Newshoggers Archive: Nothing new under the sun

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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Friday, September 24, 2010

Nothing new under the sun

Commentary By Ron Beasley

The intellectual vacuum that is the House Republican leadership has presented the voters of the US with it's Pledge to America. It has been criticized and mocked by both the right and the left. It is little more than a list of the same talking points we have heard from the Republicans for decades. Ezra Klein:

What, exactly, does the Republican Party believe? The document speaks
constantly and eloquently of the dangers of debt -- but offers a raft of
proposals that would sharply increase it. It says, in one paragraph,
that the Republican Party will commit itself to "greater liberty" and
then, in the next, that it will protect "traditional marriage." It says
that "small business must have certainty that the rules won't change
every few months" and then promises to change all the rules that the
Obama administration has passed in recent months. It is a document with a
clear theory of what has gone wrong -- debt, policy uncertainty, and
too much government -- and a solid promise to make most of it worse.

But leave it to Jon Stewart to see it for what it is and isn't.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Postcards From the Pledge

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

But then what would you expect from a directionless party composed of morons and lunatics.

Update:

TPM has a good rundown of Republican reactions to "The Pledge". Even the Republicans aren't impressed!