Suburban Mom's Political Fix: 'Buy American' Stimulus $ Controversy, Mass. Senate Seat Contest & Sawyer Gets ABC Anchor Desk

'Buy American' Stimulus Money Controversy

The Boston Globe ran a disturbing page one story about how some of the $787 billion in federal stimulus money, which was supposed to be used to put Americans back to work and help keep American companies stay afloat, is being spent on products made in other countries. The Globe reported:

"As local governments race to spend stimulus money, many are seeking exemptions from the law's 'Buy American' restrictions, which were intended to prevent taxpayer money from ending up on foreign pockets. The administration has granted waivers for goods as varied as steel for public housing projects, high-speed Internet equipment, and Auburn's (Maine) manhole covers, which have heavy-duty hinges to help withstand the town's heavy truck traffic.

The Obama administration could not provide a list or amount of waivers granted -- which potentially could total billions of dollars -- and Vice President Joe Biden's office, which has responsibility for overseeing the stimulus, did not respond to requests for comment."

However when I read this line, "the EPA issued a blanket exemption for foreign-made components last month as long as they do not amount to more than 5 percent of a stimulus project's cost," I had to wonder exactly how much money we're talking about being spent on foreign made goods. Granted, President Obama and Congress sold this stimulus package as a Put-America-Back-to-Work program, but have apparently, when it comes to the nitty-gritty of distributing the funds, administration officials have quietly decided to alter the program's dictates after the fact, making it a Put-America-Back-to-Work-Except-If-Some-Entities-Using-Federal-Money-Really-Want-Foreign-Products.

In order to figure out just how big of a deal this really is, we need to know exactly how much is being spent on non-American goods and whether there's any truth to what "critics" of the "Buy American" clause in the stimulus plan say, that "the waivers reflect the reality that the United States no longer makes many basic goods, and that in a global economy many products are assembled in several countries, rendering the rules unenforceable."

Mass. Senate Seat Contest Gains At Least One Contender

Now that the late Sen. Ted Kennedy has been laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, candidates to serve out the remaining couple of years of his term are starting to come out of the woodwork. Kennedy's nephew, former U.S. Congressman Joe Kennedy is expected to announce within the next day or two whether he'll pick up the political baton on behalf of his family and run.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has said she's in, regardless of whether any Kennedy family member enters the race. (If she won, she'd be the first female senator from Massachusetts.) Others who are toying with running include former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling (who, if Politico is right might have trouble running on the GOP ticket), former Mass. Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey and former Bush White House Chief of Staff Andy Card.

This has the makings of an exciting Senate race, something Massachusetts hasn't had in some time.

Sawyer Gets ABC Anchor Desk

To learn that, come January, two out of three of the anchors for the Big Three network newscasts will be women was very heartening to me. I'm so looking forward to the day when seeing and regarding a woman as an authoritative network news anchor is no longer a question to be debated or discussed, but simply a given. Women anchor the cable network newscasts all the time, all day long, so why should a woman anchoring a network newscast be any different (other than the small fact that the network news audience skews older than for the cable news networks and may be more uncomfortable with a female anchor)?

When Katie Couric assumed the helm of the CBS Evening News, her initial reviews were mired in sexist language and were sometimes patronizing, as people mused and mocked her clothing, her body and her make-up. She was skewered and verbally flogged. Before Couric, Elizabeth Vargas had been chosen to be the co-anchor of the ABC World News along with Bob Woodruff. That lasted about six months or so before Woodruff was seriously injured while covering the Iraq War and Vargas decided to move over to ABC's weekly news magazine 20/20 after learning she was pregnant with her second child and that the World News schedule wouldn't work for her. Decades ago, Barbara Walters and Connie Chung struggled as co-anchors on network broadcasts, gigs that didn't last long. Will the anchoring experience be different for Sawyer?

Former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather joined the crew of Morning Joe to discuss women as network news anchors. See the first part of their chat here:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

However my glee over Sawyer's ascension was tempered once I started to read some of the details and reactions to Sawyer's selection, details like the quote from ABC president David Westin who told the New York Times, "This was not a result I wanted." Details like the rumors that outgoing ABC anchor Charlie Gibson is "livid" that Sawyer was tapped as his replacement.

Then there are the photos people have been running of Sawyer when she was a young beauty queen, long before she was hired to work in the Nixon White House and before she became a household name. Where, I ask you, are the high school and teenaged photos of male news anchors so that we can see "how far" they've come? Did we see photos of a young, awkward Brian Williams when he became the anchor of the NBC Nightly News? Or of Gibson when he took over from Vargas and Woodruff? Or is this kind of hey-don't-take-her-so-seriously shtick just reserved for female anchors like Couric and Sawyer?

And what was with U.S. News & World Report's Bonnie Erbe who, instead of celebrating, derided the whole development, calling network newscasts a "pink collar ghetto" because now women are the majority of anchors? Erbe wrote:

"That Charlie Gibson is leaving his post as anchor of World News Tonight and Diane Sawyer is replacing him may be emblematic of the declining power of the network evening newscasts . . . First Katie, now Diane. It should be an historic moment for female newscasters, who now outnumber men by 2 to 1 on the three major commercial broadcast networks. Instead, it feels like an after-thought. Funny, I never thought I'd live to see the day when the network newscasts became a pink collar ghetto. But with Rachel Maddow now almost as prominent than Katie Couric and Bill O'Reilly much more frequently in the news than Charlie Gibson, it's fair to say that day has arrived."

