I dare you to praise Obama for something!

This is a test of your ideological flexibility!

Can you praise President Obama for a success in the last two years?

Progressives probably can't and conservatives probably won't.

Therefore, the progressive blogging community is partially responsible for the 'Enthusiasm Gap' in the Democratic base that may lower voter turn-out and may throw the Congress to the GOP. Meanwhile, the GOP's inability to see the good is creating a delusional, hysterical, traitorous Disloyal Opposition.

Try this exercise that illustrates my point: I dare you to praise Obama for something.

I will take my own challenge to demonstrate.

I appreciate Obama getting the military into reverse on both of Bush's stupid wars. The new Bob Woodward book "Obama's Wars" shows Obama and Biden wisely recognizing Afghanistan as another Vietnam, and creating the conditions for ending the war. The book shows Obama standing up to the generals, demanding a six page letter of terms, after the military kept trying to roll him on things they'd already decided. Now this is pretty "Inside Baseball" talk, but it provides reassurance to anti-war base voters. After the Afghanistan decision to escalate, there was a widespread deflating in the base. Obama is on the way to fulfilling the promise to get us out of these wars and he deserves credit for that work in process. May these movements towards peace be successful.

I think we naturally don't want to be cheerleaders for power, and this is a healthy instinct. And also we live in a time of national madness, when the group thinking machine of the media is completely delusional. We are suffering under a Fox propaganda culture that's winning over Reality (where facts about carbon-dioxide exist!) So it's up to us people, to tell the truth as we see it!

Or how will the public know what has gone well?

The Obama Administration is up to some cool stuff, but you'd never know it. They just haven't telling their story that well. Www.Whitehouse.gov is pretty cool as blogs go, but it is like a museum: quiet, scholarly, under utilized, careful. Obama's new media hasn't gone very deep into the Net-roots or youth Facebook culture. Then add the noise: Fox is a GOP mouthpiece and only talks smack. Then add the silence: progressives are alienated or very quietly supportive. Suddenly Obama is the Invisible Man, an Unsymbolizing Symbol.

So let us celebrate the victories of the Obama Administration so far and help them out.

I say: Overall, I believe Obama is a good guy in a very hard job, and he has done a pretty good job so far.

I liked the 42 nation summit on Non-Proliferation of nuclear weapons.

I liked that the Attorney General allowed Medical Marijuana to advance in California.

I like the organic garden and the anti-obesity/whole foods campaign of Mrs. Obama.

I like that they are putting solar panels up on the White House!

I liked that the international banking system didn't do a 1929 meltdown. (That was good, right GOP?)

I like the anti-bullying GLTB work they've done lately.

I like that they are moving on 54 high-speed rail projects in 23 states that will get $2.4 billion dollars.

I like that they haven't pushed "free trade" deals.

I appreciated the Cairo speech's outreach to the Muslim world.

I liked that Credit Card companies can't jack your rates without telling you.

And so on.

Try this exercise. I double-dog dare you. It pushes some buttons in the psyche but please stretch yourself.

Because the Republican Climate-Denying Zombies are at the door of Congress and if they get in, we'll never get the Climate Legislation necessary for planetary survival!

On the November 2nd election, I stand with the President Obama and the Democrats and I hope you will too.

May truthful words build a sustainable world.

Sane Suggestions for Traveling to DC for the Stewart/Cobert Rally

My friend Anna said "I think the Rally is going to be a generational event, like MLK speaking or something, something that we'll remember." It does feel like it's going to be huge. A mass gathering of sane Americans arising as antidote to Fox mania! And then a crazy Halloween party weekend in the capital. So come! Here are some suggestions on how to get here and stuff to do.

Washington D.C. is a beautiful, great and strange town. Everybody talks smack about Washington, but that's just because the politics are lame and entrenched while the world burns. But DC is a brilliant town to ramble around in. Internationalism, intelligence and prosperity mix to create seemingly endless novelty, as if we were riding the cresting waves of Terrence McKenna's Novelty Wave towards the Eschaton.

To get to DC, Amtrak trains travel to DC's Union Station. From there it's a short metro or long walk to the event. Drivers can drive until outside city and then catch the Metro in. Several bus companies are organizing trips to the event, with links on the Rally To Restore Sanity's website. The event is in front of Congress's building on the Mall, so take Metro stations Smithsonian or Capitol South.

