Simply hilarious... well, it would be if Barry didn't believe his own lies. Oh, and if his slavish followers weren't so easy to bamboozle.

A segment of the upcoming movie "Hype" gives us the facts about Obama's friends and unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers.

On August 25 Patrick Donahue of Bloomberg breathlessly informed us that a recent poll showed that Germans love Barack Obama. In a week where Obama's soft polling numbers with Americans who will do the actual voting, you'd be excused if you wondered who cared, but apparently Bloomberg thinks this Obama puffing "news" is worth reporting. It's more reason to be suspicious that the Old Media is in the tank for Barack Obama, in any case.

This particular Bloomberg story has little substance and is centered on a population that cannot even vote for Obama in the first place. Interestingly, however, this story makes no effort to contrast high polling numbers in Germany with the much softer support Obama finds in the U.S.A. At least such a comparison might have served a more newsworthy purpose.

Germans overwhelmingly back Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama over Republican contender John McCain, a poll showed, though a majority said the U.S. election outcome won't affect relations with Europe.

Among Germans under 30 years old, 84 percent said they back the Democratic senator from Illinois.

Once again... who cares what the 1,009 Germans polled think about our election? Why is this news?

Still, maybe the reason this is getting reported as news is because Obama has been seeing very soft support, even losing ground to McCain here among people that, unlike their German counterparts, will actually have the opportunity to vote for president of the U.S.A.? Perhaps Bloomberg is looking for good news to support Obama in any place they can find it?

For instance, as late as August 20, Zogby reported that McCain had not only closed the gap, with Obama but earned a 5 point-lead over the candidate of "hopenchange." McCain was enjoying a 46 percent to 41 percent lead over Obama by the 20th. The coverage by USA Today shows an August 21 Gallup poll with the candidates tied at 45 percent each and an August 23 CNN poll also proves a tie at 47 percent each.

Conventional wisdom claims that Obama should be running away with this election but polls simply have not backed up this assumption. Naturally, Democrats are charging the nation with racism for Obama's polling deficit.

So, if Bloomberg can't find polls to support the conventional wisdom among the actual voters, Germany comes to the rescue to shore up a feeling that an Obama win is the popular choice.

Not much in the tank, eh?

Read it and weep, Dixie Chicks. Shove it Bruce Springsteen. Put a sock in it Johnny Cougar Mellencamp. Because, in a refreshing change of pace for the entertainment industry, Kid Rock is telling CMT Insider via People Magazine that entertainers should stay quiet on matters political.

How many times have you seen the uninformed blather of some goof from Hollywood, or some crank from the music industry filling your TV screen or oozing from your radio? How many low brow maestros have had your eyes rolling when they imagine themselves to have some prescient insight into matters of politics? Apparently rock singer Kid Rock is signing onto your piquancy because he has said that singers should just shut up about politics.

"I truly believe that people like myself, who are in a position of entertainers in the limelight, should keep their mouth shut on politics," the rap-rock musician, 37, tells CMT Insider.

"Because at the end of the day," he goes on to say, "I'm good at writing songs and singing. What I'm not educated in is the field of political science. And so for me to be sharing my views and influencing people of who I think they should be voting for ... I think would be very irresponsible on my part."

That is quite an intelligent point of view. After all, a man needs to know his limitations. For instance, I don't talk about physics because I have absolutely no knowledge of the field. Similarly, these Hollyweird types should avoid talking about things they obviously have no idea about.

What is more pathetic than a Meryl Streep "testifying" before Congress concerning something she has no clue whatsoever about, for instance? Remember her self-assuredness about the chemical Alar on apples in the 1980s? turned out that whole thing was a scam. But she was so sure she was right... even though she had no personal knowledge upon which to base her conclusions. Revealing ignorance is not very flattering.

Naturally, these "beautiful people" spend their days being fawned over and they must grow to imagine that they are the height of human achievement, believing that they can do no wrong and that their every pronouncement should be looked upon as words from Mount Olympus.

