Whether you live in the swingin’est swing state or a solid party stronghold, there are many important reasons to vote on Tuesday beyond the crucial contest at the top of the ticket. Through the election, The Seminal will tell you about some of them.

Albuquerque City Council President Martin Heinrich is running to represent New Mexico’s first district in the United States House of Representatives. Heinrich is solid progressive voice pushing for an end to George Bush’s failed Iraq fiasco so that we can spend some of that money on domestic priorities like renewable energy initiatives and affordable healthcare for all.

If you live in NM-1 (Albuquerque and surrounding areas), vote for Martin Heinrich on November 4th. If you know folks in New Mexico, give them a call and get out the vote!

Whether you live in the swingin’est swing state or a solid party stronghold, there are many important reasons to vote on Tuesday beyond the crucial contest at the top of the ticket. Through the election, The Seminal will tell you about some of them.

Oregon Speaker of the House Jeff Merkley is one of the best of a great crop of progressive candidates this cycle. Merkley is running against incumbent Republican Gordon Smith to represent The Beaver State in the US Senate. Smith has tried hard to hide his consistent support of the Bush agenda, and made this race closer than it needs to be. Merkley has advocated for universal healthcare, a green jobs program, an end to corporate giveaways, and a responsible drawdown in Iraq, and has earned the endorsement of Barack Obama. Jeff Merkley will be an important part of an expanded Democratic majority in 2009.

If you live in Oregon, vote for Jeff Merkley on November 4th. If you know folks in Oregon, give them a call and get out the vote!

10. “The Man’s Too Strong” - Dire Straits
9. “Don’t Stop Believing” - Journey
8. “Killing In The Name” - Rage Against the Machine
7. “A Change Is Gonna Come” - Sam Cooke
6.  ”My Generation” - The Who

And now we’re up to #5.  Here’s a cut off Don Henley’s first solo album from 1982.  It’s dedicated to all our friends in the mainstream media:

In South Asia, humanitarian crises are putting the west’s commitment to the Pakistani and Afghan people to the test.

In Baluchistan, Pakistan, a deadly earthquake has claimed as many as 300 lives and left thousands of Pakistanis out in the cold.

In Afghanistan, UN and relief organization experts are calling for a Berlin airlift-style rescue operation to prevent mass starvation this winter.

The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a UK military think tank, makes its warning in a briefing paper.

It says food shortages now represent a greater threat to Afghanistan than the Taleban insurgency.

It wants a similar but smaller repeat of the Berlin Airlift during the Soviet blockade of west Berlin in 1948.

The briefing paper said the Afghan population would turn increasingly to the international forces in the country for help once winter sets in.

The United Nations World Food Programme estimates the country will need 95,000 tonnes food aid by February.

If we can funnel billions of dollars to the military and the ISI in Pakistan, some of which goes to the Taliban, then certainly we could divert some of the present aid to addressing these humanitarian needs. Moreover, if we fail to take action, our credibility in these two countries will be further eroded. With the US’ continued strikes against Pakistan (news of one literally broke as I was writing this), and the continued high civilian casualty rate in Afghanistan, we must step up and save people’s lives now in this moment of crisis if our presence is to have any legitimacy.

I have listened over the course of a few afternoons in Dallas Federal Court to a complete perversion of our court systems to harass Muslim charities. The trial is one of several attempts by our Justice Department to connect longtime charities with terrorism. Previous ones have all failed.

I was not at all surprised, after this experience, to hear about an ongoing bungling operation in the Middle East, the designation of a group as terrorists for totally political reasons. The group is protected by our military, while it is called terrorist by our occupied White House. This country is a laughing stock throughout the world for the ignorance of its foreign policy.

The MEK, Mujahideen-e Khalq, was designated as terrorist in 1997 in the course of an attempt to initiate warmer political relationships with Iran. They have been used against the government of Iran, and protected as an ally, although their designation as terrorists continues. The situation is as full of ludicrous use of our powers internationally as is the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation. It looks like one more indication that ignorance in the executive branch has prevented this country from formulating a rational, operative foreign policy.

