Esme's Blog

It can't be easy being the president these days. Being savaged by Republicans is to be expected. But now comes a full frontal assault from his own party.

Leading the charge: Minnesota’s Sen. Al Franken. According to one of the lead stories on Politico.com, Franken, in a closed door meeting, laid into Obama senior advisor David Axelrod for the administration's lack of leadership on health care.

The president in some ways has no choice but to chart a more moderate course on health care reform. But so far he has not laid out a plan on exactly how that can happen. He still has majorities in both houses. But with his own party becoming more and more disillusioned, one has to wonder what level of reform can be achieved.

As for Franken, as the Politico piece points out, he had promised to lay low in the aftermath of the bitter recount saga. Laying low is clearly not his style. It remains to be seen what a more openly aggressive Franken can achieve. It certainly won't be dull. Stay tuned.

Photo credit: Jeffrey Thompson/Getty Images

At first this made me feel better, this word from the NFL Vice President for officials that the refs had blown a call that cost the Vikings dearly in last weeks' debacle in New Orleans.

The blown call was the low hit by Bobby McCray against Bret Favre. The play resulted in an interception thrown by Favre. He then limped off the field with a sprained ankle.

Why would it make me feel better? Well, somehow it seemed to ease some of the blame off the team and onto the refs. Had the penalty been called, the Vikes would have had the ball on the Saints' 19; instead the Saints got the ball on their own 31.

McCray was fined $20,000 dollars for this and another hit on Favre. But then, he is going to the Super Bowl, so what does he care?

In the end, the NFL announcement that the call had been blown was a reminder that it wasn't the refs, but the Vikings who defeated themselves.

Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

The explanation: weeks ago the folks at WCCO radio asked me to fill in for host Jearlyn Steele on her Sunday show. A huge fan of Jearlyn's, I said yes. It was only Monday morning that I realized that I would be up against the Vikings.

WCCO radio execs decided as soon as the Viking game was over, I would immediately end my show and allow Dark Starr and Steve Thompson to proceed with the Pro Football Final Show. Going up against the Vikes, I counter programmed during the 8 o'clock hour with a discussion on mental illness and the recent federal legislation that has changed the reimbursement plans for millions of Americans.

Shortly before 9, studio coordinator Chris Ellston let me know the game was almost over. I could see the game behind me on a monitor in the studio. Chris started gesturing wrap. He said, "The Vikes are about to win. We have to get off now."

I immediately said on the air, "Good night, stay tuned, coming up in a few seconds, Pro Football Final." Then Favre threw the interception, and you know the rest.

Chris immediately cried, "We jinxed it!" Maybe we did. With a history like the Vikes, the agony, the delicacy, the pain is too much to bear.

Photo: Jupiter Images

Prince has a new song dedicated to the Minnesota Vikings, and it is getting trashed on YouTube and other Web sites. (The Purple One was in the house for Sunday's whupping of the Cowboys.)

I am not sure if I would call it a "fight" song. Maybe a gospel send off to be performed in places of worship before the 5:40 p.m. kickoff Sunday.

Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

The court in a 5-4 decision lifted restrictions on corporate advertising in political campaigns. The ruling reversed two decades of controls on spending. If you think you were awash in political commercials in 2008, prepare for the deluge. Republicans are publicly the happiest about this. Sen. Mitch McConnell said, ''With today's monumental decision, the Supreme Court took an important step in the direction of restoring the First Amendment rights of these groups by ruling that the Constitution protects their right to express themselves about political candidates and issues up until Election Day.'' (A notable exception to the Republican cheers: Sen. John McCain. McCain said he was “disappointed” by the ruling. The decision guts large portions of the McCain-Feingold 2002 legislation that limited corporate spending.)

But the people who have to be the happiest are TV executives, who have seen revenue dwindle in the midst of the recession and online competition. I only hope that the bounty leads to dollars headed directly to newsrooms for aggressive reporting on the accuracy and impact of the onslaught of ads that will transform our political landscape.

And oh yeah, my job and the jobs of other TV journalists could be saved in the process.

Tucked in the fine print of the House version of the health care bill is a measure that would transform the lives of Americans with chronic, severe and rare diseases. The House bill would eliminate lifetime caps on insurance.

It's something most of us don't even think about. Do you know your lifetime cap? I don't. Usually the people who do are families where illness has been a companion for years and the lifetime cap is a looming deadline that alters a family's life forever.

In many cases, the individuals involved are children. The options for those families facing caps are not pretty. Bankruptcy is often a necessary step, along with the ultimate expiration of their benefits once the cap has been met.

The Senate bill would eliminate caps on new policies taken out six months after any bill is passed. But the Senate bill says existing plans are "grandfathered" in, meaning they can continue to impose caps.

