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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Sunday, February 5, 2012

Zakaria on "The Post-American World"

By John Ballard


Fareed Zakaria literally wrote the book and coined the term post-American
And he's the person best able to explain what he meant.
Today, using the second person singular, he spoke directly to Mitt Romney.
Check this out. 












2 comments:

  1. Didn't waste much time speaking to Newt Gingrich I noticed...

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  2. Newt is the Republican Harlequin. The rules of politics, diplomacy and etiquette govern what may and may not be said aloud, especially around royalty. But somebody has to speak them aloud in order for them to be forbidden. That's why every deck of playing cards includes a Joker.
    Fools have played important parts in history and have been enshrined in literature and music. One of Shakespeare's most important characters is the Fool in King Lear (wonderfully reproduced by Akira Kurosawa in one of his films). I recall a Russian history professor explaining the role of Rasputin as an example of "God's Fools" who were the only ones who could speak aloud about topics that anyone else might be executed for mentioning. In fact, the Strauss tone poem Till Eulenspiegel celebrates such a character. The Wikipedia article has some great illustrations.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Till_Eulenspiegel
    I've followed Gingrich for years since he was once my Congressman. He's smart and colorful. And as a harlequin he will be sorely missed. Or maybe not. These guys have a way of popping up in unexpected places at unexpected times.

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