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, September 22, 2010

Buh-Bye, Dr. Summers

By John Ballard



Somewhere Cornell West is smiling.

...he continually got in trouble and got in trouble. And I say this not to really just bash the brother. But that kind of arrogance and ignorance is dangerous in public places. That�s why I was so surprised when Barack Obama chose him to be the national economic adviser. I said, here�s somebody who has no history whatsoever of sensitivity to poor people or working people, who had been supporting deregulation for a long time as a Clintonite, in the Clinton administration. What is going on here? Or has Obama already become so comfortable with the establishment that you had to have an economist who was legitimate to the establishment in order for him to get his regime off the ground? OK. I mean, if that�s the kind of argument you have, then put it forward. But don�t tell me you�re a progressive, then, and generate that kind of support or major advisers speaking to you�speaking to you every day. Now, if he had Paul Krugman or Joseph Stiglitz or Sylvia Ann Hewitt, I�d say, �Hey, you got something going here. I think we�ve got a chance for some progressive policy that actually focuses on poor and working people.� But I do forgive Larry Summers for this reason: that I think we all ought to have joy in life, and you can only have joy when you overcome arrogance and open to your own ignorance, because you end up being smart and brainy, but suffering from spiritual malnutrition, emptiness of soul, you see.


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1 comment:

  1. geoffSeptember 22, 2010 at 1:09 PM

    Yeah John, bye Larry and good riddance to him. From the time it was known that LS was going to be a key part of the administration I've known in my heart of hearts that Obama was a sham. I hear Larry will be off again to Harvard maybe to sit on a mahogany shelf while the dust settles and before he his hired by some needy Wall Street firm or Massive Investment Bank. After all that's the least he can do to not completely taint Mr. Obama and his faux reforms.
    Now the good news is that Obama has hinted he'll hire some biggie Wall Street type to fill Larry;s shoes just to show the world that he isn't anti-business. Only in America you say. Pity.

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