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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Thursday, April 26, 2012

"Born with a silver spoon in his orifice..."

By John Ballard


When I began blogging in ernest in 2004 one of my first decisions what to limit my content to ideas and events I found intresting, possibly important, but probably not widely known.  Although I am obviously an old-fashioned Liberal, I have never spent much time at any of the top-tier sites, Left or Right, figuring that if something it important I will know about it soon enough, and if I feel the need to address an issue, I can do so on my own terms. 


I am not attracted, then, to any of the places were they play the same notes over and over. That's one of the annoying features of the Fox people. They seem to find a tilted spin on nearly everything. I sometimes think even the weather forecasts are sending a political message. Something about those telegenic blond haired female reporters and guys with permanent smirks just turns me off.  


And by the same token, I am bored quickly with MSNBC, Current and other networks that handle their Left-wing content just as undiluted by reflection, but with more salt-of-the-earth and academic types who tend not to be as pretty. It's all about cocooning. And it's not that different from self-gratification, if you catch my drift. 


But sometimes, like a child in the toy department or an alcoholic in a package store, I come across something that I just have to grab and share. (I admit that if I'm cooking a recipe that calls for brown sugar I secretly hope the box has been open and dried out so I can pop some of the hard lumpy pieces from the top into my mouth and eat them like candy. That's how much I have a substance abuse issue with sugar.)


I promise not to do this often, but here is a box of candy that I just came across and I had to share. 
Enjoy... 











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