Bluegrass Blogtopia

I had it in my mind the anniversary was on the Ides of March but perhaps that was a recollection conflated with the forging of this little blog. As Joe pointed out on the facebook page the other day, it was four years ago on March 10th that Barefoot & Progressive was birthed onto the internet.

An entire Presidential term’s worth of ramblings. Happy birthday to us. In the blogger to wordpress switcheroo of 2011 some posts were lost, including a handful of those early ones, but I’ve restored the first post, Joe’s little mission statement.

It began:

“I want to be in Kentucky when the end of the world comes, because they are always 20 years behind.” -Mark Twain

Sad but true, Samuel. We’re experiencing a dramatic political shift in this country right now. Americans are standing up against a reckless, endless war. They are standing up for universal health insurance. They actually believe in global warming. They are starting to catch on to the hollow Republican tactic of homophobia. 80% do not approve of the mild retardation of George W. Bush’s policies and performance. Democrats are actually standing up to Republicans and fighting back. And they are about to elect a black man named Barack Hussein Obama as their friggin’ president.

Meanwhile in Kentucky…..

You can read the rest here… a wonderful throwback to the late-Aughts of the early 21st Century.

Any way, happy birthday to B&P. There’s no telling where the next four years will take us, or even the next month. There may be some new writers around here — if you are lucky — and there may be a Santorum-presidency and a Kentucky Democratic Party afraid of its own shadow. There really is no telling what drastic changes the future holds.

Yeah, sure B&P is the “2nd Best” local blog and KSR is the “Best Blog in Lexington”… but those ACE awards fail to consider who the best blogger is — and Lexington’s best local blogger has for some time now been Rob Morris.

Rob runs Lowell’s — also known as the annual winner of ACE’s “Best Mechanic” award — and for the past few years has blogged about local issues and car issues, which is an odd mix so now he’s splitting the two and, well, listen to Rob:

In particular, I’ve wanted to shift my focus from predominantly local issues to predominantly national and global ones – to try, for instance, to decode what’s happening in Washington or Wall Street from my own distinct perspective.  These topics just didn’t feel at home among car care tips and shop news.

….To resolve this dilemma, I’ve created a new blog called CivilMechanics — sponsored by Lowell’s — in which I will express my unique perspectives on a variety of issues.  (And, yes, “CivilMechanics” is an intentional multiple-entendre. I like that kind of stuff.) Please check out our first post, “Confessions of a Job Creator“.

And yes! Check out his first post, Confessions of a Job Creator in which Rob picks apart the “House Republican Plan for America’s Job Creators.”

If only we job creators paid less money in taxes, Republicans say, we would hire more.

If only we were free from government regulation, we would hire more.

If only we were less concerned about government spending, we would hire more.

As much as I appreciate Republicans’ apparent concern – their willingness to dump money in my pocket, their longing for my freedom to pollute with abandon, their eagerness to drive the nation to the edge of default to keep government spending in check – here’s the thing:

Their efforts won’t help me create a single job.

Not one.

Go read the rest and welcome Rob at his “new” digs.

Just letting you know that we’re still working on fixing some little things on this gorgeous new redesign of Barefoot and Progressive (like the comments and the RSS feed).

If you see anything else that is amiss, please click on that contact button below the header or leave a comment on this post (by clicking on this post’s link and scrolling down).

As you’ve surely noticed by now, we have finally switched over to the brand-spanking new Barefoot and Progressive 2.0. Looks pretty sweet, doesn’t it? Yes, it does.

But I also have some bad news. And strange news, I suppose. Or just good, it’s up to you.

Shortly after we paid for the B&P upgrade and got everything in place last week, I received a job offer from the Louisville Eccentric Observer (LEO) to be their new staff writer covering local and state politics (in print and on their blog). This was an excruciating and agonizing decision, but I felt like it was a great opportunity that I shouldn’t pass up. So starting next Monday, I will be working for LEO.

So… did I just launch a brand new version of Barefoot and Progressive and immediately proceed to kill it? WTF?

Not necessarily. Starting Monday morning, I will no longer be posting with any regularly on Barefoot and Progressive, and on the rare times that I do, it will only be on very Lexington-centric issues or events. Everything else that I’ve written about here over the past 3 years (Mitch McConnell, Steve Beshear, John Yarmuth, Rand Paul, Ken Ham & The Dinosaur Pips, Frank Simon, mountaintop removal, national politics, etc…) I will now be writing about on a daily basis over at LEO’s blog, and in longer pieces of their print edition in Louisville (also available online). It’s a pretty sweet gig. And unlike B&P, I get an actual paycheck. Which is nice.

The wonderful David Schankula will also continue to post here on everything Lexington-related (6th District too, Benny) when he has the time, but he’s a busy man. So things are certainly going to slow down here, as well as narrow down around Fayette County. But my hope is that we’ll be able to find some good folks in the near future that can pick up the slack, contribute regularly and effectively, and run the ship for the long haul. Any ideas? Send them my way.

So that’s that.

Anyway, I’ll probably give you a sappy thanks/goodbye post Sunday night (and I’ll continue posting regularly until then), but I’ll just take a moment here to thank all of you amazing readers over the past 3+ years. Your readership, your support, your comments, your hatred (I welcome it), your kind words, your tips, and your contributions (if you are one of the awesome people that contributed to the fundraiser, I should have already written you about refunding you, if not please contact me). Couldn’t have done it without you. And I can assure you that leaving behind B&P (my toddler) and you good folks in Lexington is a special kind of agony.

But I’m not really going anywhere, am I? Yes, I’ll be doing the same shtick at LEO, which you can read every day. And while B&P is going to slow down quite a bit starting Monday, I’m confident that good things are in its future, and it’s not going to fade completely away (we already have a deal with Ashton in the works… score!).

So that’s all for now. Enjoy the new site. Take it for a spin. Peruse the archives. Let us know what you think… about this strange, strange birth of B&P 2.0.

And…

(and an extra special thanks to the great folks at Sunant Interactive for doing such a great job on the B&P upgrade. If anyone out there in Google Land is looking to answer the question “Who can convert my Blogger blog over to WordPress without losing links and 301 redirects?”, these are the people that you go to.)