Well, We're Movin' On Up!

Everyone always asks me, "Tom, what's next after Wal-Mart?"

Now I have an answer.  After over three years and 3,572 posts, Palousitics is going national in a big way.

Red County Magazine is a high quality, bi-monthly publication targeting center-right readers on topics such as business, lifestyle, politics, education, technology, and real estate though a center-right political lens.  The magazine utilizes many well-respected commentators, writers, and accomplished community leaders for daily analysis.

Red County has recently started a series of conservative political blogs that reach a large national audience.  Check out their home page www.redcounty.com

I was approached by the Scott Graves, president and editor-in-chief of Red County and Michael Kerr, the editor of Red County Washington and asked to bring Palousitics into the Red County network of blogs.  They have been following us for a long time and feel we have a high-quality blog that deserves a larger statewide and national audience.

So now we're going to get one. Palousitics is becoming "Red County Eastern Washington."

There will be a different look and a different website, and we'll be expanding our area of interest to cover everything east of the mountains, but we'll still have the same Palousitics writers you've come to know and love, the same insightful and hard-hitting commentary, all of our previous posts, and the same mission of engaging, educating, and entertaining.

Starting at Midnight, this blog will be permanently redirected to the new Red County blog. But you can go ahead now and point your browser to www.redcounty.com/eastwashington.

Thanks for a great three years, and see you at the new site!

Join Palousitics.com Team 129

The Dino Rossi for Governor campaign yesterday launched the newest and fastest way for people to build grassroots support. The Team 129 action network, named after the 129 votes that Dino lost by in 2004, allows people to create and measure their own online support network with the goal of bringing new leadership to Olympia that will start fixing real problems… for a change.

I have created a Palousitics.com account, and I'm going to see how much impact we can create in this governor's race. I have already sent some readers an e-mail. If you would like to take part in this effort, contact me here. The goal is for Palousitics to have the biggest impact of anybody in the state.

There are also groups you can join at Team 129. There is already a WSU Cougs for Rossi group, a Young Republicans for Rossi group, a Farmers for Rossi group, a Washington Businesses for Dino, and a Whitman County for Rossi group. But we should get a 9th District and Pullman group going and maybe a WSU College Republicans group as well.

Congrats to All; Palousitics is #1 Again

If you pay attention to the little BlogNetNews widget on the sidebar, you will have noticed that Palousitics is the #1 most influential political blog in Washington again this week. My thanks to all the "Forbes Gang" for helping make this possible.

Speaking of the "Forbes Gang," note that BlogNetNews has added some more categories to their influence index. One of these is for the most inluential conerative blog. Our own Mike Costello's blog The Pajamahadin is #3, with Palousitics at #4, no doubt thanks to Mike's excellent writing skills.

BNN also now has a 12-week rolling average, in which Palousitics is #5. Considering the big-time Puget Sound political blogs that places us with, that's pretty humbling.

Remember Rule #1 of Murphy's Rules of Combat: "If the enemy is in range, so are you." As we grow in influence and effectiveness, we will draw fire from the opposition. Recent events have proven that to be true. Take these as awards for a job well done and motivation to keep on doing what we have been doing.

Wal*Mart and the Forbes Gang Rule!

Just received this from a regular Palousitics reader. Very funny! Thanks!! I plan on getting a lot of use out of that sign making website.

Top Palousitics Stories for Second Quarter 2008

The year is half over, and the second quarter of 2008 saw record breaking unique visitor and page view numbers for Palousitics, thanks in part to April's multi-site linked post on global warming.

We also had yet another Googlelanche concerning the Obamessiah, as folks nationwide searched to see whether the widespread e-mail Barenjager posted about Obama's National Anthem stance was true or not (it's not.)

And, even better, it's not all about me blathering all the time. For the first time ever, not one of the top five posts was authored by yours truly. My goal has always been to build a truly community blog where many conservative voices from the Palouse and Eastern Washington could be heard.

1. Purposeful Manipulation of Temperature Data or Poor Practice? by April E. Coggins
2. Obama Explains National Anthem Stance by Barenjager
3. Seattle's Patriotism by Michael
4. An Inconvenient Truth: Global Temperatures Continue To Plummet by Michael
5. Another Giant Palouse Earthworm Found - In Chelan County? by Michael

Palunchitics Wrap-Up

Those of you who couldn't make it today missed a great Palunchitics. As Scotty mentioned previously, Moscow-Pullman Daily News managing editor Steve McClure was gracious enough to stop by the Hilltop this afternoon and chat with us over lunch about our local newspaper. We touched on many subjects, including:

- The new printing press
- The size of the paper and newsprint
- The economic issues facing the Daily News
- Fact checking, plagiarism and columnists
- The Washington Post's proposed "hyper-local" coverage
- The struggles of big city newspapers and the success of small town ones.
- The possibility of a Sunday edition
- The new Washington cell phone law
- The balance between Pullman and Moscow coverage
- The tricks sometimes required to confirm stories or getting to the facts (such as Hillary Hamm's exposing of the PARD serial lie about not receiving union support)
- Editorial consensus, or the lack thereof, on certain issues
- The Associated Press' heavyhanded attempts at copyright enforcement
- The future of the Daily News, both print and web versions

This is not the first time Steve has visited with us. He attended the first Palousitics blogfest back in December 2006.

