Breitbart's Last Tweet

By now I’m sure that most of you have heard that conservative icon Andrew Breitbart passed away early this morning.
I was following a conversation on Twitter last night just before going to bed between Breitbart and Lamar White, Jr., who blogs as CenLamar.
Lamar, who was an aide to Alexandria mayor Jacques Roy, is currently at SMU in Dallas studying law. I have linked to CenLamar for years, and he kindly has linked to My Bossier. We have commented on each other’s blogs at times.
The Twitter discussion was about an article in the Atlantic. It wasn’t a particularly contentious exchange, particularly in Breitbart terms.
The last thing that Breitbart put on Twitter was addressed to Lamar:
AndrewBreitbart I called you a putz cause I thought you were being intentionally disingenuous. If not I apologize. @CenLamar
Go figure.

Blog is back up and running

Google Blogger, the blogging platform I use for My Bossier, was down for about 24 hours - you could read only, I couldn't blog and you couldn't comment.  The only thing I'm missing right now are two comments from the latest blog post, hoping they will be restored.
I've been with Blogger since the beginning in 2007 and have never had a problem.  They are in the middle of an upgrade and had to do some maintenance and ran into problems.
Sorry for the interruption.

Comment Moderation

I am instituting comment moderation on the blog, this means that I will have to read and approve any comments that are left before they go up.
I am doing this because a lot of unnecessary comments, some bordering on slander, some silly and some just outrageous, have been left lately.
You will still be able to fully express your view, support your candidates, and discuss your agreement/disagreement with any candidate or their platform.  What you won't be able to do is make accusatory remarks that can't be substantiated.
Let's see if it improves the level of our discussions.

My Bossier Weekly Roundup: The Vlog

Video blogging, or vlogging, has become pretty popular in some quarters. While I have no desire to change the format of My Bossier, I thought it might be good to do a weekly update vlog, discussing the blog posts and events of the week.
This is my first effort; we’ll try it for a couple of weeks and see how it goes. Please give me your honest opinion – should I keep it up or not?

An open letter to My Bossier Commenters

Dear My Bossier Commenters:
I have made the statement in blog posts previously, and will make it again – the commenters give My Bossier whatever amount of success it enjoys. The purpose of my blog posts, generally, is to start conversations. As far as I’m concerned, that is the principal purpose of a blog.
I do try to keep the comments as open as possible, and I allow anonymous comments because I realize that everyone who is commenting doesn’t necessarily want their true identity known. In some controversial political discussions, they cannot.
Only in very rare cases do I delete a comment, and I usually give an explanation when I do.
Besides, without my commenters I would never have realized that my blog sucks, nor that very few people actually read my little blog. Nor would I have known that it is people like me who ruin our system, I wouldn’t have realized that I’m as bad as The Times, and without commenters no one else would have pointed out how comical the stories are and that it is only made more comical by a Benton hillbilly blogging about it.
Oh, and that I'm an idiot.
So commenters, keep it up and thanks. Here’s a song for you.
Sincerely,
Jim

Happy Birthday Andy!

Today is Andy's birthday.  Y'all go over there and wish him the best.  He needs it, he's really getting old!

Dr. Roquel Williams, Prophet

Sometimes I throw some links in a blog post, but rarely do I do a whole blog post for one link.  You have to go over to As Seen in Shreveport and check this one out.

Saturday Roundup

Luttrells not married?
A bizarre twist in an already bizarre story. Ed Walsh at Channel 3 is reporting that the sister of murder victim Ernest Luttrell is claiming that he and wife Loretta were never married. Loretta is one of the three people charged with his murder.

People of the Tea
Bossier School Board Candidate Barbara Rudd knocked on the door of Matt Sciba.  Matt is a coordinator with the Shreveport Bossier Tea Party.  She told Matt that she is in favor of the roll forward in the millage rate that the board is considering.  Needless to say, this didn't sit too well with a Taxed Enough Already organizer.  Matt's reaction?  "A candidate running on tax increases during a recession? Crazy."
Rudd is running against incumbent Lindell Webb.

