I am truly reluctant to be so presumptuous as to tell Obama some ideas on how to improve his campaign. This is a guy who only 4 years ago gave a rousing speech at the Democratic Convention, starting at that point to turn the Democratic party on its ear, kind of reminiscent to a student of history like me of the way Gandhi turned the British Empire on it is ear, and back in touch with the real people, its traditional base.

Money raising is far from my interests in Presidential Politics, but hey, this is still America, so therefore, I must note that Obama has raised more money than any candidate in American History. So it might seem like arm chair politics or Monday morning football for anyone to offer any advice or to suggest changing the course or changing the tack might be in order, so that above all he doesn't lose the idealistic and ideological base of his appeal and his power.

[The AP reports that Barack Obama reversed a two-month downward trend by raising more and spending less. He took in $52 million in June, more than twice the nearly $21.5 million raised by John McCain. Obama had $72 million cash on hand to McCain's $27 million.



The Politico points out that Obama raised $25 million on the last day of June alone; his one-day haul represents nearly half of his monthly total and more than Republican rival John McCain generated for the entire month. During the month, McCain did not have a single day in which he raised a million dollars.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/21/june-campaign-finance-

num_n_113991.html]

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Having said all of that, let me offer some strong advice, and I hope the 300 foreign affairs policy advisors, the pundits, and the professional political arm chairs and Monday morning quarterbarcks don't leap to any conclusions beyond the obvious, which is that I want Obama to win, and then I want to see him overhaul the USA's Foreign Policy and its entire image at the core of 7 billion peoples' thinking. This is decades over due, and really a dire situation internationally. I try to make this major point as humbly as possible:

OBAMA REALLY NEEDS TO HAMMER WHAT BUSH AND CHENEY HAVE DONE TO THE U.S. ECONOMY FOR THE PAST 8 YEARS, BY DUMPING SO MANY BILLIONS IN WAR. ONE LEVEL OF GOOD GOVERNMENT IS HOW YOU CHANNEL THE MONEY, AND THEY HAVE FAILLED REALLY BADLY. WE MAY BE TOO LATE AND TOO FAR INTO THE LAST STAGES OF IMPERIALISM.

If that sounds too Marxist, too bad. Marxian economic analysis is at the very core of the most successful historians and politicians, as a historical tool in determining what we are doing wrong, the downward spiral we are on in terms of the collapse of most of post World War II society. In Hegel and Marx's theories, this is simply called DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM.

And our brave military firing US missiles into not one, but a series of Afghanistan wedding parties, and within two more weeks, breaking into a home in Iraq a few days ago, and WHILE HE SLEPT: this is a disaster, not just "collateral damage."

These kinds of things are happening repeatedly, and they make all Americans very ugly indeed, as Ugly as we have actually become, or as ugly as Halliburton, Brown and Root, and Blackwater have made us in the eyes of billions of people, for their ghastly excesses in Iraq and for the many mistakes by the military in Afghanistan.

The support for Obama's Timetable in Iraq from the Iraqi President Maliki, even if he is kind of US Puppet, rather than for Bush's vagueness: that is real progress, make no mistake.

Seeing Obama walking with Afghani President Karzai: he proved one obvious point: he has Presidential carriage, demeanor, and style.

This is urgent. This is long overdue. This is mandatory, not only for Americans, but for the rest of the entire world to further realize that Obama is a straightshooter, honest, and solutionary. To not do so is to miss both the greatest opportunity and the most serious challenge any USA President has ever had.

The speech in Berlin might be the best place to start doing this, but even after: it will never be too late to take this course of action I am here proscribing!

Stephen Fox, Managing Editor, Santa Fe Sun News

stephen@santafefineart.com

from http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stephenfox/gGx4dN

and http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?id=54043&ret=AccountDtl.aspx