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, December 7, 2009

Chirping in the Birdcage

By John Ballard



I'm learning to monitor tweets while doing my morning surfing. This can be distracting, especially when themes intersect in delightful ways.



Steve points to a great piece in the Guardian explaining how special interests advance the claims of climate change deniers.



..."members of the public feel more confident expressing opinions on others' motivations and tactics than they do expressing opinions on scientific issues".
�
Remember this the next time you hear people claiming that climate scientists are only in it for the money, or that environmentalists are trying to create a communist world government: these ideas were devised and broadcast by energy companies. The people who inform me, apparently without irony, that "your article is an ad hominem attack, you four-eyed, big-nosed, commie sack of shit", or "you scaremongers will destroy the entire world economy and take us back to the Stone Age", are the unwitting recruits of campaigns they have never heard of.



A little while later Blake Hounshell passes along wonderful tweets from Sara Palin:



?Copnhagn Climate Summit;Obama should boycott in light of bogus "findings"Public leary re:snake oil science,he must take stand on climategate
?2 much of "global warming" agenda is merely to halt responsible developmnt;sound science must b foundation 4 Copnhagn decisions,not politics


You can't make up stuff like this.I had a flashback of Charlie Chaplin as a waiter in a silent film whipping out a pair of pliers to bend a patron's knife into something like a long spoon because the man insisted on eating peas with his knife instead of using the spoon by his plate.

Check out Blake Hounshell

Percentage of Americans who believe in angels: 55

Percentage of Americans who believe in evolution: 39

Percentage of Americans who believe in anthropogenic global warming: 36

Percentage of Americans who believe in ghosts: 34


Percentage of Americans who believe in UFOs: 34



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2 comments:

  1. Steve HyndDecember 8, 2009 at 3:34 AM

    Hi John,
    Credit for spotting that great Guardian piece on the climate denial industry should go to Kat.
    Regards, Steve

    ReplyDelete
  2. NeoDecember 8, 2009 at 6:00 AM

    It takes an idiot to invoke �big oil� when the CRU e-mails show Esso and BP Amoco going to the various IPCC AR3 meetings along with Shell who was offering a �strategic partner� along with student grants (0962818260).
    That �big oil� cannard just isn�t going to work anymore.

    ReplyDelete

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