By Jason Atkinson, on Wed Oct 24, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET
We did it. You did it.
Last night our indiegogo site closed and we raised $35,000.
Thank you- Thank you everyone- This project has 89 supporters from across the globe who want to see this happen. – From my close friends the Browns being first to two generations of river guides – the Borg family – being last. Thank you.
Every nickel you helped us raise in the last month gave the project credibility.
Now what? Spread the good word and help us find investor partners in philanthropy, institutional investors, business partners and our friends in the tribal community.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Oct 22, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Great debate moments.
It is the season of debates, it seems.
Which got me wondering: What is the greatest closing argument I’ve ever seen in a debate? How about you?
The answer that kept coming up for me was a debate I watched in college several years after it took place. William F Buckley, Jr. debated a California governor who later became our president.
And won.
The issue was one I cared little about: The Panama Canal Treaty.
But there was a modern eloquence–and elegance, passion, wit, and substantive command of the issue at hand that impressed me more than any other debater in any other debate I had seen before or since.
Here is the clip. Agree or disagree, you have to admit, you are watching a master debater at the top of his game:
By Jason Atkinson, on Mon Oct 22, 2012 at 11:00 AM ET
We only have 24 Hours to go. If you want to donate, now is the time. Click here
I want to thank everyone, all 82 of your so far, who’ve believed in me, this idea, and this film.
I told Jeff Martin, the Producer, imagine 82 people from across the globe, standing together in one room, cheering us on.
For me, this is unfulfilled. Making this film, changing hearts and minds through the human side of this river’s recovery, is something I just have to do.
By Chris Schulz, RP Staff, on Fri Oct 19, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET
For the upcoming an election, a proposition in California can have lasting effects for the nation and the world. Should genetically modified foods be labeled? [aljazeera]
Some new varieties of fruits and vegetables may be appearing at your grocery store soon. [wsj]
A new study links rises in temperature to more frequent and larger hurricanes. [latimes]
Traditionally oil friendly Texas has drawn a line in the sand for a new pipeline. [yahoo]
By Jonathan Miller, on Wed Oct 17, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET
Fascinating article in the latest The Middle East Quarterly written by a friend of mine, David Brog, who is the Executive Director of Christians United for Israel. While the two of us come from a different ideological perspective, I share his concerns about declining support for the Jewish State among my fellow liberals and progressives.
Here’s an excerpt:
Over the years, a series of polls has asked variations of the following question: “With whom do you sympathize more, the Israelis or the Palestinians?” The results increasingly indicate a broad partisan divide with only a minority of Democrats siding with Israel. For example:
A March 2006 Gallup poll found that 72 percent of Republicans and only 47 percent of Democrats sympathized more with the Israelis than the Palestinians.[4]
A July 2006 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 81 percent of Republicans and only 43 percent of Democrats sympathized more with Israel than the Arab nations.[5]
A February 2010 Gallup poll found that 85 percent of Republicans and only 48 percent of Democrats sympathized more with the Israelis than the Palestinians.[6]
An October 2011 Quinnipiac poll found that 69 percent of Republicans and only 36 percent of Democrats sympathized more with the Israelis than the Palestinians.[7]
Other measures of support demonstrate an even greater disparity. A March 2010 Zogby International poll, for example, found that 92 percent of Republicans—and only 42 percent of Democrats— had a favorable opinion of Israel.[8]
As Gallup summed up the situation in 2011, “Over the past decade, Republicans have consistently shown greater support than Democrats for Israel; however, the partisan gap has widened.”[9]
For decades, historian Daniel Pipes has been carefully monitoring these trends on the basis of ideology—conservatives vs. liberals—rather than party. In 1984, he concluded that there was no ideological divide, stressing that “conservatism does not predispose an American to favor one side, nor does liberalism.”[10]Writing almost twenty years later in 2003, Pipes recalled his earlier observation and wrote, “Today all that has changed. The Middle East has replaced the Soviet Union as the touchstone of politics and ideology. With increasing clarity, conservatives stand on one side of its issues and liberals on the other.”[11]
As the Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg observed in April 2011, “Particularly among liberals, Israel’s reputation is waning dramatically.”[12]
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Oct 15, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
White water rafting… in Las Vegas.
(Or learning to improvise on father-son weekends)
When I was 13 years old my parents had recently divorced and my father decided it would be a good time to have a father-son bonding weekend and that we’d go white water rafting in Snake River Canyon Wyoming. It was the first and last time I’ve ever been to Wyoming. Or whitewater rafting, for that matter. But
I do have fond and fun memories of what developed into a rather unconventional father-son weekend.
We arrived at the and were told by the guide that the water was unusually placid and there would be no “white water rafting” but we could still navigate the river’s calm waters, fish, and have cookouts where we stopped to camp for the next four days. My father, who was once fairly described as having the attention span of a strobe light, looked horrified—like it had been announced we’d been kidnapped and wouldn’t see civilization again for a very long time—maybe ever. My attention span was slightly better. Like a strobe light running in slow motion. And although I doubt I looked horrified; I suspect I looked seriously concerned and maybe even a little ashen.
JYB Sr., JYB Jr. and JYB III circa 1972
We spent the next 8-10 hours on a raft. That’s it. Just rafting and fishing unsuccessfully. That night we set up camp and had a fire and played backgammon. That’s right, backgammon. My father and I would play backgammon for a dollar a point. I was down by a lot when we stopped playing several hours later because the dice rolling kept others with us from going to sleep. Earlier that evening our tour guide pointed out on a cave what looked like some Indian drawings. I knew my mom would find this interesting but I could tell my dad had dialed into his primitive survivalist instincts and was concocting a plan to allow us to escape. There were some things he knew he couldn’t protect me against in the wild. But boredom wasn’t one of them. I sensed that a real white water adventure was about to begin—one that wasn’t on the tour guides itinerary.
