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, June 5, 2012

Money Counts

By John Ballard


The outcome of yesterday's Wisconsin election illustrates how public opinion can be shaped by money. The governor kept his job in no small part thanks to outspending his challenger. Bear in mind that out of the two, he's the one with fiscal conservatism at the core of his argument. Hehe. This is why we don't say "poor and powerful." The phrase we always use is "rich and powerful."


To use a medical comparison, overeating and obesity doesn't mean everybody will get sick or die young, and drinking alcohol to excess doesn't always result in a substance abuse problem -- there are fat old people still in good health, and others who can drink themselves into oblivion at night and function quite well the next day. So yes, having access to money goes along with being powerful. 


Walker-barrett[1]


 


And they left no stone unturned -- or thrown. Just to put ice cream on the cake, Twitchy (Michelle Malkin Owner, Founder and CEO) still has enough resources (and grinding, bullying chutzpah) to sponsor and promote an in-your-face Twitter message this morning...


 




 


I, for one, am really getting tired of having words put into my mouth that are not mine.
That seems to be a chosen tactic in the extremist arsenal. (And speaking of arsenals, notice the cross-hairs in the Twitchy link and try to remember which side of this contest would be most likely allied with guns. Just saying.)
Yes, I know both sides use the same rhetorical weapons. 
But there is a difference -- both sides don't have the same amount of money. 



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3 comments:

  1. Bill HJune 6, 2012 at 3:15 AM

    I continue to be amazed at the excuses made by the losing side. If the margin had been a point ot two, maybe, but the margin was almost precisely the same as the original election.
    Democracy is not failing just because your side did not win. I have had my preferred candidate lose more than once in fifty years of participation in democracy, and I have never felt the need to "prove the rest of the nation wrong and myself right" by establishing reasons why my guy was cheated out of the win that he should have had.
    If you don't like the outcome, I will cheer as you say that you don't like the outcome, but all of this endless stuff that Liberals, or progressives, or whatever we are these days, do about how unfair everything is because the "other side doesn't play fair" and how we keep "getting cheated out of what is rightfully ours" by the other side is just getting monotonous. We lost. One side had to lose, and this time it was us. Move on to the next battle like grownups.

    ReplyDelete
  2. John BallardJune 6, 2012 at 5:43 AM

    Whatever.
    Platforms and ideas are important, but I believe public opinion and voting behavior can also be influenced in a serious way with money.
    I'll be watching the race for Gabby Gifford's seat. Her former chief-of-staff is running to fill the balance of her term and his opponent, unable to raise enough locally for strong opposition, is being bailed out by lots of outside money. Journalists may now be using the designation "Tea Party candidate" due to ideology, but I am firmly convinced it is due more to money than principles.
    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77081.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. shirtJune 6, 2012 at 8:15 AM

    "Money doesn't talk, it swears." -- Bob Dylan

    ReplyDelete

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