Senator Al Franken has introduced a measure to eliminate caps in all policies, existing and new. Six other Democratic senators are also supporting the measure. A cap, for all intents and purposes, is a limit on how much health care an individual can receive.

Some measure of health care reform seems destined to pass this year. But it is hard to imagine true reform without the elimination of caps that so drastically limit the options of the sickest among us.

Image credit: AP

Pulled away from Ponzi schemes, crime and political intrigue I landed on a story about Hockey Moms this week. I was assigned, I suppose, because in my real life I am a Hockey Mom. My friends around the country had an immediate response to Sarah Palin’s famous quip at the RNC last fall. Palin asked "You know what they say is the difference between a Hockey Mom and a pitbull? Lipstick." 


Harrison
"Oh" my friends said, "is that what you have become?" Well "yes and no" I replied. The pitbull part and the lipstick part are  Sarah Palin’s contribution to the genre. I find Hockey Moms in general are not at all fierce, but mostly patient chauffeurs in a never ending carpool to practices between three to six  nights a week. As for lipstick at 7:00 a.m. at a frigid rink -- who cares? Maybe Sarah Palin does ... but I don't.


Esme
Hockey Moms, as far as I am concerned,  are people who want to see their kids do well and yes, have fun, here in the State of Hockey.

The Hockey Mom story featuring Amy Iverson of St. Louis Park will air Thursday at 5 p.m., will be rerun on Sunday at 10 a.m., and of course will be featured on WCCO.COM.

On Thursday of this week, Mayor RT Rybak scheduled a self-congratulatory newser on plunging crime rates in Minneapolis. In 2009 there were 19 murders in the city, the lowest number in 26 years.

Rybak, of course, had to scrap the planned newser. Scarcely more than 12 hours earlier, three men had been gunned down, execution style, at a quiet neighborhood market. The two shooters are still at large. In the first nine days of 2010 there have been five murders in Minneapolis. That's more than 25 percent of the total for all of last year.

Crime rates are mercurial statistics, especially in a smaller city were a rampage like Wednesday night's can inflate percentages dramatically. Yes, Rybak and Chief Dolan deserve the credit for the good. But they must also share in the blame for the bad.

Among the deeply troubling aspects of Wednesday night's bloodbath is that the victims appear to have been targeted and the cooperation from the community seems to be limited. Yes, the crime rate from last year is profoundly good news, but this year's start is a shocker.

Thursday's news conference was appropriately sober, (on top of the tragedy that Chief Dolan had to handle questions about a rogue officer who has confessed to a string of armed robberies).

News cycles move quickly. Taking credit for crime trends is a quicksand strategy that can leave even skilled politicians scrambling.

Judge Kathleen Gearin's scathing ruling accusing Governor Tim Pawlenty of using unallotment as a weapon and that he had "trod upon the constitutional power of the legislature" sets up the almost absurd scenario that the budget battle of last spring will play out all over again.

The governor maintains the judge is wrong and that he will appeal. But Judge Gearin remains one of Ramsey County's most respected jurists. Her ruling could have been far more limited in scope.

Instead, its scolding of the governor will almost certainly open the door to more legal challenges. What seems impossible to figure out is how the stalemate will be settled.

With the governor insisting he will not back down on his pledge of no new taxes and with a $1.7 billion deficit looming, what compromise can there be? The legislature shows no sign of budging either.

Groundhog Day, Minnesota style. If only we could go back to spring temperatures.

Photo credit: David McNew/Getty Images

Just as former Senator Mark Dayton's bid for Governor seems to be gaining serious traction in a candidate heavy field, come two very different revelations that have people talking about him. And being talked about with 20 candidates running is no small achievement.

First, Dayton, has become a not insignificant footnote to the Sen. Joe Lieberman, Sen. Al Franken and Sen. John McCain smackdown previously blogged about here.

Now comes the C-Span archive that reveals that Sen. McCain shut down then Sen. Dayton in 2002, in exactly the same way. Actually the footage is gone, but the transcript shows that McCain denied Dayton an extra 30 seconds in 2002 to debate the start of the Iraq war.(Conspiracy theorists will no doubt have a field day that they actual denial footage was somehow erased.)

The second revelation is that Dayton has battled depression for years and has helped control it with  medication, diet, and exercise. Dayton also revealed in the Star Tribune article that he suffered a relapse in his battle with alcoholism in 2007 but is now sober again. The fact that Dayton, an heir to the department store fortune, suffers from these illnesses is a reminder that they don't discriminate. No matter how rich or successful you are, they can snare you. Dayton's willingness to share his battle with depression is likely to be hailed by mental health advocates, who argue that shining a spotlight on an illness once considered a stigma is an act of courage that could well help others.