UTAH ANIMAL ADOPTION CENTER CELEBRATES HALLMARK CHANNEL’S KITTEN BOWL VII BY HOSTING KITTEN BOWL PARTY ON SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1
Events Feature Giveaways and Adorable, Adoptable Animals
WHAT: Utah Animal Adoption Center is joining North Shore Animal League America, and more than 500 shelter partners across the country, to celebrate Hallmark Channel’s Kitten Bowl VII game with a Kitten Bowl Party event on Saturday, February 1 from 10:00AM – 6:00PM at the PetSmart in Layton. The event will feature giveaways and adorable, adoptable animals.
Kitten Bowl is the greatest feline football showdown in cable television history and has resulted in more than 40,000 shelter pet adoptions since its premiere in 2014. The competition will be hosted by North Shore Animal League America’s Foster Mom, National Spokesperson, and Board of Directors member Beth Stern. Four-time Pro Bowl quarterback and Feline Football League (FFL) Commissioner Boomer Esiason and former NFL running back Rashad Jennings will be on hand to offer commentary on every adorable moment of fur-flying kitten play-off action. The broadcast will also feature off-field antics featuring our North Shore Animal League America puppy friends.
The second annual Cat Bowl, featuring senior and special needs felines, will premiere on Saturday, February 1st, 2020 (11:00 pm ET/PT) on Hallmark Channel. Kitten Bowl VII will premiere Su-PURR Bowl Sunday, February 2, 2020 (2:00 pm ET/PT) on Hallmark Channel.
North Shore Animal League America and their participating shelter partners across the country will be hosting Kitten Bowl Parties. The shelter partners which adopt out the most animals during this promotion (February 1 – 16) may receive cash grants.
All of the players who played in the actual Kitten Bowl competition have since found loving homes through Hallmark Channel’s partnership with North Shore Animal League America – the world’s largest no-kill, rescue, and animal adoption organization. However, there are plenty of fabulous felines (canines, too!) at your local shelter waiting to find their forever homes.
Link to view highlight preview reel from Kitten Bowl VII and Cat Bowl II (2020)
WHEN: Saturday, February 1 10:00am – 6:00pm Kitten Bowl VII Party
**Featuring giveaways and adorable, adoptable animals**
WHO: Adoptable cats and kittens are the stars of this event with equally adorable (and adoptable) dogs and puppies cheering them on from the sidelines.
WHERE: PETSMART
750 NORTH MAIN STREET, LAYTON, UT 94041
Media RSVP to:
JODE LITTLEPAGE
Phone: Office (801)355-7837 / Cell (801) 318-9787
Email: Jode.littlepage@gmail.com
About UTAH ANIMAL ADOPTION CENTER (UAAC)
Utah Animal Adoption Center (UAAC) is a non-euthanizing animal adoption center, rescuing an average of 1,000 dogs and cats each year and placing them in loving homes.
UAAC has been dedicated to reducing the tragedies of pet overpopulation, the euthanasia of healthy adoptable pets and animal suffering since 1983.
UAAC is funded entirely by individual donations and some private foundation grants. Your donation to UAAC saves lives by supporting animal rescue, ongoing loving care, medical attention for pets in need and humane education. www.utahanimals.org
About Hallmark Channel
Hallmark Channel is Crown Media Family Networks’ flagship 24-hour cable television network, distributed nationwide in high definition (HD) and standard definition (SD) to 90 million homes. As the country’s leading destination for quality family entertainment, Hallmark Channel delivers on the 100-year legacy of the Hallmark brand. In addition to its signature new, original movies, the network features an ambitious lineup of other new, original content, including scripted primetime series, such as “Good Witch,” “When Calls the Heart” and “Chesapeake Shores”; annual specials including “Kitten Bowl” and “Hero Dog Awards”; and a daily, two-hour lifestyle show, “Home & Family.” Additionally, Hallmark Channel is the exclusive home to world premiere presentations of the acclaimed Hallmark Hall of Fame franchise. Dedicated to helping viewers celebrate life’s special moments, Hallmark Channel also offers annual holiday programming franchises, including “Countdown to Christmas,” “Countdown to Valentine’s Day,” “Summer Nights,” “Fall Harvest” and “Winterfest.” Rounding out the network’s diverse slate are some of television’s most beloved comedies and series, including “The Golden Girls,” “The Middle,” “Last Man Standing,” and “Frasier.”
