A Milford, Conn. gas station owner blames an anti-Obama billboard for scaring away business.

The sign is posted above USA Fuel on the Boston Post Road near High Street in Milford. The billboard reads "Obama = The Entry Drug to Socialism."

This story originally appeared on NBCConnecticut.com.

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"I’ve lost a few customers, I’ve lost quite a few," said Fayez Ghaly, owner of USA Fuel. "They either don’t come back or they’re really upset about it. We try to explain to them it’s not our sign and we can’t do anything about it."

The store has dropped gas prices to try and lure customers back.

"It’s actually been driving us crazy, because everybody thinks it's straightforward that it is our sign, because when you look at it the first time, you think it’s on our property," said Moe Boulas, a USA Fuel employee.

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The sign is owned by DeForest Smith of George J. Smith and Son Real Estate. He said he put it up because someone had to share a message that he believes many agree with.

"He (Obama) is, in my opinion, running this country into socialism while he bankrupts us," said Smith.

Smith said he didn’t want the sign to negatively affect any Milford businesses.

"I’d never, ever would intentionally hurt a small business person," said Smith.

He said he would be willing to discuss the sign with Ghaly, but hasn't heard from him. Ghaly, however, said he contacted Smith and Smith told him the billboard will stay up through Election Day.

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"Offensive." "Abhorrent." "Pathetic." Words like that are being used to describe a billboard in Caldwell, Idaho, that compares President Barack Obama — unfavorably — to James Eagan Holmes, the suspect in the shooting deaths of 12 people in a Colorado movie theater last week.

The sign features photos of Holmes and Obama side by side. Of Holmes, it says: "Kills 12 in a movie theater with assault rifle, everyone freaks out." Of Obama, it says: "Kills thousands with foreign policy, wins Nobel Peace Prize."

The electronic billboard often blares anti-Obama messages, but this one struck people as especially insensitive. It's the work of supporters of the late Ralph Smeed, for many years a lightning-rod activist for libertarian causes in Idaho, The Idaho Statesman of Boise reported.

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"This billboard is offensive to all those lives lost and affected by the shooting," wrote a commenter on the Facebook page of KBOI-TV of Boise, which first reported the story. "Just pathetic, even if this is their expression of the 1st amendment."

 

Read the full story and see the billboard at KBOI-TV

Another called it "insulting, ridiculous and just plain inaccurate."

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Maurice Clements, a former Idaho lawmaker who now keeps Smeed's tradition alive, told the Statesman: "We're all outraged over that killing in Aurora, Colo., but we're not outraged over the boys killed in Afghanistan."

Asked about the reaction to his billboard, Clements acknowledged: "That's a technique of trying to make a point, and maybe it was poorly done."

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For American Atheists, Tuesday was meant to be a big day for getting out their godless message — with the unveiling of a billboard in a heavily Jewish neighborhood in New York City. But plans to erect the sign in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn were altered at the last minute when the owner of site refused access to the installers.

Written in Hebrew and English, the sign was to have read: "You know it’s a myth … and you have a choice." It is an advertisement for the upcoming "Reason Rally" in Washington, D.C., billed as the biggest atheist gathering in U.S. history, and for the American Atheists' convention immediately afterward.

It was also intended to urge non-believers to overcome their fears and "come out" in their heavily religious communities.

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"We believe that (these) communities are teeming with atheists due to the emails we regularly receive," said American Atheists President Dave Silverman, a nonprofit that seeks civil rights for non-believers and absolute separation of church and state. "We have received a dozen emails from Hasidic Atheist Jews since we announced the billboards. … They feel totally alone. We want to tell them they are not alone."

Silverman was at the site with the advertising company to erect the giant sign atop a residential building.

But landlord Kenny Stier refused to allow workers from the advertising company Clear Channel into the building, said Silverman. He told The Brooklyn Paper that he believes powerful rabbis in the largely ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish area persuaded Stier to block the billboard.

"It has been very disconcerting to see that the traditional victims of religious bigotry have become the purveyors of religious bigotry," said Silverman, who was raised in the Jewish faith.

Stier could not immediately be reach for comment, but The Brooklyn Paper quoted him as saying, "I don’t want to get involved in this."

Williamsburg Rabbi David Niederman told the paper the sign is "a disgrace. ... The name of god is very holy to us and to the whole world."

Atheists bill big names for 'coming out' party in the capital

The atheist organization has already selected a new site along the Brooklyn-Queens expressway not far away, and will try again on Thursday to erect it there.

On Wednesday, American Atheists were slated to post another billboard to near the Islamic center of the heavily Muslim community in Paterson, N.J. — identical except written in Arabic and English. They have not received any blowback in that community, Silverman said.

"We’re not particularly disturbed about it,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations. "We believe it’s their First Amendment right to put them up. … Obviously they placed them to be provocative, but that’s also their right."

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