The talking heads are outraged. There is great wailing and gnashing of teeth. The Forever Glum sit hunched over their tepid beer with that look of eternal resignation and remind everyone who cares to listen that "I knew this would happen - it was only a matter of time". These people are all upset about President Obama, and the things they think he's done - and these are the lefties!

Who can forget those heady days leading up to and immediately after the election? We had dreams of the Perfect Cabinet, acting as if we were picking brackets for March Madness. With light in our hearts and a song on our lips we set off dancing down that golden road to a perfect place where all of our soldiers came home, we had Universal Health Care, and there were so many environmental jobs being created, everyone would be happily working in a clean green world.

To be certain, we all knew that he wasn't perfect, and that he would do something to upset us, right? We all knew that he was better than the alternative by far, right? We all knew that we could never get someone elected who was as progressive as we were, right?

Somehow, it seems we have forgotten that. The high dudgeon coming from normally "safe" shows like Countdown and Rachel Maddow over some seeming infraction of the liberal "code" is disheartening, especially when it flows down into the common masses, who post and comment and tweet their disgust.

One example was covered in yesterday's blog: The Justice Department's filing of a Motion to Dismiss. Forget that this is SOP for any court case, forget that these are Bush DOJ officials that Obama didn't fire, forget that the brief says that the illegal wiretapping is not occurring any longer, forget that Obama shouldn't be sticking his nose into the DOJ's business (the way Bush did)... Those kinds of details are apparently too complicated for some people to juggle, so they accuse Obama of trying to keep the Bush-era powers, and - according to some - expand them.

Just yesterday I got into a tit-for-tat with someone outraged that the military budget was being nominally increased. It didn't matter whether that money would be going to the soldiers to help them with life during and after their committments. It didn't matter whether those horrendous contracts for KBR et al were not being renewed. It didn't matter whether contracts for military machinery that we don't need were being cancelled.

No, all that mattered is that we weren't leaving Iraq and Afghanistan immediately, and we weren't cutting military spending dramatically.

Perhaps everyone needs a sober reminder - it's called REALITY.

Reality means that change will come, but it will come incrementally. It means that despite the "most liberal senator" epithet predictably applied to the Democratic candidate by the right-wing spin machine, Obama is (and always was) somewhere between moderate and liberal. It means that diplomacy is at the heart of politics, and that the iron-fisted rule we deplored when the Republicans were in charge is not going to happen here.

We have to realize that we are NOT going to get everything we want, and what we DO get will not happen overnight, and that - as he said in his acceptance speech - he has also heard the voices of those that didn't vote for him, and he is being their president too. I hope that we can all take a chill-pill and give the man some space and the benefit of the doubt so that he can fix this country.

On the road to Oz, the tin man found his heart, the scarecrow found his brain, and the lion found his courage, only because it wasn't an easy road... Something to think about while we try to find ours.