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, July 28, 2009

NRO Editorial Shuns The Birthers

By Steve Hynd


Looks like some of the brighter conservative souls are figuring out that "Birther" insanity isn't good for the Republican party's election chances. The editors at National Review Online have spoken:



President Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at 7:24 p.m, in Honolulu County, Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. The serial number on his birth certificate is 010641. Baby Barack�s birth was not heralded, as some of his partisans have suggested, by a star in the east, but it was heralded by the Honolulu Star, as well as the Honolulu Advertiser, each of which published birth announcements for young Mr. Obama.


...Much foolishness has become attached to the question of Presdent Obama's place of birth, and a few misguided souls among the Right have indulged it. The myth that Barack Obama is ineligible to be president represents the hunt for a magic bullet that will make all the unpleasant complications of his election and presidency disappear. We are used to seeing conspiracy theories from the Left, for instance among the one in three Democrats who believe that 9/11 was an inside job conducted with the foreknowledge of the Bush administration....[Where did the get that figure, thin air? - Steve]...There is nothing that President Obama�s coterie would enjoy more than to see the responsible Right become a mirror image of the loopy Left circa 2003.


Somehow I figure they don't mean the likes of James Joyner or even Orrin Hatch, they mean themselves by that phrase "responsible Right" - every last Thompson and Palin boosting, war hyping one of them. But they certainly make it plain the Birthers are under the bus.



The director of Hawaii�s health department and the registrar of records each has personally verified that the information on Obama�s birth certificate is identical to that in the state�s records, the so-called vault copy. Given that fact, we are loath even to engage the fanciful notion that President Obama was born elsewhere, contrary to the information on his birth certificate, but we note for the record that his mother was a native of Kansas, whose residents have been citizens of the United States for a very long time, and whose children are citizens of the United States as well.


And then they throw out some red meat for the cheap seats:



Barack Obama may prefer European-style socialized health care. He may consider himself a citizen of the Earth and sometimes address his audiences as �people of the world,� as though he were born not in another country but on another planet. Like Bruce Springsteen, he has a lot of bad political ideas; but he was born in the U.S.A.


Thus setting up the post-Birther narrative: "Barack Obama was born in America, but he might as well not have been."



4 comments:

  1. This was a message from Rich Lowery to Sarah Palin - don't go there!

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  2. "Baby Barack�s birth was not heralded, as some of his partisans have suggested, by a star in the east, but it was heralded .."
    I hate when they do that. I think ONE GUY drew a picture of Obama-Christ and we will NEVER hear the end of it from the freepers. gah I hate them...
    and
    "There is nothing that President Obama�s coterie would enjoy more than to see the responsible Right become a mirror image of the loopy Left circa 2003."
    those DFHs who were against the war in Iraq and who complained about wireless wiretaps and arbitrary detentions! they were so loopy!

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  3. Here�s Obama�s dilemma in a nutshell (READ VERY CAREFULLY AND DIGEST):
    If BHO shows his original long form birth certificate, indeed showing he was born in Hawaii, it will also show his father was American citizen, Frank Marshall Davis, not the Kenyan/British citizen, Barack Obama Sr. While that would allow Barack Jr. to be POTUS eligible as BOTH a �citizen�/�native born citizen� AND an Article 2 �natural born citizen� � that is, born to two American citizens on American soil � it would simultaneously show he is a fraud hiding his real father � an unacceptable political debacle.
    If, on the other hand, BHO keeps hiding his original long form birth certificate � while simply repeating, without showing, he was born in Hawaii � he can still CLAIM BOTH he was born in Hawaii AND his father was the Kenyan/British Barack Obama Sr. This would enable Barack Jr. to claim he�s a �citizen�/�native born citizen� but it would mean (if a federal court would ever get around to declaring and thus far no one has standing to bring the suit) that he�s NOT an Article 2 �natural born citizen� and thus not eligible to be POTUS � a legal/constitutional debacle since all acts under an illegal POTUS are void.
    So it seems, BHO has elected option one until forced to go option two because for now it looks like no federal court will ever find a plaintiff with standing. (Of course, there�s the additional issue of BHO losing American citizen status if/when he became an Indonesian citizen � that is, IF he returned and was naturalized he would be a legal citizen, but would lose both native and natural born status, and, IF he returned and was not naturalized, he would be an illegal immigrant unlawfully in this country � but we�ll leave that for another day.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey, look, guys!
    We got our own birther!
    (Where do they find these people?)

    ReplyDelete