While I certainly don't agree with the Daily News on every issue (anonymous commenting and lack of comments moderation on Dnews.com being my biggest gripe,) I think Steve is a good guy and that the Daily News is overall pretty centrist and does the best it can with very limited resources.

We are trying to line up a local elected official for the August Palunchitics. Stay tuned.

1st Lunch Guest

This afternoon's lunch was another great success. We invited our first guest, Steve McClure the managing editor of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News. We had a chance to talk about the new press, the format of the newspaper, the stories they cover, and many other newspaper related items.

We had a lot of good laughs and a great time getting a chance to ask the burning questions. McClure was gracious with our questions and was great to talk with. Tom Forbes had a camera and I am sure he will be posting more information from his perspective that we all love to hear as well as a photo or two.

I am looking forward to future guests and more time spent with the readers and writers of Palousitics.com!

Lunch TODAY!

DATE: 07/09/08
TIME: 12:00 NOON
WHERE: Hilltop Restaurant, 920 NW Olsen, (at corner of Wawawai Road and Davis Way), Pullman
WHO: EVERYONE!

With 4th of July and my travels, I am very late in posting the lunch invitation to EVERYONE in Palousitics land. Tomorrow I have scheduled a guest to have lunch with us and answer questions and talk a little about the newspaper industry.

Please let me know by replying here or e-mailing me if you plan on coming. crier@cityofpullman.com. I would like to give the Hilltop an idea of the number of people who will be coming.

"Change comes through education, not tax"

Brilliant Town Crier column in today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News from our very own Scotty Anderson. Very classy, Scotty, mentioning Don Pelton. I'd love to see some kind of memorial to him on Bishop Blvd. He did as much as anybody to see the growth there happen.

Stay tuned for my response to Mr. Civil Discourse's ludicrous attempt at recreating East Berlin on the Palouse.

Though I am thankful the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the right to keep and bear arms, I am disappointed that it even had to go to the Supreme Court.

There have been many laws that have assaulted the right to keep and bear arms. Many of the laws are advocated by people exercising their First Amendment rights to trample on Second Amendment rights, when it is because of the Second Amendment rights we have been able to secure the First Amendment rights.

When someone thinks back to the time when America was getting organized and people were fighting and dying to make this country work, you can't help but realize some of the issues we face today pale in comparison.

One such issue is a Seattle-like mandatory 20-cent tax added to each and every plastic bag someone uses when shopping at a Pullman-area store. To think that people have enough time on their hands to petition the government to tax its citizens even more is embarrassing when compared to the founding of a nation.

On the other hand, there is a group of individuals who wear a pager day and night ready to drop what they're doing to help someone in need. Sometimes at 3 a.m. these volunteer firefighters are needed to clean up somebody else's tragedy.

Several times a year I see people standing outside of local grocery stores volunteering their time to collect food for the food bank. Others volunteer hundreds of man-hours to put together the Fourth of July celebration at Sunnyside Park.

In their own way all these people are giving up something of their own in order to make our community a better place. In all cases what they give up is time. In some cases these volunteers also give up their own money to help pay for materials or gas to get around. They give up a good night's sleep, and when asked to do it again, they do.

In their own way each of the volunteers is helping to make our community safer, more comfortable, and more fun. Our community is a better place because of these people.

Those petitioning the Pullman City Council to make grocers charge 20 cents per plastic bag used at the store probably think they're helping to make our community a better place.

A recent article in the Daily News mentioned someone seeing 22 plastic bags on College Hill, but there was no mention of an effort to clean them up.

It was suggested that residents start to carry reusable bags and use those instead of plastic bags. No one, however, has volunteered to hand out these shopping bags.

It is argued that we shouldn't view the proposal as elitist, instead we are showing respect and care for our community. But no one is standing in front of the stores to educate people.

It is suggested that we can use the new tax to donate the money to the local food bank or help pay for community improvements.

I would like to see this group of people go to the community and try to change their habits through education. Educating people is better than forcing the government to tax its citizens.

Some people see a need and they volunteer their time, their sleep, and their money to the cause. Others see a need and they want to use the strong arm of government regulation to further the cause.

