In case you missed what Hugo Chavez said about Barack Obama at the UN's Copenhagen climate change conference this past week:"It still smells like sulfur in the world.  The Nobel Prize of War just finished saying here that he is here to act. Well, show it sir. Don't leave by the back door."  This was just part of Chavez' personal call-out of your Dear Leader that included at least one of the epithets that he would have hurled at Obama's non-Nobel Lauriat predecessor had George W. Bush been amongst them.

Incidentally, Chavez received a standing ovation for his anti-capitalism rant from virtually all of the international delegates who (take your pick) either love both Chavez and Obama for their Marxism or will continue to hate the USA regardless of whether its president is a wealth-redistributing socialist or not.

9/25/09 - Obama smells mmm mmm good

The last time they turned the mic over to Hugo Chavez at the UN he opened with a slapstick routine about the room smelling of sulfur. George W. Bush had addressed the General Assembly earlier from the same podium, so Chavez' shtick drew big laughs from fellow America haters by his equating of the President of the United States with el diablo.

Three years later: "It doesn't smell of sulfur here anymore.  It smells of something else. It smells of hope," the Venezuelan dictator told the UN on Wednesday.  Earlier, Libya's strongman Muammar Qaddafi had declared to the same gathering that "We'd be content and happy if Obama can stay president forever."

Speaking of staying as president forever, Qaddafi has held his position since 1969 while the relative novice, Chavez, has been Venezuela's top dog since 1998.  If Obama wants "re-election" advice, these guys and the similarly supportive Castro brothers, with 50 years of Marxist/socialist dictatorship under their belts, are just the crowd to be hanging with.

Of course, the American left is ecstatic over these dictators' acknowledgments of the hope and change they have found in their president.  On the same day as Obama's UN teleprompter drone-athon (perhaps daily professorial philosophical lectures are still a bit of a novelty to foreigners whose press coverage is, shall we say, a bit more limited than our own) a video of happy American school children singing the Dear Leader's praises hit YouTube. 

The dictators' love raises the question: Had Qaddafi, Chavez and the Castros pronounced Obama so sweet-smelling a year ago in the final days of the campaign, would their glowing propaganda endorsements have helped or hurt the president on Election Day? If not, we're in far bigger trouble than anyone could ever imagine.

In any case, our nation's case of buyer's remorse is revealed in Obama's continuing decline in the polls and in the growing coalesced protest movement that has created more true neo-cons than the smug left ever imagined possible -- especially after such a resounding Conservative defeat not quite a year ago.

But it's not just right-wingers who see through the Obama hypocrisy.  The ultra-left is pretty upset about his limited prosecution of their anti-war, socialized medicine, gay rights and environmental agendas. 

We're even hearing from the Gitmo prisoners that he pledged to support with American citizens' rights and the immediate closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.  Ahmed al-Darbi, a 34-year old Saudi who is charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism, told the court in December that he hoped Obama would "earn back the legitimacy the United States has lost in the eyes of the world,"

In a note passed to his lawyer, al-Darbi now says that he is disappointed the Guantanamo prison remains open and the military court still holds hearings.  "I say to him now that he has gone astray," al-Darbi lamented.

So what does "hope" smell like?  No one really knows.  But oddly the stench of sulfur emanating from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was never reported by any of the aforementioned. 

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, was overcome by the Holocaust denier's disgusting smell and he plainly said so. To their credit, dozens of delegates from most of the European nations, Canada, Australia and the United States got up and left during Ahmadinejad's speech, but the diplomats who remained applauded as the Iranian political leader continued his address.

Despite surprisingly strong subsequent statements by European leaders regarding Ahmadinejad's ramped-up nuclear development program, our own president apparently wants to stay sweet-smelling to those who matter least by remaining idealistically and unrealistically professorial, speaking about "the goal of a world without nuclear weapons" and of the legalistic breaking of rules and sanctions.

The next time they visit the UN, Qaddafi and Chavez could sing a little duet with some second-graders from New Jersey as their backup...