The next morning after several more hours on the raft of unsuccessful fishing and gliding along the undisturbed waters while I continued to lose more of my allowance playing backgammon, I realized my father had convinced the tour guide to go a direction that would drop us off at the first small town were close to. Suddenly there were people and a small store. We were dropped off, said good-bye, and grabbed the duffel bags I had packed for us.
I had no idea where we were going only that the waters were getting more interesting and adrenaline was on the uptick. My father asked for a ride to the nearest airport. He paid a tall Native American man $50 to allow us to drive his old pick-up truck to the nearest airport where he would pick it up later that day. So, there we were—two city boys roughing it but learning to brave the harsh outdoor elements by persuading a strangers to loan us his pick-up truck so we could get to the airport. The truck had a single 8 track tape: Seargent Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club’s Band. I had always liked “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” but got to listen to the entire 8 track during our drive and realized how much I really liked the entire album. Even “A Day in the Life.”
We arrived at a tiny airport with few flights and none looking to arrive in destinations more appealing than where we already were—except one. We flew to Las Vegas. As we walked into the hotel lobby in Vegas, I think it was fair to say we were the only ones checking in with duffel bags. Because I’d only packed outdoor clothing for our rafting trip—and most father-son activities in Las Vegas were geared more for indoors—we each had to buy new clothes that night. Which was fun. And we had room service where I discovered Matza Ball Soup. Something that wouldn’t have happened had we continued White Water rafting. And to this day I still order Matza Ball soup whenever I have the chance.
We stayed for a couple of days and I not only got even in backgammon, but came out a little ahead. And most important there was the father-son bonding, city style. And the ancient and important ritual tradition of father passing on important life survival skills to the son. I learned well how to improvise, adapt and think out of the box….and am rarely bored in life. Even without having to go to Vegas. And then we boarded a 747 and headed back home to Kentucky from our rugged and largely improvised—and unforgettable— white water adventure.
By Jason Atkinson, on Wed Oct 10, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
Saturday I swam with 1,000 spawning salmon and I wondered what if they might be the last? Did I do everything in my power to fix the river my grandparents told me to restore? No. I’ve tried it with politics. I’m unfulfilled seeing what is happening and knowing I have the power to change it.
It was too late for the Hudson River in New York. The same was almost true with the Willamette River. While today the water around Portland is better, I wouldn’t recommend swimming in it. There are only a few rivers in the world, which could tip in either direction. My son will live with the results. So will yours.
I took this picture Saturday
Why laser beam on the Klamath? Because her champions are Government reports, bad politics, old hatreds, misinformation, and election cycles in both Oregon and California. The river’s future is stagnating like the water behind its lowest dam. Green, hot, and no one wants to touch it.
I want to. We’re Americans. We fix problems. We build our country. We leave it better.
Americans knew “super-sized” fast food was bad for our health. All the Government reports said so. But it was not until a documentary called Super Size Me made the emotional connection by laser-beaming on one man who ate too much, destroying his health, did America change. Within weeks of the films release, McDonalds ended “super-sizing.”
My laser beam is focused on the Klamath because I know a spotlight will be shown on how Americans do conservation. Our emotional connection is with America (like Super Size Me), and our story is the families who depend on a restored Klamath River.
I know the people of the Klamath. I am one. I know what is at stake, the competing cultures, the way of life in Oregon and California. I also know my great-grandfather swam with thousands and thousands more fish than I did Saturday.
The Klamath matters because restoring this river and her people reflects who we all are as Americans.
Help us finish up our grassroots push. We are just $19,250 to go.
By Jonathan Miller, on Thu Sep 27, 2012 at 10:34 AM ET
Apparently, the South Korean sensation, “Gangnam Style,” is going global. Just yesterday, during the United Nations General Assembly meeting, Iranian Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took to the streets of New York City, and was joined by Hafaz Assad and the late(?) Ayatollah Khomeini for a stirring rendition.
In its four years of re-setting American policy in the Middle East, the Obama Administration has made the following choices: it remained mostly silent when the 2009 Iranian elections seemed to momentarily destabilize the Ahmadinejaid regime; it pointedly called for a reconfiguring of Israeli borders with the tenuous pre-1967 lines as the starting point for negotiation; it has embraced the popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya without expressing major reservations about the radical, even Al Qaeda based elements on the edges of the upheaval; it has not coupled foreign aid to the emergent regimes to a softening of internal policies that suppress religious minorities; and the White House has visibly tamped down momentum for Israeli action against Iran’s nuclear aspirations.
To President Obama’s allies, this is the carefully calibrated record of a government bent on shoring up American popularity in the Arab world. To critics, it is a muddled, ad hoc realignment of American interests. I lean toward the second perspective. But even the defenders of Obama diplomacy are hard-pressed to deny the obvious: the strategy seems to have yielded far from enough dividends within either the Arab street or its ruling classes in the wake of last week’s violence. And any results have ranged from ephemeral gains (a slight diminution of anti-Americanism and a rhetorical affinity for democracy, both of which have come undone under the recognition that American democracy is not empowered or inclined to censor the Internet) to the outright counter-productive (the appearance of an American/Israeli wedge has isolated Israel’s hawks on the global stage, which must embolden Iran’s conceit that it can militarize its nuclear capacity while the West debates).
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Obama’s Middle East
We did it. You did it.
Now what? Spread the good word and help us find investor partners in philanthropy, institutional investors, business partners and our friends in the tribal community.
