Barack Obama Joker socialism poster denounced as racist

A poster depicting President Barack Obama as Heath Ledger's "Joker" character from "The Dark Knight" has sparked controversy after it appeared on the streets of Los Angeles.continues here



The poster shows the US president with white face paint, dark eye shadow and smudged red lipstick above the caption "socialism", in an apparent attack on the US president's efforts to reform health care and stimulus spending.

It is unknown who created and distributed the image, which some believe has racial overtones because it shows Mr Obama as a black-and-white minstrel in reverse.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, denounced the image and called on those behind it to reveal themselves. "Depicting the president as demonic and a socialist goes beyond political spoofery. has racial overtones because it shows Mr Obama as a black-and-white minstrel in reverse No it shows obama as the cartoon character the joker-AAWR

"It is mean-spirited and dangerous.

"We have issued a public challenge to the person or group that put up the poster to come forth and publicly tell why they have used this offensive depiction to ridicule President Obama."

A stark visual contrast to Shepard Fairey's popular red, white and blue image of the president-elect featuring the caption "hope", the "socialism" image has appeared as Mr Obama is facing a growing swell of criticism as he attempts to force through his $1 trillion health care programme.

The "socialism" poster has spread virally across the internet, crashing the website that first displayed images of it and rising to the top of Google's "Today's Hot Trends" list. Paper versions also appear to be spreading, with some showing up in Atlanta, Georgia.

Some Right-wing commentators have seized approvingly on the image. Thomas Lifson wrote on the conservative American Thinker website: "It is starting. Open mockery of Barack Obama, as disillusionment sets in with the man, his policies, and the phony image of a race-healing, brilliant, scholarly, middle-of-the-roader."

The liberal tabloid "LA Weekly", which depicted George W. Bush, the former president, as Dracula on its cover in 2004, denounced the Obama-Joker poster as virulently racist. continues here

“A black-and-white minstrel in reverse”, you know it would be funny if it wasn’t so serious, if leftists hadn’t infiltrated every nation and injured normal discourse, if the people still had free speech and truth was valued. Now I have a lot of issues with the election of Mr Obama, primarily I note the tremendous push given his campaign, by the owned media, leftists, liberals and yes, non-white communities, you see groups vote on the basis of self-interest and generally with regard to non-white minorities, this is governed by race. Of course, should no non-white candidate be standing, then the community will vote for the candidate that must advocates their cause, Mr Obama received 96 percent of the black vote and a believed 67 percent of the Hispanic vote. It is perhaps for this reason he endorsed the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, giving no consideration to her rather dubious political past.

The election of Mr Obama was a racial event, quite simply he was propelled into office atop a wave of demographic change, leftist agitation and liberal guilt, yet one must always realise that individuals are defined by group, one can see this with the dropping of the charges against the New Black Panther Party members, individuals charged with voter intimidation in Philadelphia during November's elections, this blatant case of voter intimidation appears to be unworthy of consideration even though one individual wielded a baton ,although should Klan members endeavour to do the same, one can envisage really quite a different outcome indeed. We also see this with his appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, prompting Sen. Mitch McConnell to remark, “Judge Sotomayor is a fine person with an impressive story and a distinguished background. But a judge must be able to check his or her personal or political agenda at the courtroom door and do justice even-handedly, as the judicial oath requires. This is the most fundamental test. It’s a test Judge Sotomayor does not pass.”

Sonia Sotomayor has always supported her own group interest or that of non-whites, even from right back in her university days at Princeton, during her time at university she joined Acción Puertorriqueña, a group that lobbies for the rights of illegal immigrants, she also joined Third World Centre, a group that advocated for and championed the rights of people of colour. So we can see at a glance that Mr Obamas administration and indeed decision making process, is at times governed by out-group thinking, of particular note here, Mr Omamas intervention in the Gates case, the tagging of the arrest of Henry Louis Gates as, Cambridge police acting stupidly, of particular importance. Mr Obama simply went on the defensive, he defended a perceived member of his own group before knowing the full facts and no “beer summit” can alter such publicly noted behaviour. Yet we are told that America takes no note of race that America is a melting pot, yet in truth the pot is melting, because of the white hot anger on all sides, rage that threatens to spill out of control at any moment.

