In the second half of this video, from Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll of New Left Media, we see election day go from elation to heartbreak as Maine voted, by a thin majority, to revoke marriage rights from gay and lesbian couples.

What are the alternatives to the way we live? Since last fall's financial collapse, we've heard more honest discussion about capitalism's failings than in years. Yet real change is still hard to find. Wall Street is still handing out bonuses, we're still at war, and even Guantanamo might not actually be closed by the deadline Obama set upon taking office. As Americans question whether change is possible in an election cycle, we stop and think about what an alternative social order would look like.

After the meltdown, what next? We continue our discussion by featuring David Harvey and Alexander Cockburn on reinventing the neoliberal social order. At CUNY not long ago, these two independent thinkers sat down with Laura to discuss possibilities for real, radical change, and we have a special look at that for you.

Since Obama is convening a jobs summit and soliciting suggestions on how to put people back to work (that don't involve the dirty word "stimulus"), we had Dean Baker and John Nichols put their heads together and talk about ways to create good, meaningful, well-paid jobs and rethink the way Americans look at work.

Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker describes himself as being "aboard the Obama express," and his new book, OBAMANOS!, collects his essays on the Obama generation and the way the campaign changed politics. A year into the administration, Hertzberg is still hopeful, though like many progressives he offers criticisms of the way the health care reform fight and others have been conducted.

This video, from Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll of New Left Media, gives an inside look at the No On One campaign, from get-out-the-vote training to a rally and candlelight vigil the night before election day. Watch for Part 2 tomorrow!

Though the Bush administration and many other insiders claimed that no one could've seen the collapse coming, construction workers, whose own pension funds were invested in these companies, knew that there was a housing bubble and feared for their own retirement money. This video from the Huffington Post Investigative Fund takes a look at the rating agencies and their future.

16 workers a day die from work-related injuries, according to this latest video from Brave New Films. Charles Jeffress, former Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), notes that there are hardly any consequences to employers for failing to comply with guidelines--and with four million injuries on the job each year, it seems that employers have decided that it's easier to flout the law than to comply.

The unemployment number officially hit double digits recently, though the actual truth is that it's been in double digits for a while. The Nation's John Nichols , author of Tragedy & Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy calls the unemployment crisis a "social, economic and political threat," writing of the growing sense of urgency within an administration facing a purported recovery that hasn't extended to everyday people. Economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy agrees, noting that unemployment is still a crisis for the families affected, who struggle to pay the bills and put food on the table.

Palin Palin all the time, and never a peep of complaint. That's the long and short of the news cycle these past few day but there are just a few stories on which I'd like to see some follow up.