DC's public transport is the best in the country. The Metro is fast and, more importantly, clean. Public transport is more pleasant when not grimy. (NYC, I'm lookin' at you!) Buses go everywhere the subway doesn't. Be careful, though, sometimes two different color train lines can arrive on the same platform.

DC is a town that can be feel tough to navigate until you get it. Here's the city's design. DC is arranged into quarters around a city center, so streets have a quadrant designation. This allows for the numbers to stay low, counting up from the center. Remember to check this NW/SW/NE/SE designation or you might be aiming for the other side of town, though in practice it doesn't factor in that much. Street names go up alphabetically from the center. Shorter syllable words are closer to the city center than longer syllable words.

During the day, the National Mall has dozens incredible museums to amble about. And they are all free! Literally, miles of hallways, so wear comfortable shoes. The cops are chill, though their metal detectors won't like corkscrews or swiss army knives at the museum door. The Smithsonian's Freer Gallery has some incredible Asian art. National Air and Space Museum's got a 3D movie about the Hubbell Telescope that looks cosmic. The new Native American Museum looks like the Anasazi cliff dwellings of the American Southwest. Integrating natural themes like water and sky, it celebrates native sensibility brought into architecture, as with the Mohegan Sun Casino in CT. This museum has the best food on the Mall, from buffalo stew to veggie chili, arranged in a food court based by different geographic food sheds. The Mall is a bit of "food desert", where it can be easy to be hungry even with money in your pocket. In theory the Smithsonian has a cafe, if you consider a $3 Coca Cola digestible.

For evening adventures, DC is has a lively bar culture, embodied at the Tune Inn (331 Pennsylvania SE). In the Du Pont Circle area, Afterwards Cafe serves good food inside a terrific bookstore. The best dive bar I've ever been was the Raven, gritty and brilliantly human-scale, with rock star pictures on the wall and a surly bartender who will serve you well, (from DuPont Circle metro, bus 42, 3125 Mt Pleasant Ave NW). For dinner in DuPont Circle, a great salad factory is Sweetgreens. Nearby is the nation's first certified organic restaurant, Nora, pricey but wholesome.

For accommodation, there are many youth hostels online, though most seemed booked for the weekend. (Try the William Penn House, $40 a night.) Hotels available by Metro are plentiful. DC is a fairly easy place to just sneak off into the greenery with a sleeping bag. Rock Creek Park is home to a beautiful river with miles of biking trails.

DC is filled with brilliant architecture. For two hundred years people have sought to increase the prestige of their organization by having a really impressive building in the Big Town. The embassies near Du Pont Circle are so beautiful, though they seem to have witnessed unhappiness. The city is stuffed with public space treasures, like the beautiful little park on Embassy Row dedicated to Khalil Gibran, at 3100 Massachusetts Ave NW.

DC feels pretty safe. It's a prosperous town, so perhaps government doesn't suffer recession. In the words of Brother Cornell West, DC is an chocolate city. There are half-a-million Ethiopians here, the most outside of Ethiopia. Due to the international schools and embassies, there are people from all over the world, creating a great gumbo of ethnicity, and America's most international city.

DC is a also a place where the military/industrial complex takes out ad campaigns for their new tank, with full page ads in Post, and subway billboards. The metro stop before the mega-mall at Pentagon City is always good for unintentionally funny ads. Check out the billboards at Capital South metro, where cleanskies.org has the most egregious green-washing campaign ever: using climate change facts to justify getting "natural" gas by hydrofracking the shale beds of NYC's water-supply. Please take a moment to publicly mock these ads.

Capital South metro station is the stop to take to go to the Democratic National Committee building, 430 South Capital Street, an orange building near some sort of factory, where you can stop by after the rally and make some phone calls for the upcoming election. And afterwards, check out the nearby Tortilla Coast mexi-cafe and see where Capital Hill staffers eat chips after a day of difficult legislation.

For Friday night, at the Rock n Roll Hotel, there's a Masquerade Party with 3 bands, (5$ or free with Mask!) at 1353 H St. NE. On Saturday, there's a costume rally afterparty the Eighteenth Street Lounge at 1212 18th NW Street.

DC, our capital, let's restore it's sanity with a one big sane weekend.