Ed Schultz will host the free clinic along with the National Association of Free Clinics. According to a press release, the free clinics have prevented seven suicides, diagnosed four cases of cancer, and delivered healthcare to over 13,000 uninsured people since 2009.

Schultz also hosted a free clinic in New Orleans in 2010, and has been involved with the community since shortly after Hurricane Katrina, launching the Adopt a Family of Hurricane Katrina Trust Fund. He broadcast live from Gulfport, and raised money on his radio show to directly aid victims of the disaster. He even relocated 20 Katrina survivors to Fargo, ND (his hometown), and helped get them jobs.

The free clinics also underscore the sad state of health care in America. As Schultz points out, many of the people who attend these clinics haven’t been to a doctor in years. People may disagree about how to fix the problem, but there’s little disagreement that Americans shouldn’t have to get sick, or even die, just because they can’t afford not to.

If you wish to donate to the National Association of Free Clinics, you can text the word “HEALTH” to 50555. Each text is a $10 donation.

“Our neighborhood was devastated, but now we have life back in it again,” said a man perched on a ladder against a tree before one of the new Make It Right homes on Tennessee Street. Beside him on the tree was a wreath, inside which was a drawing of a man on the roof of his home, waving an American flag, as inches below there was water, rising. He spoke of his mother and grandmother who had died that day, in their homes – and how they had come together as a community through their losses to rebuild. “That’s the most important thing — and what we want to do this celebration for — is to bring life back to the Lower 9th Ward, and let people know no matter what happens, we ain’t going nowhere. This is our home!” Then the music struck back up again, and the parade began anew. Five years ago, the flood waters would have been at least 10 feet over all of our heads. At least.

You’ll notice that there were about a zillion TV cameras there. If you look closely at this other report, you can espy both me and Bloomberg’s Lizzie O’Leary in the crowd. Forgive the parts where I run up a bit to get a better shot, and forgive the parts where I zoom in excessively on super-cute babies; watch for the part where the TV reporter walks by, doing a stand-up as he walks along with the band. My favorite is the little guy in the orange Mardi Gras chief outfit.

Second Line – Tennessee Street, Lower 9th, Aug. 29, 2010 from Rachel Sklar on Vimeo.

They look great, but — over 4,000 homes were lost five years ago — and Make It Right is building 150. On Tennessee Street and surrounding, the gleaming new homes are rising up, but they are doing so amid vacant lots and in a larger neighborhood where countless homes still stand, empty and broken and boarded-up and decaying. On many, the spray-painted ‘X’ markings from recovery teams is still in sight, with their symbols indicating, among other things, how many bodies were found inside. (I spoke last night with a member of one of those teams, who said that the high water would sometimes carry strange bodies into homes, through open walls and blown-out doors, to be deposited there to be found or, worse, dealt with by whomever might be there to meet it. The flooding of the Lower 9th left scores dead (I’m currently reading 1 Dead In Attic by Times-Picayune writer Chris Rose, whose title comes from the grim yet all-too-common reports from those dark days). I walked around the Lower 9th on Sunday, and realized with a shock that the water would have been probably three times my height, at least; from where I stood on Tennessee Street, with the levee in clear view, two streets away, I can’t see how I could have survived.

We were on Tennessee for a second line street party, where the neighborhood marches along with a brass band, amid lots of clapping, singing and dancing. Afterward a man stood up on a ladder against a tree and hung a wreath, inside which was a drawing of a man on his roof with the waters closing in, waving an American flag. He said that his mother, grandmother and niece were lost on that day, but they were all still here and the Lower 9th would go on. They would rebuild, and they’d never leave. Then the celebration began anew.

Afterward, we drove around the area, away from Tennessee street. It’s back, in terms of families and cars and people living there, but amidst the homes there are those former homes, still left as they were when the waters receded, with decaying wood and crumpled paint and broken windows and boarded-up everything. The video below shows some photos and footage from my visits there — by no means representative of the neighborhood as a whole, but representative of a pretty significant and undeniable element. The neighborhood is standing, and functioning — which is more than can be said for it in the wake of Katrina’s fury, and the levee’s surging waters. But still. Five years later, it’s still there.

There’s more coverage to come from my time in New Orleans, including video interviews with NBC’s Brian Williams and Bloomberg’s Lizzie O’Leary, plus some seriously excellent music from the House of Blues. New Orleans is plenty more than its scars. But they are there. Video below – song is NOLA by Mirah, feat. Thao Nguyen, off the “Dear New Orleans” Katrina 5th-year anniversary benefit album.

