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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Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Palin Retrospective

By Hootsbuddy

I'm late to the party but it's still an amusing game to guess why Sara Palin threw in the towel. For the moment I will take her at her many words. Take your pick. Meantime Jotman has the definitive Palin Timeline for future reference and posted a compelling CNN iReport video which, although it is more an indictment of the US Supreme Court, will be an undeniable part of her legacy

Jotman's timeline is a tour de force of documentation, the most comprehensive collection of links and information about Palin to be found in one location. This is a brief snip.

2000
2000-2003 - Wasilla receives 11.9 million in federal earmarks (20 times per-capita average in other states)

2000 - Jan - writes glowing letter of reference for Wooten to become a state trooper. Palin called him "a fine role model."
2000 - hired a Washington lobbyist
to secure federal earmarks for her community (Robertson, Monagle &
Eastaugh, an Anchorage-based law firm with close ties to Rep. Don Young
and Sen. Ted Stevens)
2000 - May - new state law passed that would force Wasilla to pay cost of medical examinations for rape victims.
Under Palin, Wasilla expected victims to pay for these tests, and the
Wasilla Police Chief Fannon vehimently objected to the new legislation

2001
2001 - marriage between Palin's sister Molly and trooper Wooten.
2001 - McCain list
of spending "that had been approved without the normal budget scrutiny
included a $500,000 earmark for a public transportation project in
Wasilla."
2001 - fee paid by Wasilla to Mr. Silver pf the lobby firm raised from $24,000 to $36,000.
2001 - piper born

2002
2002 - leaves Assemblies of God church, an Evangelical church which she had attended since the age of four.
2002 - McCain
objects to $1 million for Wasillla "in a 2002 spending bill for an
emergency communications center in town -- one that local law
enforcement has said is redundant and creates confusion."
2002 -
"As Palin campaigned unsuccessfully in 2002 to become lieutenant
governor, she received contributions from executives at VECO Corp., a
powerful Alaska oil field services company.(IHT)"
2002 - unsuccessful in her campaign for lieutenant governor.
2002 - Oct - Palin's second term as mayor of Wasilla ends.

2003
2003 -
McCain criticized $450,000 for an "agricultural processing facility in
Wasilla that was requested during Palin's tenure as mayor."
2003 - Feb -
Palin, although she did not have an oil and gas background, was named
chairwoman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission "with the
$125,000-a-year seat designated for a "public" member."
2003-4 - Chairwoman, AOGCC
2003 - Nov -
Ruedrich resigned from the AOGCC. "Palin, acting as chairwoman and
ethics supervisor, passed complaints up the ladder to the attorney
general and the governor's office." Press accounts make Palin the hero.

And that's just the snips for several years back. Recent information is organized by month instead of year.

Of all the guesses advanced I like Ron Beasley's best: a teevee show. But I'm having a hard time deciding what might be her forte. I'm thinking maybe someting on a cable channel, marketing sports gear late at night.



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