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, February 8, 2010

Impact of Murtha's death

By Dave Anderson:



As everyone already knows, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA-12) died this afternoon.  I was not a big fan of him as he was a self-dealer who at the very least was hanging out with people who reeked of corruption if not corrupt in a potentially legal manner himself.  I advocated primarying him for good governance purposes last year, and I stand by that analysis that he and a few other long-term Dems' corruption or appearance of corruption had significant negative externalities. 

So what does this mean politically.  Instantly it puts another Democratic seat into the likely November loss column.  His district had been a core Democratic district for generations, but Central and Western Pennsylvania as a whole has been trending hard to the right over the past fifteen years.  The PVI for the district became mildly Republican after the 2008 election as McCain won a squeaker.  The Democratic bench in the region is not particularly thick while the GOP bench is very strong.  The district is white, aging, working class and dependent upon defense pork, and resource extraction.  

In the short term, the seat will remain vacant, and the House Dems will have to find another HCR vote from a previous NO vote.  Gov. Rendell has to set a special election date within the next week and a half.  That date could be anytime from mid-April to May 18th when the state has its regular primary.  It is quite possible we could see a repeat of the TX-22 situation from 2006 when a special election and a regular election primary produced two different winners so there is a lame duck incumbent on the first day in office. 



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