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 14, 2009

Incompetent Democrats

By Ron Beasley


I agree with John Cole here.



I still contend health care reform is over. The GOP and the fringe right will just move on to something else they find �objectionable� like this absurd accusation that voluntary counselling amounted to a panel of experts determining who should and should not live, the senior citizens seem overwhelmingly content to suckle at the public teat in regards to medicare while giving everyone else the bird, the insurance industry is playing both sides, half the Democrats are spooked by their own shadows, and the other half are in bed with the FIRE sector.


It is just over. And the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves. If the Republicans had majorities like the Democrats have right now, they would have abolished the IRS and the Department of Education, Bernie Madoff would be running social security, there would be an oil well in every backyard and off every inch of coast, we�d have mandatory prayer in schools, and the defense department budget would be doubled so we could have excellent adventures in Iran while we liberate Georgia from oppressive Russian rule. And we�d be doing it all with a top marginal rate of 3%.


Get ready for three more years of debating school uniforms.



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2 comments:

  1. zak822August 14, 2009 at 9:17 AM

    What we are seeing is the downside of President Obamas first love, community organizing. Community organizers preach bringing all stakeholders to the table and developing consensus among them.
    They don't accept that some stakeholders will not allow consensus on any terms but their own.
    President Obama really believes that the Blue Dogs and GOP will see the rightness of what he wants and arm twisting has no place in community organizing.
    I'm done making excuses for him. Cole is right, it's over. The only chance is for President Obama to take to the bully pulpit in Septemeber and call the Dogs out, and to stop pretending the GOP is negotiating in good faith.
    The American people respect strength. Without a show of strength, President Obama will be gutted like Carter was. He must stand in front of the public day after day and take his opponents on directly and strongly. All of his opponents. He must tie his reform goals to the lives of the voters, who overwhelmingly want it, and tell them to demand that their members of Congress give them it to them.

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  2. geoffAugust 14, 2009 at 1:10 PM

    I'm reeling from Obama's apparent incredible ineptitude but also wondering what's wrong with his domestic affairs advisors to let him become so lame. Are they also as stunned as he appears to be? In general he seems to have almost completely lost Americans to a confused sea of nonsense and handily avoided any real debate about your health care industry and potential real alternatives. I'm starting to think that the latter - no real debate - is planned and the confusion provides cover for what US politicians want.

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