Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod have the same contempt for the electorate that con men and three-card monte hucksters have for their gullible marks. And, what's more, they've every right to do so. After all, they took a left-wing radical out of Chicago, the corruption capital of America, mixed in a dash of "hope and change" malarkey, and convinced 64 million suckers to vote for him.

I'm well aware that a great many Americans are currently suffering from buyer's remorse, but that doesn't excuse them. I mean, it's not as if all the evidence weren't readily available prior to the 2008 election. Unless a person had spent the previous year vacationing on the moon, he should have been well aware that all of Obama's friends, associates and spiritual advisers were crooks, racists or communists.

Why weren't they paying attention when Obama admitted that his cap-and-trade policy would send our energy bills soaring through the roof, when he declared war on the coal industry and when he told Joe the Plumber that he advocated the redistribution of wealth?

Why did they think electing a guy who had been a community organizer – an obvious euphemism for being a left-wing activist – was a good thing?

And, finally, in a nation that has yet to elect a woman, a Jew, a Latino, a Mormon, an Asian or even, so far as I know, an atheist or an agnostic, why did so many people think they had earned a pass to heaven for no other reason than that they'd voted for a guy who was partially black?

The folks who chose to overlook all the obvious evidence and stick the rest of us with Obama remind me of those ditzy women who ignore all the telltale signs, and turn a deaf ear to the warnings of concerned friends and relatives, and wind up marrying wife beaters.

There was a time when people like Mark Twain, Will Rogers and Bob Hope made good-natured jibes about politicians, and when everybody else regarded office holders as if they were the equivalent of old Uncle Ned, who'd get plastered at family get-togethers and fall asleep with his head in the mashed potatoes. But those days are long past. How can they not be when Congress is bankrupting America and skunks like John Kerry and John Conyers have the gall to confess they didn't even read the 2,000-page health-care bill even though they actively support its passage?

The only real difference between Kerry and Conyers and the rest of their congressional cronies is their candor. All that these tax-supported incompetents care about are the trappings of office – the huge staffs, the photo ops and the easy access to bribes and sex. These self-important oafs not only refuse to read the small print, they refuse to even read the writing on the wall.

Instead, they elect to defame those Americans who ask only that they abide by the Constitution they've sworn to defend, dismissing us as mobs, thugs and astroturfers.

Their notion of doing their patriotic duty is to leave everything up to the likes of Pelosi, Reid, ACORN and the SEIU's Andy Stern – individuals and entities no normal, decent person would trust to pick out their neckties, let alone their political agenda.

A recent poll determined that 46 percent of Americans approve of Obama's performance, while 54 percent disapprove. But if you dig a little deeper, you discover that 61 percent of white Americans disapprove, and it's only because a whopping 97 percent of blacks give him a big thumbs-up that the numbers are as close as they are. So much for the post-racial America candidate Obama promised us.

Some folks wonder why so many members of Congress are willing to bury future generations in debt, to destroy America's ability to compete with China and India by pushing for cap and trade and buying into the "scientific" hoax known as global warming, and importing Castrocare to the United States.

The answer, I believe, is that left-wing politicians aren't overly concerned with America's welfare. It's power and influence that drives them, which is why an embarrassment like Robert Byrd, even as he approaches the century mark, refuses to retire.

In Jack London's novel, "The Sea Wolf," the brutal, but erudite, Wolf Larsen, captain of the seal-hunting schooner, the Ghost, is asked why he is content to command a crew that hates and fears him. In response, he quotes from "Paradise Lost," in which John Milton has Satan, the fallen angel, explain his own puzzling motivation by stating: "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."

It seems to me that today the ship of state is under the command of Wolf Larsen.

Burt Prelutsky has been a humor columnist for the L.A. Times, a movie critic for Los Angeles magazine and a freelance writer for TV Guide, Modern Maturity, the N.Y. Times and Sports Illustrated. He has also written TV scripts for shows such as "MASH," "Mary Tyler Moore" and "Diagnosis Murder." His book "Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco" was recently updated and is available from WND's online store; or if you'd rather order by phone, call WND's toll-free customer service line at 1-800-4WND-COM (1-800-496-3266).

www.wnd.com/index.php