Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (23252)	1/6/2004 9:36:44 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793677

She's learning Liberal tactics early! “All of our friends have pretty much the same ideas, but we have a couple of friends who are Republicans; we like to berate them,” Teens too young to vote spend primary cycle working phones and learning system By Joe Adler jadler@seacoastonline.com PORTSMOUTH — Just 14 years old, Diana Drumm will wait for 2008 to vote for president. But the Hampton Falls resident and freshman at Phillips Exeter Academy is already making a splash in presidential politics. As a student intern for Sen. Joe Lieberman’s campaign, she is expressing a preference she cannot record in the ballot box. Drumm spends much of her free time in the candidate’s Portsmouth office, calling prospective voters, doing data entry — whatever she can to move the campaign along. “It’s kind of ironic since I can’t vote,” said Drumm, who met Lieberman at a house party thrown by her parents. “But I want the best person to win because it will affect my future. More people my age should be involved because it affects their futures as well.” Drumm is like many area students giving their time to political campaigns in the period before the Jan. 27 Democratic primary. Teen volunteers can help candidates in several ways. First, a campaign may receive a popularity boost when teens endorse a candidate to their friends. Also, campaigns need help with endless tasks as voting day approaches. “Whether they’re doing data entry, phone banking or just straightening out the office, it’s immensely helpful,” said Joe Ackley, a volunteer coordinator for Dean for America in Portsmouth. “We have an 84-year-old volunteer who makes calls, and one as young as 12.” On Tuesday afternoon, Ackley set up three juniors from Portsmouth High School with telephones and call lists of prospective voters, whom they tried to convince that Howard Dean is the best presidential candidates After a morning of canvassing door to door — and hearing many homeowners say they were not interested — the students learned the hard way that not everyone wants to talk politics. “Hi, my name is Rachel, and I’m calling on behalf of the Dean campaign,” said Rachel Sacks, reading from a prepared script that staffers said is flexible. “I was wondering if you have two minutes ... oh ... oh ... OK. Thank you. (click).” Sacks, Marta Lyons and Katie Drapsho helped start Teen Dean, a small group of politically minded 15- and 16-year-old students at Portsmouth High School who came together because of their common support for the candidate. “He’s very outspoken about what he believes in,” Drapsho said of Dean. “A lot of candidates just go with what’s popular.” Lyons, who volunteered for Al Gore during the 2000 presidential campaign, said the three friends often talk politics. They plan to hold voter registration drives at school for the students who are old enough to vote. “A lot of the seniors don’t even know who the candidates are, or how to go about learning about them,” Lyons said. Sometimes the political discussion can turn into a debate among friends, said Drapsho. “All of our friends have pretty much the same ideas, but we have a couple of friends who are Republicans; we like to berate them,” she said. Drumm, who helped out at Lieberman’s office Tuesday when Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd spoke, said it was Lieberman’s integrity and experience that impressed her. “He seems more able to beat Bush,” Drumm said. Kelley Cole, a junior at Exeter High School, learned about the candidates when her history teacher, Eric Doucet, invited staffers from the different campaigns to speak in class. Cole said that she is volunteering for Lieberman partly because she will turn 18 in time for the national election and wants to educate herself before entering the ballot box for the first time. “You learn a lot (as a volunteer),” Cole said. “Before I did this, I didn’t know anything about politics. It’s interesting to see how it works.” This page has been printed from the following URL: seacoastonline.com

To: carranza2 who wrote (23252)	1/6/2004 10:16:33 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793677

The grand alliances are dead. With a few trusted friends, America must carry on alone. A Farewell to Allies Now they are neutrals. America can stand tall without them By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER - TIME Within days after Saddam's capture, France, Germany and Russia announced their willingness to consider relieving Iraq's crushing debt burden. This was no burst of conscience about unrepayable billions lent Saddam to squander on grotesque palaces and grotesque weapons. This was the wind shifting America's way in Iraq — and the neutrals adjusting course accordingly. But this is not the beginning of a great reconciliation. These countries were no help before the war, during the war or after the war. France tried to rally the world to stop the U.S. from deposing Saddam. Russia was sending night-vision goggles to Saddam. Not one lifted a finger to help the postwar reconstruction. Some Americans are bitter about this, others merely confused. Democrats think it's our fault. They charge Bush with mishandling relations with the allies. Theirs is an etymological problem. Events have overtaken vocabulary. These countries are not allies. It is sheer laziness now that counts France and Germany as old allies, sheer naivete that counts Russia as a new one. It should not surprise us. Countries have different interests. For a half-century, anticommunism papered over those differences, but communism is gone. Europe lives by Lord Palmerston's axiom: nations have no permanent allies, only permanent interests. Alliance with America is no longer a permanent interest. The postwar alliance that once structured and indeed defined our world is dead. It died in 2003. To be sure, there are some countries that see their ultimate security as dependent upon the international order maintained by the U.S. These are not insignificant countries, and over time they may become the kernel of an entirely new alliance system. They include Anglo-Saxons (Britain, Australia) and a few Europeans (Italy, Spain, Poland, other newly liberated East European countries). They understand that the sinews of stability — free commerce, open sea lanes, regional balances of power, nonproliferation, deterrence — are provided overwhelmingly by the American colossus. They understand that without it, the world collapses into chaos and worse. They believe in the American umbrella and are committed to helping the umbrella holder. As for the rest, they are content to leave America out there twisting in the wind. They do not wish us destroyed — they are not crazy — but they are not unhappy to see us distracted, diminished and occasionally defeated. When the Iraq war began, the French Foreign Minister refused a reporter's question as to which side he wanted to win. This was not a mere expression of pique. When the existential enemy was Nazism or communism, the world rallied to the American protector. But Arab-Islamic radicalism is different. Its hatreds are wide, but its strategic focus is America. Its monument is ground zero. Ground zero is not in Paris. The neutrals know that perhaps in the long run they too will be threatened. For now, however, they are quite content to see the U.S. carry the fight against the new barbarians. The U.S. was attacked; it will carry the fight regardless. For much of the world, the war on terrorism offers not just a free ride but a strategic bonus: American diminishment. France unabashedly declares that American dominance is intolerable and the world should by right be not unipolar but multipolar. Much of the rest of the world believes it but does not have France's nerve to say it. The hard fact is that war on many fronts is consuming and containing American power. While America spends blood and treasure in faraway places like Baghdad, China builds the economic and military superpower of the future. Europe knits itself into another continental colossus. And the rest of the world goes about its business. Meanwhile, the Americans take on the axis of evil one by one. In the 1990s, containment of America took a different form. With the acquiescence of a Democratic Administration uncomfortable with American power, silk ropes were fashioned to tie down Gulliver: a myriad of treaties, protocols and prohibitions on everything from carbon emissions to land mines to nuclear testing. With the advent of the Bush Administration, contemptuous of these restraints, that would no longer work. Enter al-Qaeda. The neutrals may wax poetic about America's sins, but they do not hate us. The problem is not emotion, but calculation. At root, it is a matter of interests. Interests diverge. No use wailing about it. The grand alliances are dead. With a few trusted friends, America must carry on alone. Copyright © 2004 Time Inc.