Apparently this is racist.

If that's racist (because the monkey supposedly depicts President Obama - it's actually just a combination of the idiotic stimulus bill, which could really be described as "borrowing your way out of indebtedness", and the intelligent chimpanzee that went on a rampage and got shot) then what were all those depictions of George W. Bush as a chimp?

If Democrats are going to wheel out the "racist" accusation (usually the last refuge of a lefty scoundrel) like this every time anyone even vaguely criticises or mocks Obama or any of his policies then American democracy is in serious trouble.

Or perhaps the Democrats missed the hilarious yet tragic chimp story because they were too busy reading the 1500 page bill they voted through this week. Because they read every page before voting for it, don't they?

Newsarama has an interesting article on the rights and wrongs of comic book publishers (such as Marvel) putting out material involving a public figure (in this case, Barack Obama).

My question to Marvel would be why they permitted an sequence involving Gordon Brown to appear in Captain Britain and MI13 #1 (which generated a lot of positive coverage for him over here) and blocked a similar sequence in a future issue involving David Cameron.

Now I doubt that anyone at the publisher seriously favours one over the other (I would not presume anyone at Marvel knows anything about UK politics, why would they?) but this lack of equality in coverage essentially boils down to political interference over here. - especially given that it's added to Gordon Brown's personal delusion that he's some sort of superhero, "saving the world" he says, which is doing serious damage to the way he runs the country.

Colbert goes Marvel.

For the benefit of non-US readers (and that includes me!):

On Obama's win

Clarence B Jones, of all people, put into words what has bugged me most about the US Presidential Campaign. Now I do like Obama, but I think McCain was an equally good candidate (and in some ways better) and I feel like he never got a fair crack at the whip in this election, that he restrained himself against his Democrat opponent because of the racial divide (and of course, even worse, he got tarred with the Bush brush, which given what happened in the 2000 primaries is deeply ironic in the most awful way possible) to the point where at one point he was even defending his opponent in the face of criticism (some say too little too late, but has that EVER happened in a US Presidential election before?).

What Clarence B Jones (Martin Luther King's speechwriter - yeah, I noticed that too) said was that this was a referendum on race. And I do feel like a lot of people saw it that way (including, I suspect, many of the people who voted in it), and if that were the case then the right side definitely won. But it wasn't a referendum on race - it was actually a contest for the most powerful position on Earth, at a time when the financial world is in turmoil, the economy both at home and abroad is slumping and the country is deep in the middle of two very difficult wars. Obama's protectionist policies won't help the economy, his record on the wars is patchy at best, and frankly he has fewer policies than David Cameron (who hasn't even fought an election yet!). I feel resentful about the way he has been almost blindly elevated to the top, no questions asked. There are things to worry about the new President-elect - but his oratory skills, his character, and most definitely his race do not fall into that category.

And actually, the most appalling derivative of the notion that Jones describes is that anyone who voted for John McCain was voting against the idea of a black President. While I'm sure there are some awful people in America to whom black people should be seen and not heard (and for that matter only seen mowing their lawn, licking their shoes and having whips cracked at them), I refuse to believe they constitute the full 48% of the electorate that voted for McCain. In fact looking at the overall number this represents a 6% swing from Republican to Democrat over four years. Does that change really justify the mass hysteria we see at the moment? Is it even a resounding victory for the "referendum on race"?

Guest blog: Ed Reynolds (2 of 2)

The US campaign is very frustrating to me.

Eight years ago, McCain hobbled out of the GOP primaries utterly disspirited with politics after one of the most savage and shameful campaigns in modern history -- you know, the one where the bully-boys bankrolled by Bush 41 spread it about that McCain had a 'black baby' (the kid he adopted) and that he was mentally unstable after his incarceration. I don't think he expected to run again and I'm sort of surprised that he has.

I don't agree with McCain on a slew of issues from the EU to abortion rights but I do think he would have made a decent president once. His judgment on the surge was impeccable, and he think his views are in general more reasonable than it's prudent for him to say. As a one-term president, not accountable to a party machine, or even a two-term president bold enough to try and forge a personal following that would allow him to give two fingers to the corrupt party machine -- lot of potential.

But it's creepy to see him now in the pocket of these people who slandered him, these people who behind close doors utterly despise him, paid for by a sitting president who has more than once used him as a punchline. I just kind of wish now they'd chosen one of the suicide candidates like Huckabee. The party deserves to melt down, it deserves to have to rethink itself from first principles and see Bush's fiscal irresponsibility and social tub-thumping as the cause of its ills.

Instead, McCain will lose the election by being 8 years late, the lesson most likely won't be learnt. And I think Obama will win.

Now, Obama in office doesn't fill me with enthusiasm. I think it will be great for America's self-confidence to have a black president and put some sense of closure on a history of terrible race relations in America; it sounds airy-fairy, but confidence and optimism are powerful things particularly in a depression when gloom can breed caution and caution can breed more gloom.

But as far as I can tell his economic policies suck. A windfall tax on oil -- watch as the companies pass this straight onto consumers; effectively, it's a tax on the poorest disguised as a tax on the richest. He plans reforms to make America more protectionist -- a catastrophe. His labour initiatives sound great in a recession but will discourage employers from employing and expanding and so will worsen the downturn. Roosevelt managed to kickstart a short-term revival in the 30s with tax and spend but the "spend" has just been spent and I don't think "tax" is a great stimulus package. Besides, what ultimately cured the US under FDR was WW2 bolstering the army hugely while acting as a global advert for American products.

My expectations are low, but I just hope he seizes the mantle on social issues and gets a good shot at some Supreme Court nominations so he can secure abortion rights for the next generation.