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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Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Good friends and dumb decisions

By Dave Anderson




In my experience, good friends help their good friends avoid amazingly and predictably dumb decisions before those decisions are made.



  • Several years ago, I was the best man for a good friend. I was in charge of the bachelor party. After the 2nd bar of the night, I made the executive decision to scrub the excursion to the strip-club because the groom to be was doing his best imitation of a dead cockroach and saying "I want to feel boobies..." Going to the strip club ensured either an ass-kicking from a nasty bouncer, one hell of a nasty fight with his fiancee or both.


  • That same friend, several years before, physically restrained and threw into trunk of his car his very drunk roommate (who, soaking wet weighed 138 pounds) on his 21st birthday because that roommate wanted to go to a biker bar and start a fight.


    • Both of those decisions were made by good friends looking out for the best interests of their good friends who were not in the position to make good decisions.




    The invasion and occupation of Iraq was predictably going to be a clusterfuck. The reason for war changed weekly, and the reason and motivation was independent of any evidence to the contrary. Good friends of the United States were making it abundantly clear that they thought this was a dumb idea. Yet, the "best friend of the US" in a "special relationship" did nothing besides enable:




    Tom Ricks passes it along:

    As a British naval historian friend I know once noted, the time when the British government could have helped -- and perhaps stopped the war -- was back in the winter of 2002-2003. Real friends speak up when a friend is making a big mistake. Instead, Tony Blair may have destroyed the "special relationship" by supporting the invasion when he should have opposed it.




    A good friend is in the position and has the obligation to deliver a dope slap when their friends are doing something predictably and amazingly dumb. The good friend is in that position because they have a history of supporting the decisions of their friends, so opposition should be notable and credible as it is rare.

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    1 comment:

    1. The Glory and The OilDecember 2, 2009 at 10:17 AM

      The reason for war changed weekly,
      no it did not.
      it was always about the OIL and is still all about the OIL.
      i mean, really, come on, can't you people just admit it ??

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