If you missed my conversation with Israel-bashing, Muslim American Society pal Nancy Murray (at podium, above), you can hear it on our "On Demand" page at 969wtkk.com.  My favorite part is when she defends Hamas by pointing out that "they're not firing missiles, Michael. They're firing rockets."

Oh, ROCKETS.  Well, that's completely different, Nancy. I'm ready to push Israel into the sea now, too.

WARNING! NAUGHTY SNOWBOARD PICS BELOW!

I'll admit it--I have no interest in the subject of whether or not ski lodges should ban these new "naughty" snowboards from the Burton company. I put these boards in the same category as some of the rude, obscene and off-color t-shirts my family has inflicted upon us at the local mall.

No, what I love is the reaction of the Burlington, VT City Council. Here's the headline: "City Council Passes Resolution Asking Burton To Meet With Protesters."  Not "banning obscene boards" or "defending free speech."  No, just urging all parties to talk.  What's next? "Burlington Requests Hamas, Israel Meet For Group Hug?"

Good grief.

Anyway, your naughty snowboard pics are below.

Boston police officers kick in the door of a home and find three people:

A criminal immigrant who lives in city-subsidized housing and has a government job;

A 16-year-old smoking a joint;

A 20-year-old Marine drinking a Bud Lite to celebrate his safe return from a second tour of Iraq.

Who is the ONLY person the cops arrest?

Answer that question, and you'll know everything you need to know about life in America's Bluest State.

Remember: The reason you're not a good, Cambridge liberal is that you're not smart enough.  If you were more intellectual, more nuanced in your thinking, more open-minded and tolerant, than you too would have been marching through Boston this weekend waving a sign like the one above.

(h/t to Solomonia for coverage of the rally)

If you weren't so dumb, you'd understand that it's the Jews and their bigotry-driven refusal to be pushed into the sea, their hate-filled unwillingness to be killed by terrorist missiles that's causing the problem.  That's what smart people at Harvard understand, but you don't.  That's why Harvard invited this guy to speak on the eve of a 9/11 commemoration.

No, dumb people like us--and Adi Dvir at Ynet News--foolishly hold the people of Gaza responsible for their own actions.  We ignorantly assume there's some difference between a pluralistic, democratic state like Israel and a bunch of murderous, anti-semitic thugs who dig tunnels for weapons smuggling rather than build industry and prosperity.

Get smart.  Hate Israel.  Support terrorists. Then you can be a good liberal, too.

...is change itself!

President-elect Barack Obama, fresh from his Abs-Cam photo-op tour of Hawaii, will soon return to Washington a new man - if by new you mean virtually identical to the old guy.

Oh, there’ll be change all right. I predict that by the end of 2009, Barack Obama will have changed so much, you’ll hardly recognize him.

Remember Obama 2008? The guy who railed against our Iraq policy and wanted all our troops home by last March? In 2009, that’s all going to change. President Obama will leave American troops in Iraq until 2011, and he’ll send even more of those so-called lackeys of the American war machine (aka soldiers and Marines) to Afghanistan next year.

Remember the Obama who denounced George W. Bush’s evil tax cuts for the rich? The Obama whose running mate called upper income earners opposed to higher taxes unpatriotic? That’s so last August. The 2009 Wave O’Change will keep the Bush tax cuts in place, undermining the patriotism of wealthy Americans for at least another year.

Oil company profits - if they have any - will not be seized by the government and used to build wind farms to air condition overheated polar bears.

Read the rest in my Boston Herald column today.

The media coverage of Israel's fight against Hamas terrorism is painfully funny.  Or humorously painful.  Or some other phrase that involves laughing at stupidity, despite the horrors of war behind it.

War is impossible to understand without context.  If an alien landed at the White House in 1945 and heard Harry Truman give the order to drop an atomic bomb on the citizens of Hiroshima, he'd buzz back to his home galaxy and declare that America was a nation of barbarians.  Only in the context of war--Japan's policy of violence and expansion, and the millions of lives it claimed--can Truman's decision be understood. And every rational person understands his decision as the right one.

