As was the case when John McCain announced Sarah Palin would be his VP running mate, the media within 48 hours has crawled everywhere short of Joe The Plumber's anal cavity to see what they could dig up about a guy who dared to challenge their annointed presidential candidate.
Would there even be a race if the media so much as wiped away the rose petals sitting atop Barack Obama's life story?
Rhetorical question, of course.
So the media has dug and dug and unearthed the dirt on Joe The Plumber.
The networks, along with BSNBC, quickly reported that *gasp* Joe owes the government back taxes to the tune of a little more than $1,000. I fail to find any relevency in that, but I certainly can understand why to Liberals, that's justification for dismissing his entire point of view on taxation if not stripping him of his First Amendment right altogether!
Their most damning find, though, is that Joe is not even a licensed plumber! Forget his First Amendment right! He should be in prison!
It simply amazes me that for two days now, the media can talk of little else. Of course, as is the media's way, they leave out one tiny bit of crucial information.
Joe has been an apprentice plumber since November of 2003, working for an Al Newell. Mr. Newell has been a master plumber since 1974 and is licensed. In the state of Ohio, one cannot even apply for his plumber's license until he has served as an apprentice for five years.
I'll do the math for those who'd rather not. Not until November 2008 (that's next month for those still not choosing to follow) can Joe apply for his plumber's license.
Oh yeah, and the media also giddily reported that Joe only earned around $42,000 last year, "so his claim of earning $250,000 seems to be wildly exaggerated," according to several news reports.
Again, the media picks and chooses ... and then simply makes up ... its facts to suit its agenda.
Go back to the original Obama-Joe exchange. He did not say he earns $250,000. He said he wants to buy a business eventually (Mr. Newell's) and is concerned that once he DOES own a business worth that much, that he will be further penalized with higher taxes for his hard work, ingenuity, etc.
This poses a critical point that I'm glad to see SOME people picking up on, including the McCain campaign.
Obama's answer to Joe in that exchange (and you can find the video anywhere on the Internet; the words actually did come out of Obama's mouth) was that he (Obama) wants to make sure all those under Joe, and others who make that kind of money, have the same chances.
That, my friends, is right out of Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky (Obama's mentor) SOCIALISM.
The fact is, "all those under Joe" DO have the same opportunity. No one annointed Joe. He works a trade. He serves an apprenticeship. And if he's driven enough and works hard enough, he'll have his business eventually, just like millions of other Americans.
The problem, as I see it, is that there is an alarming number of people in this country who DON'T want to work for what they get. And now we have an extreme Left Wing presidential candidate who gladly will give it to them.
Courtesy of all the Joes out there.
Obama's mantra is "spread the wealth." It's an undertone of what's at his core:
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Karl Marx wrote that in 1875. It's the basis for every communist/socialist system that's been tried in the 133 years since.
And that, my friends, is Obama's vision for change.
(Imported from Oct. 18, 2008)
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
A soldier's story
The following is a blog entry written on Aug. 30, 2008, by Army Specialist Stephen Fortunato, who was killed Tuesday in Afghanistan when the vehicle he was riding in was blown up by an improvised explosive device. This entry was forwarded to the [Boston] Globe by his mother, Elizabeth “Betty” Crawford.
If I may … I’d like to say something. Just to get it out there so it is clear.
To all the pampered and protected Americans who feel it is their duty to inform me that I am not fighting for their freedom, and that i am a pawn in Bush’s agenda of greed and oil acquisition: Noted, and [expletive deleted] You.
I am not a robot. I am not blind or ignorant to the state of the world or the implications of the “War on Terrorism.” I know that our leaders have made mistakes in the handling of a very sensitive situation, but do not for one second think that you can make me lose faith in what we, meaning America’s sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers in uniform are doing.
I am doing my part in fighting a very real enemy of the United States, i.e. Taliban, Al Qaida, and various other radical sects of Islam that have declared war on our way of life. Unless you believe the events of 9/11 were the result of a government conspiracy, which by the way would make you a MORON, there is no reasonable argument you can make against there being a true and dangerous threat that needs to be dealt with.
I don’t care if there are corporations leaching off the war effort to make money, and I don’t care if you don’t think our freedom within America’s borders is actually at stake. I just want to kill those who would harm my family and friends. It is that simple. Even if this is just a war for profit or to assert America’s power, so what? Someone has to be on top and I want it to be us. There’s nothing wrong with wishing prosperity for your side.
