Water Is Wet

• Have health care?  Need health care?  You might want to consider the ramifications of electing Trump.  

  Republican candidate Trump would repeal "Obamacare" and replace it with a new tax deduction, insurance market changes, and a Medicaid overhaul. Democrat Clinton would increase financial assistance for people with private insurance and expand government coverage as well.
  
  The two approaches would have starkly different results, according to the Commonwealth Fund study released Friday.
  
  The analysis was carried out by the RAND Corporation, a global research organization that uses computer simulation to test the potential effects of health care proposals. Although the New York-based Commonwealth Fund is nonpartisan, it generally supports the goals of increased coverage and access to health care.

  Well, I didn't think I would need health care, either, but one's body proves everyone wrong sooner or later.  As usual, the Republican health plan is "Don't get sick."  (Yes, I stole that years ago.)
• Two essays from Jesse Curtis that probably need to be read together:
  
  1. On how "evangelical" does not mean "Trump supporter," and why. 

     Many Americans know evangelicalism primarily as a political movement. So it may surprise some people to learn that evangelicals are spending far more time and money working on things like poverty, racism, health care, and education than they are in trying to elect Republicans. World Vision, for example, is an evangelical aid organization with a budget that by itself dwarfs all the activities of the "Christian" Right in the United States.
     
     [...]
     
     This is the culminating act of political self-destruction in a 40 year campaign of harmful politics. When I think of the "Christian" Right, I'm inclined to repurpose a line from Frederick Douglass' first autobiography: "between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference..." Indeed. Despite all the good done by evangelicals in local communities, the dominant political expression of American evangelicalism is hateful and selfish, and unworthy to be called Christian.

  2. On racism and denial.

     White Americans desperately want to be innocent of any racial wrongdoing. You notice this pretty quickly when you begin to talk about race. Once you look for it, you'll see how often White people are approaching the whole conversation with one goal: establishing their innocence. "My family didn't own slaves. My grandparents immigrated here in the twentieth century. I worked hard for everything I have. Black people have had the same opportunities." Etc.
     
     These kinds of statements tend to be beside the point, and often plainly false. But truth in a literal sense is not the goal of this kind of rhetoric. We use it to claim that we are good, and that we bear no responsibility for racial injustice. We use it to avoid negative feelings. We want to claim innocence not by doing something, but by creating our own reality with our words.

  They're related.
• Noam Chomsky, taking the long view (excerpt, via AlterNet):

  "We want quick victories," Chomsky pointed out, but went on to explain that even the Civil Rights movement was rooted in a movement that had spread to America nearly 200 years prior.

  (There are interesting typos, such as "writers" for "Riders.")
• ETA:  Department of Oh, And By the Way:

  Bob Schieffer, a CBS news veteran and former presidential debate moderator had a very different idea of what the job of a debate moderator is.
  
  CBS' Face The Nation host John Dickerson asked, "There's been a big question about fact-checking and what the moderator's role should be in that. How do you see that question?"
  
  The only reason there are questions about fact checking is because Trump is against it.
  
  Schieffer replied, "Well -- and I've said and I've thought about this over the years, after doing these things -- the first fact-checkers have to be the candidates themselves. If one candidate makes a mistake, you want to give the other person a chance to call him out on that."
  
  This is very smart from Schieffer, but he didn't stop there.
  
  Schieffer said, "If he or she doesn't, then the moderator steps in and sets the record straight. But if you don't give the candidates themselves that opportunity, you're being unfair to both of them."

  Got that? (John Amato, Crooks and Liars.)  EFTA:  Because the Debate Commission Chief begs to differ:

  Janet Brown, executive director of the commission, which organizes the debates every four years, said [...] "I don't think it's a good idea to get the moderator into essentially serving as the Encyclopedia Britannica."
  
  Once the fact-checking door is open, "I'm not sure, what is the big fact, and what is a little fact?" [...]
  
  Trump campaign aides have staked out a similar position. Some of them say a pro-fact-checking stance is really an anti-Trump stance.

  Emphasis mine.  And gee, I can't imagine why they'd think that.