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.