When You Fart in Church

...you end up sitting in your own pew.

I was about 10 when I first heard that Confucius joke. It's probably the day I fell in love with the double entendre. 

Perhaps it is human nature to want things both ways. 

That's what we are seeing after the Paul Ryan speech last night from the Republican convention. Fact checkers, that elusive group of elite media who make claim to winners and losers, have been all over the thing. It seems they don't really need to know what Ryan said last night, because they know what Ryan meant. Even if it was never uttered.

Fact checkers want it both ways. They want to create an environment where theirs is the final word, and they want to also find in favor of their opinion regardless of the facts.

But, it's starting to smell. This time they were caught and a barrage of backlash has them fact checking themselves. It's time the tide turn on the practice of opinionated fact checking. Identifying a fact with all caps followed by a colon doesn't make it a fact anymore. That revelation is just in time for the rest of us to start thinking about what we read with regard to the election.

Do me a favor and keep in mind how many times you want it both ways as we dabble in political rhetoric between now and Nov. 6th. No sense making this campaign season stinkier than it's already become.

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A friend and I argued the other day (you can't imagine me doing that, can you?) where I took the position that no, this isn't the most important election in our lifetime. That actually took place in November 2010. That election is the one which held this country back from the tipping point, from sliding over the precipice towards a controlled, more socialist nation. By laying claim to one half of one third (that's a convoluted way of saying "electing a Republican majority in the House of Representatives"), this country stopped the momentum. It's just a matter of finishing the job.

I have other acquaintances who are giddy that we might end up with a national R/R/R sweep emulating the one we picked up in Wisconsin during that same November 2010 vote. (A couple of us have dubbed it a pirate government. Let me know if you get that one.) I'm not so sure that's what we need. I like mixed government. Only the good stuff gets to bubble to the top that way.

If you go back to all those founding father lessons from civics class, you can deduce the magic of their plan. It's fitting the House of Representatives turned first and hard after two years of D/D/D government. (No nickname for that yet.) The House was meant to be the most responsive — the canary in the coal mine — if voting constituents didn't think things were going very well. Only the House has a two-year term.

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Only 67 days to go to Nov. 6th.