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, September 14, 2009

Calling All DFH's! Remember January 19, 2009!!!

By John Ballard via Dr. Lippin and Peter Yarrow.





A physician-activist, Dr. Rick Lippin, knowing my deeply held belief that songs that touch peoples' hearts can bring them together to advance causes such as social justice and societal equity, posed a question to me about which songs might appropriately be applied to advance the health care reform movement in America. Dr. Lippin, a leader of national, significant, dialogue correctly cited "We Shall Overcome " as the signature song of the Civil Rights Movement. Peter, Paul & Mary and many others sang this song on behalf of that historic effort during the 1960s, a movement that culminated in landmark legislation and a sea change in what Americans came to realize might be accomplished through grassroots activism which, in those days, was inevitably accompanied by song.

Here was my response to Dr. Lippin just a few days ago.

...Songs from the mouths and hearts of the long "loyal opposition" such as "My Country Tis of Thee" and "America the Beautiful" might resonate most powerfully now, in these times.

...this is the time to sing songs together that affirm our gratitude for what has recently occurred in our country with the election of a person of color to the presidency, one who in former times might well have been the target of segregationist fury, or even a lynch mob, rather than the leader of our nation.


... Let us sing together so that we can begin to heal our nation's bruised heart by choosing a course that affirms the dignities and rights of all our citizens to enjoy the basic human right of affordable, good, medical treatment, regardless of their good fortune to have or, conversely, to not have, the means to pay for it.


When we are sick we are most vulnerable and, in truth, a nation's decency is most truthfully revealed in the ways it treats its most vulnerable and needy. We are the only nation that fought in the second World War (WWII) that does not yet have universal health care...

Dr. Lippin correctly pointed out that a healthy land, after all, in a very literal sense and "land" as comprised of our fellow citizens and the ideals upon which our great nation was founded provides us very literally with sustenance and health.

So let up use the power song and singing together to help our new young president bring health care to all of our fellow citizens.



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