Ok then! Cherry City sounds great.

From the Salem Public Library newsletter, sponsored by the Friends of Salem Public Library:

Q. Salem is sometimes called the Cherry City. How did it get this nickname, and has Salem had other nicknames as well?

A. According the Salem History Database (www.salemhistory.net), cherries have been grown in and around Salem ever since Henderson Lewelling introduced the trees to the area in the 1850s, and the first Cherry Fair, sponsored by the Salem Elks Lodge, took place in 1903.

Over the years, many other nicknames have been bestowed, but none have had the sticking power of The Cherry City. Joseph Nathan Kane’s Nicknames and Sobriquets of U.S. Cities, States and Counties (R 910.3 Kane) lists The City of Orderly Growth, The Charmed Land of Unequalled Beauty, and The Happy City Life as just a few of the nicknames Salem has held.

The City of Autosprawl Blight and Rapacious Developers just doesn't have that same ring . . .

Will Rogers's ghost writes from the present about the GOP takeover

Image via WikipediaKenneth Chapman
Astoria

Seen around

"The trouble with internet quotes is that you can never be sure they're accurate.
-- Abraham Lincoln.

A serious message for the Dems

Possibly NSFW, depending on where you W.

What a hoot: The Weather via A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Click photo to get your Star Wars weather

Maybe President "Big Coal" Pelton will introduce the speaker!

Too funny -- a philosopher speaking at Willamette U. law school to inquire about whether we have any obligation to the future. Maybe Willamette President M. Lee "Big Coal" Pelton -- who sits in a very comfortable chair on the board of PGE, Oregon's top polluter and greenhouse gas emitter -- will introduce her and stay to argue that, no, our only obligation is to maximize the return to our shareholders (since that is, after all, PGE's position).

Word: Bill Maher nails it

Image by jamestraceur via Flickr

Update the Second: Oh. My. God. This must be like Totally Righteous Anger day. Awesome.

Update: The always-excellent "Reality Based Community" has a modest recommendation for the USDA: For Christ's sake, do your goddamn job for once instead of sucking up to Big Meat, you gutless sacks of offal (paraphrasing a little).

Bill Maher, on fire:

New Rule: If America can't get its act together, it must lose the bald eagle as our symbol and replace it with the YouTube video of the puppy that can't get up. As long as we're pathetic, we might as well act like it's cute. I don't care about the president's birth certificate, I do want to know what happened to "Yes we can." Can we get out of Iraq? No. Afghanistan? No. Fix health care? No. Close Gitmo? No. Cap-and-trade carbon emissions? No. The Obamas have been in Washington for ten months and it seems like the only thing they've gotten is a dog.

Well, I hate to be a nudge, but why has America become a nation that can't make anything bad end, like wars, farm subsidies, our oil addiction, the drug war, useless weapons programs - oh, and there's still 60,000 troops in Germany - and can't make anything good start, like health care reform, immigration reform, rebuilding infrastructure. Even when we address something, the plan can never start until years down the road. Congress's climate change bill mandates a 17% cut in greenhouse gas emissions... by 2020! Fellas, slow down, where's the fire? Oh yeah, it's where I live, engulfing the entire western part of the United States!

We might pass new mileage standards, but even if we do, they wouldn't start until 2016. In that year, our cars of the future will glide along at a breathtaking 35 miles-per-gallon. My goodness, is that even humanly possible? Cars that get 35 miles-per-gallon in just six years? Get your head out of the clouds, you socialist dreamer! "What do we want!? A small improvement! When do we want it!? 2016!"

When it's something for us personally, like a laxative, it has to start working now. My TV remote has a button on it now called "On Demand". You get your ass on my TV screen right now, Jon Cryer, and make me laugh. Now! But when it's something for the survival of the species as a whole, we phase that in slowly.

Folks, we don't need more efficient cars. We need something to replace cars. That's what's wrong with these piddly, too-little-too-late half-measures that pass for "reform" these days. They're not reform, they're just putting off actually solving anything to a later day, when we might by some miracle have, a) leaders with balls, and b) a general populace who can think again. Barack Obama has said, "If we were starting from scratch, then a single-payer system would probably make sense." So let's start from scratch.

Even if they pass the shitty Max Baucus health care bill, it doesn't kick in for 4 years, during which time 175,000 people will die because they're not covered, and about three million will go bankrupt from hospital bills. We have a pretty good idea of the Republican plan for the next three years: Don't let Obama do anything. What kills me is that that's the Democrats' plan, too. . . . .

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-if-america-cant_b_299383.html

Candorville: How insurance companies work (deadly . . . accurate)

A documentary on homeopathy

Ouch, so true: How to be cruel to old guys

This sexist filth isn't funny at all. Also.

Standing up for those who can't stand up for themselves

Will Farrell and friends stand up for the real victims of the health insurance debate: insurance company executives.

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Good luck with that

Image by terriem via Flickr

zuchini for sale (turner)

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Date: 2009-08-03, 10:07AM PDT
Reply to: sale-3b5xb-1303490477@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}

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i have lots of zuchini for sale. 25 cents ea or 5 for a $1

Pretty soon it will be the time of year when people keep even their old beaters locked, just to prevent people from putting zucchinis in them.