*p.s. While I love this song — and the whole “Dear New Orleans” album — I have to just take issue with one line: “It’s not your fault, levee break.” Ponchartrain, hurricane — natural. Levee break — man-made compounding of a natural disaster to horrific proportions. Can’t really let a post about the Lower 9th Ward go without clarifying that.

But that was before Twitter — which we now know to be an instantaneous newsfeed that has upped the speed of the news cycle to warp speed and made it impossible to claim ignorance about what’s going in any given place with even the most spotty AT&T reception. What would the coverage – the information flow – of Katrina have been like in the age of Twitter? Dear New Orleans, a digital benefit album to the city for the 5th anniversary, featuring artists like OKGo, My Morning Jacket, Nellie McKay, Steve Earle and R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, is live-twittering Katrina…5 years later. “Aug 27, 2005: 5AM: Katrina upgraded to Category 3 Hurricane” “Aug 28, 2005: 9:30AM Mayor Nagin issues first ever mandatory evacuation of New Orleans.” “Aug 29, 2005: 7AM Katrina makes landfall as a Cat. 4 Hurricane” — seeing the events of that horrific time unfold in 140-character increments is sobering indeed — especially when we know what’s to come.

Watching the coverage of Katrina we are of course reminded of the snails-pace slowness of the government’s response. Who could have known at the time? was the response. Well, I am reminded of the NOAA weather advisory before Katrina hit — when it was just a wicked hurricane waiting to happen — before the levees broke. Take a look at that and wonder how on earth every single federal agency wasn’t on emergency notice.

NOAA weather advisory, August 28, 2005:

EXTREMELY DANGEROUS HURRICANE KATRINA MOVING ACROSS SOUTHEAST
MISSISSIPPI

DEVASTATING DAMAGE CONTINUES ALONG ITS PATH

KATRINA…NOW A CATEGORY THREE HURRICANE WITH WINDS OF 125 MPH AND
HIGHER GUSTS…WILL CONTINUE TO MOVE NORTHWARD ACROSS SOUTHEAST
MISSISSIPPI AND INTO EAST CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI THROUGH THE AFTERNOON
AND EVENING HOURS. ALONG AND NEAR KATRINA’S PATH…EXPECT PARTIAL TO
COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE. ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT
BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL
SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE…INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY…A
FEW POSSIBLY TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. MANY WINDOWS WILL
BLOW OUT.

AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD…AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH
AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY
VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE
ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS…PETS…AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE
WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.

POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS…AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN
AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING
INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY
THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING…BUT BE TOTALLY DE-FOLIATED.

“Mr. Go” has been eating away at both the Louisiana ecosystem and its coastline since it’s construction, destroying wetlands that naturally buffer New Orleans from Hurricane damage. It connects the Mississippi River with the Gulf of Mexico, shooting water straight into the heart of the city. As Maddow put it, Mr. Go “is trying to kill New Orleans.” Maddow explains that Mr. Go was designed for shipping, and it “even sucked at that,” carrying about five ships up to the Mississippi per week. “It’s too late,” she announced, “but at least Mr. Go is closed.”

Maddow hoped that this was a step in the right direction of letting nature be, especially in this part of the world where the wetlands had been majorly tampered with. Perhaps, she wondered, “we are getting slightly less stupid about picking fights with God down here.”

The segment from last night’s Rachel Maddow Show via MSNBC below:

On the ground in New Orleans, this is a city that is clearly back and functioning, but the scars are real and visible — and even more visible depending where you go. 80% of this city was underwater when the storm hit and the levees gave. I visited the Lower 9th Ward yesterday, and there they were — the levees that were breached as the waters rushed over, flooding that already poor neighborhood into near-oblivion. Even though I was amidst the rebuilding efforts of Make It Right — and some terrific-looking new homes, up on stilts, with open roof access now mandated because of tough lessons learned — there were also vacant lots, abandoned homes, and the signs of water damage everywhere. Driving there I saw a big red-brick building that looked like a school, with broken windows and boarded-up parts, clearly abandoned. So the notion of “recovery” here must be tempered by what still remains damaged, unrepaired or worse, gone forever.

By the way, the book on my lap was The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf. And the cover looked oddly familiar from my vantage point.

Here are some of those photos below. More from New Orleans to come.

Mixing coverage from five years ago with new reporting, the doc focuses on several families and highlights the various ways red tape has stopped the reconstruction.

Wendell Pierce (Bunk from The Wire) is a main character. The actor now stars in HBO’s Treme based on post-Katrina New Orleans, but Pierce is also a local. We see his work trying to rebuild his neighborhood of Pontchartrain Park, which is both uplifting and frustrating. There is the opposition to Pierce’s plans from local residents and also the government hoops to jump through. At times, Pierce questioned why he was even doing it. But then there are the moments of celebration.

