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.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Democrats and the Art of the Impossible

by anderson

"Obama has pathetically caved to most every Republican yowl on every domestic bill, only to watch no Republicans even vote for the butchered bill anyway.  The health care botch will be the same."






-- Shockfront,





December 7, 2009
















"Moments ago, the Senate passed a comprehensive health care reform bill by a vote of 60-39 �"






















OK, so that wasn't such a bold prediction.


But what is clear is that the longer the Democrats "debate"
legislation, the less the American people get out of it.  The Democrats
are masters of loosing ground from a position of strength, of shirking
the mandate given them by American voters.  In two successive
elections, voters gave the Democrats more and more firepower to get
things done, and after each election, the Democrats proved unable or
unwilling to do those things.


Indeed, if what we have seen play out in the health care debacle can
say anything about the Democrats, it is that they can take the
possible, and make it impossible; cowering before any and all
Republican bluster, taking a clear and unequivocal mandate, turning it sideways, and, with corporate media encouragement, pretending it just isn't there.

What is also clear is that Democrats fear the GOP
far more than they do the wrath of an increasingly distressed and
disenfranchised citizenry.  Either that, or, as I've said before,* the D
party is just a front operation for the GOP, which in turn is just a
front company for corporate America.  So, scaredy-cats or
co-conspirators?  Impossible to tell.


Unfortunately, the Democrats' inability to either act or function as a
governing majority has its most profound effects upon those who voted
for them and who actually expected "change," those who have no phalanx
of lobbyists in Washington and expected (or hoped) that the Democrats
and Obama would be their lobbyists.






But that didn't happen, now.  Did it?


___________________________
* Hilariously, I wondered then, "if Obama actually wins the presidential election, who will the Democrats cave in to then?"  Well, it turns out that they can still keep caving into the Republicans! The fun never stops, kids!



Posted by at

1 comment:

  1. geoffDecember 25, 2009 at 4:11 AM

    In light of the modern democrats lost way, Jon Raban has a warning disguised as a review of Palin's book in the latest NYRB:
    http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23532
    In the short essay he pens this little critic of the praised preaching eloquence of the seemingly completely muddled Obama administration:
    "Recently, I came across FDR's fireside chat of April 14, 1938,[2] when, speaking from the bottom of the second trough of the double-dip recession, he delivered a plain and passionate defense of deficit spending; Keynes for the family, and as resonant and topical now as it was seventy years ago. Nothing I've heard from the present administration matches its clarity, and where puzzlement and incomprehension exist, Palin leaps to fill the gap with facile and v�sch answers."
    I've looked but no audio of the April 12, FDR, chat, but reading it I think Raban is correct FDRs clarity regarding a complex matter and clearly recognized honest sincerity dwarf the faux sputtering served up by Obama.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)