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, April 28, 2012

Wingnut Welfare

Commentary By Ron Beasley


The socipathic Republicans/Conservatives hate welfare unless it's for large corporations that are part of the military industrial complex.  In order to avoid cuts in the "defense" budget they want to cut food stamps.



WASHINGTON -- The latest Republican plan to reconcile the budget and preserve defense spending extracts even deeper cuts from programs to help the poor and Americans still reeling from the recession.


Although spending levels for the budget were set in the Budget Control Act passed last summer in the deal to raise the nation's debt limit, Republicans are pushing ahead with another plan that cuts more while trying to prevent the beginning of $600 billion in cuts over 10 years to the growth of the defense budget.



So what are they trying to save?  The billion dollar flying lemon better known as the F35.  They had to cheat to keep the F35 and Lockheed Martin alive.



It seemed like a promising step for America�s next stealth fighter: The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter passed a key Pentagon test of its combat capability. But it turns out that the family of jets cleared the mid-February exam only because its proctor agreed to inflate its grade. In essence, the military helped the F-35 cheat on its midterms.


The collusion between the Pentagon testing body, known as the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC), and the F-35 program � first reported by Inside Defense � confirmed that the U.S.� most expensive warplane met previously established performance criteria. Specifically, the review was meant to show that the jet can fly as far and take off as quickly as combat commanders say they need it to.


But the review council, which includes the vice chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, eased the standard flying profile of the Air Force�s F-35A model � thereby giving it a range boost of 30 miles. And it tacked an additional 50 feet onto the required takeoff distance for the Marines� F-35B version, which Defense Secretary Leon Panetta just took off budgetary probation.



This lemon has 13 known flaws.  This will increase the amount of wingnut welfare required and delay delivery.  But the project continues and Lockheed Martin remains alive.  It's a Budgetary Disaster but easy money for a major defense contractor.


While the Republicans continually talk about government waste the F35 is waste they won't talk about.



1 comment:

  1. So if the F-35 is an example of wingnut Republican waste, why is the program still alive after 3 years of Democratic rule? The military is a bipartisan boondoggle and we have a Democrat running for re-election who boasts of the accomplishments of his military and refuses to cut "defense" spending. Let's not lay this at the feet of the wingnuts and use it as an excuse to get more Democrats into office to do the same thing.

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