Obama Asks McCain, Who's Country Do You Put First?

Barack Obama took the gloves off yesterday when addressing John McCain. For a while now McCain and Palin have viciously attacked Obama by making things up out of thin air, such as the lipstick on a pig craziness and accusing him of wanting to teach kindergardeners the same sex-ed as a seventeen year old when the bill in question was designed to go after pedophiles. Obama has weathered this barrage of culture war punches with grace and dignity, now he's delivering solid upper cuts to the increasing desperate McCain campaign.

From ABC News:

A pretty scathing charge from Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., this morning as he spoke to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and assailed Sen. John McCain's, R-Ariz., position on free trade.

"Just ask the machinists in Pennsylvania who build Harley-Davidsons," Obama said of McCain's record. "Because John McCain didn’t just oppose the requirement that the government buy American-made motorcycles, he called Buy American provisions 'disgraceful.' Just ask the workers across this country who have seen their jobs outsourced. The very companies that shipped their jobs overseas have been rewarded with billions of dollars in tax breaks that John McCain supports and plans to continue.

"So, when American workers hear John McCain talking about putting 'Country First,'" Obama said, "it’s fair to ask –- which country?"

Jake Tapper of ABC spins this as an attack on McCain's patriotism, but that is highly off the mark. Obama is finally getting into full swing with his attacks on McCain's dedication to keeping jobs in America and not sending them overseas so corporations can pad their bottom lines. It isn't a question of patriotism, it is a question of economics and a question from someone that is tapping into the economic populism of this country. That sentiment has been buried several times over by conservative wedge issues and outright lies told to the people in order to hold onto power at all costs.

No one is questioning McCain's patriotism (actually the traditional media hardly bothers to point out when McCain questions Obama's patriotism, often in very subtle ways), we just refuse to highlight it anymore for him. There are seven weeks and three days to go in this election season and it is time to get down to business. Obama is going to fight hard to show the people that he is working for them and that McCain is working hard for the same wealthy few that Bush favored for the last eight years.

Miami Herald To Outsource Part Of Their News Dept.

Lou Dobbs must be frothing at the mouth right about now, once he hears that the Miami Herald is outsourcing comment moderation to online stories and their ad and design work for the news department to New Delhi. The new policy is in its testing phase and Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal said that they don't know how employment will be affected in the South Florida area.

From Business Week:

The Miami Herald is outsourcing some of its advertising production work to India, the newspaper's editor said Thursday.

Starting in January, copyediting and design in a weekly section of Broward County community news and other special advertising sections will be outsourced to Mindworks, based in New Delhi.

Um, if you outsource jobs to India for a local paper, chances are someone in the area is going to lose their position. I know the Miami Herald isn't the first, or second newspaper to do this, but come on, do we really need to send the work of a paper that covers a local area to a country several thousand miles away?

Now It Is Journalism Being Outsourced

I know that journalists are slipping these days but there is no need to send their jobs to India. It is bad enough technical and customer service positions are being relocated halfway across the world to cut costs. For local journalists to be replaced with people that don't even live in the town that they are reporting the news on is just plain ridiculous.

From CNN:

James Macpherson, editor and publisher of the two-year-old Web site pasadenanow.com, acknowledged it sounds strange to have journalists in India cover news in this wealthy city just outside Los Angeles.

But he said it can be done from afar now that weekly Pasadena City Council meetings can be watched over the Internet. And he said the idea makes business sense because of India's lower labor costs.

"I think it could be a significant way to increase the quality of journalism on the local level without the expense that is a major problem for local publications," said the 51-year-old Pasadena native. "Whether you're at a desk in Pasadena or a desk in Mumbai, you're still just a phone call or e-mail away from the interview."

No James, it is more than that. On the local level such as in Pasadena, reporters should live in the area, know the layout of the town both spatially and culturally and be able to communicate to their neighbors. That is absolutely impossible to do from Mumbai.

As can be seen in the CNN article, there are plenty of doubters because it is a stupid idea. A long time ago, the news was meant to inform, not to maximize profits of the companies that ran the news departments. It is time to take a step back and let people from Mumbai cover Mumbai, and Pasadena should do the same.