======================
With the Iowa caucuses heating up the 2020 presidential race, the personal finance website WalletHub compared Iowa’s demographic characteristics and public opinions against that of the U.S. to answer: How Closely Does Iowa Resemble the U.S.? Our data set of 31 key measures includes sociodemographic, economic, educational and religious metrics as well as public stances on certain issues.
Key Findings
For the full report, please visit:
http://wallethub.com/edu/iowa-us-resemblance/18578/
=====================
Utah Senate President Adams Responds to the State of the State Address
SALT LAKE CITY – President J. Stuart Adams issues the following statement following Governor Gary R. Herbert’s 2020 State of the State Address:
“I appreciate Governor Herbert's commitment to education, transportation infrastructure and air quality. Our economy is functioning at an all-time high, and it is due to the forward-thinking and collaborative spirit of Utah's leaders and engaged citizens. Our efforts are paying off. Utah is leading the way in economic development, education scores, infrastructure and upward mobility. I value the governor being closely aligned with the legislature in our shared desire to improve continually so our future is even better than it is today.
=======================
United Utah Party to announce 2nd District Congressional Candidate
What: United Utah Party 2nd Congressional District Congressional Candidate
When: Thursday, January 30 at 10:00 a.m.
Where: Online
Tomorrow at 10:00 AM, the United Utah Party will release the video announcement of someone seeking the UUP nomination in the 2nd District Congressional District.
For more information, visit unitedutah.org.
===================
Maneuvering hell for our advantage
by Robert C. Koehler
994 words
When the mainstream media writes about war, even critically, the image that often comes to mind for me is an infant wrapped in plastic. That infant is naked reality, a.k.a., the present moment, suffocating and screaming for its life; the plastic smothering it are the journalistic euphemisms by which murder and terrorism turn into abstract acts of national necessity.
Thus, the recent news that the United States clobbered war-torn Afghanistan with a record number of bombs and missiles in 2019 came to us via Stars and Stripes in language protecting all concerned from raw awareness and flying shrapnel:
American aircraft released 7,423 munitions in the country in 2019, according to figures published Monday by U.S. Air Forces Central Command. Coalition aircraft flew nearly 8,800 sorties during the period, over a quarter of which carried out strikes.
The tally surpasses the previous record set last year when 7,362 munitions were released and comes amid ongoing discussion between American and Taliban officials aimed at ending America’s longest war.
Talks between the two sides continued for most of 2019 as American bombs were dropped.
This is, basically, the language of gamers. I bring it up not to criticize a single story but to throw a wild question into the wind: What if the media suddenly denied war its free moral pass? What if acts of military mayhem were not discussed as chess moves in a global game of competing national interests but sheerly for what they were: acts of slaughter, blood and psychological hell?
Maybe there was a time when war could be seen as rational and contained. After all, the major wars of the 20th century were neatly distinguished by Roman numerals. Peace prevailed for the rest of the century, right?
In point of fact, war begets nothing but war, a reality that’s getting harder and harder not to acknowledge here in the 21st century. But the language of war — “releasing munitions,” let us say, rather than blowing the arms and legs off children — lets the game proceed, at least beyond the national borders and national consciousness. If something awful happens on the home front, the reporting’s a bit different, of course. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, for instance, were covered for what they were, not from al-Qaeda’s strategic point of view. Compare that, let us say, to the shock-and-awe bombing of Iraq a year and a half later.
Here, for instance, was CNN reporting on March 22, 2003, shortly after the invasion was underway. We were in the process of killing 6,000 people in the initial bombing campaign, but the U.S. strategic (and humanitarian!) viewpoint was the prime focus of the coverage:
Rumsfeld said that the strike had taken place ‘on a scale that indicates to Iraqis’ that Saddam and his leadership were finished. He added that the allies would work to search for, capture, and drive out terrorists who had found safe harbor in Iraq, as well as to deliver humanitarian relief to the Iraqi people.