Obama half-brother ‘linked to UK sex attack’

BARACK OBAMA’s half-brother has been refused entry to Britain after reportedly being accused of an attempted sex attack on a 13-year-old girl on his last visit.

Samson Obama, who runs a mobile phone shop in Nairobi in Kenya, was on his way to the president’s inauguration in January when he tried to stop over in Britain to visit relatives. But he was turned away by immigration officers who declined to issue a visa on the grounds of deception.

Biometric tests carried out at East Midlands airport showed that he was linked to the attack on a girl in Berkshire last November but never charged, according to a report last night. Further checks identified Samson as the half-brother of President Obama, leading to a hurried call to the White House.

A Home Office source told the News of the World: “This was obviously an extremely sensitive issue when it was flashed up by the database.” Officers had noticed that one of the documents that Samson had supplied with his visa application was false which led them to make further inquiries, according to a Home Office spokesman.

Details on the database suggested that he was the same man who had been arrested by police in Berkshire after approaching a group of young girls, including a 13 year-old, and allegedly trying to sexually assault one of them, the News of the World reported.

He then followed the girls into a cafe where he became aggressive and was asked to leave by the owner. Police were called and Samson was arrested. He reportedly gave officers false identification details and supplied his mother’s address in Bracknell. continues here

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Obama: Berlusconi faces race row as he calls America's first black president 'suntanned'

Bungling Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was tonight at the centre of controversy after praising U.S. President-elect Barack Obama on his great SUNTAN.

Media tycoon Berlusconi, 72, famous for his gaffes, made the remark while in Moscow visiting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and said Obama was 'young, handsome and tanned'. 

The Italian PM in the past has come out with priceless howlers, including labelling one German MEP a 'prison of war camp guard' and saying that the 'West was superior to Islam'.  

Last night, as he was condemned from all sides for his remarks on Obama, a rattled Berlusconi snapped: 'What's the problem? It was a compliment. If these people don't have a sense of humour then it's their problem,' he said, according to Ansa news agency. 

Only 'imbeciles' would interpret his comments as derogatory, Berlusconi was quoted as saying by Ansa.

The website of top-selling Italian daily La Repubblica said: 'Right on cue comes the first almighty gaffe - which risks to outshine even the German MEP one.' 

Permatanned Berlusconi had been slammed by Italian opposition MP Dario Franceschini who said: 'He needs to apologise straight away. The best theory is that he can no longer control himself.  continues here

'Change has come' - Barack Obama wins US presidential election

Barack Obama this morning declared "change has come to America" as he emerged triumphant from one of the most extraordinary elections in history to become his country's first black president.

There were tumultuous scenes at a victory party with 70,000 people at Grant Park in Chicago - and hundreds of thousands more outside - when TV networks simultaneously declared him the winner at exactly 11pm Eastern Time, bringing an emphatic end to the Bush years.

Projected wins in the traditional battlegrounds of Ohio and Florida - as well as Pennsylvania, on which John McCain's pencil-thin path to the White House had depended - were easily enough to give Mr Obama the Electoral College votes he needs.

A clutch of other once-Republican states, including Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa, Nevada and Virginia, also fell to the Democrat. North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana and even Montana are still deemed too close to call.

Mr McCain - after an often tempestuous campaign - delivered a gracious concession speech in his home state of Arizona.

But at midnight in Chicago, Mr Obama arrived to rapturous, pulsating ovation from supporters in Chicago to promise the world that a "new dawn of American leadership is at hand".

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy - tonight is your answer," he said.

In a speech punctuated by frequent chants of "yes, we can", the Democrat said the long lines of voters standing in line for hours had done so because they believed "this time must be different, that their voice could be that difference".

He added: "It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled – Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America."

The immense turnout in yesterday's election was testament not only to the energy, excitement and expectations of a rejuvenated American democracy, but also the fears of a nation standing at a crossroads of history. The new president faces economic and social convulsions at home, conflict abroad.

Exit polls showed Mr Obama performing strongly among voters who regarded the economy as the most important issue, cutting a swath through the east, making deep inroads into once-solid Republican territory in the Mountain West and recapturing parts of the south for the first time in a generation

He hopes his victory, 40 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King and the start of cultural wars that have scarred American politics ever since, holds out the promise of healing his country.