I am a proud American. I believe that my country allows me to live my life more or less however I want to, and believe me, I have seen what the alternative of that looks like. I also believe that our big scary government does way more than it has to to help complete [expletive deleted]-ups get back on their feet, a stark comparison to places where leaders just line their own pockets with gold while allowing the people who gave them their power and privilage to starve.
I have chosen my corner. I back my country, and am proud to defend it against aggressors. Also, if you dare accuse us of being inhumane, or overly aggressive because we have rolled into someone else’s country and blown some [expletive deleted] up and shot some people, let me remind you of just how inhumane we COULD be in defending ourselves. Let me remind you that we have a warhead that drops multiple bomblets from the stratosphere which upon impact, would turn all the sand in Iraq to glass, and reduce every living thing there to dust.
Do we use it? No. Instead we use the most humane weapon ever devised: the American soldier. We send our bravest (and perhaps admitably craziest) men and women into enemy territory, into harms way, to root out those whom we are after and do our best to leave innocent lives unscathed.
One last thing, a proposal. I know it has been stated time and time again but I just think it is worthy of reiteration. If you find yourself completely disgusted with the way America is being ran, and how we handle things on the global stage, you can leave. Isn’t that amazing? No one will stop you! If you are an anarchist, there are places you can go where there is no government to tell you anything. That’s right…you are left solely to your own devices and you can handle the men who show up at your door with AKs in any way that you see fit. Just don’t try good old American debate tactics on them because you will most likely end up bound and blind-folded, to have your head chopped off on the internet so your parents can see it.
However, if you insist on staying here and taking advantage of privilages such as free speach and WIC, keep the counter-productive [expletive deleted] to a minimum while the grown ups figure out how to handle this God-awful mess in the Middle East.
(Imported from Oct. 18, 2008)
If I may … I’d like to say something. Just to get it out there so it is clear.
To all the pampered and protected Americans who feel it is their duty to inform me that I am not fighting for their freedom, and that i am a pawn in Bush’s agenda of greed and oil acquisition: Noted, and [expletive deleted] You.
I am not a robot. I am not blind or ignorant to the state of the world or the implications of the “War on Terrorism.” I know that our leaders have made mistakes in the handling of a very sensitive situation, but do not for one second think that you can make me lose faith in what we, meaning America’s sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers in uniform are doing.
I am doing my part in fighting a very real enemy of the United States, i.e. Taliban, Al Qaida, and various other radical sects of Islam that have declared war on our way of life. Unless you believe the events of 9/11 were the result of a government conspiracy, which by the way would make you a MORON, there is no reasonable argument you can make against there being a true and dangerous threat that needs to be dealt with.
I don’t care if there are corporations leaching off the war effort to make money, and I don’t care if you don’t think our freedom within America’s borders is actually at stake. I just want to kill those who would harm my family and friends. It is that simple. Even if this is just a war for profit or to assert America’s power, so what? Someone has to be on top and I want it to be us. There’s nothing wrong with wishing prosperity for your side.
I am a proud American. I believe that my country allows me to live my life more or less however I want to, and believe me, I have seen what the alternative of that looks like. I also believe that our big scary government does way more than it has to to help complete [expletive deleted]-ups get back on their feet, a stark comparison to places where leaders just line their own pockets with gold while allowing the people who gave them their power and privilage to starve.
I have chosen my corner. I back my country, and am proud to defend it against aggressors. Also, if you dare accuse us of being inhumane, or overly aggressive because we have rolled into someone else’s country and blown some [expletive deleted] up and shot some people, let me remind you of just how inhumane we COULD be in defending ourselves. Let me remind you that we have a warhead that drops multiple bomblets from the stratosphere which upon impact, would turn all the sand in Iraq to glass, and reduce every living thing there to dust.
Do we use it? No. Instead we use the most humane weapon ever devised: the American soldier. We send our bravest (and perhaps admitably craziest) men and women into enemy territory, into harms way, to root out those whom we are after and do our best to leave innocent lives unscathed.
One last thing, a proposal. I know it has been stated time and time again but I just think it is worthy of reiteration. If you find yourself completely disgusted with the way America is being ran, and how we handle things on the global stage, you can leave. Isn’t that amazing? No one will stop you! If you are an anarchist, there are places you can go where there is no government to tell you anything. That’s right…you are left solely to your own devices and you can handle the men who show up at your door with AKs in any way that you see fit. Just don’t try good old American debate tactics on them because you will most likely end up bound and blind-folded, to have your head chopped off on the internet so your parents can see it.
