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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Tuesday, August 26, 2008

A sense of entitlement and a temper tantrum?

By Ron Beasley



The Democratic convention is under way and like the Republican convention that will follow next week it is little more than a scripted campaign ad.  In an attempt to find a story where there really isn't one the media is trying to play up the PUMA story.  I suggested the other day that this is a non story and a talking head I'm gaining respect for, NBC's Chuck Todd agrees:





That's right, there are PUMAs in Denver and if they are the only ones you interview you can make it look like a story.  TPM also interviewed Clintonite Paul Begala who when asked about the alleged riff said this:

The classic definition of inflation is to many dollars chasing too few goods and services.  What we have here is too many reporters chasing to few stories.

Although they are far fewer than the McCain campaign and the media would like you to believe there are some PUMAs.  What drives them to this wacky and suicidal behavior?  Over at The Moderate Voice Jill Miller Zimon has an excellent post I suggest you read on the media-whipped PUMA phenom but I'm going to jump right to the comments section and this from DLS:

....there is a threat by many Clinton voters to defect to McCain because "their" candidate didn't get the nomination, and in many cases it smacks of a sense of entitlement and a temper tantrum.

That is how I have seen the PUMA movement all along.  Most of the Hillary supporters have been able to move on a few have not and they are the story.



Update



The always acid tounged Jack Cafferty weighs in:

Some of Hillary Clinton's supporters had threatened to disrupt the proceedings if their candidate wasn't shown the proper amount of respect. They're called PUMAs, an acronym for "Party Unity My Ass." They appear to be a humorless lot who cannot come to terms with the fact that the country didn't want Hillary Clinton to be president. So they have been throwing a hissy fit ever since the primaries ended.



For these people there will never be unity unless Hillary Clinton is president. For the rest of the Democratic Party, logic suggests that when it comes to a decision between Barack Obama and John McCain, they would be more inclined to stick needles in their eyes than vote to perpetuate the abysmal situation we find ourselves in courtesy of George W. Bush and his merry band of country-wreckers.



1 comment:

  1. Wow - that Cafferty knows how to put words together, eh!
    Thanks for the link. I'm not a big Obama fan, I do like Biden (he was my top choice to begin with) and I did vote for Clinton in the Ohio primary. But I enough is enought - please, media - MOVE ON (even more so than the PUMAs).

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