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LOS ANGELES, Aug. 4 (UPI) -- Posters portraying U.S. President Barack Obama as The Joker from the Batman movie "The Dark Knight" have been spotted throughout Los Angeles. The poster of Obama, wearing The Joker's trademark white face make-up and elongated lips, also carries the word "socialism" above and below his image, FoxNews.com reported Tuesday.

Based upon what you know at this time, should the United States confirm Sonia Sotomayor as a Supreme Court Justice? * 37% Yes* 43% No* 20% Not sure Regardless of whether or not you believe she should be confirmed, how likely is it that Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice? * 64% Very likely* 26% Somewhat likely* 3% Not very likely* 1% Not at all likely* 7% Not sure Do you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable impression of Sonia Sotomayor? * 20% Very favorable* 27% Somewhat favorable* 22% Somewhat unfavorable*...

On his 100th day in office, Barack Obama enjoys high job approval ratings, no matter what poll you consult. But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.

Three months into his presidency, Barack Obama stands out as perhaps the most trusted figure in American politics. In a new Public Strategies Inc./POLITICO national survey of 1,000 registered voters, Obama outdistances figures on both the left and the right in earning the public’s trust, with two-thirds of respondents saying they trust the president “to identify the right solutions to the problems we face as a nation.” Of those who said they trust the president, 31 percent said they trust him “a great deal.” An additional 35 percent said they have “some” trust that Obama will find the correct solution....

I have written quite a bit about polarization in the early Obama presidency. Each time I do, I receive a few emails similar to this one: [Y]ou maintain that Obama's governing style has been highly partisan. That's simplistic: it takes two to tango and the Republicans have valued total opposition over reasonable compromise. I don't care if Obama rolled the Republicans in the public perception game or not: they're playing in the big leagues and they've been there a long time. They should know how to win that game. This is a version of a general argument - "The Republicans...

Barack Obama has failed on promise to unite usResearchers form the Pew Research Center have performed an analysis of polls. They found American politics is more polarized at this early stage of Barack Obama's presidency than at any equivalent point in the past four decades. March polling found a partisan gap of 61 points between Republicans and Democrats. That is worse than George Bush had in 2001. After the contentious and dividing election of 2000, President Bush had only a 51-point partisanship gap between Republicans and Democrats at this stage of his Presidency. The Main Stream Media painted President Bush...

President Uniteus at it again http://www.thebulletin.us/articles/2009/02/03/news/nation/doc49880d530dea3950883725.txt

President Unite Us on a roll http://www.thebulletin.us/articles/2009/02/03/top_stories/doc4988138b4d07c517542754.txt

(T)he Arkansas General Assembly rejected a congratulatory resolution for Barack Obama because it contained divisive language describing our country as founded by “slave owners”: (snip) WHEREAS, a nation founded by slave owners and seared by civil war and generations of racial strife made a leap in the march toward equality and delivered a smashing electoral college victory to the forty-seven year-old first-term senator from Illinois, who forged a broad, multi-racial and multi-ethnic coalition;

Numerous accounts of the new "spirit of inclusion and non-divisiveness" of the administration have surfaced this week. Most show the distinct differences between an incredibly cooperative, gracious former President as helped a dismissive, Bush-deranged, fear merchant. Even cartilage jaw John McCain has been gracious in both his concession speech, and his willingness to kiss the new administration's Pro-Keds at any opportunity. Heck, if Barack gave up any more demands in his first days in office, we'd have to call him French. I have to check and see if we surrendered California to Mexico this week, but as long as botox-nancy...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's pledge to seek a worldwide ban on weapons in space marks a dramatic shift in U.S. policy while posing the tricky issue of defining whether a satellite can be a weapon. Moments after Obama's inauguration last week, the White House website was updated to include policy statements on a range of issues, including a pledge to restore U.S. leadership on space issues and seek a worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites.

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama opened his presidency by breaking sharply from George W. Bush's unpopular administration, but he mostly avoided divisive partisan and ideological stands. He focused instead on fixing the economy, repairing a battered world image and cleaning up government. "What an opportunity we have to change this country," the Democrat told his senior staff after his inauguration. "The American people are really counting on us now. Let's make sure we take advantage of it." In the highly scripted first days of his administration, Obama overturned a slew of Bush policies with great fanfare. He largely avoided cultural issues;...

Obama: Tilting at Racial Windmills By John Perazzo FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, December 16, 2008 In an interview published December 10th in the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, Barack Obama stated that one of his top priorities as president will be to put an end to racial discrimination in the criminal-justice system. This pledge is consistent with his oft-repeated campaign promise to “eliminate disparities in criminal sentencing,” most notably “the disparity between sentencing [for] crack and powder-based cocaine,” which Obama said was “wrong and should be completely eliminated.” At a presidential primary debate in January 2008, Obama asserted that...

The May 6 primary energized Indiana in ways no one had seen in years. The Democratic presidential contest was the number one topic of conversation among ordinary Hoosiers, young and old, black and white, rich, poor, and middle class. It filled pages of our local newspapers and hours of local talk radio and TV news airtime for weeks. Thousands of new voters were registered, and Indiana had the highest primary turnout in 20 years--over 39 percent, nearly double the state's norm for presidential primaries. Twenty-two per cent of Hoosier Democrats going to the polls on May 6 were first-time voters....

The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully. Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with that crowd. “There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton. There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to...