So, it is certainly refreshing to see an entertainer admit that they have no expertise in politics. Good on Kid Rock for realizing his limitations.

(Photo Credit: Frank Micelotta/ FOX/Getty)

This just gets better and better. You'll recall our recent focus on the abuse of funds and influence peddling by California Service Employee International Union (SEIU) head Tyrone Freeman being investigated in depth by the L.A.Times and how Mr. Freeman has been funneling union contracts to his family members. Now a related investigation in Michigan has revealed that one of Freeman's former associates has had to step down from a Michigan SEIU post because of similar financial misdeeds there.

Once again the L.A. Times is the source for this sad tale of union bosses abusing the power so blindly handed them by the rank and file.

It appears that Rickman Jackson, former chief of staff for the California organization headed by Tyrone Freeman, had to step down from a Michigan SEIU local when it was discovered that he and Freeman had set up a shady housing corporation that was improperly getting business from Freeman's California organization.

Both departures followed reports in The Times that the local and a related charity paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to firms owned by the wife and mother-in-law of its president, Tyrone Freeman, and spent similar sums on a Four Seasons Resorts golf tournament, restaurants such as Morton's steakhouse, a Beverly Hills cigar lounge and a Hollywood talent agency.

The Times also disclosed that a housing corporation Freeman helped launch used the address of a Bell Gardens home that property records show is owned by Jackson. Freeman, Jackson and housing corporation representatives have declined to say whether Jackson was paid for any use of his residence.

This scandal is getting bigger by the week.

For his part, SEIU President Andy Stern claims to be shocked by all these illicit actions of his protege, Freeman and his web of corruption. Stern has used the cover of this scandal to move against one of his chief rivals in his own union by announcing that the officers under Sal Rosselli will be dismissed and his local put in trusteeship by the SEIU's national offices.

The president of the Oakland organization, Sal Rosselli, denied the allegations Monday. He said the trusteeship move was an attempt to deflect attention from the spending inquiry in Los Angeles and now Michigan, and to punish him for fighting the 2-year-old proposal to transfer his members to Freeman's local.

So, on top of exposing the corruption of Freeman and his associates and relatives, we find Andy Stern indulging in his favorite pass time as iron-fisted SEIU ruler from the top down.

Scandals to the right of me, scandals to the left of me, into the valley of tyrants rides the president of the SEIU!

Go on over to the L.A. Times for all the dirt.

Reuters thinks that tax breaks and loopholes "costs" government its tax receipts. This is a perfect example of class hatred ginned up by the media to further class warfare between Americans. The absolute truth is that if people use the tax code to limit their tax burden they are not costing the government anything, but are using legal means to avoid a higher tax burden. Further, our money is NOT the government's property in the first place so a lower tax take is in no way "costing" the government anything. Yet, Reuters still uses this class warfare rhetoric to report its story revealing its attack-the-rich agenda.

The Reuters headline employs the class warfare rhetoric right off the top screaming, Tax loopholes seen costing billions annually. "Costing"? No, if tax receipts are lower it isn't because people are depriving government of due receipts. Again, it is because taxpayers are obeying the law and properly using the tax code as crated by Congress. If there are loopholes in the tax code they were placed there by Congress, whether wittingly or unwittingly, but still it’s the fault of Congress not “the rich.”

The first paragraph gins up the class warfare rhetoric to an even higher level.

Tax and accounting loopholes that largely benefit rich taxpayers and companies cost the government $20 billion a year even as the pay gap between chief executives and employees has widened, two groups said on Monday.

Ah, so it "benefits the rich"? You mean, the eeeevil, eeeevil rich Reuters? Yet the "rich" and their accountants somehow get this blame? Again, if there are such loopholes, it is the fault of those who wrote the code, not those forced to abide by it.