An episode on Frontline, Showdown With Iran, (10/23/2007) included interviews with longtime active Middle Eastern correspondents and U.S. government officials concerning MEK. The following delineates the problem in its present form, an interview with Alireza Jafarzadeh, Former spokesman, National Council of Resistance - the organization of those resisting the present government in Iran.

If you are a regular reader, then I expect that you can guess what I’m going to say when it comes to choosing the next president of the United States. If you call yourself a liberal, or a progressive, or a lover of individual liberty and reproductive choice; if you want quality, affordable healthcare to be accessible to all Americans, if you want to restore some modicum of equity to the tax code, and some degree of sanity to our foreign policy; if you want to approach energy independence and global warming with the seriousness and the urgency those matters deserve; if you want a government staffed with experts instead of ideologues that is led by a man who trusts his intellect enough to be intellectually curious—or even if you just want some portion of all this—then there is only one way to vote on Tuesday: Barack Obama for president.

BUT, if you live in New York, there are actually two ways you can vote for Obama—you can go the old, stodgy, predictable route, and pull the lever or mark your box for Barack Obama (D), Democrat, or, if you really, really believe in all that I laid out above, you can vote for Barack Obama (WFP), Working Families Party.

As I have discussed in elections past, New York has something called “fusion” voting; this allows a candidate to receive the endorsement of more than one party, and to be listed on the ballot under multiple party lines. All the votes for a single candidate, however, are combined to count for the final total. A vote for Obama on Row E—the Working Families Party line—counts just as much as a vote on the Democratic line. . .

. . . and more.

More, because the Working Families Party is more than a social club or the vestigial organ of some moribund New York political machine, the WFP is an active and organized party that has been fighting for progressive ideals for better than a decade. They stand for universal healthcare, tax equity, and equal representation under the law. They have lead fights for a living wage, for green jobs and green homes, and affordable housing. They advocate for better-funded public schools so that every child gets a quality education, no matter where he or she lives, and the public financing of elections to get the corrupting corporate money out of the system.

Earlier this month, WFP teamed with organized labor and local activists to protest New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Speaker Chris “Quisling” Quinn’s naked power grab vis-à-vis term limit “extensions.” The effort did not prevent Bloomberg from buying enough influence on the City Council to win his rule change, but working together, the WFP and the people of NYC made a lot of noise and called a lot of attention to the undemocratic way that the mayor and speaker went about overriding the existing law. Because of this effort, the fight to unseat these arrogant plutocrats next year has a big head start.

By voting for Obama—and for other cross-endorsed candidates—on the Working Families line, you are showing candidate and country that you stand for these kinds of progressive ideals. A vote for BHO (WFP) Row E shows that you want our next president to embrace the progressive potential that has brought you to his side.

By voting for state candidates on the WFP line, you will help shape the next generation of New York politics. Democrats are poised to gain the majority in the state senate for the first time in over 40 years, and thus will control both houses of the legislature and the governor’s mansion. It will present a tremendous opportunity to reform a dysfunctional state government; a vote for the Working Families Party will give the left better leverage in the battles that lay ahead.

The Nation, The Albany Project, Daily Gotham, and Democrats.com have all endorsed a Row E WFP vote because they all know that strengthening the role of the Working Families Party is a solid step toward building a statewide progressive movement. Voting for Obama on the same line brings that voice to the national dialogue.

Barack Obama has promised change, and I truly believe that his election will noticeably transform the style and substance of our national leadership. What kind of change, how much change, and how directly that difference will affect the lives of hard working Americans, however, still hangs in the balance. The progressive direction advocated by the Working Families Party is the kind of change Democrats have been fighting for lo these many months and years—it is change we can believe in.

Vote Row E.