Mr McCain acknowledged as much, saying: "This is a special election. I recognise the great significance it must have for African Americans and the special pride they must be feeling tonight."

In his concession speech he paid tribute to Mr Obama for inspiring millions and declared the country had "come a long way from the cruel bigotry" of the past.

"There is no greater evidence of this than the election of an African American to the presidency of the United States," he said. "Let there be no reason now for any American not to cherish their citizenship of this, the greatest nation on earth."

Several times he quietened boos from the crowd in Phoenix, saying the nation needed to "come together". Mr McCain promised to help Mr Obama in any way he can "lead us through the challenges we face" and told supporters that though his campaign had fallen short: "The failure is mine, not yours".

Robert Gibbs, Mr Obama's spokesman, later disclosed that the president-elect was eager to sit down with his former rival and discuss how they can work can together. He is said to have told Mr McCain: "I need your help, you're a leader on so many important issues."

In his speech last night, Mr Obama declared: "Let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look not only at ourselves, but each other."

He also paid generous tribute to his campaign team, his wife and children - to whom he has promised a new puppy - and his grandmother, who died on Sunday before seeing him win the presidency.

In the fight for Congress, Republicans suffered huge losses, but were clinging to hopes that they might just stop Democrats from reaching a filibuster-proof 60-seat "super majority" in the US Senate.

Democrats, needing nine seats to reach the 60-seat threshold, were on target to gain at least seven, but narrowly failed to pick off Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the upper chamber.

In the House of Representatives, Democrats were on course to gain at least another 25 seats, giving them their biggest majority in the lower chamber for a generation.

Hillary Clinton, who saw her own bid to become America's first woman president narrowly fail in an historically-charged Democratic primary, released a statement saying: "This was a long and hard-fought campaign but the result was well worth the wait.

"Together, under the leadership of President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and a Democratic Congress, we will chart a better course to build a new economy and rebuild our leadership in the world."

Gordon Brown issued a statement shortly after 6am in Britain offering "sincere congratulations" to Mr Obama.

"The relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom is vital to our prosperity and security," he said. "Barack Obama ran an inspirational campaign, energising politics with his progressive values and his vision for the future. continues here

John McCain camp accuses Barack Obama of playing of the race card

The simmering issue of race boiled over on the presidential campaign trail Thursday after John McCain's camp accused Barack Obama - the first African American with a real shot at the presidency - of playing the race card.

The high-voltage charge came after Obama said McCain and Republicans want to scare voters by saying he doesn't look like the Presidents on dollar bills.

"Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck," McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said. "It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong."

McCain agreed. "I'm sorry to say that it is [true]," McCain told CNN. "There's no place in this campaign for that."

Team McCain got riled over a riff Obama repeatedly tossed into his speeches Wednesday, saying that his opponents would try to paint him as too risky a bet for commander in chief.

"Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face," Obama said in Missouri. "So what they're going to try to do is make you scared - of me.

"You know, 'He's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name,' you know, 'he doesn't look like all those other Presidents on the dollar bills.'"

Although race has been an undercurrent in the White House contest, McCain hasn't raised Obama's heritage. He's condemned people who inject race into the daily debate, such as some anti-Obama ads run by the North Carolina GOP.

Aides said the Republican's feelings are deeply rooted in personal experience. In 2000, McCain was the victim of a whisper campaign in South Carolina - allegedly fostered by allies of then-rival George W. Bush - that he fathered an out-of-wedlock child with a black woman. The child is McCain's adopted daughter, who is Bangladeshi.

"There is no greater directive inside this campaign," a top McCain aide said of rules against anything approaching racism. "It is like the quickest ticket out of this building."

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs denied Obama referred to race in his remarks about GOP fearmongering.

"He was referring to the fact that he didn't come into the race with the history of others," Gibbs said. "It is not about race."

Even if McCain felt aggrieved by the Democrat's dollar-bills dig, an old Hillary Clinton hand warned he could be playing with fire just for crying "race card." 

"Our experience is that Obama is very hard to attack on this," said a former Clinton adviser. "You start to go after him on race and they will eat you alive."

