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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Friday, October 28, 2011

Compensating for something?

By BJ Bjornson

Something a little lighter to take you into the weekend.

This is a pretty silly argument, but it strikes me as part of an ongoing pattern of Conservatives looking for symbolic rather than practical ways to burnish Canada�s image.


A Conservative senator is urging the country to dump the iconic beaver in favour of the polar bear as an official emblem of Canada, saying the rodent has had its day.

. . .

�A country�s symbols are not constant and can change over time as long as they reflect the ethos of the people and the spirit of the nation.�

The senator said the polar bear is more noble and rugged.

�The polar bear is the world�s largest terrestrial carnivore and Canada�s most majestic and splendid mammal,� she said, noting it �survives in the harshest climate and terrain in the world.�


Personally, I�m for keeping the beaver. Not only is it the only other terrestrial mammal I�m aware of to build a structure visible from space, it is also far more likely to survive in the significantly warmer world that is rapidly destroying the polar bears� habitat. Something the Conservatives are doing nothing to prevent, if not outright looking to accelerate, and just may be another thing this little symbolic gesture is looking to compensate for.



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1 comment:

  1. Ron BeasleyOctober 28, 2011 at 10:16 AM

    Living here in the Beaver State, Oregon, I'm kind of partial to the Beaver my self. Of course they are a pain in the a$$ when the block urban streams and flood neighbor hoods.

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