Rock Solid/Calvary coverage
Meanwhile, back to KTBS, the peanut gallery is loud and boisterous on the Rock Solid/Calvary story. If Rock Solid and Calvary had been forthcoming and open on this by having a meeting with all of the involved parents last week before this story hit the headlines, they could have stopped a lot of this before it started.
KSLA, who was the first local news source to come out with the story, has taken it off their website. As far as I can tell, KTAL never had anything about it on their website. Perhaps they don’t think that the molestation of an eight year-old by a 14 year-old at a local day camp held at a prominent church and the subsequent attempt at stonewalling and coverup is newsworthy. In their minds it doesn’t rank up there with stories such as the lightning strike at the Sonic in Benton, the cancellation of a movie by SPAR and the Robinson film Center and the burning question of seat belts in school buses.
The comments on the story in The Times have degenerated into a name calling exercise between regular commenters. Very little energy is being expended on the issue at hand.

Iguana present you a mystery

Back in April, I did a story on State Senator Buddy Shaw's bill about disclosure to folks who are buying an Iguana.  Suddenly, I am getting viewers from all over the world (Israel, Sweden, UK, Spain, Poland, Guatemala, Australia and the US) viewing that story and I can't figure out from what source.  When I check their referral status in my stats I just get this.

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Just Three Things

Blogging is a little slow the last couple of weeks. Not that there isn't a lot to talk about, sometimes I just don't feel like it. In a couple of weeks people will be qualifying for local races, among them school board and Shreveport mayor and council.
Once all the politicians (and wannabes) come out of the woodwork, you can be sure I'll have plenty to say.
Sometimes events drive the blog, and anything can happen on any given day. I've learned that in 2½ years of doing this.
If you have something on your mind that I need to bring up for discussion, drop me an email. In the meantime, this is the kind of mood I'm in.

What do you think of My Bossier?

Every blogger goes through periods of introspection, wondering if blogging is worth it. Of course, the readers and commenters make the blog, but the person doing the blogging has to choose which subjects to deal with and how to present them.
After all that introspection, and being the low key and humble person that I am, I have decided that this sums it up best.

North Louisiana Blogging

I started North Louisiana Blogs last year in order to promote all of the blogs in our corner of the state. I think we have some very good blogs and need to let everyone know.
I have been remiss in posting over there, but am pledging to keep it updated.
Check it out today.

The Purpose of this Blog

Lamar White, Jr. is an Alexandria blogger who is also an employee of Mayor Jacques Roy. He recently posted this about a particular situation that exists in the blogging community in Alexandria. One of his major points is that the local media have very limited resources when it comes to in-depth reporting, and that too often the slack is taken up by bloggers assuming the role of journalists.
I will note that Shreveport is fortunate to have some really good local reporters at the Times, primarily Alison Bath, Adam Causey & J. A. Prime, who all dig into local stories and cover them very well. I don’t intend to slight any other local sources, but these reporters keep my attention.
While some of Lamar’s blog post doesn’t really apply to our area, his comments on blogging are excellent and I endorse his views.
Excerpt:
When I created this blog more than four years ago, it was never my intent to serve as a source of local “hard” news. I don’t approach this blog as if it is a news outlet; this is primarily about commentary.
…… Still, it is important to remember that journalism is a profession. You need sources and access; above all, you need to be engaged.
So, faced with the absence of information, we substitute credible journalism with conjecture and opinion. Suddenly, the news becomes someone else’s half-informed opinion of their impression of someone else’s newspaper story.
And this conjecture and opinion can be compelling. It’s often spot-on. But it’s not news. It’s commentary.
I think that this description can aptly be applied to My Bossier. While on a few rare occasions we have offered up ‘hard news’, our purpose is to open up discussions about local news events.
This is usually done with a blog post containing my opinion about any given situation that has been reported. We may discuss local events that aren't getting as much attention from the press.
The process is completed by the people who comment on My Bossier, and it is these commenters who give the blog real substance.
The point of the whole thing is that news is reported by professionals who are bound to report the facts, while the blog can take those facts and conjecture on their meaning and effect.
Good food for thought.