However, if you insist on staying here and taking advantage of privilages such as free speach and WIC, keep the counter-productive [expletive deleted] to a minimum while the grown ups figure out how to handle this God-awful mess in the Middle East.
(Imported from Oct. 18, 2008)
The poop (literally) on polls
I've often written about polls and expressed my misgivings, largely because I have first-hand knowledge about their role in today's media.
Have a story or point of view you want to advance? Easy. Run a poll. Fashion the questions in a way that will guarantee the results you want to "back up" that point of view. And carefully tilt the kind of people you "poll" to further those results.
This campaign season once again shows how meaningless these "polls" really are.
A half-dozen times or so, I've walked into work to cat-calls from my more Liberal colleagues about a New York Times poll or Washington Post poll or ABC poll ... all, of course, showing Barack Obama with a sudden nine-point lead or 10-point lead or whatever.
The last time this happened was about a week or so ago. I believe it was a Washington Post poll that suddenly had Obama with a 10-point lead after weeks and weeks of a much tighter race. Of course, one needs to peel back several layers of what's reported and look at who was polled, first of all.
Naturally, none in the media (including the Washington Post itself) disclosed the fact that the sampling included nine percent more people who identified themselves as Democrats than did so as Republicans.
So in reality, given the fact that the vast majority of those who have a particular party affiliation vote along that party's line, what is this poll worth?
Well, a lot to the media. These people know that most folks don't peel back ANY layer to look closely. Most see a headline, and that's the extent of their "knowlege" of the news. A handful read the first three paragraphs of a story. Relatively few make ANY attempt to actually educate themselves.
And the result? In this campaign season, particularly lately, Liberals get to thump their chests. Conservatives fret. Hopefully, the media schemes, many will throw in the towel.
Isn't that what happened in 2004? The "media" reported half the day that these "exit polls" showed a Kerry landslide. The effort was to convince Western states in particular and voters everywhere who were going to cast theirs late in the day that the game was over.
It obviously wasn't, was it?
It's sad, but if we in this country bought automobiles the way we buy "news," car mechanics would be the richest people on earth.
There's a story at the top of Yahoo's home page today that illustrates my point in neon.
The headline: Poll: Voters souring on McCain; Obama holding steady.
This rather long story goes into great detail for paragraph after paragraph about, well, just what the headline says.
Here's the next-to-last paragraph:
The AP-Yahoo! News poll included 841 likely voters was conducted from Oct. 3-13 and has an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. Included were interviews with 373 people who initially said they were Democrats, 252 Republicans and 214 independents, for whom the margins of sampling error are plus or minus 5.1, 6.2 and 6.7 percentage points, respectively.
Now what do you realistically expect a poll to "reveal" when 44.4 percent of the people polled are Democrats and only 30 percent are Republicans?
This is legitimate news? C'mon people!
The best part of this particular "poll"? What the story does NOT say but what's included in the entire poll report, is that among these "likely voters", 44 percent say they'll vote for Obama, 42 percent for McCain.
You'd think that in a poll that included 14 percent more Democrats than Republicans, the fact that only two percent more people saying they'll vote for the Democrat than the Republican would somehow find its way into the story, if not BE THE STORY.
Why isn't it even IN the story? Take a wild guess.
(Imported from Oct. 17, 2008)
Have a story or point of view you want to advance? Easy. Run a poll. Fashion the questions in a way that will guarantee the results you want to "back up" that point of view. And carefully tilt the kind of people you "poll" to further those results.
This campaign season once again shows how meaningless these "polls" really are.
A half-dozen times or so, I've walked into work to cat-calls from my more Liberal colleagues about a New York Times poll or Washington Post poll or ABC poll ... all, of course, showing Barack Obama with a sudden nine-point lead or 10-point lead or whatever.
The last time this happened was about a week or so ago. I believe it was a Washington Post poll that suddenly had Obama with a 10-point lead after weeks and weeks of a much tighter race. Of course, one needs to peel back several layers of what's reported and look at who was polled, first of all.
Naturally, none in the media (including the Washington Post itself) disclosed the fact that the sampling included nine percent more people who identified themselves as Democrats than did so as Republicans.
So in reality, given the fact that the vast majority of those who have a particular party affiliation vote along that party's line, what is this poll worth?
