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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Saturday, February 19, 2011

Support the Wisconsin Unions

By John Ballard


From Pete Seeger's 90th Birthday Concert (Clearwater Concert), Madison Square Garden, 5/3/09. Featuring Billy Bragg, Mike & Ruthy Merenda, Dar Williams, New York City Labor Chorus.
Lyrics LINK.











I wish I had a better feeling about the outcome.  I hope to be wrong thinking the Wisconsin fiasco is prescient. A very ill wind is blowing across the country. Every time I hear someone say "elections have consequences" now it makes me want to hurl. It is as though the thirty-year long economic rape of the Reagan Revolution never happened!


I caught a Fox fart while channel surfing and some guy grinning like a Southern sheriff in a town with one traffic light was excited about busloads of Tea Party supporters coming to support the governor, along with Herman Cain, Joe the Plumber, Andrew Breitbart and others serving up the same old koolade.
I saw a tweet that "Teachers are the new welfare queens" noting that education budgets are taking hits all over the country.
Someone at CNN summed up the House version of the budget as "arguing over a bar tab while the ship is headed for an iceberg.
The political chaff is blowing around like a cloud of sawdust... defunding health care as much as possible, National Public Radio, Planned parenthood and any other incidentals that altogether don't amount to a row of pins in a shirt factory.


The sad part is that so many ignorant people imagine all this has meaning. It makes me sick thinking about it.


Meantime, this is from yesterday...


It's Glenn Beck's worst nightmare -- firefighters invading government buildings in a spine-tingling display of union solidarity. Don't they know the Wisconsin protests are a Muslim Brotherhood plot to create a one-world Marxist government?


As the on-scene narrator notes -- firefighters are exempt from Gov. Scott Walker's attempt to strip collective bargaining rights from state employees, but that doesn't seem to have split union ranks in Wisconsin.


 












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3 comments:

  1. sfHeathFebruary 19, 2011 at 10:51 AM

    Did you catch Maddow this week arguing that because two unions were the only Democrat-leaning institutions able to attempt to stand toe-to-toe with corporate political donations since the Citizens United decision?
    She was very convincing that, just like in the ACORN case, Republicans would rather disintegrate their opposition than persuade them.

    ReplyDelete
  2. John BallardFebruary 19, 2011 at 1:56 PM

    Here's the link. And she's totally excellent.
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#41674668
    The program is less than fifteen minutes, and I would challenge anyone to watch the first five minutes and argue against unions.

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  3. geoffFebruary 20, 2011 at 3:45 AM

    I think Rachel does a great job of developing the real story behind the WI protest but I really don't get her shilling for the Democrats. Neither Clinton nor now BO Democrats are supporters of unions. Gees unions abandoned BO & Demos in the fight for Ted Kennedy's seat - wonder why?. And I get an amazing laugh out of the impression from the MSM that the weak pusillanimous comment BO gave to WTMJ TV is a sign of support. PLaying the great father bs role that seemed to work at Tucson appears to be BO's new shtik "they're our neighbors ... they're our friends" from the character that froze gov't workers wages & salaries. MSM will likely help sell his faux support for working people but his real buddies know he's just kidding.
    Course I know Rachel has no real alternative. You can have one or the other: which is less immediately harmful and to whom?

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