"This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change."
President-elect Barack Obama

Across the country, food banks are struggling to keep up with increased demand.  And with the holidays approaching, Democrats Work is doing something about it.  We need your help.

Today, we are launching the Yes We Cans Virtual Food Drive to help you donate to the food bank in your community.

(crossposted everywhere people eat!)

According to politico, Hillary Clinton is actually undecided on the offer, and may even reject it. Some speculate the "vetting" is the problem, while the lack of certainty is actually consistent with what Clinton has been thinking all along.

Begich, Mark     146286     47.56%

Stevens, Ted     143912     46.79%

per http://elect.alaska.net/data/results.htm

I don't have the exact total of the previous vote at hand but it appears to be roughly 14,000 to 15,000 more votes than previously tabulated.

Hot off the presses, did you see this headline about a major progressive initiative announced today:

Progressive Leaders Begin Push for Major Public Investments

Didn't think so. Despite the army of Congressional progressives pushing for major infrastructure and other public investment, the mainstream media decided their Tuesday event -- called the 'REAL INVESTMENT IN AMERICA CONFERENCE' -- wasn't news. Did the word `progressive' in the PR headline trigger an automatic news blackout?

There was a little info on the conference at a prospect.org blog, TAPPED, since it semi-sponsored the conference. Progressive economist James Galbraith, who delivered the keynote address at the conference, favors massive spending generally to pull us out of the deep hole we're in. TAPPED writes (emphasis added throughout this diary):

Galbraith's keynote speech was quite good, dealing with the causes of the economic crisis and what kind of work needs to be done to fix it. Some of the ideas are familiar -- a moratorium on home foreclosures for example -- and others more novel, like lowering the medicaid entrance age to 55, which would move health care costs of the books of corporations like GM and onto the public roll. He also suggested increasing social security benefits and state-federal revenue sharing, two approaches that have not been used since the era of that dreaded liberal, Richard Nixon.

"I have already spent somewhere in the range of $400 to $450 billion without breaking a sweat," he said at one point in the discussion, "I tell you it won't be enough. ... Suspend half the pay-roll tax. Let the government pay it for the next five years. ...This is not a time to be nervous about big numbers. Let's now look beyond this year and ask what we have to do going forward. [What is required is] public action on a sustained as well as substantial and speedy basis."

I've been pretty fed up with the Human Rights Campaign (hereafter HRC) for a while now.  If you are unfamiliar with them, or what exactly they are (since the name is, well, rather vague), the HRC is the largest GLBT Rights advocacy/lobbying group in the U.S.  And, frankly, they've been incredibly ineffective over the years.  As Rachel Maddow has repeated over the years, "Human Rights Campaign?  Really?  We're so marginalized that we can't even say who we are in our title?"

Seen in that light, the milquetoast efforts to 'not offend anyone' from the offical No on 8 folks is totally unsurprising.  So it its inefficacy.

Which makes me really excited about The Impact and what it accomplished over the weekend.  I'd really like to the The Impact's energies directed towards pressuring Congress and the Adminstration to repeal, at the very least, the portion of DOMA that restricts the Federal Government from recognizing gay couples.

"The more things change..."

There's lots of ranting going on in the Progressive blogging community these days, since November 4th, about centrism, bipartisanship, and a variety of other matters--from Joe Lieberman to Robert Gates to Hillary Clinton to Rahm Emanuel--which all circle back around to, essentially, the same conclusion (or, more accurately, concern):  Are we Progressives witnessing an alarmingly high level of successive Sister Souljah moments in recent days? And, is President-elect Obama's administration tacking too far to the right and thus alienating the very base that won him the Presidency?

(This is a sincere question to which I do not know the answer.)

Over the past 24 hrs., Glenn Greenwald, over at Salon.com, notes this may be the case in: "The mind of the Democratic leadership."

Eric Holder has been named the next Attorney General of the United States.

Holder was first appointed by Reagan to serve as an Associate Judge on the D.C. Supreme Court. He was then appointed by Clinton to serve as an Attorney for the District of Columbia. Holder also served as Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton Administration from 1997 to 2001 as was Acting Attorney General early in the Bush Administration.

Holder worked as an attorney at Covington and Burling and joined the Obama campaign as a senior legal adviser.

Holder attended Stuyvestant High School and Columbia University earing his B.A. in 1973 and his J.D. in '76.

Only one kick

The only hesitancy about Holder’s selection was that he himself had reservations about going through a confirmation process that was likely to revive questions about his role in signing off on the controversial pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich. Although there is no evidence that Holder actively pushed the pardon, he was criticized for not raising with the White House the strong objections that some Justice Department lawyers and federal prosecutors in New York had to pardoning somebody who had fled the country. But after reviewing the evidence in the case, and checking with staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Obama aides and Holder both decided the issue was highly unlikely to prove an obstacle to his confirmation, one of the sources said--especially given the Democrats’ more sizable post-election majority in the Senate.

This has yet to be confirmed by the Obama Transition team, but it is being reported by the news outlets. The Obama campaign says that this is not a done deal, but it is as close as it gets. Holder will be the first African-American Attorney General.

More as it comes...

Senator Hillary Clinton now has a choice. Either she accepts a possible appointment as Secretary of State of the United States or she goes back to the Senate and Chair the Insurance Coverage Working Group established by Senator Kennedy.

Today Kennedy named three Senators to Chair three working groups that would work on Health Care reform.

Prevention and Public Health: Chair Senator Tom Harkin
Healthcare Quality: Chair Senator Barbara Mikulski
Insurance Coverage: Chair Senator Hillary Clinton

As we all know, Clinton asked Kennedy to create a Subcommittee on Healthcare, which she could chair. That request was denied. Kennedy Chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions

Here is a statement from Kennedy.

"Our committee is fortunate to have the services of major leaders who are committed to improving health care for the American people. Senator Harkin, Senator Mikulski, and Senator Clinton have generously offered to step forward and assume an expanded role on critical aspects of health reform. I commend them for their leadership, and I look forward very much to working with them, with all our colleagues on the committee and throughout Congress, and with the Obama Administration to achieve the goal at long last of quality, affordable health care for all Americans."

Clinton can now either help bring peace to the world or help bring affordable, quality Health Care to millions of Americans.