I’m back.

I got in last night after a long day in airports via Baton Rouge and Atlanta, and I’m decompressing right now. I’m taking a couple days off from work, and I’m not writing yet. It’s turned out to be a much more complicated emotional journey than I expected, and I really need some time to process what I’ve been through. ARC mental health staff who interviewed me during outprocessing said it’s normal, and that I will be working through a grieving period that could last a long time. In addition, the work was physically exhausting, and I came down with strep throat while I was there. I had no internet access, and hardly any access to news of the rest of the world, which was probably a blessing, given what was already on my agenda. Right now, away from the work and the situation and able to finally let down my defenses, I’m surprised to discover that despite a day off Friday and a day to outprocess Saturday, I’m exhausted physically and mentally, and operating on about 20% of my usual brain cells. Everything seems to be happening in slow motion, and a lot of what I’m experiencing doesn’t yet seem real. I cry easily when I talk about the people of New Orleans, and it’s because I fell in love with them. I don’t know HOW I’ll be able to go back to work in this state, but I know I need to go…they are short-handed right now.

I have 205 pictures, and a journal to glean stories from, as well as my own raw memories, so I will be telling quite a few tales soon. In the meantime, I really need to take my own time in getting the stories out, for my own mental well-being. That means I’ll be writing soon, but not tomorrow, or the next day. I don’t know when. Set up an office pool: “Riggsveda will return on-line on “X” date”. But soon. Be patient with me.

• I would like the media to know that I am a very clever person, and I can actually hold two thoughts in my head at the same time. Seriously. That means I want to see stories about both the corrupt, criminal behavior of this administration and their blatant pandering to right wing extremists with their supreme court nomination. Don’t insult my intelligence, or that of every other American, by pretending there’s only room for one story.
• Samuel Alito is a polyp sprouting from the diseased colon of the Republican party. I don’t care if he’s kind to his family, has a wonderful sense of humor, or refrains from branding women with an iron in the shape of an “A”—his political lineage is unambiguous, and that makes him a scabrous chancre not suitable for the office. He’s a last-gasp representative of an absolute failure of an administration, the final ghastly moan of a set of bankrupt political policies that are utterly wrong for our country. He must be opposed. Sign on to MoveOn’s petition.
• Right-wingers, don’t even try to play the game that he’s not going to foster discrimination or that he’s not going to want to overturn Roe v. Wade. He’s the choice of the Dobsons and Delays and Santorums and the rest of the Neandertal wing of the Republican party, so to pretend that he ought to be palatable to progressives is offensively stupid. If you want a rabid wingnut on the court, you’re getting one…so at least be honest enough to admit it rather than acting as if he might harbor a liberal whim or three somewhere in his fossilized brain, and that we ought to therefore support him.
• Democrats, you’d damn well better oppose this guy with every breath in your bodies. You may be outnumbered and your resistance may be futile, but if you aren’t gutsy enough to vote for progressive principles against a scumbag Scalito, don’t ever ask for my vote again. And yeah, I’m looking at you, Russ Feingold. Once was enough, and marshmallows do not constitute appropriate representation of my views.

From the Eugene Register-Guard:

The federal government is retreating from a right-to-know program that allowed residents in neighborhoods all across the country to look up the pollutants emitted by nearby factories.

About one-third of 20,000 major industrial plants nationwide will get relief from paperwork if the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency adopts the proposed rules.

Instead of requiring companies to report their chemical releases to the federal government annually, the schedule would be changed to every other year.

Also, companies would be allowed to emit 10 times more chemicals - up to 5,000 pounds per year - before they reach the threshold where detailed reports are required, compared with 500 pounds under the current rules.

As a result, the federal Toxics Release Inventory - which is available online in an easy-to-use form - would have less detail and more out-of-date information.

EPA officials say the “Burden Reduction Rule” was spurred by business complaints that the reporting requirement was too cumbersome.

Yes, “too cumbersome”. And the extra 4500 pounds of toxics per year each newly unencumbered business can emit, will not be a burden on our lungs, thyroids and other innards. Our greatest wealth, it’s claimed, is our good health. But it’s apparently disposable when poor widdle businesses whine to the Yellowphants.

This, from the folks who claim to be pro-life.

Ten years from now, the Democratic party will look back upon this year as the turning point in their returning to the solid majority party in the United States.

All thanks to the brilliant architect of that transformation: George W. Bush!

I have argued many times that what caused the downfall of the Democrats from default party to the party that only gets elected when the shit hits the fan was their inability to stand up for their principles.

They became so accustomed to just tweaking things to maintain their “majority” status, that they no longer stood for anything. They became a party that took positions on issues as a strategic means of gaining votes, not because those positions reflected core values and principles.

As such, they are now viewed by the public as weak and vacillating. Easily rolled and unprincipled.

It’s an attitudinal stance that