Maryannaville™

If you’re in Louisiana anywhere south of about Alexandria, now is the time to start packing. You might be able to stick around until Saturday night or possibly until Sunday morning to see if it turns, but from what I understand, doing that is pushing your luck. If you’re actually in New Orleans you should leave now regardless.

Lousiana SPCA is closed to the public in preparation for Hurricane Gustav. [USA Today]

Related:
Evacuations continue [NOLA.com]

There is no mystery to happiness.

“Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn — or worse, indifference — cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they live each day within a shroud of yesterdays. The happy man does not look back. He doesn’t look ahead. He lives in the present.”

Here’s the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning — the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life — a man must re-inhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them.

*Jed Rubenfeld, “The Interpretation of Murder”

Related:
Stop repeating the past:10 Ways to Break Away From Repetition Compulsion

Sacramento: State and local law enforcement should not arrest state qualified patients who possess, cultivate, or travel with medical marijuana, according to new guidelines issued this week by the California Attorney General’s office.

According to the guidelines, authorized patients and primary caregivers may possess up to eight ounces of dried marijuana, and may maintain no more than six mature plants or 12 immature plants, unless a doctor recommends more. However, a recent decision by California’s 4th District Court of Appeals determined that legislators could not legally impose limits on the amount of medical cannabis patients may possess. State Attorney General Jerry Brown is appealing the decision.

The guidelines encourage patients to participate in the California Department of Public Health’s registration program to obtain a medical marijuana identification card. Currently, the cities of San Diego and San Bernardino are challenging the legality of the ID-card program.

Under the new guidelines, the distribution and non-profit sales of medical cannabis is permitted by qualified “collectives and cooperatives.” By contrast, the guidelines warn that ‘storefront’ business that engage in the for-profit sales of medical marijuana “are likely operating outside the protections” of state law.

“We are not going to harass legitimate clubs,” Brown said. “[But we will] target … those clubs that are part of a larger criminal operation.”

Full text of the Attorney General’s guidelines.

For more information, please contact Keith Stroup, NORML Legal Counsel, at (202) 483-5500, or Dale Gieringer, CA NORML Coordinator, at (415) 563-5858.

Editors note: We’ll see how this mop flops…

“The United States is in the second inning of a recession that will last for at least 18 months and help kill off hundreds of banks, influential economist and New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini told Barron’s in Sunday’s edition.”
Read on…

“What a terrible time this is to be a Christian. The churches have failed and betrayed us, and the ministry preaches hate and murder. If there is a sane and reasoning voice in the Christian church today it is sadly silent.”
*Francois Auguste Rene Rodin
Nov 12, 1840-Nov 17, 1917