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, September 10, 2011

Tax Cuts are the Duct Tape of Politics

By John Ballard


My only Twitter message following the president's speech was this.



The Speech was the equivalent of a man
buried alive, scratching vainly against the
inside of a box with his fingernails. Pitiful.



The deadlock in Washington isn't simply partisan. It's everybody against the president. And as Andy Young pointed out in the piece I put up yesterday, Barack Obama is a man without enough political resources to back him, i.e. Obama needs a protective network that he currently lacks.


Andrew Young said that over two years ago. He wasn't talking about how smart, gifted or popular he was. Those qualities are inportant but not essential in the world of politics. Look at the current crop of GOP presidential hopefuls. Intelligence, consistency and rational thinking are not on their list of strong suits. In fact, with Gingrich, Romney and Huntsman trailing the pack, intelligence appears to be a veritable handicap.


Those who climb the ladder must do so with the help of what Young called a protective network. Obama's strongest protective network was the crumbling remains of the Kennedy legacy. The deaths of Ted Sorensen and Ted Kennedy, together with the Schwarzeneggar-Maria Kennedy Shriver breakup were symptomatic of the fragility of any national support Obama may have had outside Chicago. (I think the wife of a Republican Governor supporting a Democrat for president is unprecedented.) Sure, he has a good many friends in high places, but what's missing is the pragmatic political support that might rival that of, say, Hillary Clinton, or even Rick Perry. I read somewhere that Perry may be as shrewd politically as LBJ. The man is potentially very dangerous.


So when Obama turns to Big Banking, Big Business or whatever he can scrape up from K Street he's taking the only way left to stay afloat. The GOP has closed ranks and is more interested in defeating this president than lifting the country out of an economic quagmire. In fact, signs of economic and jobs improvement over the next few months will be politically counterproductive. In the same way that insurance companies regard medical payouts as a "loss" and banks call funds in savings accounts "liabilities" if they are not leveraged, in the double-speak of Washington tax cuts can mean whatever the speaker wants, depending on whether it helps or hurts a political cause. 


Like someone in a lifeboat at sea running out of water, he's faced with the prospect of drinking his own urine. Or like a man in a box, buried alive, he has no place to turn. Since the GOP succeded in rebranding the Bush Tax Cuts as the Obama Tax Cuts (so that when those rates expire at the end of 2012 they can be called the Obama Tax Increases) the term TAX CUT has become the cliche du jour. 


So thanks to AngryBlackLady we can laugh to keep from crying as we watch the current spectacle unfolding in Washington. 



  • And if you soak your hands in tax cuts, your skin comes out so soft! Madge would love these tax cut thingies.

  • Lady tax cuts? You're soaking in it!  

  • I'm a tax cut, you're a tax cut, he's a tax cut, she's a tax cut WOULDN'T YOU LIKE TO BE A TAX CUT, TOO?!  

  • Be a tax cut... Drink Dr. Tax cut.... Wait, huh? (U brought back memories with that lil ditty.)  

  • My tax cuts and me like to climb a tree; my tax cuts and me are the BEST FRIENDS COULD BE! my tax cuts. my tax cuts! MY TAX CUTS AND ME!  

  • It's tax cuts! It's tax cuts! For fun it's a wonderful ploy! It's tax cuts! It's tax cuts! It's fun for a rich girl & a boy! 

  • That doesn't make sense....oh wait, it's a "tax cut". It's not supposed to make sense.  

  • 4 out of 5 douchebags recommend tax cuts for the rich. #truestory  

  • 4 out of 5 republican dentists recommend tax cuts to keep your smile fresh  

  • Tax cuts now, tax cuts tomorrow, tax cuts forever!! *cue Rebel Yells* 

  • Tax cuts tax cuts eat them up yumm 8P -- i took a tax cut out to see a movie. didn't have to pay to get. him. in.  

  • I love the smell of tax cuts in the morning. It smells like...job creation. 

  • I'm tired of these motherfuckin' tax cuts on this motherfuckin' plane! -- Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was tax cuts killed the Beast.

  • TAX CUTS FLY LIKE A BUTTERFLY, STING LIKE A LARGE MALLET 

  • NOBODY PUTS TAX CUT IN A CORNER.

  • Momma always said life is like a box of tax cuts. You never know which one yer gonna get.  

  • You want the tax cuts?!?!? You can't handle the tax cuts!!!!!  

  • Have you mentioned a day without TAX CUTS is like a day without sunshine?  

  • One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in tax cuts bind them 

  • One small step for a man..a giant leap for tax cuts  

  • my tax cut brings all the boys to the yard, it's better than yours, Damn right, I could teach you but I'd..  

  • If this tax cut were mine I would lay at your feet...all that I own...you been so good to me...if this tax cut were miiiinne 

  • Oh Tax Cut, Tax Cut! Wherefore art thou, Tax Cut?  

  • Oh look, what light thru yonder window breaks? It is the tax cuts

  •  "My only regret is I have but one tax cut to give for my country" #PatrickHenryRomney #taxcutquotes 

  • Four score and 7 years ago our our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new tax cut, conceived in Liberty...  

  • Dr. King had a dream that one day, he would receive tax cuts.  

  • I have a dream that one day our children will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their tax cut!  

  • (well yah that) but more importantly, by the content of their tax cut! 

  • Ask not what your country can do for you, but you can do for your tax cut -- We're gonna need a bigger tax cut 

  • Help us Obi Wan Taxcut, you're our only hope  

  • Use the tax cut, Luke -- Use the tax cut, Luke // LUKE. *koh koh* I AM YOUR TAX CUT. *koh koh* NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!111one  

  •  they nevah shoulda given you niggas taxcuts! fuck yo tax cut! you can get another tax cut!  

  • TAX CUT?! SAY "TAX CUT" AGAIN. TAX CUT AIN'T NO LANGUAGE I'VE EVER HEARD OF. 

  • I'm ready for my tax cut, Mr. DeMille. -- Jesus H tap-dancing christ...I have seen the tax cut  

  • Ask Not How A Tax Cut Hurts The Poor, Ask How You Can Get One To Pay For Your New Dance Floor. #wherearethebushtaxcutjobs 

  • Aint no UE rate high enuf. Ain't no tax cut low enuf. Ain't no income gap wide enuf. To keep me from screwing you babe. 

  • To boldly cut where no tax has cut before! 

  • The new RONCO tax cut!! Just set it, and forget it! -- And YOU get a tax cut, and YOU get a tax cut... 

  •  Read my lips...No new tax cuts.  

  • Dems give me health care that buys my lithium, Repubes give me a tax cut. My voices say they're equally good!  

  • Jesus loves me this I know, cuz the tax cut tells me so. Little ones to them belong, they are weak tax cuts are strong. 

  • my tax cut keeps away the dreaded Sulawakian warrior wasp. & polar bears -- Used my last tax cut to kill a Balrog that wouldn't let me go peacefully through Moria. Goddamn Balrogs.

  •  ::grabs egg:: This is your brain. ::cracks egg onto IRS form:: This is your brain on tax cuts. ANY QUESTIONS?!



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1 comment:

  1. Bill H.September 10, 2011 at 6:35 PM

    "I think the wife of a Republican Governor supporting a Democrat for president is unprecedented."
    Get serious; that wife is a Kennedy. And if you think Schwarzeneggar is a Republican in anything other than name, you don't know Schwarzeneggar.

    ReplyDelete

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