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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Friday, November 6, 2009

Pre-rejecting the Obama Agenda

By Dave Anderson:


Liberals and Democrats have argued that the two governors' races that the Democrats lost this week turned on a combination of local issues and weak Democratic candidates who would not do anything to excite the Democratic base. 


Conservatives and Republicans have argued that these two races are a national referandum on the Obama agenda and that the answer was a decisive no to having a government that can actually attempt to solve some problems instead of engaging in a looting expedition. 


If that is the case, then New Jersey must have been ahead of the crowd as the following three minutes on Google shows:


New Jersey Real Times:


November 03, 2008, 5:32AM


Gov. Jon Corzine's approval rating has remained steady in the past month, according to a poll released today.


The Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll found 46 percent of respondents approve of the Democrat's performance, while 37 percent disapprove. That's a slight improvement from the marks he received in October, when 45 percent approved of the job he was doing, while 39 percent disapproved.


Meanwhile, 24 percent of respondents said the state is headed in the right direction, while 65 percent say it's off on the wrong track. Last month, 23 percent said the state was headed the right way, while 67 percent said it was headed the wrong way.


Please note the dateline.  If the rest of Google is correct, Obama was elected President on November 4, 2008.  So New Jersey, according to the conservative argument, pre-rejected the Obama agenda a year in advance despite giving him a comfortable victory the day after this poll was published.  The other explanation is that it is tough to win as an incumbent when job approval ratings are barely a net positive and the states' voters think the state is heading in the wrong direction by a 5:2 margin. 



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