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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Sunday, May 30, 2010

The Gulf Of Mexico Was Already Dying

Commentary By Ron Beasley



I posted on this over at The Moderate Voice the other day but I think it's worth repeating.  Dave Cohen reminds us that the Gulf was already dying, albeit at a slower rate, before the Deepwater Horizon.

The oil leak on the Mississippi Canyon seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico
proceeds apace. It is now
clear that BP's recent plan did not succeed in plugging the leak. The
widely dispersed petroleum is a great disaster, but I get the distinct
impression that this oil is seen as despoiling a pristine
environment
. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have this
impression because, to my knowledge, the sorry state of the Gulf of
Mexico before the oil spill is not being discussed. Before the
oil spill, the Gulf of Mexico was being ravaged by�




  • coastal erosion

  • hypoxia(very low oxygen)

  • harmful algal blooms (red tides)




The levies that the federal government started building on the
Mississippi River in the 30�s are destroying the marshes and wetlands by
depriving them of new material. Nitrogen and phosphorus from extensive
agriculture in the Mississippi River basin have resulted in large areas
of low oxygen, �dead zones� and increased blooms of toxic algae.


As Cohen points out even before the toxic oil volcano in the Gulf it
was a toxic waste dump being slowly killed.







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