What are the origins of the Obama-Joker-Socialism poster? Drudge links to a Newsbusters headline noting the posters have been “popping up in Los Angeles,” and Newsbusters in turn traces the image to an online article from April 25 of this year. A Google Image search reveals a very similar image dated January 18, 2009, from the Flickr photostream of “a 20 year old college student in Chicago studying engineering.” It’s the fourth image down at this link, accompanied by the caption: “Not necessary indicative of my political views. But I do think hes not all he said he is. You can already sense he’s backing off his claims of change.” The student’s image appears to be a photo-shopped parody of a Time cover. You can tell that the poster image linked to by Drudge and Newsbusters was adapted from the student’s image by the identical red border and the date at the top left.