started my studying.

This is where elections always get confusing, and I know a lot of smart people with busy lives who don't show up at the booths on election day because they don't feel prepared.

Few things piss me off more than smart people who don't vote.

It doesn't take that much to get prepared. I always start with NPR's election coverage. Around these parts our local flavor of NPR is called Capitol Public Radio. They have all three of the presidential debates available as audio files or text transcripts, plus segments on most the propositions. You can plug in some headphones and listen to this stuff while you're at work today:

http://www.capradio.org/election2012

But everybody has their favorite news source. You don't like mine? Tell me about yours in the comments.

Just do me a favor and spend at least as much time reading up on the election as you will on the World Series, huh? I'm not knocking baseball. I love baseball. But at the end of the day, it's just a game. Cheer for your team, sure. But your voice counts for something real in that other competitive arena. Use it well.

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Comments

Submitted by swingbug on

And then for others, I'd ask that you spend significantly more time reading up in the election than you are on the World Series...

Submitted by Katy on

I'm a bit grumpy about the elections, because I applied for my absentee ballot (and haven't received it yet) so had to go download one and now have to decide about no less than 30 things about which I have no or incomplete information! I don't know what is worse, not being able to choose my Local School Board District member, or having to choose them blind.

But I'm voting, I promise!