Pontchartrain Park has the second slowest rate of return, only ahead of the Ninth Ward – only 30% of the residents had returned. Also from the neighborhood? Darryl Willis, star of the BP ads, and part of this CNN documentary.

O’Brien was on the ground five years ago for CNN, and she talked to residents she had initially interviewed from when the Hurricane first came.

More coverage from CNN as well as other networks will come this week, and we’ll have more coverage as well.

Here’s the trailer for the doc:

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Discussing federal expenses, the audience member argued that, even if conservatives managed to lower costs one year, “then year two, when the Kenyan decides we need more money, it’ll be back up to 30, 35%. They can’t be trusted.”

Watch the video below:

Jindal poked a little fun at his own party’s recent financial indiscretions as he welcomed them into town, helpfully tipping them off to where they shouldn’t go to stay out of trouble:

“Enjoy this beautiful weather, enjoy our great food, our great music, our great culture. Spend a little bit of extra money in our hotels and our restaurants, we’d appreciate it. And a word of warning to RNC staffers: you may want to stay away from Bourbon Street.”

Watch the clip below:

But Treme, about post-Katrina New Orleans, is different (here are Newsweek and the New Yorker‘s reviews). Mediaite spoke to one of the stars of the show, Clarke Peters (who also starred in The Wire as Lester Freamon) about filming in New Orleans, Wire comparisons and more.

Mediaite: Treme films in New Orleans, and a big focus in the show has been the music. How has it been to film in the city and become so a part of the music scene?

Peters: New Orleans is a city of food and music and it’s nice to be in the center of all that.

Mediaite: When you accepted the role, were you attracted to the story of Treme, the character (Albert Lambreaux), or were you equally attracted to work with David Simon again?

Peters: I was more interested in working with David on a new project. I knew nothing about Treme. When he told me what Treme was, I began to research it. Prior to that, I said, what do you want to do next, he said, I want to do this, and I said ok.

“You’ll see something that will provoke discussion, possibly debate, and see something that will make you sit down and think. It’s not something neatly packaged that looks beautiful and is soft focused. I know that people will probably try to make comparisons, but what comparison can you possibly make between The Wire and Treme?”

Mediaite: What is the difference between working on this project and The Wire?

Peters: The difference is going from any show to another new show. It’s more about the things that remain the same: parts of the crew, parts of the production company have remained the same. Also some of the cast. Difference is in the uniqueness of having a company of actors and production coming together. It sometimes happens in the theater. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this happen on television. On the set, it’s the same. The pace is the same as The Wire, almost exactly the same. We don’t get our scripts until maybe the day before we have to start shooting. It always adds a little frisson to everyone’s energy there!

Mediaite: Is David Simon very strict about you following the script as he has written it?

Peters: Sometimes yes, sometimes no. When David Mills was here, God bless his soul, [ed. note: Mills passed away March 31.] he was on set and we were talking about particular lines that I just didn’t feel were words that could fit to the character’s mouth – that implied something that it shouldn’t have implied. David [Simon] isn’t that precious, what he’s more precious about is that the story is being told, that the scene is being played, but as far as saying ‘hey baby,’ or ‘yo baby,’ he’s not going to balk at anything like that. But for myself, if there’s something that doesn’t fit right in my mouth, I’ll say that and he’ll say ‘let’s see what you got’ or throw me a new line, and that’s what I love about this, because in a very small way it’s a collaborative effort. They are definitely the writers, but we’re in new territory here, and my character is one that is bringing to the table things that they may not have thought about, or coming from a place they may not have thought about. Besides just being a social and pleasure club the Mardi Gras Indians are a group of men that are carrying on a tradition for many, many, generations, and so that I know that David, or Eric, didn’t have time to explore all of those possibilities of all the characters they have, so I’m able to bring to them the research I have found concerning the Indians and construct a theory that I might be able to put to them as to where he might move with this, or what might need to be said, or what might be interesting to be said. They know what needs to be said, I think what I’m bringing to it is what might work. Because it’s a Black American experience, so there is just so much a White American is going to get from that. It would be the same thing if a Black American tried to write about the Native American experience. There’s just something missing. So in that respect they’ve all been very generous and accommodating.

>>> NEXT PAGE: Comparing The Wire and Treme, remembering David Mills.

Here’s where it might get interesting. It’s possible that Letten’s recusal has something to do with the fact one of the men who was arrested along side O’Keefe was Robert Flanagan who is the son of William Flanagan, who is the acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana. It’s also very tenuously possible it may have the slightest of connections to the Obama administration: Apparently, there is also other action surrounding Letten that, as far as anyone knows has nothing to do with this case. Rachel Maddow reports that LA Senator David Vitter had placed a hold on Obama’s nominees for the position until he go assurances that Letten would retain his, which he received yesterday. The plot thickens! More from Maddow below (MSNBC is perhaps overly interested in all thing O’Keefe!).