But context is precisely what the media refuse to offer in their coverage of the war between the democracy of Israel and the radical, anti-semitic, homophobic, Sharia-law-imposing, anti-rational, blood-thirsty murderers of Hamas.  Hamas fires missiles, Israel fires mortars, therefore Israel and Hamas are equal and they should both stop.

This is idiocy. Alan Dershowitz destroys the "proportionality" argument here.

The pluralistic, modern democracy of Israel uses violence because, as the old saying goes,  "If the Arabs had no guns, there would be no war; if Israel had no guns, there would be no Israel."  Claiming moral equivalence between the two is as stupid as saying a knife-wielding mugger and a doctor with a scalpel are equal. "Hey, they both wear masks and cut people--what's the difference?"

CNN's "coverage" of the war would be embarrassing if there were any standards of journalism left.  It's bizarre to watch nitwits like Rick Sanchez (he makes Madonna look like Jeanne Kirkpatrick) working harder to be "fair" to Hamas terrorists than they were to Sarah Palin.

What the media will never say is the Natural Truth: The more Hamas supporters Israel kills, the better the world will be.  It will be better for Israeli civilians currently targeted by Hamas missiles. It will be better for Arabs in Gaza, currently used as human shields by Hamas.  Everyone wins if Israel wins.  And the only way to win is to achieve a clear military victory. Not a total victory, which is not possible, but a victory so large that Hamas is humiliated and rendered useless to their sponsors in Iran and Syria.

The worst thing that could happen--and therefore, which is being pushed by the Boston Globe-Democrat--is for Israel to stop shooting now.  If you want to read the juvenile, limp-wristed rot that passes for thinking on most American editorial boards, spend five minutes wading through this childish twaddle.  It would make a writer at Teen Beat magazine blush.

The Globe-Democrat never answers the obvious question their call for an immediate ceasefire raises (not "peace," mind you. Not even Renee Loth is that clueless).  What's the good thing that happens then?  Hamas recovers?  There's no upside to that, unless you support Hamas' stated goal of the destruction of Israel.  Hamas will not negotiate, they will not seek peace and self government. They will keep killing as many Jews as they can, and they keep saying so over and over again.  As Mark Steyn writes this week:

In Gaza, they don’t vote for Hamas because they want access to university education. Or, if they do, it’s to get Junior into the Saudi-funded Hamas-run Islamic University of Gaza, where majoring in rocket science involves making one and firing it at the Zionist Entity. In 2007, as part of their attempt to recover Gaza from Hamas, Fatah seized 1,000 Qassam rockets at the university, as well as seven Iranian military trainers.

Steyn also points out that just before Christmas, Hamas voted to reinstate traditional Sharia practices, including crucifixion.  I wonder how American Lefties--who protest both Israel and Easter decorations on government property--feel about REAL government-sponsored crucifixions?

This is a struggle between good and evil.  Israel represents the values of the West.  They're the good guys.  Hamas is the Islamist thuggery that would drag their corner of the world back to the 9th Century.  They're the bad guys.  If you can't tell the difference, you're either a moron or a member of the Partisan Press.

Pardon the redundancy.

UPDATE: This is the best analysis of the real fight in the Middle East I've read this week. 

My father, Simon Graham, carved this microphone by hand--no fancy electric gizmos, just some whittlin' tools--for my good friend John Wrisley.  John began his radio career in Gardner, MA back in the 1940s, and continued doing talk radio into the 21st Century.  John grew up in Massachusetts and his first "big break" was a gig at WTAG in Worcester, MA, which is why the mic bears these call letters.

He helped me get into the radio business by offering some timely advice ("Take the money") early in my career.  He still does voice work, writes for various publications and runs his website from his beautiful home on Myrtle Court in Columbia, SC.

