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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Monday, July 23, 2012

Mitt Romney - Avoiding the Issues

Commentary By Ron Beasley


Mitt Romney is off on an international tour to prove  his foreign policy credentials.  Of course in Romney fashion he's avoiding most of the real international issues,  



Mitt Romney travels abroad this week to polish his presidential resume. But since Romney will avoid confronting head-on the vicious sovereign debt crisis in Europe that already appears to have engulfed the American economy, the trip may seem more like a vacation.



He does not want to bring attention to the Euro crisis because in doing so would be an admission that the Euro Crisis is responsible for the problems with the US economy.



But Romney will largely steer clear of the debacle that has contributed to sluggish job growth for the past three months in the United States and a 3.72 percent drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average since May. 


Instead, his itinerary takes him to the United Kingdom and Poland, two countries that because of their currencies-the pound and the zloty-are somewhat removed from the crisis. For a presidential hopeful stumping on his business expertise, it is potentially a squandered opening.


"Candidates do this to show they're ready for the presidential stage, but if you're not talking about the number one issue, it begs the question of what you're doing there," said Jim Kessler, senior vice president for policy at the think tank Third Way.



To enforce his neocon credential he is going to Israel.  That may not work out so well as the Israeli government has no desire to get involved in US domestic politics at least overtly.  


Romney is also avoiding Afghanistan.  He must be hawkish to please the neocons but he reads the polls and a majority of Americans want us out of that quagmire yesterday.  


This road show is ill advised and Romney has nothing to gain and everyting to lose.  So I say go for it Mitt!



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