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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Monday, July 27, 2009

Wedge the crazies

By Fester:


Earlier this year, I thought the Obama Administration made a smart move by picking a series of fights with Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney.  Both of those individiduals have very low favorables outside of the Republican base and automatically downgrade the perceived validity of any argument that they advance when that argument is received by the non-hardcore Republican base.  I thought this was a tactically smart move for the Obama Administration because choosing one's enemies and picking the right type of fight makes life much easier than facing competent and persuasive opponents. 


It looks like House Democrats are remembering some of the day to day bitch slap politics that they were on the receiving end from the DeLay machine where Democrats were given a choice of pissing off a major support group or being accused of voting for the 'terrorists to win.'  The best example was the stripping of civil service and collective bargaining rights from the bill that formed the Department of Homeland Security.  Mild revenge of agenda setting power is occurring today as Greg Sargent reports:


Dem Rep. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii is going to introduce a resolution on the House floor today that seems designed to put House GOPers who are flirting with birtherism in a jam.



The measure Abercrombie will introduce commemorates the 50th anniversary of Hawaii�s statehood. But here�s the rub, his spokesman tells me: It describes Hawaii as Barack Obama�s birthplace.


�In the language of the resolution, there is a statement that Hawaii is the birthplace of the 44th President of the United States,� Abercrombie spokesman Dave Helfert confirms.


That confronts House GOPers with a choice: They can vote for the measure, and endorse the idea that Obama was born in Hawaii, which could earn the wrath of birthers. Or they can vote against commemorating the 50th state�s joining of our blessed Union. Or GOPers can skip the vote, but that could look nutty.


Splitting the GOP between the hardest of the hardcore who are only responsive to incentives from the right and those who are embarrassed is a useful public service.  More importantly, this is a nice way of imposing political costs of advancing the stupid.  Not a bad piece of agenda setting and wedge issue creation. 



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