The rest of this Reuters agenda driven piece is filled with even more examples of class warfare rhetoric aimed to make those in the lower classes hate those Americans who make more. Here are some examples: (bold emphasis mine)

• The biggest loss comes from a "stock option accounting double standard"...
• That practice alone costs the U.S. government $10 billion a year...
• A practice known as deferred compensation... costs the government $80.6 million a year...

Lastly, Reuters gave us a quote from an author of the report they are quoting.

"It's outrageous that our tax dollars are inflating executive paychecks," said Sarah Anderson, an author of the report. "Surely in these troubled economic times we can find better ways to spend our nation's wealth."

Sorry, Miss Anderson, but our tax dollars are not "inflating executive paychecks." These corporate leaders are using legal means to lower their own tax burden, something all of us do when we can.

If Miss Anderson and her pals at Reuters want to see corporate leaders pay more taxes, then the burden is on Congress to change the laws. No finger wagging should be aimed at the taxpayers legally observing the tax codes, “rich” or not.

But, then, we wouldn't have that wonderful opportunity for Reuters and their ilk to gin up class warfare between Americans, then, would we? Yes, if the truth were reported, then there would be a “cost” to it. It would “cost” Reuters one of their favorite divisive tactics to stir hatred between Americans.

The kids at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill feel like they've been used and discarded by Andy Stern's Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and they aren't happy about it. They are so upset they've issued an open letter to the SEIU to air their grievances... not that it'll matter much.

It seems that the SEIU swooped onto several college campuses and encouraged student activists to organize college foodservice workers and then, assuring the kiddies that all their work was a worthy effort, quietly worked with the colleges NOT to organize the same workers that the kids thought they were enrolling in a union.

At that point the student groups got a tad upset that all their energies went for nothing and who can blame them? After all, they thought that they were striking a blow for "the workers" against those evil "corporate slave masters" in their typically naive, young idealistic enthusiasm.

Some of you readers out there may be a tad confused at this point. Why would the SEIU, one of the most powerful unions in the county, seem to mislead these naive kids and refuse to organize supposedly willing new members? Well, its all a piece with SEIU President Andy Stern's newest tactic wherein the union works closer with the employer to determine who will be "allowed' to organize and who will not.

Stern's process has been to act a little less antagonistic with potential new corporations that might find their employees come under the SEIU's wing. The SEIU has made many closed door, back room deals with potential corporate members, deals that few of their potential or existing members are allowed to be a part of because these deals are made at the highest level of the SEIU.

The deal is that the SEIU will organize a certain section of a corporation's workforce, but agree with the corporation not to organize others. The SEIU also agrees not to allow the local unions to enter into scorched earth, vitriolic campaigns against the corporate heads.

What's in it for the union? Well, for one thing new membership has greatly enlarged for the SEIU. It has also made organizing quite a bit easier and less contentious. The union grows with less pain, the employers seem to feel more a member of the union team and are less antagonistic... seems like a win, win, right?

Wrong. See, to complete these secret back room deals, the locals are completely cut out of the negotiations. And this is what happened to the kids. They were not included in the back room deals that assured several college campuses that their workers would not be included in the new membership enrollments.

So, all the kid's efforts were left ignored causing these young activists to feel used and abused. This is the same feeling that union locals all across the country have been feeling as the SEIU national office in Washington D.C. has undercut their efforts and swept in behind the scenes to cut secret deals as per Andy Stern's agenda.

It turns out that these kids are learning a rough lesson that politics isn’t beanbag. They are also finding that there is no pure ideology in activism and compromise will happen no matter how “righteous” they think their little cause is.

Of course, it is quite amusing that a union has forged ahead with a top down, iron-fisted mode of leadership, completely cutting out the local organizations. This tactic seems to be a reflection of the top down, corporate leadership that unions constantly claim makes the business sector so anti-worker, doesn't it?

Stern's action rightfully seem heretical to most rank and file union members. But, in the end, if the SEIU gets as powerful as Andy Stern imagines in his wildest dreams they mights, who doesn't realize that all these tender tactics will be thrown in the dustbin and the usual, thuggish, union behavior will once again become de rigueur.

