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, November 23, 2009

Palin And The Apocalypse

By Steve Hynd


The scariest domestic political story of the day is this one: "Matters of faith, politics on table as Palin visits Graham"



"He's followed her career and likes her strong stand on faith," said son Franklin Graham, who was present for the 2 1/2-hour get-together. "Daddy feels God was using her to wake America up."


The former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate told Billy Graham about how she came to faith in God as a girl in Bible camp.


She quizzed him on the presidents he's known and wanted his take on what the Bible says about Israel, Iran and Iraq, Franklin Graham reported.


As Spencer Ackerman notes, Palin's visit to the fundie Graham household explains something she said recently:



Last week, Sarah Palin made a strange comment defending Israeli settlement construction by warning that �more and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead.� Since worldwide Jewry is unaware of such an imminent threat that would prompt mass immigration to Israel � and certainly not immigration specific to the West Bank � that sounded like some kind of dogwhistle to Christian Zionists, a cohort that promotes unconditional American support to Israel in order to bring about the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ to earth. Not, in other words, something particularly high on the Jewish or Israeli agendas, but Christian Zionists represent a pretty sizable bloc within the Republican coalition and could, say, help someone win a presidential nomination were someone so inclined.


Given her own very personal association with a Kenyan minister who hounded a woman for witchcraft, it seems unlikely to me that Palin is simply making a cynical play for the loonie fringe who look forward to the Apocalypse. She honestly seems to belive this stuff. And yet she's considered a frontrunner for the GOP nomination. That seems to me to prove that the GOP's former "big tent" has been replaced by a gated community...or an asylum.



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2 comments:

  1. oNovember 23, 2009 at 6:56 AM

    when Obama is going to visit Rev. Jeremiah Wright?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Steve HyndNovember 23, 2009 at 7:38 AM

    Wrong place for that comment, o. If you're not just a drive-by commenter, read other posts - we're not exactly Obama's biggest liberal fans.
    Regards, Steve

    ReplyDelete

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