DENVER - Democratic White House candidate Barack Obama on Wednesday said rival Hillary Rodham Clinton is too polarizing to win the presidency and she has taken positions shared by President Bush and Republican candidate John McCain for political expediency. Obama depicted Clinton as a calculating, poll-tested divisive figure who will only inspire greater partisan divisions as she sides with Republicans on issues like trade, the role of lobbyists in politics and national security. At the same time, he elevated McCain, fresh off victory in Florida's crucial primary, as the likely Republican nominee. "Democrats will win in November and build a...

With Democrats in control of both Houses of Congress for the first time in twelve years, economic inequality is back on the agenda. In his response to the State of the Union address, new Virginia Senator James Webb began by contrasting how much those at the top of the average company earned with the amount earned by those at the bottom. Running for the Democratic Presidential nomination, John Edwards is returning to his 2004 theme of "two Americas." They are joined by liberal pundits such as Paul Krugman and Jonathan Chait, who between them accuse conservatives of "hatred" and of...

Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that her unsuccessful health care reform effort in 1993 makes her more effective on the issue now as she seeks the presidencyThis week, rival John Edwards offered his plan for universal health care that calls for a tax increase to ensure health care coverage for all and a requirement that businesses provide insurance. The tax increase would pay for the plan's cost of up to $120 billion a year."The president can propose, but the Congress has to dispose, and if we don't have a consensus in the country that our present system is...

Washington – Senator John Kerry issued the following statement in response to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, assorted right wing nut-jobs, and right wing talk show hosts desperately distorting Kerry’s comments about President Bush to divert attention from their disastrous record: “If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but...

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) criticized Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean Wednesday night for using "religion to divide." Obama told reporters gathered at the Rock the Vote awards dinner at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., that Dean needs to tone down his rhetoric. Dean said on Monday that the Republican Party was "pretty much a white, Christian party." "As somebody who is a Christian myself, I don't like it when people use religion to divide, whether that is Republican or Democrat," Obama said. "I think in terms of his role as party spokesman, [Dean] probably needs to be...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The General Assembly president issued a blueprint to strengthen the United Nations, calling for governments to pay more attention to poverty and human rights but avoiding the contentious issues of Security Council expansion, defining terrorism and guidelines for using force. The document was a first draft for world leaders to consider for adoption at a U.N. summit set for September, which Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called to overhaul the world body. U.N. officials said 174 leaders have accepted his invitation. General Assembly President Jean Ping presented the document Friday to member states and later told a...

Soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Sunday that he could support Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia if President Bush nominates him to head the high court, but he bristled at the prospect that Bush could tap Scalia's colleague Clarence Thomas, calling him "an embarrassment." Asked by Tim Russert about Scalia as a possible chief justice, Sen. Reid told NBC's "Meet the Press," "I cannot dispute the fact, as I have said, that this is one smart guy." Reid added that while he usually disagrees with Scalia's opinions, "his reason for arriving at those results are very hard to...

Right-wingers didn't start the fire. Imagine that you and I were neighbors, or even friends. One day, I drop by to visit. Eventually, I suggest that our community has become dangerous and that you might consider buying a gun and taking shooting lessons. As you extinguish your fourth cigarette in half an hour, I also observe that quitting smoking is the single best thing you can do to improve your health. You suddenly capsize your coffee table and scream, “You talk like Hitler. Damn you and your family!” whereupon you announce that you will move to another state because you...

Rebirth in Christ: A Latter-day Saint Perspective Andrew Skinner The New Testament Concept of Salvation: An Evangelical Christian Perspective Craig Blomberg The Process of Salvation: A Latter-day Saint View Robert Millet Jesus the Savior: Soteriology and the Stages of Meaning William Loewe Mission of the Holy Ghost: From Believing to Becoming Camille Fronk Incarnation, Worship and Service: An Anglican Soteriology Carol Marsh Jesus, Sacrament of God: A Contemporary Franciscan View Kenan Osborne The Role of Ordinances in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Robert Matthews The Redemption of the Dead: A Latter-day Saint View of the Fate...

[www.CapitalismMagazine.com] Having been forced to recognize that our soldiers won a brilliant military victory in Iraq, media commentators are trying to minimize that achievement by loudly proclaiming how much more difficult it will be to "win the peace" by establishing a stable and benevolent new government in Iraq. But the greatest threat to this goal is not the existing divisions and hatreds among different Iraqi factions. The problem is the advice these very same commentators are giving about how to deal with those divisions: that the key to the political reconstruction of Iraq is to ensure the right political balance...

<p>LOS ANGELES(AP) - California Republicans meet to elect a new chairman this weekend after a racially charged campaign for party leader that has further divided the fractured state GOP.</p> <p>Party Vice Chairman Bill Back, a retired aerospace executive from Wheatland, faces Duf Sundheim, a Palo Alto attorney, to lead a party that lost every statewide office to Democrats in November for the first time since 1882. Republicans also are in the minority in the state Legislature.</p>

Americans who value the Constitution should stand with Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and oppose George Bush's attempted power grab in conjunction with establishing a Department of Homeland Security. The Bushies are trying to frame the debate as either protecting bureaucracy or providing security for Americans. In fact, the debate is about preventing an authoritarian president from sacrificing the Constitution in the name of providing security. Let me remind you that those who prefer security to freedom will lose both. Bush wants to be able to disregard labor contracts and civil-service rules, as well as move money within the department as...