…and I will give our new president a chance, unlike the treatment by those folks to the left of things who came right out of the starting gate throwing rocks and various and sundry innuendo at the Bush Presidency before he even had the chance to be sworn in.

However, there are a few small bones I believe need picking, such as, of course, the debate, or lack thereof, surrounding the so-called “Stimulus Bill”.

Mr. Obama made great hay on the subject of promulgating a bi-partisan government, and was even caught on video, smiling a positive sort of smile, saying that he is determined to get the Republicans to work as a team with the Democrats.

That’s very nice, Mr. President, but unless I am being obtuse in my observations, the reality, as things are working out, is that in your lexicon “working together” means everybody towing the liberal line rather than the Democrat majority accepting and incorporating the input of the Republicans in the decision making process.

Even Pelosi’s ‘we won, so we rule’ attitude goes against the grain of your promises to maintain a bipartisan government.

Now, the “Stimulus Bill” itself is crammed with billions of dollars’ worth of partisan agendas that have little or nothing to do with stimulating the economy, not least of which is the billions earmarked for ACORN or the what? Half billion or so destined to combat STDs? As a commentator on FOX news this morning put it, there are some wonderful ideas packed into the “Stimulus Bill”, but quite a few of these don’t belong on the price tag of a bill whose goal is to revitalize our economy.

In the liberal tradition of a bi-partisan Congress, all Republican input is being completely ignored, shut out, etc, etc…

…so much so that the new president can’t seem to hang on to certain cabinet nominees who are endowed with consciences.

Well, how about a little spot-on input, then, from Ann Coulter?

It’s bad enough when illiterate jurors issue damages awards in the billions of dollars because they don’t grasp the difference between a million and a billion. Now it turns out the Democrats don’t know the difference between a million and a trillion.

Why not make the “stimulus bill” a kazillion dollars?

All Americans who work for a living, or who plan to work for a living sometime in the next century, are about to be stuck with a trillion-dollar bill to fund yet more oppressive government bureaucracies. Or as I call it, a trillion dollars and change.

I wasn’t what you would call overly thrilled at the new president’s appointment of Hillary Clinton as SecState, but he seems to have softened the blow on one hand…

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is finding that her job description is dissolving under her feet, leaving her with only a vestige of the power she must have thought she acquired when she signed on to be President Obama’s chief Cabinet officer.

Since her designation:

Vice President Joe Biden has moved vigorously to stake out foreign policy as his turf. His visit to Afghanistan, right before the inauguration, could not but send a signal to Clinton that he would conduct foreign policy in the new administration, leaving her in a backup role.

Richard Holbrooke, the former Balkan negotiator and U.N. ambassador, has been named special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. He insisted on direct access to the president, a privilege he was denied during much of the Clinton years.

Former Sen. George Mitchell, D-Maine, negotiator of the Irish Peace Accords, was appointed to be the administration’s point man on Arab-Israeli negotiations.

Samantha Powers, Obama’s former campaign aide, who once called Hillary Clinton a “monster,” has been appointed to the National Security Council as director of “multilateral affairs.”

Gen. James L. Jones, Obama’s new national security adviser, has announced an expansion of the membership and role of the security council. He pledges to eliminate “back channels” to the president and wants to grow the council’s role to accommodate the “dramatically different” challenges of the current world situation.

Susan Rice, Obama’s new United Nations ambassador, insisted upon and got Cabinet rank for her portfolio, and she presumably also will have the same kind of access to Obama that she had as his chief foreign policy adviser during the campaign.

{to me, this sounds suspiciously like “Hillary, you’re butt’s finally out of the Senate and you’ve got yourself a bigger job title, now go sit in the corner and shut up” — heh, heh}

…but continues “business as usual” in the game of patty cakes with our avowed enemies.

{Need to scroll down a bit to get to the quote below}

Question: Thank you, Mr. President. I’d like to shift gears to foreign policy. What is your strategy for engaging Iran? And when will you start to implement it? Will your timetable be affected at all by the Iranian elections? And are you getting any indications that Iran is interested in a dialogue with the United States?

Obama: I said during the campaign that Iran is a country that has extraordinary people, extraordinary history and traditions, but that its actions over many years now have been unhelpful when it comes to promoting peace and prosperity both in the region and around the world, that their attacks — or their — their financing of terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas, the bellicose language that they’ve used towards Israel, their development of a nuclear weapon or their pursuit of a nuclear weapon, that all those things create the possibility of destabilizing the region and are not only contrary to our interests, but I think are contrary to the interests of international peace.

What I’ve also said is that we should take an approach with Iran that employs all of the resources at the United States’ disposal, and that includes diplomacy.

And so my national security team is currently reviewing our existing Iran policy, looking at areas where we can have constructive dialogue, where we can directly engage with them.

And my expectation is, in the coming months, we will be looking for openings that can be created where we can start sitting across the table, face-to-face diplomatic overtures, that will allow us to move our policy in a new direction.

There’s been a lot of mistrust built up over the years, so it’s not going to happen overnight. And it’s important that, even as we engage in this direct diplomacy, we are very clear about certain deep concerns that we have as a country, that Iran understands that we find the funding of terrorist organizations unacceptable, that we’re clear about the fact that a nuclear Iran could set off a nuclear arms race in the region that would be profoundly destabilizing.

So there are going to be a set of objectives that we have in these conversations, but I think that there’s the possibility at least of a relationship of mutual respect and progress.

Anyone who’s read this blog in the past knows what I think of Ahmadmanjihad’s respect for America, or of even the remotest possibility that we can sit down with him and his ilk and hold a mutually honest discussion leading to any kind of mutually honored agreements.

Notice how the Iranians waited until Obama was in the White House before they tested their new missile. You know, the one they claimed is meant to launch communications satellites but (ahem!) also confirms their capability of delivering a warhead not only into Israel, but southern Europe, as well.

On another note, I was watching an interview with John McCain on Fox, and he made a valid point regarding the conduct of the Democrats, now that they have a Democrat president to go with their majorities in the House and Senate.

He said that what the Democrats are doing now, as far as wielding their power, is not much different than what the Republicans did during the Bush Administration. He added that the GOP paid dearly for it in November, 2006. Now we can only hope that the Democrats pay the same price in 2010, as a response from voters on the price the taxpayer has to pay as a result of the “Stimulus Bill”, and that, G-d willing, we get a sweep of all three branches two years after that.