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, April 20, 2011

Not That Into Rand or Ryan

Commentary By Ron Beasley


This is the opening week of Atlas Shrugged the movie but it is not a good week for Randian wingnuttery.  Yes, it's a bad movie but it was a really bad book.  It is also a time when Ayn Rand cultist Paul Ryan's budget plan was introduced.  Well Ryan's Randian plan is not too popular.



Tea Partiers may say the government is too damn big, but when it comes to at least two federal entitlement programs, they sing a wholly different tune.


In a McClatchy-Marist poll released this week, 70% of registered voters who identify with the Tea Party opposed making cuts to either Medicare or Medicaid -- the government-run health programs for the elderly and the poor -- to help reduce the nation's deficit. Meanwhile, only 28% of tea partiers said they'd be willing to cut spending on those two programs.


Tea partiers were not alone in opposing Medicare and Medicaid cuts. An overwhelming 80% of all respondents said they opposed such cuts, with a majority of every demographic measured in the survey lining up against them.


Ninety-two percent of Democrats opposed cutting Medicare and Medicaid, as did 73% of Republicans, and 75% of independents.



Of course Ayn Rand herself took advantage of Medicare.  So what's with Ryan?  Is he too wingnut for the wingnuts?  So when will we see Republicans who would like to be reelected throw Ryan under the bus?


 



No comments:

Post a Comment