Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Monday, June 16, 2008

Nunn-sense

By Libby



By now you've probably heard that Obama released a list of new hires for the national campaign and most notable was Hillary's former campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, who will be acting as chief of staff for the as yet unnamed VP candidate. I saw a lot of speculation about what it all means in terms of Hillary's chance at being asked to fill that slot on the ticket. I'm in the camp that thinks this hire pretty much rules that out and judging by the reaction from the Clinton loyalists, who are not happy campers, it would appear we're correct in that assessment.



As regular readers know, I didn't think Obama/Clinton would be a good ticket, so I'm not unhappy to see this development. Otherwise, I haven't had strong feelings about it, until I read Chris Bowers post. Chris makes a pretty good case on why he thinks Sam Nunn is now becoming a serious contender. I hope he's wrong. It would be a disaster as Chris sums up well himself.

Putting a 70-year old, white, southern, corporate dude on the ticket would almost entirely wipe away any notion that Obama is a "change" candidate. Sam Nunn is more status quo than David Broder. He is the least "change" candidate one can find.

I find it difficult to believe Obama wouldn't realize that as well, so I'm reserving my panic. I'm betting on Obama ignoring the speculation, along with the billions of bytes of free advice currently clogging the intertubes and naming someone that no one expected.



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2 comments:

  1. Cheryl RoferJune 17, 2008 at 7:51 AM

    What Sam Nunn has is impeccable credentials on controlling nuclear weapons and foreign policy in general. He is one of the directors of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and one of the co-signers (with George Schultz, William Perry and Henry Kissinger) of two Wall Street Journal op-eds (Januaries of 2007 and 2008) arguing that . With Dick Lugar, he originated the program to control nuclear materials in Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed.
    Obama has co-sponsored legislation with Lugar that follows similar lines, including negotiating with Russia to take missiles off alert; pretty much the next steps in the WSJ op-eds.
    One way that the United States could regain moral leadership in the world would be to take up the program in those op-eds wholeheartedly. That would mean that the president would get out in front with some bold proposals in conjunction with the other nuclear weapon states.
    I'm hoping that Obama's serious consideration of Sam Nunn indicates that he is thinking this way.

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  2. LibbyJune 17, 2008 at 12:08 PM

    I didn't know about his anti-nuke creds Cheryl. That's heartening to hear. But it doesn't change my mind that 70 year old, fully entrenched, corporate friendly pol would be disaster on the ticket. Not a good balance.

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