Newshoggers Archive: Kat's Catches

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.

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

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Kat's Catches

By John Ballard

At Steve's request I'm putting up this string of links with ticklers as they percolate up from Kat, our awesome researcher, who makes aggregators redundant.
Anyone who can't find something of interest here is hard to please. (You only thought your time was limited. You had no clue. Check this...)

Following the Deepwater Horizon disaster, oil and gas interests have flooded campaign contributions to congressional candidates. This Mother Jones summary has names and amounts.

Cigna links several reports of another GOP revenue stream, the insurance industry. Anyone surprised? Humana also noticed how closing the donut hole will make their product more attractive.

Two members of President Obama's economic advisory board pressed him Monday to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for two years but he didn't give. Hang tight, boss.

Elena Kagan reported for work and the Supreme Court now includes three women. Like many before her she will be recusing herself from about a third of cases this year, having been involved in lower court decisions. (I learned that in the event of a tie, 4 against 4, the lower court ruling will stand. and the issue will have to be decided later by a different case.)

Google CEO Eric Schmidt really has a knack for expressing relatively benign ideas in a way that makes him and his company look incredibly creepy. I can't imprprove on that opening line. Creepy captures it well. More links at the source. (The Atlantic link is wrong but this will get you there for a half hour video of the interview.)

Talk of the 'Google implant' will alarm fundamentalist Christians worried about the Mark of the Beast. No way to say that better. Sic 'em! I can't resist this snip.

I can�t help wondering if Google CEO Eric Schmidt has gone completely nuts by publicly acknowledging the possibility of a �Google implant� under the skin � even though he adds that such a development lies on the other side of a �creepy line� that his company would �probably� not cross.

A geek blog picked up this. "The average American doesn't realize how much of the laws are written by lobbyists." Schmidt referred to Washington as "an incumbent protection machine," explaining that laws are put into place to keep existing policymakers in charge.

A bit of dirt but no big gobs of mud for Meg Whitman, running for governor in California.

Family sues for fifty million when a man dies in police custody from "probable respiratory arrest during prone restraint, with morbid obesity."

Daily Beast -- Democrats peeing in the ocean scrambling to get out the youth vote.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are urging folks who use the mall in Washington to pick up behind themselves. Demonstrations thereleave behind loads of trash. (JB: They must not go there much. One of the most impressive sights I have ever seen was the Mall one morning following a Fourth of July fireworks display the night before. the litter was so deep when we left the mall it was hard to see the curbs. Overnight the Washington sanitation crew restored the place to its usual post card perfection. More impressive than the fireworks.)

Hungary is experiencing a world-class ecological disaster.

Cyber crime remains rampant.

There's more.
Another page full.
But Ihave to go help take care of our youngest grandchild.

Happy linking!