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 5, 2010

That�s the Whole Point

By BJ Bjornson


Steve Benen has a post up considering the inability of Congress to get unemployment benefits extended due to Republican obstructionism. He notes that doing so is rather poor economics and is likely to make the current recession even worse by crimping consumer spending due to the denial of funds to those who truly need it and will almost immediately spend whatever they get. No arguments from me on those points since they�re pretty much Econ 101 stuff, but he does go off track a bit with his conclusion:


Someone really ought to let Jon Kyl and his GOP colleagues know. Unless their goal is to hurt the economy, they'll no doubt want to reverse course and allow the Senate to vote on extended unemployment benefits the moment lawmakers return next week.




Well of course that�s their goal! After all, the Democrats are the ones (nominally) in charge right now, and the ones Americans are going to blame when things don�t get better, regardless who is actually sabotaging the efforts to improve circumstances, and that can only help the Republicans in their quest to return to power . . . and make things even worse for everyone, given their complete incompetence and near-insanity of policy positions long since proven counterproductive, but then there�s a reason Mencken�s quote wasn�t about overestimating the intelligence of the American public.


And really, who can blame the Republicans for these kinds of tactics? They aren�t going to be punished for making things worse. Their own partisans will swallow whatever cockamamie excuse they come up with and cast the blame on Obama and the Dems, and the partisans on the left will, if recent history is any guide, decide that the failure is due to the fact that Obama never really wanted the legislation passed and is just using the Republicans and Blue Dogs as an excuse to cover for its failure, and then cast the blame on Obama and the Dems. Under such circumstances, one can hardly blame the Republicans for acting the way they do.



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