Perhaps the media can’t be blamed because things didn’t work out the way the pols said they would, but when does enough become enough? Are we at the point where, as endless war consumes ever larger segments of Planet Earth, it’s now time to declare that it’s out of control and stop writing about war in the same terms used by those who wage it? War is not a chess game. Whatever strategy it employs involves killing people, mostly civilians, and we should at least begin acknowledging that the ramifications of doing so are never strategically contained.
Back to Afghanistan and the fact that we bombed this ravaged country more heavily last year than we have since we started keeping count, which was in 2006. Why? We’ve been pummeling Afghanistan since 2001.
Luke Mogelson, writing last year in The New Yorker, pointed out:
In 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared, ‘We clearly have moved from major combat activity to a period of stability.’ Since then, more than a hundred and fifty thousand people have been killed in Afghanistan, and about seven hundred and fifty thousand Americans have served there. The U.S. has spent about eight hundred billion dollars on military operations and on a multitude of economic, governance, education, health, gender-equality, and counter-narcotics initiatives. Today, most Afghans live in poverty, corruption is endemic, literacy and life-expectancy rates rank among the lowest in the world, approximately a third of girls become child brides, and no country exports more illicit opium. The Taliban control or contest more than half the country.
There’s more going on here than strategic failure. War is hell in all directions, and perhaps it’s time to question the sanity of trying to maneuver hell for your own advantage.
One way that hell comes back home is via veterans’ suicides, which continue at a rate of about 20 per day. More and more people studying the matter are clutching hold of the term “moral injury” to describe the cause. Moral injury means a damaged conscience, a pierced sense of self, often due simply to following orders and helping inflict hell on a dehumanized enemy. Indeed, waging war requires dehumanizing fellow human beings. We couldn’t have released 7,423 munitions last year on people we valued.
But a dehumanized enemy can suddenly rehumanize herself in a veteran’s conscience. As Tyler Boudreau has pointed out: “Moral injury by definition includes the memories of those who have been harmed.”
The dehumanization process of war comes home in other ways as well. Domestic mass murders — which are growing ever more commonplace here in the greatest country on Earth — borrow the morality of war. The killer, avenging whatever grievance haunts him, employs the “principle of social substitutability” to kill people he doesn’t know, because for whatever reason they stand for the enemy he has chosen to punish.
And 18 years on, we’re bombing Afghanistan more savagely than ever. We’ve already destroyed the country, but we can’t stop trying to save it.
–end–
Robert Koehler, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is an award-winning Chicago journalist and editor.
--
Yours for a nonviolent future,
Tom H. Hastings, Ed.D.
Director, PeaceVoice Program
Oregon Peace Institute
503 744 9787
(he, him, his)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
author, latest book, A New Era of Nonviolence
https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/a-new-era-of-nonviolence/
Assistant Professor
Coordinator, Conflict Resolution BA/BS major & minor programs
PSU Conflict Resolution Department
RMNC 131
Portland OR 97201
http://www.pdx.edu/conflict-resolution/tom-hastings
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://hastingsnonviolence.blogspot.com/
Whitefeather Peace House
3315 N Russet Portland OR 97217
peace education notification list sign-up:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/peacejusticeportland
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
---
To unsubscribe: <mailto:editors--peacevoice-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net>
List help: <https://riseup.net/lists>
========================
Office of the Lieutenant Governor
Spencer J. Cox
Lieutenant Governor
*attached contains the following:
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Justin Lee
801.928.6948
Lt. Governor Spencer J. Cox provides referendum clarification
SALT LAKE CITY (January 29, 2020) – Lt. Governor Spencer J. Cox released the following clarification regarding the public referendum on 2019’s S.B. 2001:
2019’s S.B. 2001 was officially repealed yesterday when Gov. Herbert signed 2020’s H.B. 185. The purpose of a referendum petition is to refer a law passed by the legislature to a vote of the people. Since that law has been repealed, there is no longer an existing law to refer to the people, effectively making the referendum moot. Therefore, the referendum question will not appear on Utahn’s ballots this year. I would like to thank Utah’s county clerks and their teams for the tremendous amount of work they have done in processing over 145,000 signatures in a very short amount of time.