Why stop at charging for plastic bags? Maybe there should be a tax on glass bottles, aluminum cans, and even "keg" cups. That tax could be used to clean up the broken glass, empty aluminum cans, and keg cups that litter some of the streets in Pullman. This may seem far-fetched, but I would wager targeting plastic bottles is the next item on the list.

Is this group of citizens using Seattle as inspiration? If so, the city of Seattle is no longer buying plastic water bottles. How long until that is proposed in Pullman?

Final thoughts: Don Pelton - the Pullman Alliance for Responsible Development is done holding Pullman hostage and Wal-Mart's coming. I wish you were here to see it.

T-85 goes the countdown.

The Blog Heard Round the World

Congratulations are definitely due to April! Her post "Purposeful Manipulation of Temperature Data or Poor Practice?" was picked up initially by Tom Nelson, Watt's Up With That, Icecap, and then the mother of all global warming skeptic blogs, Junk Science. Now, it's being linked at big-time conservative blog Little Green Footballs.

April's post is already the most linked in Palousitics history and is well on its way to being the most viewed ever.

Welcome Cav!

Please welcome Cav, who just made his first thought-provoking post below. I think it is imperative that we as conservatives start thinking about how we can rebuild the Reagan Coalition.

As a child of the 70s, I see many parallels between now and then: an energy crisis, high gas prices, national disaffection following a long and frustrating war, fears of impending environmenal catastrophe, bad music, etc. Remember, it took Jimmy Carter to get us Ronald Reagan. And it will take Obama (or McCain to a lesser extent) to get us a new conservative leader like Reagan, be it Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin, or whoever. In the meantime, our conservative values will have to be stored with care, and love, for better times.

Cav is a former Central Washington University College Republicans president and still lives in Ellensburg, which in many ways is Pullman's sister city. I am very glad to get some more Eastern Washington voices on the blog (and yes, I'm including you over there in Walla Walla, Paul.)

In the Third Year of the Palousitics Revolution

Three years ago today when I started this blog, I wanted two things: Dino Rossi in the Governor's Mansion in Olympia and a Wal-Mart Supercenter under construction in Pullman.

God willing, I'll see both of those things happen by next January.

From its humble beginning, I'd like to think Palousitics' now nearly two dozen contributors have played an important role in recent events on the Palouse, such as:

Taking the WSU College Republicans' fight to promote free speech and expose racism, intolerance, and lack of academic diversity at WSU to a local, regional, and national audience. Ed Weber,the director of WSU's Foley Institute recently apologized to conservatives for kow-towing to the "hegemony of the left-leaning liberal viewpoint" and promised more conservative speakers on campus.

Arguably the most pro-growth Pullman City Council and Whitman County Board of Commissioners in recent times.

According to PARD's latest screed in the Daily News "unfairly and personally attacking" the millions of Wal-Mart haters in Pullman and forcing them into anonymity and silence. In actuality, many of the silent majority of Wal-Mart supporters have found the courage to speak out, prompting Wal-Mart officials to comment that, other than the PARDners, they have been overwhelmed with the positive response they have received in Pullman.

Since I started Palousitics, I have been interviewed by the New York Times, been a guest on a Seattle radio talk show, co-hosted a Pullman talk radio show, met Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott, rubbed elbows with members of the international mainstream media, seen Palousitics ranked as one of Washington's most influential political blogs, and most importantly of all, spoken at a troop support rally for our local National Guard troops deploying to Iraq. I always tell people that I never know from day-to-day what new thing blogging will bring.

But April pointed something out to me recently that made me the proudest I have been yet of this blog. It was a long, rambling, self-pitying, paranoid history of the Hawkins development in the corridor written from Queen Nancy's perspective.

In it, she blames the foiling of her efforts to stop Hawkins, in part, on:

political will and the public’s patience waned in the face of a publicity campaign that unfairly and inaccurately depicted Moscow as meddlesome, unreasonable, anti-business, greedy, and mean-spirited.

As I am not aware of any other "publicity campaign" that depicted Moscow as "meddlesome, unreasonable, anti-business, greedy, and mean-spirited" other than what we waged here at Palousitics, I'm more than happy to take credit for it.

The little blog that took on an out-of-control city government to bring millions of sales tax dollars to Whitman County.

An Army of Davids indeed.....Happy Third Blogiversary to all you Palousitics contributors and readers.

Ode to June 10, 2008

With apologies to Sweet Baby James:

Oohhhh, I've seen fire, and I've seen Dino.
I've seen snowy days in June and a winter that would never end.
I've seen glorious times when a Wal-Mart building permit was finally a go,
But I'll see you all at lunch tomorrow, one more time again.

