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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Wednesday, November 4, 2009

"V" - It's Worse Than You Thought

By BJ Bjornson


It isn�t very often that my TV viewing works into any political posts, but thanks to the Chicago Tribune, there is a fair bit of sounding off in the right side of the blogosphere today regarding the TV series reboot of �V� being a none-too-subtle jab at Obamania.


Imagine this. At a time of political turmoil, a charismatic, telegenic new leader arrives virtually out of nowhere. He offers a message of hope and reconciliation based on compromise and promises to marshal technology for a better future that will include universal health care.


The news media swoons in admiration -- one simpering anchorman even shouts at a reporter who asks a tough question: "Why don't you show some respect?!" The public is likewise smitten, except for a few nut cases who circulate batty rumors on the Internet about the leader's origins and intentions. The leader, undismayed, offers assurances that are soothing, if also just a tiny bit condescending: "Embracing change is never easy."


So, does that sound like anyone you know? Oh, wait -- did I mention the leader is secretly a totalitarian space lizard who's come here to eat us?




I�m kind of surprised he didn�t work in a quip about not knowing the individual's birthplace in there someplace.


There is of course the small problem that the �He� is actually a �She�; a rather attractive female who also happens to refuse to be interviewed by anyone who might ask tough questions (ironically enough the reporter apparently chastised for asking a tough question by the �fawning� types is who she ultimately chooses as a go to), who might also sound a little familiar to more than a few of us. But Sarah Starbursts references aside, it is actually further into the episode that we learn just how awful things really are.


In a meeting of the not-quite-fledgling resistance movement, it is discovered that these space lizards have actually been around for some time, helping to start unnecessary wars, create economic meltdowns, and twist faith into extremism, all to destabilize things to the point where their other half could come in looking like an enlightened alternative to the status quo.


Do you see? As part of the evil and dastardly plan to make himself our unquestioned overlord basking in the adulation of a grateful planet, Obama first sent forth his loyal minions in the form of the neocons, Banksters, and the Bush administration to screw things up so horribly that he would be seen as great figure riding to the rescue. I mean, how else could a Kenyan-born Islamofascist commie and Black Power racist get elected?


Indeed! It makes perfect sense now too why he keeps bailing out the big banks without adding much in the way of pesky regulations that might actually prevent a repeat of the financial disaster, or why he doesn�t seem to actually want to get those troops out of Iraq or end the war in Afghanistan, or stop the cross-border drone strikes into Pakistan that keep driving the locals into support of the Taliban, or close down Gitmo and the other prisons for the �enemy combatants�, or why he keeps using the Bush administrations �state secrets� interpretations in the courts, or, most importantly, why he doesn�t seem to want to actually hold any of those responsible for the torture state of the last eight years accountable for their actions. They�re allies! They were acting with his full support the entire time.


As I said, far worse than you thought. Because it turns out the opposition really isn�t the opposition at all. Figures Ron would be right.



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