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, August 10, 2009

Kenneth Gladney; irony is just hypocrisy with a sense of humor

by Jay McDonough

Steve Benen tells the story
on Kenneth Gladney today.  Gladney, it seems, has become something of a
celebrity in the St. Louis conservative movement when he was involved
in a fight while protesting health care reform at a town hall meeting
last week.  Depending on who you believe, Gladney was either attacked
by SEIU members or jumped into a fight involving both union members and
town hall protesters.

Video footage apparently shows Gladney
getting up and walking away from the fracas, but he's now claiming
injuries and appeared at a subsequent rally in a wheelchair.  Steve
Benen then notes the local news coverage of the rally:

Gladney
did not address Saturday's crowd of about 200 people. His attorney,
David Brown, however, read a prepared statement Gladney wrote. "A few
nights ago there was an assault on my liberty, and on yours, too."
Brown read. "This should never happen in this country."

Supporters cheered. Brown finished by telling the crowd that Gladney is accepting donations toward his medical expenses. Gladney told reporters he was recently laid off and has no health insurance. [emphasis added]

I
wonder if the irony is lost on Mr. Gladney - that he was at the town
hall meeting to protest the reform of a system that left him without
health insurance when he was laid off.  I wonder if he understood that
the intent of the reform is to insure that folks that are laid off
aren't going to find themselves without health insurance and having to
worry about how the hell they'll pay their medical bills.

But
maybe Gladney is on to something here; the notion that he could ask for
donations to offset his medical bills. What if there was a system where
everyone chipped in, the money was accumulated, and then used to pay
folks medical bills?  

Oh wait...that's a public plan.  And Kenneth Gladney is dead opposed to those.




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