Sometimes it seems like women just can't win.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: No Bailout Deal, Post-Debate Analysis, SNL Skits

No Bailout Deal

I, along with the rest of the world, thought for sure that there'd be a bailout deal approved by the House of Representatives today. Certainly John McCain and Barack Obama thought there'd be one. McCain -- who "suspended" (only not so much suspended) his presidential campaign and said he wouldn't attend last Friday's presidential debate until there was a deal in place to avert an economic catastrophe -- must be in need of a cloth to wipe that egg off his face right now in the face of the House shooting down a bailout package today in dramatic fashion. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi certainly didn't help advance the delicate negotiations by wielding a stick in the form of some highly partisan remarks on the House floor for what was supposed to be a bipartisan, castor oil-like proposal. (See an NBC video about the House talks, including an excerpt of Pelosi's actual speech -- versus the text of her remarks -- here.)

An NBC analyst said that those who voted against the measure -- which they said their constituents opposed -- are in tough re-election fights. If there's anyway to come up with a temporary stop-gap measure until after the election (if that's even possible), that might be the only way something's going to get the green light in the face of such fierce public backlash.

So the Dow plunged and Capitol Hill is in an uproar. What will this mean politics-wise? A big, fat mess, although the folks in the cable news business will likely score better ratings. Well, one thing's for sure . . . Hank Paulson is rapidly becoming a household name.

Post-Debate Analysis

I think McCain and Obama fared about even on Friday night. There were no knock-out blows. No memorable lines. No awful gaffes. But I must say, I'm already sick of hearing the words "naive" and "he doesn't understand" being worked into numerous McCain responses to questions. I kept waiting for both candidates to get all fired up or do something we'd all remember, like sigh, glance at a wristwatch, walk menacingly toward one other, or quip, "There you go again." Alas, I was disappointed, though, substantively, I felt I gained insight into the specific foreign policy positions of both candidates.

As the pundits tended to agree that the candidates fared equally well, a USA Today/Gallup poll found that 46 percent of debate-watchers thought Obama emerged the winner, while 34 percent thought McCain got the better of his Democratic counterpart. A CNN poll had similar results, with 51 percent saying Obama was the winner, 38 percent saying McCain was the winner.

SNL Skits

No ill-advised, offensive incest jokes were featured during this past weekend's Saturday Night Live, but there were several political skits that accurately hit their targets, including Tina Fey reprising her role as Sarah Palin. The News Update nailed Bill Clinton's ambivalence toward Obama's campaign, as Fey captured the wretched awkwardness of the real Palin-Katie Couric interview from last week that was, I'm sorry to say, painful to watch. Fey's finger-in-the-air bit: Priceless. (Watch the three political SNL skits here.)

Question: Do you think SNL has gone too far in parodying Palin? Think such satire will create backlash and sympathy for Palin?

Introducing: The Suburban Mom's Political Fix

Only fortysomething days remain until Americans head to the polls to elect a new president. And this year, moms who vote are getting a lot of attention from pollsters and the media, even though moms (like dads) don't vote in lockstep and in fact have views the encompass all ends of the political spectrum, as I wrote in yesterday's blog entry.

Given the unprecedented level of attention this election has been receiving, I've decided that a weekly, bipartisan round-up of election news, called the Suburban Mom's Political Fix is in order. I'm planning to write quirky posts at least once a week, more frequently as news events dictate.

To Debate or Not Debate. That is, apparently, the big question hovering over the presidential campaign right now. Sen. John McCain stunned everyone yesterday with his announcement that because the federal Wall Street bailout proposal was on the verge of falling apart, he was going to suspend his presidential campaign, blow off David Letterman (and piss off the late night talk show host because McCain didn't cancel his Katie Couric interview), and possibly skip Friday night's presidential debate in Mississippi until some sort of deal to prop up the U.S. economy is struck in Washington.

Yet today, word is that there's a tentative, bipartisan agreement on the table, despite what the folks back home may think about a bailout. So does this mean that Mac will show up on Friday night as planned and as Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama has already said he would? Your guess is as good as mine.

CNN Anchor Calls Campaign Treatment of Palin 'Sexist.' CNN's Campbell Brown is ticked off at the McCain campaign for keeping what she sees as too tight a grip on how and when Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin fields questions from the media. Brown said it's "sexist" to not allow Palin to face the media like all the other major candidates are doing, including Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden.

I personally think this is just a strategy devised to avoid gaffes, like the whoppers Biden's been making lately (there've been some ugly ones too). But as the only female candidate for national office left in the running, Palin's limited media availability does leave the campaign wide open to the charge that they're treating her with kid gloves. This is the big show, the big leagues. If she can't answer (or pretend not to hear) shouted questions from reporters who are hanging around the campaign trail, she's got no business being there.

Today, by the way, marked the first time that Palin actually answered a couple of inquiries from reporters. Maybe the McCain campaign took cues from Brown's "Free Sarah Palin" rant.

Why I love Entertainment Weekly. The magazine's writers and editors are smart and, for a publication focused on the entertainment industry, have a savvy way of delivering information and commentary on pop culture that doesn't patronize its readers. The cover of the new issue (see above), parodying the controversial New Yorker magazine cover with a photo of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, is spot-on. THAT cover is funny, the New Yorker cover, not so much, in fact, not at all.

Be sure to read the interview with Colbert and Stewart.

Image credit: Entertainment Weekly.