# # #
================
Press Release
USDA Invests $1.6 Million in Broadband for Rural Arizona Communities
GOLDEN VALLEY, Ariz., Jan. 29, 2020 – Today, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development Arizona State Director Jack R. Smith announced USDA has invested $1.6 million in a high-speed broadband infrastructure project that will create or improve rural e-Connectivity for 1,492 rural households, 27 pre-subscribed businesses, six educational facilities, four pre-subscribed farms, three critical community facilities and a health care center. This is one of many funding announcements in the first round of USDA’s ReConnect Pilot Program investments.
“Through USDA’s ReConnect Program, more than 1,400 Arizonians living in rural communities will get access to the latest broadband technology that will connect them to opportunities in education, health care and economic development,” Smith said. “Under the leadership of President Trump and Agriculture Secretary Perdue, USDA is committed to this strong partnership with rural communities in deploying this critical infrastructure, because we know when rural America thrives, all of America thrives.”
Wecom Inc. will use a $1.6 million ReConnect Pilot Program grant to construct a Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP) and hybrid Fiber-to-the-Node (FTTN) fixed wireless system that is expected to connect 1,492 households in Peach Springs, many belonging to members of the Hualapai Tribe, and the surrounding area to high-speed internet.
Background:
In March 2018, Congress provided $600 million to USDA to expand broadband infrastructure and services in rural America. On Dec. 13, 2018, Secretary Perdue announced the rules of the program, called “ReConnect,” including how the loans and grants will be awarded to help build broadband infrastructure in rural America. USDA received 146 applications between May 31, 2019, and July 12, 2019, requesting $1.4 billion in funding across all three ReConnect Program funding products: 100 percent loan, 100 percent grant, and loan-grant combinations. USDA is reviewing applications and announcing approved projects on a rolling basis. Additional investments in all three categories will be made in the coming weeks.
These grants, loans and combination funds enable the federal government to partner with the private sector and rural communities to build modern broadband infrastructure in areas with insufficient internet service. Insufficient service is defined as connection speeds of less than 10 megabits per second (Mbps) download and 1 Mbps upload.
In December 2019, Agriculture Secretary Perdue announced USDA will be making available an additional $550 million in ReConnect funding in 2020. USDA will make available up to $200 million for grants, up to $200 million for 50/50 grant/loan combinations, and up to $200 million for low-interest loans. The application window for this round of funding will open Jan. 31, 2020. Applications for all funding products will be accepted in the same application window, which will close no later than March 16, 2020.
A full description of 2020 ReConnect Pilot Program funding is available on page 67913 of the Dec. 12, 2019, Federal Register (PDF, 336 KB). To learn more about eligibility, technical assistance and recent announcements, visit www.usda.gov/reconnect.
In April 2017, President Donald J. Trump established the Interagency Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity to identify legislative, regulatory and policy changes that could promote agriculture and prosperity in rural communities. In January 2018, Secretary Perdue presented the Task Force’s findings to President Trump. These findings included 31 recommendations to align the federal government with state, local and tribal governments to take advantage of opportunities that exist in rural America. Increasing investments in rural infrastructure is a key recommendation of the task force. To view the report in its entirety, please view the Report to the President of the United States from the Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity (PDF, 5.4 MB). In addition, to view the categories of the recommendations, please view the Rural Prosperity infographic (PDF, 190 KB).
USDA Rural Development provides loans and grants to help expand economic opportunities and create jobs in rural areas. This assistance supports infrastructure improvements; business development; housing; community facilities such as schools, public safety and health care; and high-speed internet access in rural areas. For more information, visit www.rd.usda.gov.