In other words, Stern is playing for chumps every corporation that works with him under these delicate new rules. They are laying the groundwork for their own demise as Stern slyly builds his trap.

Still, Stern's is a cynical and anti-intuitive agenda and it is worrying most union rank and file organizers. Stern's gambit could reap a bounty or the whirlwind. I'm rootin' for the later.

With more on the card check battle, we have a rally against Unions set up in Portland, Maine where members of the SEIU and the AFL-CIO confronted the pro-choice advocates in a typically uncivil, even threatening, union manner. One union thug even turned over a display table, trying to prevent the pro-choice folks from setting up their displays.

From reports from the scene (video here), the union thugs spat upon the pro-choicers, swore at them and generally impeded their ability to engage in free and fair debate.

John Henke, From a participant at the rally, described what was endured.

I just came from a press conference held by the US Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with the Maine State Chamber of Commerce. It was held in Portland and dealt with the EFCA [Employee Free Choice Act - i.e., Card Check]. ...

After the news conference we went on the US Chambers special bus to Monument Square in the center of Portland. There were at least 75 union members holding a protest rally against the Chamber and in support of the EFCA. The interesting thing is the protest was organized by the Maine Democratic Party.

There were about 15 of us on the bus and nobody wanted to get off, so I led the way. We were heckled, swore at, and called some names. One of the young ladies from the chamber tried to set up some tables and put leaflets and information on it and the protesters kicked the tables over on the lady who was not hurt. ...

[T]his protest is exactly why businesses have to work to defeat this bill. When you disagree with organized labor they resort to bullying, intimidation, and peer pressure. Why would any business want to subject their employees to that type of intimidation and bullying ...

All, in all, pretty much what we expect from violence prone unions. And the fact that it was the Maine Democratic Party that organized the union thugs must not go without notice. If this sort of behavior isn't a perfect example of why unions and their lapdogs in the Democratic Party are against democracy and our business community (you know, that business community that makes this country one of the strongest economies in the world?) then nothing does. It also shows what will happen to people who want the American freedom of being able to chose for themselves should unions get even more power.

Again, I remind one and all, that Barack Obama is in favor of giving unions untrammeled power to intimidate workers, eliminate the ages old democratic process of the secret ballot, and cause our businesses to further fall behind the rest of the world in competitiveness. And from the thuggish behavior we've seen in Portland, we can see what is in store for us should Obama win the White House.

The latest Chris Britt political cartoon in the State Journal-Register from the Capitol of Obama's home State, Springfield, Illinois, already seems to be making excuses for the Democratic Party candidate's falling poll numbers. In the wake of several high profile polls showing that Republican John McCain has come roaring up in the polls in the last few days, it seems that the Journal-Register is trying to lower expectations for Obama's chances, blaming it all on that good old standby racism.

Like most in the Old Media, Chris Britt sees racism at the root of everything, so it isn't surprising that in a week when Democrat operatives are expressing worry over Obama's poll numbers along with McCain's recent closing of the gap we see this cartoon assuming that Obama's biggest "hurdle" is racism in America.

We all know that Barack and his wife -- as well as their "spiritual mentor" Reverend Wright --have injected racism into this campaign at every turn. But the curious thing is, no one else really has. Certainly his early support in states that have a small black population seems to auger that Obama's race is not being held against him. No, except to the Obama's and the media, his race has mattered little to anyone.

Yet, here we get this political cartoon selling the idea that Obama is having difficulty overcoming the race issue. Sounds to me like they are preparing the grounds to explain away his loss if it should occur.

This brings to mind a great little quip by comedian/commentator Dennis Miller:

"I could care less about the color of Barack Obama’s skin, but the thinness of it is starting to wear on me." ---Dennis Miller

What do you think?

