Ellen surprised one of Taylor Swift’s biggest fans by bringing her on the stage to meet Taylor face-to-face. Watch her emotional response to the meeting of a lifetime!

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GRAND JUNCTION, Colorado (AFP) – A billboard depicting Barack Obama as an Islamist suicide bomber, a gay and a Mexican bandit has triggered a storm of criticism in a western US city weeks ahead of crucial polls. The colourful poster of the US president — under the ironic slogan “Vote DemocRAT” — is attracting attention from media worldwide and from people clogging a local parking lot for a closer look. “It?s beyond distasteful, and it?s disrespectful of the commander-in-chief,” said Martelle Daniels, chairwoman of the local Mesa County Democrats, calling it “clearly racist and homophobic.” “Certainly (it) is not designed for intelligent discourse at all,” she added in Grand Junction, in the western US state of Colorado. Beneath the cartoonish figures of Obama — also depicted as a cigar-chomping gangster — are rats, labeled as trial lawyers, the Inland Revenue Service (IRS), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Federal Reserve bank. Chuck Pabst, the local Republican Party chairman, told the local paper the Grand Junction Sentinel that the billboard is in bad taste. “It?s reprehensible and disrespectful, and that?s not what any honorable person would put forth,” Pabst said. “To ridicule somebody in this manner is juvenile.” Politically, Mesa County is Republican-dominated and increasingly conservative, with several active Tea Party organizations — which are making waves ahead of mid-term elections next month. After two years in the White House, Obama is struggling to avoid a drubbing for his Democratic party in the November 2 ballots, and the race is getting increasingly hard-fought as the polls get nearer. The provocative picture is the work of artist Paul Snover, who frequently posts on constitutionalist and Tea Party websites. Snover couldn’t be reached by AFP for comment, but he told the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel in an e-mail that he is “not allowed to say” who paid for the billboard. Dennis Lucas, a Grand Junction businessman who owns the billboard, said, “I cannot tell you who it?s rented to,” and hung up. Doris Downey, the owner of a company whose parking lot is being invaded by people taking a closer look, is angry that her business is being disrupted. “I have no problem with freedom of speech, but I do have a problem with causing problems for others, and this is causing problems for us on top of all this,” she said. “I don?t know who commissioned that thing, which I think is despicable, but they should own up to it,” Downey said. “Anonymous opinion gets no respect from me.” Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter , become a fan on Facebook

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“I need a freakin’ job.” That’s the message President Obama saw as he arrived in Buffalo, N.Y.,  this afternoon for an event talking up the administration’s success in creating new jobs. He also pitched Congress on approving a $30 billion credit for small-business growth. Yet critics say Obama has been focusing his recovery efforts too narrowly and hasn’t done enough to help people find work. After all, the latest job figures show 9.9 percent of the country still out of work. That inspired a group of unemployed Buffalo residents — who also have a website called INAFJ.org — to appeal to the president in the form of a billboard along the route his motorcade took into town. Here is a photo of the billboard:   The group has also produced a video, which can be viewed here: I Need A Freakin Job @ Yahoo! Video   Yet jobs aren’t a huge priority for either party heading into the midterm campaigns, as Politics Daily’s Jill Lawrence notes . That might be because other issues have taken precedence. A new Gallup poll finds that for the first time in two months, the issue of “jobs” has fallen to No. 2 on the list of issues Americans are most concerned about. The new No. 1 issue: The economy in general. White House officials defend their efforts on jobs, saying the president has been focused as much on creating new jobs as on “saving” current positions. [ Lost jobs that won’t come back ] But here’s a sign the job seekers ‘ message to the administration may be getting through: The White House just announced Obama will travel next Tuesday to Youngstown, Ohio — where unemployment hit 15.1 percent last month, the city’s highest jobless rate in more than 15 years . The focus of Obama’s visit: “jobs and the economy,” according to the White House . And a more direct sign still: Obama press aide Bill Burton was asked about the billboard in today’s press gaggle. His reply was, “The President is here to talk about jobs, what his administration has done to create jobs, what we need to do in order to create an environment where small businesses can create jobs. So the answer is, we’re on the path to creating more jobs, and we’ve got a lot more work to do.” —Holly Bailey is the senior politics writer for Yahoo! News. Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter and join us on Facebook (click “Like”) . Other popular Yahoo ! stories: • Seven things to avoid doing on Facebook • An unusual new use for cigarette butts • Surprising reasons people don’t get hired

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