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25,000 Body Bags Ready In Louisiana
In Louisiana 25,000 body bags are now on hold for victims of Hurricane Katrina and last week's devastating flood. The actual death toll remains unknown but officials saying they are preparing for the worst. A temporary warehouse morgue in rural St. Gabriel that had been prepared to take 1,000 bodies is being readied to handle 5,000. Earlier this week New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin predicted up to 10,000 people died in New Orleans alone. A website set up by the Red Cross lists more than 117,000 names of people who have not been located. The majority of the people on the list are presumed to be alive and displaced to other cities.

the above is from democracy now! while elaine was filling in here, she and mike were both hitting hard on making sure people knew about democracy now.

i'm really not sure what to say tonight. that's party due to a huge disappointment. i spoke with c.i. on the phone about it and c.i. said 'when it's that kind of trash i don't even feel bad for not spotlighting it.'

see there's a blogger who seems pissed off at the world that he has had to leave his repeated 'it all began 7 years ago.' it's become his only point of reference.

he can't be bothered with anything beyond the borders of the united states, even when the united states is at war. and now he's pissed that he has to deal with hurricane katrina. pissed because he had to cancel a topic he wanted to do but he didn't feel it was getting enough attention.

so now he's spent two days at war with atrios. using words like 'fucker.'

and he's waving the white panther flag today.

it's like the 1st time bob dylan went jewish.

you just scratch your head and wonder what the hell is going on.

he's gone from pooh-pahing ap photos last week because, as elaine said to me, he lacks the insight to leave his own tiny frame of reference. now he's on a 1 man anti-affirmative-action program.

he wastes everyone's time. more so than when he goes off yacking about sports. i spoke to everyone at the third estate sunday review today. dona says he needs to get over the fact that he didn't invent the fucking wheel. i agree.

jim says that anything beyond al gore and bill clinton is beyond him and he's embarrassing himself on his self-destruct tangent. 'a great short stop doesn't make a great pitcher,' jim said.

jess said, 'where has he been on the war? he's not done a damn thing. he's wasted all of our time tsk-tsking over a statement here or a statement there about al or bill. he's like that character in sunset blvd.'

norma desmond?

jess: right. times moved on but he didn't. he's useless and he's made himself useless. he comes off like a sexist and i noticed that he finally noted african-americans wednesday as he worked his way through slamming them. maybe he can suck up to norah o'donnell again? i mean talk about no balls. only an idiot wouldn't have grasped the compromising position she put herself in with that party. and only a hypocrite would have refused to tackle it and ignored her sloppy reporting year after year just because she once defended al gore. he plays favorites and pretends he's this 'call it like it is' guy. he's never addressed what matt cooper did. he never will.
he plays favorites.

i asked ava her opinion and she said she was speaking for herself but obviously influenced by c.i. since they had spoken at length about the problems with that person for some time. ava's opinion is that he now spends too much time trying to get attention. 'he surfs the web looking at other posts before he can write his own these days. and he does those annoying butt pats to his buddies. it's disgusting. he was a leader now he just reacts each day and today was the last straw for me, i need a break after the vile bile he hurled. he has no grasp of anything these days and just sits around screaming 'not true' over and over.'

if you're wondering who i am talking about i could name him. i won't because i know that as disappointed as i am, c.i.'s even more so.

the blogger is trashing his reputation now, disgracing himself, with each entry.

i asked c.i. if any of this would pop up at the common ills but c.i. said it's too disappointing and also that the blogger in question loves a pissing match. c.i.: 'rebecca, i know his work. i've read it all. if he started something up, i wouldn't high road it because the community wouldn't stand for it. and it would be the most hurtful in the world for him right now because is ego is so damaged that if anyone who knew the work addressed it on a critical level, he'd be destroyed. i'm just going to ignore him and pray he gets through this phase.'

all quotes in this are with permission.

so i asked ty what he thought and ty said he thought the guy didn't know enough black people if he knew any. he said the guy's insensitivity is disgusting. ty said the site was good for a white centered site that never passed a chance to slam women.

he never has praise for women. he's started to offer some. after a roundtable. i'm not saying the roundtable caused it. i'm saying that it didn't happen until the after the roundtable.

when he did his thing and made his name he was the only game in town that mattered. now there are some new gun slingers and he feels the need to waste everyone's time taking them on.
he's a in a dick size contest and he's proving himself to be the supreme dick lately.

i feel like i'm watching cat ballou in real time. c.i.'s jane fonda just sure that somehow lee marvin will pull himself out of the drunken haze and swoop into the save the day. i don't have that kind of faith.

but here are some tips for him if he's going to continue down the ill advised road he's on. start linking to these people you give shout outs too. if you're going to whore yourself like that, go all the way. make a blog roll. maybe that way they'll praise you even more.

here's another tip. richard pryor knew how to denoate a curse word for emphasis and humor. you, sir, are no richard pryor.

he's gone from a supernova to a cranky william safire. it's depressing.

i called gina and she was enraged. she said he's disgusting. before she just felt the site wasn't for her because she's an african-american woman. the attacks on wednesday, the same ones that jess noted, convinced her that not only is the site not for her, it is actively against her.

gina: i can take a contrarian voice. i like alexander cockburn and i often disagree with him. but i can't take this white man posing as the last voice of truth who has set himself on a mission to minimize a very real tragedy.

she and krista have an editorial on this in tomorrow's round-robin.

c.i.'s attitude is that there's always a place at the table for this blogger, provided he shows up sober. when he's acting like he is, the dinner party will go on without him.

the thing is, he's going to find a lot of people aren't going to be like c.i. most people are in the process of writing him off for good.