The L.A. Times' Rosa Brooks has done it again, taken a serious subject and made an uninformed romp of it. One wonders how the old Georgian lady seen in news photos standing wounded among the ruins of her apartment building, or the Georgian Mother running down the street, infant in her arms, trying to escape Russian tanks might feel about the humor with which Brooks brings to bear upon their plight? But, there it is for all to see in Brooks' "The Cold War, reheated" wherein Brooks puts the funny back in war. It's been too serious for too long for Brooks, apparently. We need the sunny side of ethnic cleansing, brutal invasion, and crushing occupation, don't we?

Oh, and let's not forget the skewed history, incorrect conclusions, and partisan inanities that Brooks blurted out with her little attempt at "Springtime for Gorbachev." Only with this production, Brooks is seriously trying to absolve the U.S.S.R.

After some hackneyed recounting of the 1980s, Brooks gives us the claim that "Cold War nostalgia" is "widespread" among "neocons" lately.

Among neocons and assorted righties, Cold War nostalgia has been widespread lately. And no wonder: Just compare the Cold War with the Global War on Terror. "Cold War" had a real ring to it. But "Global War on Terror"? Clumsy, and what a crummy acronym -- GWOT.

(The left's favorite boogy man, neocons, able to rewrite history, cause wars with the flick of a pen, and steal oil revenues with the raise of an eyebrow. I'd be surprised if Brooks could even name a "neocon.")

But, what real evidence there is of "Cold War nostalgia" in Brooks' estimation is anyone's guess. It looked like to me that the Old Media was the one lapsing back into Cold War reverie as they called out of obscurity all their favorite 80's Russian "experts" and Soviet spokesmen once the re-Sovietized Russia ramped up its obviously long planned invasion of democratic Georgia.

Brooks next displays her utter lack of knowledge of even current events.

The GWOT got off to a decent start, with Al Qaeda and the "axis of evil" to go after, but it turned out to be a dud. Maybe it was because having a "war" on "terror" never made much sense. Maybe it was because we quickly ran out of targets in Afghanistan and then became targets in Iraq (and now in Afghanistan too). Maybe it's because Osama bin Laden, who seemed like an excellent candidate for arch-fiend, vanished. Maybe it's because U.S.-sponsored torture didn't sit well with most Americans, who had actually taken to heart all that stuff about how we won the Cold War through the "power of our values."

A dud, she says? We win the war in Iraq and she calls it a "dud"? And the "targets" she claims we are, with violence down by many magnitudes and no further attacks on the homeland nor any important American assets in foreign lands since 2003, what "target" is she saying we've become? And, how exactly does Brooks think we won the Cold War, anyway? With her remark that some felt we won it by the "power of our values," does she think we just sat about and dared Russia to ignore our "values" at their peril? Or does she understand that, along with our values, it was our military and economic might that beat the Soviets down? Obviously she hasn’t the slightest notion.

Next Brooks goes on to intimate that WE are responsible for Putin's avarice.

Regrettably, we instead helped plunge Russia into an economic catastrophe. This annoyed the Russians. But we continued to help by treating Russian officials as washed-up has-beens and by expanding NATO to include most of Russia's former satellites.

Like a typical, hand wringing leftist, Brooks blames everyone but the responsible party. I would agree that our policies weren't perfect with the new Russia, but we are the last in line for blame to be handed out. Boris Yelstin, who Brooks might find on Wikipedia was the leader of Russia after the Soviet system collapsed, bears a lot of the blame -- a heckuv-a-lot more than do we. And we cannot let Vlad "the Invader" Putin off the hook, either. But, Brooks only sees the U.S. at fault. Now that really is a replay of the Cold War, a time when the American left ignored the Russian Gulags, aggression, and oppression to forever place all blame squarely and only on the shoulders of the U.S.A.

And why in Brooks' eyes is it such a bad thing that we offered NATO membership to the nascent democratic countries in the formerly Soviet satellite areas? Does she not realize we floated the same offer to Russia? Should not democracies attempt to stick together, assist each other, support each other?