UPDATE: Thanks to the courts, we have a late-breaking exception to this rule in Western New York—NY-26, to be specific. Please vote for Democrat Alice Kryzan on the Democratic line.

Willie Geist, one of Joe Scarborough’s several sidekicks on Morning Joe, ran a piece this morning where he was standing in his Upper West Side neighborhood in New York City, wearing a McCain-Palin t-shirt and recording the reactions of passers-by. The theme was that elite, close-minded Upper West Siders are lock-step for Obama–Geist only found one couple who were McCain supporters. After the piece ran, Peggy Noonan remarked that it highlighted the “pissiness” of voters, and others wrung their hands over how “humorless” and single-minded Upper West Siders are.

The thing is, if this was supposed to show how nasty people were toward poor Willie, it simply didn’t rate. The harshest comment I saw was someone who told Geist to “change his politics”.

Geist should join me in Virginia, where I have been for the past two weeks. I encounter a mix of Obama and McCain supporters when I make phone calls and put up Obama signs, but I can tell you that the McCain people are a bit less polite than Geist’s craven New Yorkers. Here are a few examples. When I was putting up an Obama-Biden sign in McLean, one driver going by screamed “socialist”. Another driver gave me and my companions the finger. One of the guys I was putting up signs with told me a number of them had been defaced with racial epithets. When I made my first voter identification phone call last week, I spoke to a woman who said abortion was like the holocaust and Jesus would be deciding her vote for her. A fellow phone banker reached a voter who cheerfully said “fuck you”.

(This is not to say that I am not reaching Obama supporters–there are plenty, and I am cautiously optimistic about Obama. But the McCain people are often something less than polite).

It may be fun for the Morning Joe crew to bring the hype on elitist New Yorkers, but, in my experience, McCain supporters can be pretty “pissy”.

Vote No on Prop 8, mutherfucker!

To find out more about Prop 8, go here. Don’t eliminate the right to marry for anyone!

There are a lot of reasons the free market doesn’t really work when it comes to health care. Here’s a biggie:

Striking new evidence has emerged of a widespread gap in the cost of health insurance, as women pay much more than men of the same age for individual insurance policies providing identical coverage, according to new data from insurance companies and online brokers.

Some insurance executives expressed surprise at the size and prevalence of the disparities, which can make a woman’s insurance cost hundreds of dollars a year more than a man’s. Women’s advocacy groups have raised concerns about the differences, and members of Congress have begun to question the justification for them.

The new findings, which are not easily explained away, come amid anxiety about the declining economy. More and more people are shopping for individual health insurance policies because they have lost jobs that provided coverage. Politicians of both parties have offered proposals that would expand the role of the individual market, giving people tax credits or other assistance to buy coverage on their own.

“Women often fare worse than men in the individual insurance market,” said Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee.

Insurers say they have a sound reason for charging different premiums: Women ages 19 to 55 tend to cost more than men because they typically use more health care, especially in the childbearing years.

But women still pay more than men for insurance that does not cover maternity care. In the individual market, maternity coverage may be offered as an optional benefit, or rider, for a hefty additional premium.

From a free market perspective, this makes sense, right? Women use more health care, so they get charged more for insurance. Supply and demand. Except that it’s profoundly unequal and un-American.

America is great because we do believe in the free market as a force for good in society. By and large, we allow our businesses and our citizens to make their own economic decisions. But we also believe that people shouldn’t be punished for the so-called accidents of their birth. Just because someone is born poor, a minority, or a woman doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the same opportunities as privileged white males in our society. That’s what equality in America is all about.

And so, we rightly recognize that sometimes, the free market works to promote inequality instead of right it, and in those cases, we recognize that limits and controls on the free market are necessary to preserve the greater good of equality. So, in American, we put human rights over profit making.

Or at least we should. Women should not have to pay more for health insurance simply because they are women. Equality demands that men and women pay similar amounts to preserve their health. And the same goes for low income folks and minorities.

(also posted at the NOW! blog)