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, February 16, 2011

Boehner's Flying Pork Shot Down

Commentary By Ron Beasley�


Crashing Pig The Democrats with the help of the Tea Party Republicans shot down House Speaker John Boehner's own pork for his district.


House Votes to Cancel F-35 Jet Engine Program



In a sign that some freshman Republicans were willing to cut military spending, the House voted 233-198 on Wednesday to cancel an alternate fighter jet engine that the Bush and Obama administrations had tried to kill for the last five years.


The vote marked another instance in which some of the new legislators, including members of the Tea Party, broke ranks with the House speaker, John A. Boehner, a Republican from Ohio, where the engine provided more than 1,000 jobs.



Of course Boehner has no difficulty with budget cuts that result in thousands of people losing their jobs but not in his district. 


John Cole says it all:



I�ve said this before, and I will say it again. Unless your proposal includes a substantial increase in taxes and a substantial amount of cuts to the military budget as well as ending the farm subsidies and giveaways to big oil and big energy and big business, you can kindly just shut up about the deficit and the debt. Additionally, any cuts to entitlements need to include cuts to the CURRENT recipients, not grandfathering the boomers and then wondering why the cuts never materialize in the future.


If you aren�t going to do those things, just shut up. You aren�t serious.



"Aren't Serious" - that sums up to the lawmakers if both parties.



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