Yes, with the offhanded treatment and sardonic humor that Brooks doles out with her fabulist version of reality, one wonders at how little she seems care about the poor people of the struggling democracy named Georgia? Why is their plight something of which to make light?

Yes, if anyone is replaying the Cold War, it is Brooks with her failed ideology and a rebirth of the self-loathing blame game once so popular with pointy-heads everywhere. Rosa Brooks, Come on Down and welcome to the 1980s.

Forced unionism is one of the issues that galls right to work advocates the most. How can we, as a free people, be forced by state laws to join a union just to keep a job? Worse, how can one be forced to pay union dues without even joining a union just to keep a job? Is this not America where one has free choice?

Well, the National Right to Work organization has been asking that question for some time and is now attempting to put the question to the courts. At UPS facilities in Dayton, Ohio and Louisville, Kentucky, NRTW is assisting several drivers for the United Parcel Service to sue the Teamsters and UPS for having been forced to pay dues to a union they do not wish to support.

Louisville, Kentucky, and Dayton, Ohio (August 19, 2008) – With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, three UPS employees in Kentucky and two UPS employees in Ohio filed federal lawsuits Friday and Monday, respectively, against national and local Teamsters officials for illegal extraction of forced union dues.

In the lawsuits, the nonmember employees claim that the national and local unions breached their duty of fair representation and violated the employees’ First and Fifth Amendment rights by charging and collecting fees used for organizing nonunion workers throughout the United States and financing a members-only “Strike and Defense Fund.”

This is a situation where these drivers are forced to pay union dues and are also forced to be represented by the Teamsters despite their personal wishes, preventing these employees from being able to represent themselves before their employers.

The fees paid by these drivers also seem to have violated Federal laws.

Since March 2006, the union charged and collected from the nonmembers compulsory fees greater than 80 percent of the full dues and fees paid by union members. Union bosses failed to provide a required notice of Beck rights and disclosure detailing the basis of the fees until this year. The financial disclosure reveals that Teamsters’ compulsory fees include disallowed expenditures for the national union’s efforts to help organize nonunion employees in both the private and public sectors nationwide. The employees have also been forced to contribute to the “Strike and Defense Fund,” which bars benefits flowing to nonmembers.

“It’s bad enough that employees who exercise their right to refrain from union membership are forced to pay fees to a union they do not want,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “But Teamsters bosses are violating the law by compelling nonmembers to fund strikes and organizing activities which seek to corral even more workers into forced unionism.”

Good luck to these brave drivers for taking on the Teamsters, well known for their violent tendencies.

A new independent study shows that deaths from terrorism have actually declined by more than 40 percent since 2001. This flies in the face of the constant Democrat mantra that states the opposite, that terrorism has increased since Bush initiated the War on Terror. It is a mantra that the media have helpfully spread for their friends at the DNC.

We've heard it again and again from the left in this country; deaths by terror have increased under George W. Bush and his War on Terror has failed. Along with so many on the left side of the aisle in the U.S., Barack Obama has said this several times in the past, too. At the Democratic debate at Saint Anselm College on Jun 3, 2007, for instance, Obama said that Bush's war has failed. "We live in a more dangerous world," Obama said on that stage, "partly as a consequence of Bush's actions..."

Of course, this talking point ignores one small bit of common sense. When a battle is joined, casualties are sure to rise until an end is declared. After all, when both sides are joined in battle (as opposed to but one), deaths are sure to rise before they fall, it being always darkest before the dawn, and all.

But that bit of common sense aside, the Democrats have been fond of using a study by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, research fellows at the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law, to prove that terrorism is worse under Bush. In fact, this study appears right on Obama's own website in an entry by one of his bloggers, Deb Henry.

Bergen and Cruickshank claimed to have found a 607 percent increase in terrorism since 2003. They defined terrorism as an act of violence, or the threat of violence, calculated to create an atmosphere of fear and alarm. They didn't just count actual deaths and attacks, but added threats to their statistics. Who cannot see that such a method would wildly inflate the numbers?

