"At that time, a Bank of America was something that you burned down. You didn't want to be designing banks." Those are the words of Chip Lord of Ant Farm, a radical architects collectivewith a "South Park sensibility," whose work during the 1960s and 1970s redefined what architects do. Space, Land and Time: Underground Adventures with Ant Farm is a new documentary by Laura Harrison and Beth Federici that looks back on the escapades of Ant Farm, including their most famous work, Cadillac Ranch.

...

We spent some time this year talking about “It gets better.” The point of that campaign, of course, was to convince gay, lesbian, and transgender kids who might be experiencing bullying and threats, that gets better and people will accept them.

We need to take control of the new computer networking tools all around us, argues author and thinker Douglas Rushkoff, or else we'll wind up at the mercy of those who do take control. That's part of the argument Rushkoff makes in his new book, Program or Be Programmed, out now from our friends at OR Books.

"You can't just have homeowners pay for the mess that the banks have made; not just of our finance system, it's becoming clear that they've made a mess of our private property system in this country," says Marcy Wheeler, who's been blogging the House and Senate hearings on the foreclosure crisis at her FireDogLake blog, and joins us via Skype to discuss the situation.

"You can't just have homeowners pay for the mess that the banks have made; not just of our finance system, it's becoming clear that they've made a mess of our private property system in this country," says Marcy Wheeler, who's been blogging the House and Senate hearings on the foreclosure crisis at her FireDogLake blog, and joins us via Skype to discuss the situation.

Today marked the return of automaker GM to public trading on the stock market. All hail the American automakers, returning to profitability in a little over a year after bankruptcy proceedings and billions of government dollars in bailouts, right?

Laura hits the Ed Show on MSNBC to critique the poll-obsession of the mainstream media, Republicans pushing back on Obama, and Roger Ailes' calling Obama a socialist.

The Tea Party congresspeople are surging into Washington, bringing to their new majority calls not only to overturn health care reform but to ban earmarks and to generally stall major legislation on the Democrats' agenda. Meanwhile, there seems to be little coming out from Obama and most of the Democrats on what is exactly on their agenda for the next two years.

The times are difficult and the challenges are great. But a sober analysis of our predicament suggests that there are accomplishments to be celebrated and lessons to be learned from the intense period of history we have just lived through that can inform a comeback strategy. As important as developing such a strategy will be upholding the commitments that have always nurtured the progressive spirit: to resist despair, to press on in times of uncertainty and to take risks to make a path forward.