Obama surrogate John Kerry tried to do just that. He went on TV to blast McCain for "inserting" race into the campaign through the back door. continues here

Cameron echoes Obama by calling on absent black fathers to take more responsibility

David Cameron has called on absent black fathers to take more responsibility for their children.

He spoke out last night in praise of US presidential candidate Barack Obama's warning that too many African Americans have abandoned their children.

Mr Cameron called for a 'responsibility revolution' to change patterns of behaviour

He agreed with Mr Obama, who spoke only hours earlier, that government and business alone couldn’t be blamed for problems in black neighbourhoods.

The Tory leader commended Mr Obama's 'bravery' and said that many black church leaders had expressed the same anxiety to him.

Referring to Mr Obama's speech, in which he warned that absent black fathers were behaving like teenagers and shirking their responsibilities, Mr Cameron said: 'I think he's absolutely right.

' I mean I think it's a very brave thing to do.

'And it will have a huge influence that he has said it.

'I've had a number of meetings with black church leaders who make the same point too.

'They are very concerned about family breakdown and social breakdown and want to see what I call a responsibility revolution take place.

'I think it is a very important part of our responsibility agenda.'

The veteran civil rights campaigner Jesse Jackson has accused Mr Obama of 'talking down to blacks', but Mr Cameron said this was wrong.

He told the Guardian: 'We will never solve the long term problems unless people also take responsibility for their own lives.'

Mr Obama, 46, said earlier in the day that parents need to teach ‘our sons to treat women with respect and to realise responsibility does not end at conception’. 

‘That what makes a man a man is not the ability to have a child but to raise one,’ he added.

He said parents must ‘provide guidance for our children’ by ‘turning off the TV set, putting away the video games, attending those parent-teacher conferences, helping our children with their homework, setting a good example’. 

Mr Obama, often talks about his own experience of being raised by a white, single mother and his grandparents. His black Kenyan father left the family when he was two.

Referring to complaints last week by Mr Jackson, that he was delivering moral ‘lectures’ to blacks, Mr Obama said: ‘Now, I know there’s some who’ve been saying I’ve been too tough, talking about responsibility.’

But he told a meeting of the civil rights organisation the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People: ‘I’m here to report, I’m not going to stop talking about it.’  

Some Democrat analysts said Mr Obama was risking a possible breach with his black political base by his refusal to back down over the issue of parental responsibility.

But the largely black crowd, in Cincinnati, gave him a standing ovation.

The Illinois senator also pledged to stay firm on his 

16-month timetable to end the war in Iraq if he beats Republican John McCain in November’s presidential election. continues here 

Black power struggle: 'I want to cut his nuts out'

Jesse Jackson's outburst against Barack Obama has laid bare the jealousy felt by a generation of civil rights leaders towards the man who would be President. Leonard Doyle reports

In the black community it's known as trash-talking. 

Ever since he loped on to the political stage in Chicago nearly 20 years ago, Barack Obama has had to contend with the jealousy of prominent black politicians. The Reverend Jesse Jackson seethed with resentment at the effortless way the younger man snatched the spotlight away from an earlier generation of black leaders whose roots lay in the civil rights movement. 

In the gritty world of Chicago's south side, the mixed-race Mr Obama soon found himself being called "a mercenary for white elites" by some of his political rivals. As recently as last year, Mr Jackson complained in public that Mr Obama was "acting like he's white" for failing to make a stink when six black schoolboys were put on murder charges in Jena, Louisiana, after a melée with white pupils. 

Now Mr Jackson has been caught speaking crudely about Mr Obama into a microphone, which he apparently thought was not live. It was just the latest in a long line of public slap-downs by the man who still views himself as America's pre-eminent black leader. For almost eight years the firebrand pastor turned politician has been trying to put Mr Obama in his place, while (usually) saying nice things about him in public. 

Before a television interview this week, Mr Jackson complained sotto voce to a visibly astonished Fox News anchorman that Mr Obama was "talking down to black people", particularly black men, when he had complained in speeches that they were not behaving responsibly as fathers. He went on to express a desire to do something so crude to Mr Obama's anatomy that most American newspapers have decided not to print it. Even Fox News decided to wait three days before airing the offensive words (he wanted to "cut his [Barack Obama's] nuts out") allowing Mr Jackson plenty of time to apologise profusely for something most viewers knew nothing about. 