he was already coming off a very weak patch before he started the latest embarrassments.

now if he was like me and just thought 'fuck it i don't give a shit' that would be fine. but he's so clearly trying to impress the new gun slingers (notice he only notes men, just like in his commentary on meet the press and other useless nonesense).

was that harsh? well his old game was to write about a certain segment to be noticed by them. now he applies that to the web.

in the meantime, as ruth has noted, he's ignored npr. morning edition has 12 million listeners. how many viewers does fox news have? how many viewers does meet the press have?

the whole purpose was supposed to be exposing the lies of the press. but he's had no interest in taking on npr until he did that ridiculous, sexist, agist slam on diane rehm.

he says he takes on the clowns. but he lets james carville and mary matalin get away with their crap year after year. want to choose 2 pundits who've dumbed down the discourse - go with those two. they've made it all about their own marital woes as they play, to steal from c.i., the sonny & cher of this decade. it's disgusting, it's stupid. and james never fights back. but blogger doesn't call him on that because blogger plays favorites.

yesterday he built on argument on something he knew nothing about. c.i. knew the e-mails would come in and when the entry was read to c.i. over the phone, there was an attempt to write a response. it didn't work out. (i'm guessing because c.i. tried to high road it.) so the evening was c.i., ava and jess going through over 1400 e-mails and jess says over 1/2 mentioned that shitty 'logic.'

so let me speak to all community members. are you listening? if c.i.'s not spotlighing this blogger, there's a reason. if you read the blogger on your own and are angry, take it up with the blogger. don't ask c.i. or complain to c.i.

i'd asked c.i. to call me last night. so as soon as c.i. got out of a strategy meeting, my phone was ringing. we talked, i'll get to that in a moment, and c.i. was so excited because there was a plan to get in bed before 10. (c.i.'s been going to sleep after 1 in the morning every night this week and then rising a few hours later.)

the community was in an uproar over this blogger.

c.i. didn't get to bed by ten. c.i. ended up with less than 3 hours of sleep again. so either take the problem up with the blogger or just ignore him. but don't push it off on c.i.

it's not fair if you think about it. c.i.'s not spotlighting him. the posts that made you angry did not get linked to at the common ills.

you have every right to be angry but this is the sort of thing that will lead to the end of the common ills. a) no 1 can devote the time that's being asked. b) c.i. still has hope that kid sheleen can get on the wagon and shoot straight again. c.i. is as disappointed as you are, more.

when i wrote about this blogger last time, i told you all that c.i. felt he was under attack and c.i. wouldn't join in that. you got your statement last night. let it go now.

last night, c.i. spoke for the community as you wanted.

let's all let c.i. have a life now.

jim and dona and i have been especially vocal on this but i'll note it again, if you're unhappy, write your own thing. it will go up. quit asking c.i. to speak for you.

this morning, when i spoke to a very tired c.i., i asked if there were any hopes for future posts at the common ills? c.i. wants to write 1. there's a funny comment in there. i laughed when i heard it. that needs to be said, the joke and the rest of it. but when you're writing and saying, 'c.i. he can't get away with this!' and beseeching c.i. to speak for the community, you're cheating yourself out of something.

i believe c.i.'s already noted the trip to d.c. at the end of the month. i'll be going to participate in the protests as well. but c.i. hoped to have some entries saved to draft this week and that's not happened. last time when c.i. went to d.c. to protest the inaugurartion, there were drafts in advance. there was kat pitching in on those days with new posts and c.i. just did the 1st post of the mornig on the new york times.

kat's going to the protests as well. she's not going to be able to fill in. no 1 is because quite frankly, we're all going.

i've suggested folding star. fs would probably do it and fs would do a great job. but folding star shut down a winding road and c.i. doesn't think it's fair to ask for that reason.

but here's my point. you may end up with the site going dead. you'll get your morning entry. that may be all you get during that weekend. so it's really time to stop complainging about things that are not even highlighted at the site.

before anyone starts wondering, the plan is for a third estate sunday review to still go up. and everyone's tossing out ideas for that right now. ideally, we'll all be able to participate since we'll be in d.c. and a number of us will have laptops. but there are going to be a lot of activities and we're all trying to figure out how we can pull of the edition for that weekend.

now at the same time, c.i. is determined to keep the common ills up and active. that will only happen if c.i.'s not dealing with nonsense. and to write c.i. about what blogger is saying is nonsense.

they are the ramblings of a drunken, aged gun fighter who has lost his glory.

write that blogger if you want to discuss your problem. or write something to go up at the common ills.

but quit pushing it off on c.i. there's too much already going on.

this was supposed to be the week of the confirmation hearings. one way or another, by now it would all be over. ava, elaine and c.i. have given so much time to mobilizing and getting the word out on that. this was supposed to be a return to a quieter phase. that didn't happen. the hearings start next week. and there's not time to deal with a blogger who's determined to destroy himself on top of every other issue c.i.'s addressing.

about the call last night. i kept thinking about a mention c.i. had made about a new site and thought, why the suspense? i thought elaine was mentioned, is she starting a blog? when i spoke to c.i. (whose entire meal that day consisted of a bag of funyons eaten on the run), i asked and was told elaine had started a blog already.

that's why her site was on my blogroll last night.

i'm very happy she started. i'm not mad that i was in the dark. when elaine's brother came back, he's in banking and had been out of the country for 18 months at that point, i let the cat out of the bag about the surprise party elaine had planned. i'm not real good with secrets.

mike deserved the exclusive. everyone seems to have stayed with this site while i was on vacation (smart move) so you obviously enjoyed elaine's writing. (smart people) make sure you check out her site.