There are many blogs on the Internet where you can learn something, but how many are there that say, "Please tell me what the hell is going on?"

Like a lot of people, I'm trying to figure out what I should be thinking about Barack Obama now. I hadn't planned on thinking anything about him until six months before election day 2012, when I would look around and evaluate what he had done for me lately. But with the first quarter of his presidency in the rearview mirror, maybe it's time to take stock.

You may recall that initially I was a Hillary Clinton supporter (I still have my Hillary `08 posters from the rally I attended featuring Bill Clinton). Obama was a nice-looking guy in a suit with a thin resume and an incredible marketing campaign, I thought. Then the whole scandal hit where Hillary said she had gotten off a plane somewhere like Guam and ducked gunfire, and CNN had the video of her instead taking a flower from a little girl. Barack surged into the lead and I got onboard.

By the time he gave his victory speech in Hyde Park, I was convinced we had the right guy. If his election was enough to cause people in Sydney, Australia to cry tears of joy, his term could be nothing but a positive thing. Even if his results were lackluster, he had at least brought the world's mood up, and that had to count for something.

The choice of Joe Biden as VP had been a bit disappointing -- I didn't know Biden's track record, he just didn't seem like the face of a new day dawning -- but the appearance of Rahm Emmanuel was really a wet towel. I knew he was an aggressive behind-the-scenes player, but the guy just gave me the creeps on sight. However at least he was a relatively new face who embodied some of the "change" Obama had been talking about. I was appalled when he was picking his cabinet positions and it was just the same old faces I've seen on TV for 20 years, and the same old white faces. How did the black people who were so excited about our half-black president feel when he surrounded himself with old white people? I was really thinking the cabinet would fill up with some young 30-something experts from Harvard, Princeton and Yale, and at least a few of them might match Barry's hue. "I was the change, see?," Barry said. Oh...okay...yeah...I guess.

Well, this isn't quite what I envisioned, but I'm gonna trust that this guy knows what he's doing. I'm sure it'll take the full four years and then some to fix this mess, so I'll give him time. Hey, he repealed the ban on stem cell research his first day! Isn't that great?

And now Al Franken gets a seat in the Senate! Hey, with Stewart Smalley on board, we're gonna see some REAL change!

Except now they're discussing the health care bill, and, "Gee, we just can't get enough votes to pass it." Even with a majority? A majority isn't enough? Why is everyone talking about the need to court the Republicans more when WE'VE GOT A MAJORITY? Can't win for winning?

Hey, and weren't we supposed to be bringing the troops home from Iraq in 120 days or something like that? It's been over 365 now. Whatever happened to the draw down?

And the closing of Gitmo, which I was on the fence about: what happened to that? "We've had to re-evaluate and then keep the Bush policy going." Hmm.

Well, maybe I'm skimming the news too much and just don't get it. But now here's Joe Klein of Time magazine, who was an enormous Obama booster, saying Barry needs to stop trying to get everyone to join hands and sing "Kumbaya" and start actually leading. Wow, so Klein is off the bandwagon. Then I read Jesse Jackson has publicly said he's a bit disappointed after crying with elation in Hyde Park, and Danny Glover goes as far as to call this "Bush's third term." Even black guys are getting off the wagon?

I can't tell if everyone's rushing to judgment, or if the building is on fire and we all should have been out a long time ago. As a Democrat, I feel we're too quick to take a defeatist attitude and form a circular firing squad; I never heard a Republican criticize Bush, no matter how bad things got, until he was in his last six months and criticism was moot. Maybe I shouldn't even be writing this and we should give the guy his full four years to make a difference.

Or maybe it's like George Carlin told us: "The politicians are there to give you the illusion you have a choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you."