The Destruction of the World Trade Center: Since the Towers came down, it has been hard to have a rational discussion about anything in this nation, least of all those two buildings themselves. Hated by critics at the time of their construction, gradually accepted as members of the urban family, they now, in their absence, occupy a space in the collective imagination that is larger than they ever possessed while they stood guard over New York harbor. The wound of their erasure is still fresh, a physical reminder of the corrupting dangers of politics, money, and ego that have defined not just the rebuilding process, but our entire culture in the years following their fall.

The Deluge of New Orleans: In the wake of 9/11, Americans were promised a secure homeland. Instead, we were the victims of an unpardonable abrogation of government responsibility. Decades of intentional urban neglect and environmental exploitation inevitably gave way to a catastrophe that will not be remedied any time soon, no matter our intentions.

The Mortgage Crisis: The home has been the locus and symbol of American prosperity for decades, the ostensible lynchpin of our dreams for both emotional contentment and fiscal well-being. But the shelter and security promised by architecture have proven to be, for many Americans, an illusion. The exploitation of our desires, whether fraudulent or merely irresponsible, triggered economic collapse. The toll that overbuilding has taken on our environment and our communities has been enormous.

The Rise of China: Perhaps the most memorable building of the decade was the “Bird’s Nest,” the extraordinary stadium designed by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron for the Beijing Olympics. It was just one of several recent high profile commissions in China that have captivated the press. But the real story of architecture in China is not so much a few high-end buildings designed by international luminaries, but the overwhelming growth of China’s cities, and the pressures that growth has exerted on the environment and China’s historic fabric.

[Photo by Karrie Jacobs]

The Fall of Dubai: An Ozymandian empire built on credit and in the desert by what amounted to slave labor. It was so obviously a parable it’s hard to believe it was ever something more than a mirage wafting over hot sands. A tower nearly half a mile tall? An artificial archipelago in the shape of a palm tree? An indoor ski slope? One could not dream up a more vivid symbol of a decade of irrational exuberance. Tread carefully, Las Vegas.

The Death of Philip Johnson: The reign of America’s pre-eminent architect was so long that, when he died in 2005 at the age of 98, it was hard to believe the profession could go on without him. It was Johnson, as a young man, who established the parameters by which architecture would be judged and practiced in the United States. He oversaw the construction of America’s greatest skyscraper (The Seagram Building), designed its most storied restaurant (The Four Seasons), and built himself a national landmark (The Glass House). His protégés included Robert Venturi, Peter Eisenman, Richard Meier, Michael Graves, Rem Koolhaas, and Robert A. M. Stern.

>>>NEXT: The iPod, Hipster Culture, Green Design & Barack Obama’s Butterfly Effect

(Actually what I said was: Try to imagine the response had “Dick Cheney appeared on Meet The Press and not only declared war on MSNBC because he didn’t like Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, but encouraged the rest of the press to cease treating it as a bona fide news operation.”)

Then there is this past weekend’s golf meme — President Bush loved his bike and his brush (and was frequently castigated for the latter), Obama loves his (mostly male) golf. Imagine if President Bush had been playing this much golf.

Politico has also picked up on the trend noting the wildly kind (non?) response from the media Obama has received after: “making a four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser; snubbing the Dalai Lama; signing off on a secret deal with drug makers; doing more fundraisers than the last president.” It’s SO UNFAIR that former Bush counselor Ed Gillespie jokes that “we’re going to start a website: IfBushHadDoneThat.com.” (Actually, someone may have beat them to it.)

So what? Has the media just been continually suckered into a love affair and Obama will forever be given the hall pass on questionable behaviour? Says political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe:

“There may well be almost an unconscious effort on the part of the media to give Obama a bit more slack because he is more likable, because he is the first African-American president. That plays into it.”

Maybe. There’s no question the press likes Obama more than Bush, or any other President since J.F.K., for that matter. But George W. Bush was judged harshly for good and terrible reason (for a number of good and terrible reasons actually, namely Katrina and Iraq, and in hindsight the economy). And while Obama probably should have spent more time in New Orleans (and maybe it would have been nice for him to check in with the Dalai Lama) these are not decisions piggy-backed on previously made disastrous decisions like not evacuating New Orleans properly ahead of a hurricane. So perhaps the press is just actually doing their job and Obama is merely being judged on his performance of the last nine months and not the sometimes calamitous eight years that preceded it. That said, any time a government launches an offensive on an entire news network should be cause for concern.