But the new study by Simon Fraser University in Canada tells a far different tale than the favorite lefty study.

First of all, they found a major flaw in past studies.

The reason that the NCTC, MIPT, and START global fatality tolls rise so dramatically after 2003 is because all three datasets are counting a large percentage of all civilian fatalities from intentional violence in Iraq’s civil war as deaths from“terrorism.” For example, NCTC’s estimate for fatalities from terrorism in Iraq in 2006 is 13,343. This is nearly 80 percent of the total Iraqi civilian fatality toll of 16,657 for that year as estimated by the independent US organization, icasualties.org.

...But they are unusual because counting the intentional killing of civilians in civil wars as terrorism," as all three datasets do, is a sharp departure from customary practice. As Ohio State University’s John Mueller has noted: “When terrorism becomes really extensive in an area we generally no longer call it terrorism, but rather war or insurgency.” Moreover, as a July 2007 US Congressional Research Service report noted, NCTC’s Iraq data are “largely the product of sectarian violence, rampant criminal activity, and home-grown insurgency--[and therefore] grossly distort the global terrorism picture.”

As reported by the Moblie Press-Register, Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria wrote in praise of the study that "it 'makes no sense' to count civilian casualties in a war zone as deaths caused by terrorism, Mr. Zakaria wrote. Since the mid-1990s, thousands of civilians have been killed in war zones in other countries around the world, and those victims weren't counted as casualties related to terrorism."

Other polls also support the claim that the world is not "more dangerous" since the war on terror began.

A 2002 Pew Research Center poll of Muslim countries found alarming levels of support for al-Qaida and its tactics. In Lebanon, for instance, 74 percent of the respondents said they believed suicide bombing was justified.

Four years later, Pew polled again in Muslim nations and discovered very different attitudes. The percentage of people in Lebanon who said they thought suicide bombing was justified had fallen to 34 percent. In Jordan, support for suicide bombing plummeted 20 points between 2002 and 2007.

Such polls show a sharp decline for support of terrorism in the Muslim world since the invasion of Iraq. "Obviously, the war didn't fuel extremist views in Muslim countries," as the Press-Register notes.

Even more amazingly, this new study finds a 65 percent decline in terrorist attacks since 2004.

Also...

There has been an “extraordinary, but largely unnoticed, positive change” in the sub-Saharan African security landscape, with the number of conflicts being waged reduced by more than half between 1999 and 2006, and the combat toll dropping by 98 per cent.

A decline in the total number of armed conflicts and combat deaths around the world also continues.

All this seems to explode that old the-world-is-more-dangerous myth that the Democrats have promulgated for the last six or seven years. Chances are the media will not talk much about this study, the Democrats will continue on as if it never happened, and Bush Derangement Syndrome will continue unabated.

(Photo credit: abcnews.com)

James Hoffa, Jr. is trying to make it look like he is reforming the Teamsters by forcing out Robert Hogan, former President of Teamsters Local 714, a member of a long time, corruption prone union family.

The IRB alleged that Hogan had acted against the best interests of union members by hiring Robert Riley as a business agent and organizing director, even though Riley had been barred from the union. The IRB also charged that the local union was failing to represent its membership, had corrupt relationships with companies where members worked, and was using favoritism and nepotism to secure jobs for associates of the Hogan family.

Hogan's family have been union thugs since the Depression era, but he has at last signed an agreement with the Independent Review Board (IRB) of Teamsters National that he will leave all union activities behind and never again attempt to become involved with the Teamsters.

Naturally, Hogan claims he is a victim of Hoffa's political triangulation and that he is totally innocent.

Local 714 has been under the control of the national union since June of this year, with Hoffa claiming he is making inroads into eliminating the corruption of this long-time, troubled local.

Time will tell, but it would be shocking if it turned out to be true instead of just a turn over from one group of corrupt officials for the newest set of corrupt union officials. Here's the new boss, same as the old boss.