Liveblogging as usual, so keep checking back here for updates.  Also follow the #risingtide and #rt4 hashtags on Twitter.

The fourth annual Ashley Morris Award For Excellence In Blogging goes to … American Zombie!  Jacques Morial accepting on behalf of Dambala.

Sinn Fein and Ashe. FYYFF!

Update: Video of Oyster’s introduction and Jacques’s acceptance speech

Liveblogging as usual, so keep checking back here for updates.  Also follow the #risingtide and #rt4 hashtags on Twitter.

You want a citizen journal, you’ve got a citizen journal: Ariella Cohen talks to us about the New Orleans Institute and announces the upcoming Orleans’s own investigative news site: New Orleans Public Record.

Based on The Washington Independent and San Diego Independent News.

Liveblogging as usual, so keep checking back here for updates.  Also follow the #risingtide and #rt4 hashtags on Twitter.

Healthcare panel includes public health Ph.D. candidate and local blogger Holly Scheib, Cecile Tebo, crisis unit coordinator for the NOPD and one of New Orleans magazine’s Top Ten Female Achievers; Dr Elmore Rigamer, medical director of Catholic Charities, moderated by our very own Liprap.

It’s not an exaggeration to show that the nation’s healthcare woes are magnified in New Orleans, especially after Katrina and The Flood.  If there was a time for accessible and affordable community clinics in this city, it is NOW!

Katrina Pain Index 2009:  “0. Number of hospitals in New Orleans providing in-patient mental health care as of September 2009 despite post-Katrina increases in suicides and mental health problems.”

Closure of NOAH = crime against New Orleans.  Cecile Tebo lets us know that these patients will end up in hospitals not in the area.  The mentally-ill also end up in the closed structure of jails to contain problem, where they do not get required treatment.

Loki’s aunt Ninette asks two great questions: What about the health of our first responders?  Also, what about the stressful nature of living in New Orleans, with two or three full pages of obituaries daily as opposed to just one?  Dr. Rigamer invites one and all to the Catholic Charities free care, but it has its limits.  Holly: We get caught up in conversations about access; health is more than access, doctors and medicine.  Where we live, who our neighbors are, what we eat, these community factors are paramount, and the conversation should be broadened to include these factors.  Cecile touts 211 – more New Orleanians need to know about this.  But, an internet search of “New Orleans 211” yields useless information.  As the G-Bitch asks, “Where“s the information? Where are the lists and hours and phone numbers?”

Short-term funding for much-needed clinics eventually runs out.  Continued care is crucial to full recovery.

Q&A: Loki mentions seeing a mental health counselor on returning to New Orleans in late 2005.  This professional had a breakdown while treating Loki and subsequently quit the profession.  (I’m sure it wasn’t Loki who drove this poor person up and over the wall.  Not at all!  :-P)  Similar thing happened to me;  I had to quit my post-K counselor after one or two sessions because it was obvious she needed therapy more than I did.  In and after a crisis situation, it is a back-breaker to be strong for everyone around you.  This is why I personally went with Pistolette‘s self-treatment.  (Hey, it worked in 1991, why not in 2006?)  Not everyone can just snap out of it, however, especially those with pre-existing, chronic, chemical and/or genetic issues and conditions.

Update: Healthcare in this country is broken on the whole, as friend Jenny and I discussed later, and this comes down to what people define as “healthcare.” Definition 1: Not taking care of yourself, be it through lack of education, motivation and/or money, and hitting the ER or Urgent Care facility for an expensive emergency procedure.  Definition 2: Annual physical exam, preventive care, exercise, eating well, education as ongoing armor against illness.  Definition 3: Preventive care mentioned in 2 as well as available, affordable care in case of accident, cancer, childbirth, etc.  A lot of people in New Orleans and America think healthcare is Definition 1, while what we need is people thinking in terms of Definitions 2 and 3, a healthy mix of personal responsibility and a social net.

Liveblogging as usual, so keep checking back here for updates.  Also follow the #risingtide and #rt4 hashtags on Twitter.

Lunch from Café Reconcile was excellent, especially the white beans on rice.  Yummy!  On to the politics panel: Adrastos moderates Clancy Dubos of The Gambit & WWLTV, political cartoonist John Slade, Lamar White of CenLamar and Ethan Brown, journalist and author of Shake The Devil Off.

Thunderous applause for the Mose Jefferson verdict.

On Mose Jefferson conviction – Clancy says Mose conviction more important than Dollar Bill’s; Bill was brain, Mose was the muscle.  John Slade warns against this opportunity to blame Black Machine Politics and says “We can’t cherry pick black people [to throw rocks at].”

Upcoming mayoral election – Clancy: The last time, 72% of voters were not strongly committed to a candidate and that’s how we got Nagin.  “If there ever was a time New Orleans needed a great mayor it is now, Nagin is the worst mayor in 100 years.”; Slade: “Anybody that says, ‘We need to run New Orleans like a business,’ just walk away from that!” (Can I just say John Slade is da bomb? He nails it again and again.)  Lamar White: “need a mayor who’s going to honor and restore integrity because that’s what’s been eroded.”

Public safety platform – Slade not worried about crime, but mental health.  Touches on importance of public-input channel when it comes to decisions like Charity.  Panel split on importance of candidate running on public-safety, anti-crime platform.

Bobby Jindal, good or bad for Louisiana? – Clancy: Bad. He’s making decisions that have nothing to do with Louisiana; John Slade: “Jindal’s a Rhodes Scholar, he’s got to have taken a geology class.  He got re-elected because there a lot of people in North Louisiana who hate New Orleans.”  Lamar: “Hindsight is 20/20, but knowing what I know now, Blanco would have been a much more effective leader for the state.” Ethan: “Whatever is in [the Republican interest] is not in your interest.  Anything that’s for the public good, they’re against, that’s what the modern Republican party is about.”

On David Vitter: Did Adrastos just put Keith Richards and David Vitter in the same sentence, even if he refers to Vitter as the human cockroach?  Blasphemy!  And did Slade just croon “Love to love you, baby?!”  What is happening here?  Lamar: The state Democratic party is completely broken.  “Now [Mary Landrieu] doesn’t need/have the party’s permission to vote how she wants to vote.”  Ethan: “Vitter is a real political animal.  My wife got a Vitter robocall inviting her to the anti-ObamaCare meeting.”  [Note: David Vitter sent an invite to a Louisiana anti-ObamaCare meeting to my OHIO ADDRESS. Tell me taxpayer money wasn’t used there.]

On Anh Joseph Cao: Slade doesn’t feel that he is a one-timer and isn’t going to represent the district well.  Especially when he puts personal “moral” ticks over healthcare for all.

Q&A: James Perry may be the sleeper mayoral candidate but Clancy thinks he’s got to raise some serious money and people’s support.  Cliff raises a good point in his question about undue media influence: Does the media follow public opinion or vice versa? Panel ends with discussion of everyone running for (major) office in Louisiana right now.

Thank you, panelists, for a most lively time!

Update 1: I’m just not in the mood or right frame of mind (sleep-deprived) to take offense at anything right now, but John Slade referring to Bobby Jindal as Haji doesn’t sit right with me.  Overall he’s a very funny, erudite guy who did a fine job on the panel and there is a fine line between comedy and slur, art and blasphemy, free speech and bad taste (and I occasionally refer to myself as a dothead, mostly when people ask me what kind of Indian I am), but it’s like calling a black person Sambo or Shaneekwa, ok?

Update 2: John Slade offers an apology.