Over the holidays my Dad, the kids and I stopped by to see Wris and his lovely wife Barbara (who still works fulltime, by the way) and presented him with this microphone. This morning I received this note from John:

It was very thoughtful...a total surprise...and a wonderful memento of those long ago days when I was driving through lousy New England winter weather to sign on WTAG 60 years ago.  By getting a job with that station in 1947 I got in on the tail end of radio's Golden Era.  WBZ was just cranking up a television operation but radio was still king of the hill.  The program director, "Dol" Brissette, had been WTAG's orchestra leader prior to WW2.  Henry Felix, chief producer, had played violin in that orchestra.  Our studios were at 18 Franklin street next door to the Telegram Gazette for whom the station was named.  The newspaper owned the station at the time. 

I know the meme of the moment is to kick 2008 to the curb with a bitter cry of "Good riddance," but I'm having mixed emotions. On the one hand, the economy isn't just lousy--it's scary. On the other hand, the massive debt Americans have run up since 1999 had to be paid eventually.  As a guy who bought a home in 2006 (ouch!), I have little sympathy for home owners whose homes are still worth a lot more today than in 2000.  I'm also happy for young couples looking for their first homes who can finally afford something.  The transition is painful, but if we end up with homeowners still wealthier and housing prices more affordable--that's a good thing.

And while President Obama is likely to continue the Bush administration's assault on capitalism and personal responsibility of the past four months, there's a very good possibility that at some point in the future another Reagan will arise to clean up this mess the same way RR cleaned up the Johnson/Nixon/Carter pseudo-socialism in 1981. 

What is probably impossible to undo is the good news of 2008: The victory in Iraq.  The modern world has finally achieved a significant foothold in the 9th Century backwater of the Arab-Muslim world.  As I wrote in my Herald column this week, history isn't linear and things  can change wildly. But the healthy virus of democracy and self-rule has now infected the Middle East.  This--and 7 years of a safe American homeland--will be George W. Bush's most lasting legacy.

One more observation about 2008 that has been overshadowed by the lousy economic news.  It was a whole lotta fun!  The Clinton/Obama Democratic primary battle was more fun by itself than we see in a typical political year.  Add the hilarious self-immolation of the Partisan Press (before 2008 the "mainstream media"), the Sarah Palin saga, Barney Frank's Fannie obsession, the Reid-Pelosi show and, to cap it off, Caroline Kennedy's public humiliation at her own arrogant hand, and.....WOW!  Before the markets collapsed, this was the best political ride since Monica Lewinsky.

Uh, let me re-phrase that...

Anyway, the somewhat good news is that 2008 wasn't quite as bad as it feels today.  The bad news is that 2009 isn't likely to be any better.

Happy New Year?

For your New Year's Day edification, here are some 2009 prediction columns I ran across this morning.  Enjoy!

The stars of the Boston Herald forecast 2009.

2009: Year Of The Moron?

And some interesting political predictions from a fellow USC Gamecock fan.

...is that nobody knows nuthin'.  From my Boston Herald column this morning:

Every Christmas season, the Graham gang gathers in South Carolina for a gluttonous celebration of the glories of sweet tea and mustard-based BBQ. Then, as the gentlemen nonchalantly loosen our belts and the ladies politely pretend not to notice, we engage in another family tradition: our annual predictions.

We started more than a decade ago, making predictions for the coming year to be read aloud the next Christmas. Some of the predictions are personal (“Will Michael have to ‘explore new career opportunities’ this year” is a family favorite). On the eve of election years, we pick our political winners and losers. 

How did we do?  Find out here. (UPDATE: Link fixed.)

Victor Davis Hanson is always worth reading, but his year-in-review piece today is particularly dead on:

Well over halfway through the month of December, only two Americans have been lost in combat operations in Iraq — about the daily body count in a major American city. What is incomprehensible is not just that Gen. David Petraeus turned around an entire theater — Americans from William Tecumseh Sherman to Matthew Ridgway had done just that amid media gloom and doom — but that his efforts when begun were so roundly demonized, and when nearly ending in success so roundly ignored.