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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Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Election day observations

By Dave Anderson:


Here are a few things that were notable to me this Election morning as my ten month old daughter is slowly waking up from her nap:


1)  My daughter loves the voting machines as it has a bright blinking button to press at the top.  She helped me vote. 


2)  The best GOTV is the pull factor of the little old ladies selling pierogies and baked goods in the polling place.


3)  The Republicans were better organized in core Democratic precincts.  At my precinct/polling location, the GOP signs outnumbered Dem signs by at least a 2:1 margin and there were three GOP volunteers handing out literature compared to one Democrat.  At the Squirrel Hill JCC polling place, the sign split was about even.  My home precinct and the Squirrel Hill wards are core Democratic base zones. 


4)  The GOP had better graphic designers work on their local race signs.  I actually could figure out who they wanted me to vote for and in what race.  The Democratic local committee signs were cluttered and I had no idea who was running for what. 


5)  The Post-Gazette is the major Pittsburgh newspaper with the Tribune-Review being Richard Mellon Scaife's vanity project.  It was interesting to note that no Republican touted being endorsed by the Tribune Review as a base motivator.  Any Republican who was endorsed by the Post-Gazette touted that endorsement in their television ads.


6)  Local judicial election television ad production values suck hard core. 



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