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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Friday, August 22, 2008

Obama, McCain And The Iraq Deal

By Cernig



I've a couple of posts over at Crooks and Liars today on the impending Iraq deal, mutterings of an Awakening revolt, McCain's need to do a swift 180 and Obama's excellent statement that's going to make it so difficult for "Eight Houses" to do that.



Now that the deal is being leaked by Iraqi officials - and includes demands that any new �status of forces� deal be for only 3 years and to stipulate all US troops out of Iraqi urban areas by 2009, Obama has pinned McCain to the wall with a statement that notes that even the Bush administration has come around to Obama's way of thinking and defines "success" in Iraq as the Iraqi's asking the US to leave.



Worse for McCain, the Maliki government is clearly signalling that it is getting ready to declare armed Awakening groups illegal and the received wisdom is that the latter will express their displeasure by returning to violent insurgency. McCain�s beloved Surge - which he has bashed Obama for not having the "judgement" to support - won�t have accomplished a lasting reduction in violence and Bush will have already committed the US to substantial withdrawal in accordance with Obama's "judgement" too. Could McCain�s Iraq policy get any more tattered?



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