…here in Charlotte, it’s a warm, pleasant spring day in the middle of January, and I’m enjoying it working out back on my deck and taking this blogging break surrounded by green (fortunately, four of the big trees in my backyard are evergreens, and my grass and shrubs are mostly the kind that stay green all year). This being one of the places birds fly south to for the winter, there’s lots of assorted chatter going on in the trees, and the Bach I have playing at the moment is at a perfect low volume to allow the bird music to improvise with it. Aaaah….

The great Phin, to whom I owe quite a lot, has moved me to a WordPress publishing platform and for the last couple of days I have seen no spambot traffic to speak of. This is my first post- move post, and WordPress looks completely different from Moveable Type, so at the moment I’m hoping I do it right.

In the past week and then some since I last posted, I have read a few news items and blog posts that I want to share here while I prepare to start posting more regularly again, such as….

In the last few days we’ve seen Mahmoud Abbas demonstrate the exact definition of a moderate Palestinian.

On the eve of a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas told supporters on Thursday that they should turn their guns on Israel and not on each other.

Well, he was Arafat’s protege, and as they say, the fruit never falls far from the tree. Still, it was sound business; As long as he had the stupid, gullible asses we call politicians and diplomats believing he was interested in peaceful coexistence, he was eligible for yours and my tax dollars. How nice.

Then, we were presented with another great example of liberal hypocrisy, courtesy of the New York Times in another of those portsider “do as I say, not as I do” episodes.

Earlier today, Boston Globe representatives of the New York Times Co. met with executive committee members of the Boston Newspaper Guild — confirming plans for a new round of employee buyouts and job outsourcing.

Rather than leading our industry by example and competing vigorously with a creative business plan, New York has chosen to reduce staff and outsource in order to go along with the status quo. These actions are repulsive given the fact that the New York Times preaches ethics at every turn, and routinely lectures the nation on how to treat working Americans.

Once again, the Times Co. is standing true to a “Do as we say, not as we do” mentality. While the Boston Newspaper Guild recognizes a decline in revenue at the Boston Globe and throughout the industry, we disagree with the methods that New York employs to combat these circumstances.

All I can say to that last paragraph is, Yo, mainstream media! Of course there is a decline in revenues, you blockheads! Those readers of yours — the former ones, that is — got tired of your partisan political spin, omissions of such “picayunes” as the truth and your altogether Cold War Pravda approach to reporting the news. In short, they have come to realize that you believe they are stupid and that you are insulting their intelligence.

As for the rest, what’s new? Liberals believe that what they feel is best for everyone else doesn’t apply to them. They are speh-shal. Ask Nancy Pelosi, for example, how many of the employees in her private businesses belong to unions…

In the Blogosphere, Thespis, of Thespis Journal fame, has a great post up on Barbara the flake Boxer putting her foot in her mouth — kinda sorta like John Kerry did with his “joke” that labelled our brave troops in Iraq as dumb losers, in that the rest of the Democrats hastily distanced themselves from the gaffe rather than support it (crickets chirping, anyone?) — in a Blogburst For Condi.

BobG at Sweet Spirits Of Ammonia discusses Juan Williams’ new book, and does it so well that he’s gotten it onto my own reading list despite my personal umbrage with its author’s overall political point of view.

And on an interesting note, how about a rather non-detailed report about high-tech surveillance devices built into Canadian coins?

Nope, I’m not done yet, one of my favorite columnists, Greg Crosby, has an enjoyable New Years reflection I’d like to share.