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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Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Keeping people out - The Time Machine

Commentary By Ron Beasley


My friend and blogging partner Dave has a really good post below.  I don't disagree with anything he says but I do have a different perspective.  While Dave graduated from high school in 1998 I graduated from high school in 1964.  The times have one thing in common - worthless wars.  Of course the big difference is the draft - something Dave and his friends didn't have to worry about.  I went to college after high school with the help of a 2S different.  I could afford it at a State scholl because the tuition was less than $500 a year.  Today at the same State institution it's $7,000 a year and that's cheap.  I got my degree without borrowing any money, I worked part time  and then worked full time during the summer. 


Of course Viet Nam was happening while I was in college.  I graduated  from college in 1968 when the Viet Nam war was going strong.  I received my draft notice shortly after graduation.  I reported for the draft in November of 1968.  I had a college degree but I was still destined to canon fodder.  I had some skills that came to the attention of the Defense Inelegance Agency and I agreed to a multi-year contract to avoid the rice paddies of Viet Nam.  So I spent three years ont he frontier of freedom in downtown Munich Germay.



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