Obama Plays American Hero

Barack Obama seems to be playing all his cards now in a desperate attempt to ensure the American voters that he is the leader America needs and would be proud of. It kind of sounds like Bush’s cliché use of “Freedom” as the stepping stone for every action. When Obama addressed The Democratic National Convention in Denver, he told the American public that he will ensure that American companies outsourcing jobs outside the US will not get tax SOPS and he would instead provide them to companies who were creating good jobs in America.

The fact is that there are no companies in US that currently get tax breaks for sending jobs overseas so Obama doing anything won’t make any difference. Moreover, for any such act, he would need a Congressional and Senate approval.

What Obama needs to think after getting out of his Superman mode is what the fate America would be if all the cheap outsourced jobs to US, Mexico and Philippines were stopped and the same were rolled back in US. The kind of margins American companies would lose, boil down to an unimaginable number and more expensive goods and services. Mr. would be president needs to understand that America outsourcing jobs overseas is in its own interest. It does do because it needs to do so for the talent and cost arbitrage.

I don’t blame Obama completely. After McCain performed the Guantanamo Bay stunt, Obama had to pull something out of his hat.

Guantanamo Bay May Cost MCCAIN

Barack Obama seems to somehow have become the talk of the hour. Amidst him trying to prove that he can lead from the front, his international visits and his unusual campaigning approach, everyone seems to have forgotten about John McCain. McCain is a Republican presidential candidate whose fate soon might be similar to that of John Kerry in 2004.

He has been somewhat of a flip-flop and has been criticized extensively for yapping on the Guantanamo Bay issue. The Supreme Court recently stated that the foreign detainees at Guantanamo Bay should have some constitutional rights to ‘habeas corpus’ protections as “enemy combatants”. This means that the detainees would have the right to challenge their detention and would come under the purview of US domestic law. Bush and his administration are not happy about this decision because now for them, the advantage that Guantanamo Bay brings will be taken away.

Guantanamo Bay is a 45 square mile parcel of land which America had taken on a perpetuity lease from Cuba and the idea was that Guantanamo Bay would not come under the purview of domestic of international law and thus it would be easier to “make the terrorists talk” there. But with the Supreme Court’s decision, around 200 suits filed by Guantanamo Bay detainees will kick in.

John McCain who initially was against the Court giving Guantanamo Bay detainees the ‘habeas corpus’ status is now all of a sudden keen on supporting the immediate closure of the prison camp and transfer of its prisoners to the mainland. He also had recently proposed on expanding George Bush’s tax cuts which he originally voted against. Currently, he supports offshore drilling along America’s coastline, something he aggressively opposed the last time he ran for president. But he did say that he is still not in favor of drilling in the Arctic wildlife reserve in Alaska.

McCain playing see-saw with words would probably cost him very dearly, especially with Obama watching his every move. I think he would have been better off had he kept his mouth shut on the Guantanamo Bay issue.