"I don't want harm nor hurt to come to this campaign," Mr Jackson gushed after Fox News said they would be airing the recording of his comments, which he called "hurtful and wrong", on Wednesday night. 

Mr Jackson, who ran for the White House in 1984 and in 1988, supports Mr Obama's White House bid – at least in public. But every now and then the tensions between the two men burst into the open. The former pastor sees himself as a crusader for the hidden, impoverished America and standard bearer for Martin Luther King. He cradled the civil rights leader in his arms after he was shot by an assassin and appeared on television still wearing a shirt stained with Mr King's blood. 

Barack Obama himself acknowledges that it was Mr Jackson who inspired him to believe that a black man could win the White House, after he saw him speak in a debate at New York's Columbia University in 1984. But while he admired the older man's showmanship, he also realised that to win the confidence of Middle America, a successful black candidate would have to appear, and speak in a way that transcends race and the angry politics of the ghetto. 

Instead of pushing himself to the head of civil rights marches, Mr Obama chose to operate behind the scenes as a community organiser, trying to get poor black people to unite and become powerful in demanding changes in their lives. Mr Obama's political mentor was Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington, rather than Jesse Jackson, who at the time was strutting on the national stage. 

Mr Jackson's first run for the Democratic nomination ended in failure, but it was the most successful campaign by a black candidate until that time. He has a gift for oratory and a wicked turn of phrase, such as "Our time has come", "If your mind can conceive it and your heart can believe it, then you can achieve it". 

But Mr Jackson caused howls of outrage when he described New York City as "Hymietown" in 1984. Again, he thought he was speaking privately to a black journalist, but his anti-Semitic remarks were splashed across the newspapers costing him valuable support among Jewish voters who were instinctively sympathetic to his cause of lifting up impoverished black communities. 

The rivalry is understandable since Mr Obama and Mr Jackson are both products of America's most racially divided city, from which both emerged as champions of the poor to seek the highest office in the land. 

There are overlapping family ties as well. Mr Obama's marriage in 1992 brought the families close. Michelle Obama was at high school with Mr Jackson's oldest child, Santita, and they were close friends. Santita sang at the Obamas' wedding and was godmother to their oldest daughter, Malia. Mrs Obama was a frequent visitor to Mr Jackson's Chicago home and as soon Mr Obama began dating her, he got to meet Jesse Jackson Jnr, who would also attend their wedding. 

The self-regarding former pastor has a habit of rubbing Barack Obama up the wrong way. Spying Mr Obama's youngest daughter, Sasha, at an event, he lifted her up and put her on a pedestal to pose for pictures. Then when the cameras had stopped flashing, Mr Jackson walked away, leaving the three-year-old girl teetering on a tall block of concrete. 

Eight years ago when Mr Obama was a little-known state senator in Illinois, he decided to mount an audacious challenge against Bobby Rush, a four-term US senator and former Black Panther. He immediately ran into some formidable opposition in the shape of Jesse Jackson and the former president Bill Clinton, who took steps to put the young upstart in his place. Mr Clinton overrode his own policy of staying out of Democratic primaries and backed Mr Rush, who trounced Mr Obama by more than two to one. 

There were other times when Jesse Jackson tried to body block the Mr Obama's rise. Back in 1995, he even tried to arrange for his son to get the state senate seat that became Mr Obama's stepping stone to national fame. Mr Jackson's son, rejected the plan and ran successfully ran for Congress instead. 

The younger Jackson, who is 42, is now a close friend to Mr Obama, 46, and is a national co-chairman of the Obama campaign. It is not the first time that congressman Jesse Jackson Jnr has found himself rebuking his father. After the Fox News episode, he said: "I'm deeply outraged and disappointed in Reverend Jackson's reckless statements about Senator Barack Obama," adding that the remarks were "divisive and demeaning ... Reverend Jackson is my dad and I'll always love him. [But] I thoroughly reject and repudiate his ugly rhetoric. He should keep hope alive and any personal attacks and insults to himself." continues here