Good night Pullman, we love you!!

Palousitics Being Picked Up By Accuweather

Go to the Accuweather.com website, enter the local weather forecast and there's a local news section, two of the four listed as of 3:36 PM, May 29, 2008 are from Palousitics.

I don't know how long Accuweather's links last, but you can see Palousitics here and here.

On To Richmond

I'm flying out early tomorrow morning for Richmond, VA. My oldest daughter is transferring to WSU. That's right, I'm now officially a

COUG DAD !!!!!!!

something that came up recently while discussing buying Jimmy Buffett tickets. That will be a great first Dad's Weekend for me.

I'm really looking forward to the Father-Daughter cross-country road trip. Most of next week, we will be driving her car over to Pullman through flyover country. Depending on the gods of wireless, I'll try to check in with a few updates from the land of the bitter white people.

Have a happy and safe Memorial Day everyone.

Hymenoptera Counter-Attack!

Hiker Falls 200 Feet After Bee Attack

PHOENIX -- A hiker who went off a South Mountain trail Monday was attacked by a swarm of bees before falling 200 feet into a ravine, Phoenix firefighters said.

The man, who is in his early 30s, was hiking alone around 5:30 p.m. when he left the trail to hike up a gully and was ambushed by hundreds of bees.

"He was waving his shirt and then he was actually just full of bees," said hiker Ken MacKenzie, who witnessed the incident.

When the hiker tried to escape the bees, he fell.

Clearly, we must step up our efforts!

Monthly Lunch on Wednesday

Details: Hilltop, Wednesday May 14th, High Noon!
Who: ANYONE AND EVERYONE!!!

Please let me know via e-mail (crier@cityofpullman.com) or post a comment on here about your attendance. I would like to have an idea of the number of people to give to the Hilltop.

I am trying to align a guest "speaker" for this lunch but I just came up with the idea. I thought from now on, I would try to align a guest for each lunch. It would be an informal meeting, just as we have been doing, meeting, chatting, and telling stories. But we would also get a chance to hear information on some Palouse area topic of interest from "the horses mouth".

Top Palousitics Stories for First Quarter 2008

It's hard to believe the year is going by so quickly. It's already time again for the top Palousitics stories for the first quarter of 2008.

1. Barack Obama Headquarters, Houston, Texas by Michael (this was our first Googlelanche.)
2. Dino Rossi Must Scare the Living Hell Out of the Democrats by Tom Forbes
3. The Washington State GOP Responds to Rossi Attack Ads by Tom Forbes
4. Harvard Study: The Mainstream Media Are Killing Our Troops by Michael
5. Klaatu Barada Nikto Globala Warmingo by Tom Forbes

Political Blogger Roundtable

On Monday, April 14 from 10-11 AM, I will be participating in a political bloggers’ roundtable on Weekday with Steve Scher on KUOW 94.9 FM National Public Radio in Seattle.

We will talk about a variety of state and national issues, including:

The 2008 Washington governor's race

What to expect with the new state primary system

The presidential race – the Pennsylvania primary, superdelegates, both Democrat’s chances vs. McCain

Other legislative races: Burner-Reichert, Hastings-Fearing, state legislature…

State transportation woes – any solutions on the horizon?

You can listen live to streaming audio of the broadcast at www.kuow.org. Podcasts are also available if you miss the live broadcast.

Confirmed Guests:

David Goldstein is founder and blogger-in-chief of HorsesAss.Org. He came up with the name of the blog as a way to describe anti-taxman Tim Eyman. Goldstein also blogs at Huffington Post and Daily Kos. He lives in Seattle. (studio-confirmed)

Eric Earling is a contributing editor at Sound Politics. He describes himself as an "outside-the-box conservative thinker." He's got a day job as Deputy Regional Representative in the U.S. Department of Education's Seattle office. He lives near Lynnwood. (studio-confirmed)

Tom Forbes blogs at Palousitics. He is active in the Whitman County Republican Party and was Mike Huckabee's county campaign manager. He's lived in Pullman for ten years, and is a computer programmer/analyst by day. (via phone)

(10:20-10:25) Liz Burlingame [BURLing-game] blogs at SeattlePoliticore. She spent four days on Chris Gregoire's campaign bus last week. She just graduated from the University of Washington with a journalism degree and lives in Seattle. [via phone]

I'll also be live blogging (which should be interesting while I'm on the phone.)

Lunch on Wednesday

Our monthly lunch will be held on Wednesday at noon at the Hilltop. If you could hit me with an E-mail letting me know who is coming and how many you're bringing so I can give the Hilltop a heads up to our numbers. Hope to see lots of you all again!

You can e-mail me at crier@cityofpullman.com.