It's the end of 2009. We're still in two wars, Guantanamo is not yet closed, and the jobless numbers are still sky-high. What happened to all the optimism we started the year with? There have been bright spots and not-so-bright spots, nasty political fights and moments of progress.

Hope. It was the word for the Obama campaign, epitomized by the famous Shepard Fairey poster, with eyes uplifted, bright primary colors declaring that Americans believed in something good again.

Many were surprised when Obama didn't tap Howard Dean for a place in his administration--Health and Human Services or even Surgeon General would've seemed a natural fit for the Vermont doctor. But being outside the administration has allowed Dean to be a loud, progressive voice for a better health care plan, and he spent plenty of time making the media rounds this year doing just that.

The war in Afghanistan largely took over the headlines this year from Iraq. Obama's escalation there has led many to call it his war. A couple of months ago, we spent an entire show focusing on the issue.

In May, Eduardo Galeano sat down with Laura for a rare interview and reading from Mirrors.

No doubt one of the stories of 2009 was the ordeal of South African runner Caster Semenya, forced to undergo humiliating "gender testing" after her breathtaking victory. On the eve of the National Equality March, we looked at the tired old assumptions about male and female, heterosexuality and homosexuality.

Discussion of the Employee Free Choice Act, like most other major reforms, has stalled while Congress is locked in a battle over health care reform. In June, we held a roundtable on the legislation and the likelihood of getting labor law reform through a technically-Democratic Congress.

Bolivian president Evo Morales cruised to reelection December 6th with 64% of the vote, and a New York Times blogger wrote during the Copenhagen climate talks that he "was the face of poor countries calling for the rich nations, which built nearly all of the existing human-generated blanket of greenhouse gases, to pay a “climate debt” to the world’s vulnerable communities."

This year saw a lot of economic upheaval and at least in the beginning, some militant labor action that the U.S. has grown unused to. Back in May, Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis appeared on GRITtv along with labor activists from around the country to ask the all-important question: Why can't we fire the boss?

Barack Obama announced last month that the US would be sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. (No word on how many private contractors would be accompanying them.) He did not explicitly use the Afghan women as justification, but many politicians have, claiming that we cannot leave the women to their fate.