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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Monday, December 6, 2010

Alan Grayson for President

By John Ballard


This is the most exciting idea I have seen lately.


Who Will Be A Champion Of The Left We Can Believe In? As Bush-lite, Obama Ain't It
What he said...
?NOW IS THE TIME TO START ORGANIZING


Listen up, folks. Get behind this man.

IT BEHOOVES ALL PROGRESSIVES TO RUN GRAYSON AGAINST OBAMA IN THE 2012 DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY.


Start the drumbeat now. NOW. NOW. NOW. Let's fire up the Democratic base.


I know, most likely Obama will beat Grayson. Even Ted Kennedy couldn't dislodge incumbent President Carter for the democratic nomination in 1980. But look at it this way: in a race against Grayson, Obama is going to have to give an account of his first-term actions, and explain why he enabled Wall Street to continue screwing Main Street. And Grayson ain't gonna give Obama any wriggle room on this, because he's easily as smart as Obama, and he has real-world private-sector business experience. He could scare Obama a few steps to the left, which might result in a few progressive moves in Obama's second term.


But, but, but: what if -- a gigantic if -- what if the democratic base is really angry at Obama, and Grayson beats Obama, and then goes on to cream the GOP idiot (Romney? Palin? where do they get these fakes and flakes?)?


What then?


Then, oh then, fellow progressives, we may have a revolution we can dance to. We may peel grapes for our beloveds and praise elegant larks for their mellifluous warblings. We may finally get to enjoy the progressive moment that our country so desperately needs -- and work on becoming the more perfect union that Obama keeps talking about but won't do much to achieve.



This is not the first time I've linked to Cilliers and as long as he spins out provocative screeds it won't be the last.
After yesterday's craven behavior by the so-called "leadership" in Congress -- and yes, Speaker Pelosi, this means you and whoever allowed this co-called "compromise" to breathe --  Cilliers' call to arms is as bracing this morning as a cup of black coffee after a night without sleep.


James Baldwin said it well:
The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
Seems to me that's where many of us are standing politically.



Posted by at

4 comments:

  1. Cheryl RoferDecember 7, 2010 at 1:25 AM

    Does he come on a white horse?

    ReplyDelete
  2. John BallardDecember 7, 2010 at 7:38 AM

    Can't say about the horse but with a net worth of thirty-one million he is in a position to get one if he wants it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Taylor WrayDecember 7, 2010 at 7:48 AM

    Oh hell yes. At this point, comparing their short records in office, Grayson looks like a much more progressive leader.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Bill H.December 9, 2010 at 2:11 AM

    Alan Grayson is a posturing jackass of limited intelligence. He was on Last Word last night expressing his outrage with the President's tax deal, and his main "outrage" was the "biggest corporate tax giveaway in history." Turns out he was referring to the provision to allow businesses to expense investment outlays, which gives no tax deduction at all, but merely allows then to compress ten/twenty years of deduction into a single year. It's designed to stimulate investment in new business equipment, which I don't for one minute think it will succeed in doing.
    We need reasoned discourse, not inflammatory rhetoric.

    ReplyDelete

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