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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Thursday, November 12, 2009

Punch the hippies and lose

By Dave Anderson:

What was the Dean campaign critique of the Democratic pro-Iraq invasion position --- If you offer people Republican and Republican lite, they'll take the Republicans as they know they believe their crazy instead of mealy mouthing it.


Ian Welsh notes the Democratic Party elite has not internalized this lesson.  Parties are supposed to stand for differences in opinion and policy outcomes.  This failure to learn the need to deliver on core promises and contrasts is leading to a Democratic ass-kicking in 2010.  The Democratic centrists want to gut Social Security and become card carrying members of the Serious People Pain Caucus by screwing the people who don�t have trust funds or million dollar back-dated stock options. It is not like the 401(K) revolution has facilated greater income variability, risk, and costs on the individual while providing crappy returns compared to the defined benefit plans.  We can't tax the people who have collected all the gains since the mid-70s --- that would be communishm and a sin against St. Reagan.  



Brilliant. Now, the purpose of this committee would be to provide cover to slash Medicare and Social Security. Imagine the reaction if, under a Democratic President, with a Democratic majority Congress, Medicare and Social Security got slashed. Who do you think would get the blame?


A number of Democratic Senators are strongly backing this. The hypothesis that Democrats want to be back in the minority is proving to have great predictive power.


A bill stripping abortion rights from women couldn�t pass in the Republican Congress. It may well in a Democratic Congress. Likewise a bill allowing Social Security and Medicare to be gutted couldn�t pass under Bush. Will it pass under Obama?


So if the policy options are for massive budget cuts to Social Security and medicare, a crap health insurance reform, and continual wars, people who voted for change in 2006 and 2008 will legitimately be at the WTF moment --- might as well vote for the people who believe in this shit instead of  those who run and win against it but as soon as they have power, implement the pain agenda.  



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