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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Sunday, June 28, 2009

Here's a guy everyone will miss!

Commentary By Ron Beasley


5_61_062809_mays1 There were times it seemed you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing Billy Mays pitching something.  Well He went to sleep last night but never woke up.




Television pitchman Billy Mays � who built his fame by appearing on commercials and infomercials promoting household products and gadgets � died Sunday.


Mays, 50, was found unresponsive by his wife inside his Tampa, Fla., home at 7:45 a.m. on Sunday, according to the Tampa Police Department.


Police said there were no signs of forced entry to Mays' residence and foul play is not suspected. Authorities said an autopsy should be complete by Monday afternoon.


And it gets real strange:



Mays was on board a US Airways flight that blew out its front tires as it landed at a Tampa airport on Saturday, MyFOXTampa.com reported.


In an interview after the flight he reported that he had been hit in the head by an object when the plan landed. 



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3 comments:

  1. RedhandJune 28, 2009 at 11:04 PM

    I've already heard speculation that his cause of death may be a brain injury like Natasha Richardson suffered after that skiing accident. If so, that airline's going to have a helluva lawsuit on its hands.
    As to whether Billy will be "missed," his screamathon ads were like fingernails on a blackboard. So, only in a love-to-hate kinda way. It's wild that this reincarnated 19th Century barker became a millionaire: only in America.
    My sympathies do go to his family. Apparently he was a pretty decent guy off screen.

    ReplyDelete
  2. EarlJune 29, 2009 at 12:23 AM

    I can only wonder if a great many infomercials are going to be redone now...

    ReplyDelete
  3. hidflectJune 29, 2009 at 1:48 AM

    We'll always have the ShamWow guy...

    ReplyDelete

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