Barack Hussein Obama

He is so very clever

We would be content and happy if he were president forever

mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama

He does it all so well

The UN has been cleared of Bush's sulfur smell

mmm, mmm, mm!

Then again, our enemies' song will probably be very different by then.

4/19/09 - Propaganda...By the Book

Forget about their in-common authorship of best-selling books that are required reading for sycophants.  Don't make too much of that shared penchant for frequent oratory or the common belief in the redistribution of wealth and other socialistic programs. 

The single tie that binds the Venezuelan strongman and our own softer-spoken less macho would-be dictator is none other than George Bush.  If not for old Dubbleyah, Chavez would be just another two-bit Third Worlder with oil in his backyard and nobody to pal around with but Fidel Castro.

But having had the golden opportunity to diss President Bush at the UN in front of the entire International Order of Ingrates, Hugo's country was instantly promoted into the Axis of Evil and Chavez was installed as the UN's Grand Dragon for the next year.

For those of you who refused to pay attention to hard news and weren't being fed daily State of the Union Addresses during previous administrations, there were repeated references by Chavez to POTUS #43 as "el diablo" that day at the UN in 2005.  Hugo's rant came on the heels of a similar but slightly more diplomatic tirade by Mahmoud Ahmedenajad and, later, Bush's own address to the General Assembly. 

What you won't see reported while the Obama World Tour continues as if Air Force One were a Prius with nitrogen-filled tires is that both aforementioned oppressors have, in their respective languages, referred to your beloved chief executive as "un ignorante".  Imagine what they say about Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.

Back on point, if it were not for the same George W. Bush that Hugo Chavez used as his stepping stone, Barack H. Obama would have been an historical asterisk by now with Hillary R. Clinton laughing her way around the globe on his big plane with the low number. 

While the First Lady of Pants Suits did her level best to criticize the previous administration and to promote her own job readiness (she did have a slightly fuller resume than that of her opponent and it looked, for a while, like the 3AM phone call deal would be a winner) Hillary was, nonetheless, unable to co-opt the message of "Bush Change" because of her proximity to yet another heavily criticized two-term president.

It was repeated a thousand times during the campaign: "Obama is not running against McCain...he is running against Bush."  That's why everything, even to this day, is more about putting the blame on Bush than about the specifics of any other promised change.

Of course, demonizing Bush echoes what Hugo Chavez said before Obama's ascendancy and it is why, for the moment, the Venezuelan dictator deems it acceptable to be smiling, shaking hands and exchanging books with Obama as if he were a long-lost cousin.

But make no mistake -- everything that Barack and Hugo appear to have in common is trumped by the fact that this is a contest between an experienced bully and a novice wimp.  While Obama bows, scrapes and apologizes to First World leaders he will ultimately be perceived as "un ignorante" by friends and foes alike when he is forced to stand up to the bullies or give them our lunch money.

Meanwhile, Chavez, loses absolutely nothing by being friendly and keeping his mouth shut.  In fact, power, prestige and credibility are being gained by Chavez merely for being seen in the same photos as the media world's most popular personality.

You could argue that Obama was tight-lipped and exchanged nothing but friendly handshakes and small talk with Chavez.  But it is also true that Obama did all of his talking during the campaign when he repeatedly, emphatically stated that he was ready to sit down and talk with America haters -- specifically Chavez and Ahmedenajad -- anytime. 

"Sitting down" was one of the main themes Obama employed to stress how different he would be from the man who refused to dignify anti-American dictators with touchy-feely rhetoric.

Chavez does, in fact, see Obama as the Anti-Bush.  That is, a US president who would lend credibility to his ilk with no strings attached even if he is seen as "un ignorante" merely for saying that he is prepared do so. 

What Hugo Chavez sees in Obama is a way to get back into the limelight, to be better liked in his homeland and to be re-elected Grand Dragon by his fellow America haters.  His propaganda strategy is working.