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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Friday, March 26, 2010

Trouble Ahead In Iraq?

Commentary By Ron Beasley



OK, there was going to be trouble no matter who won but this may cause more trouble.



Allawi Wins Most Seats in Iraqi Elections

When the votes were all finally counted, Iraq�s
election left almost everything unresolved, from who would finally rule
the country to whether American combat troops would be able to leave on
schedule by August.

The former interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite once derided as an American puppet, galvanized the votes of Sunnis who sat out Iraq�s first national elections and clawed his way back from political obscurity. But his wafer-thin edge of 91 to 89 over his nearest rival, the incumbent prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, falls far short of the majority of 163 of the 325 seats in parliament that he needs to form a government.

But even with the best of intentions, assembling that coalition will take at least until July, possibly even longer, Iraqi political experts said, and Mr. Allawi will have to overcome deep-seated enmity from the other two biggest vote-getting blocs: the Kurds, with 43 seats; and the Iraqi National Alliance, a Shiite party that gained 70 seats and is led in part by the anti-American cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, who emerged as a possible king maker.





I think it was inevitable that there would be violence but I doubt that Allawi will be able to form a government which will upset the Sunni. If he should somehow form a government it will upset the Shia and the Kurds.  So violence is inevitable - what will Obama do right before the midterms.  And he thought health care was tough.



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  1. anna missedMarch 26, 2010 at 9:04 PM

    I'll go out on a limb and predict that it will be the Sadr trend that comes to Maliki's rescue. It's been my suspicion that since the ethnic cleansing days, Maliki and Sadr have had tacit agreement that satisfied the U.S. narrative of what was happening on the ground, while at the same time built upon an agreed strategy that would exit (via the hard SOFA) the U.S. sooner rather than later. Watch the supposed enemies blow every bodies mind, and come out in mutual agreement. Maliki will continue as PM.

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