Well, a lot to the media. These people know that most folks don't peel back ANY layer to look closely. Most see a headline, and that's the extent of their "knowlege" of the news. A handful read the first three paragraphs of a story. Relatively few make ANY attempt to actually educate themselves.
And the result? In this campaign season, particularly lately, Liberals get to thump their chests. Conservatives fret. Hopefully, the media schemes, many will throw in the towel.
Isn't that what happened in 2004? The "media" reported half the day that these "exit polls" showed a Kerry landslide. The effort was to convince Western states in particular and voters everywhere who were going to cast theirs late in the day that the game was over.
It obviously wasn't, was it?
It's sad, but if we in this country bought automobiles the way we buy "news," car mechanics would be the richest people on earth.
There's a story at the top of Yahoo's home page today that illustrates my point in neon.
The headline: Poll: Voters souring on McCain; Obama holding steady.
This rather long story goes into great detail for paragraph after paragraph about, well, just what the headline says.
Here's the next-to-last paragraph:
The AP-Yahoo! News poll included 841 likely voters was conducted from Oct. 3-13 and has an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. Included were interviews with 373 people who initially said they were Democrats, 252 Republicans and 214 independents, for whom the margins of sampling error are plus or minus 5.1, 6.2 and 6.7 percentage points, respectively.
Now what do you realistically expect a poll to "reveal" when 44.4 percent of the people polled are Democrats and only 30 percent are Republicans?
This is legitimate news? C'mon people!
The best part of this particular "poll"? What the story does NOT say but what's included in the entire poll report, is that among these "likely voters", 44 percent say they'll vote for Obama, 42 percent for McCain.
You'd think that in a poll that included 14 percent more Democrats than Republicans, the fact that only two percent more people saying they'll vote for the Democrat than the Republican would somehow find its way into the story, if not BE THE STORY.
Why isn't it even IN the story? Take a wild guess.
(Imported from Oct. 17, 2008)
New bailout numbers
This, for all those constantly raised eyebrows, comes from Reuters, which is not exactly your average, everyday right-wing news agency.
New estimates for the bailout package our elected officials have heaped upon us, when taking into account what the federal government will be able to buy (with our money) in terms of bad loans per year, how they'll be able to shed those loans, even at a loss (again, our money), and then repeat the procedure the following year, brings the new projected total to ...
Are you ready?
You might actually want to sit down.
Oh, and get a glass of water before you do so.
Or a wet cloth.
Might want to have a phone nearby, too ... just in case.
And the winning number is ...
$1.8 trillion.
That, by the way, doesn't include all the pork projects Democrats said they wouldn't allow on this particular bill but heaped on top regardless.
So let's see ...
$1.8 trillion bailout package.
Nearly $1 trillion in new spending proposed by Barack Uhbama.
And these tax cuts he and his bumbling, lying VP partner are championing are going to come from WHERE exactly?
The saddest aspect is that so many are buying their bullshit.
(Imported from Oct. 4, 2008)
New estimates for the bailout package our elected officials have heaped upon us, when taking into account what the federal government will be able to buy (with our money) in terms of bad loans per year, how they'll be able to shed those loans, even at a loss (again, our money), and then repeat the procedure the following year, brings the new projected total to ...
Are you ready?
You might actually want to sit down.
Oh, and get a glass of water before you do so.
Or a wet cloth.
Might want to have a phone nearby, too ... just in case.
And the winning number is ...
$1.8 trillion.
That, by the way, doesn't include all the pork projects Democrats said they wouldn't allow on this particular bill but heaped on top regardless.
So let's see ...
$1.8 trillion bailout package.
Nearly $1 trillion in new spending proposed by Barack Uhbama.
And these tax cuts he and his bumbling, lying VP partner are championing are going to come from WHERE exactly?
The saddest aspect is that so many are buying their bullshit.
(Imported from Oct. 4, 2008)
Hypocrisy times ten
"We will not Christmas-tree this bill. The times are too urgent. Everyone has their own desires and needs. It's going to have to wait." -- Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer, earlier this week on the urgency of passing the $700 billion bailout bill.
Christmas-treeing a bill is political-speak for attaching the usual billion dollars or two in pork projects, or earmarks.
Of course, things didn't work out that way with the bailout bill. It was business as usual with millions added at the last minute for pet projects. There were tax breaks for makers of wooden arrows, for Rum producers in Puerto Rico ...
And my personal favorite, because it's just so typical: Tax breaks for corporations in American Somoa.
OK, kids, pop quiz.
Guess which company operates the largest tuna canning plant in the world in American Somoa, employing amost 75 percent of that territory's workforce?
If you said Starkist, you get a cookie.
Now, onto the bonus round.
Guess where Starkist's parent company, Del Monte, is headquartered?
If you said in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district, you get another cookie.
Let's review the Liberal playbook, shall we? American companies that operate overseas, costing Americans jobs, are bad, bad, bad! Tax cuts for the rich? (I think we can all agree that Del Monte ain't exactly hurtin'.) Bad, EVIL, bad!
Shouldn't come as a surprise, though. After all, within a week of the Democrats taking control of the House and Pelosi ascending to her throne, Congress raised the minimum wage across America and in all U.S. territories.
With one exception. Care to venture a guess?
If you said American Somoa, you get yet another cookie.
(Imported from Oct. 3, 2008)
Christmas-treeing a bill is political-speak for attaching the usual billion dollars or two in pork projects, or earmarks.
Of course, things didn't work out that way with the bailout bill. It was business as usual with millions added at the last minute for pet projects. There were tax breaks for makers of wooden arrows, for Rum producers in Puerto Rico ...
And my personal favorite, because it's just so typical: Tax breaks for corporations in American Somoa.
OK, kids, pop quiz.
Guess which company operates the largest tuna canning plant in the world in American Somoa, employing amost 75 percent of that territory's workforce?
If you said Starkist, you get a cookie.
Now, onto the bonus round.
Guess where Starkist's parent company, Del Monte, is headquartered?
If you said in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district, you get another cookie.
Let's review the Liberal playbook, shall we? American companies that operate overseas, costing Americans jobs, are bad, bad, bad! Tax cuts for the rich? (I think we can all agree that Del Monte ain't exactly hurtin'.) Bad, EVIL, bad!
Shouldn't come as a surprise, though. After all, within a week of the Democrats taking control of the House and Pelosi ascending to her throne, Congress raised the minimum wage across America and in all U.S. territories.
With one exception. Care to venture a guess?
If you said American Somoa, you get yet another cookie.
(Imported from Oct. 3, 2008)
Grrrrr!
Well, folks, the wagons are circling. All the crooks who cooked books, who put in place policies that got us into this mess, who knowingly took money ... in other words, those who are responsible for the financial mess in which we find ourselves ... are making sure their butts are covered.
Oh, there are sure to be hearings. But just like the 9/11 Commission, we'll have the architects of the problem up there at the big table, making sure everyone who SHOULD BE IN PRISON is going to skate. Nobody's going to answer for jack.
Except the taxpayers, of course.
And all this bailout crap is going on behind closed doors, too. Between mostly Democrats. We're going to wind up with a gargantuan stack of documents that the public won't know anything about ... well, except for what the people who wrote it deem necessary for us to know. Which is a whitewash of the truth.
I still haven't heard ONE WORD in the mainstream media about ACORN getting 20 percent of this $700 billion or whatever the total bailout winds up being. And I guaran-damn-tee you that they won't report, either, that all these people who jumped at 1 percent adjustable rate mortgages and now are facing foreclosure because their five-year period is up and the rate jumped to 9 percent will get to keep their 1 percent rates.
That's right. You and I and tens of thousands of others, who stayed a responsible course with our finances, now get to pay for the tens of thousands of others who couldn't see past the ends of their noses and/or thought they could get something for nothing and damn the consequences.
The media, you see, is too interested in looking under every rock in the state of Alaska to concern themselves with the truth behind the biggest financial scandal in this nation's history. And because they're not interested, we're not getting anywhere near the truth why this happened, let alone a means to ensure it won't happen again.
Instead, we're depending on the arsonist to put out the fire.
(Imported from Oct. 1, 2008)
Oh, there are sure to be hearings. But just like the 9/11 Commission, we'll have the architects of the problem up there at the big table, making sure everyone who SHOULD BE IN PRISON is going to skate. Nobody's going to answer for jack.
Except the taxpayers, of course.
And all this bailout crap is going on behind closed doors, too. Between mostly Democrats. We're going to wind up with a gargantuan stack of documents that the public won't know anything about ... well, except for what the people who wrote it deem necessary for us to know. Which is a whitewash of the truth.
I still haven't heard ONE WORD in the mainstream media about ACORN getting 20 percent of this $700 billion or whatever the total bailout winds up being. And I guaran-damn-tee you that they won't report, either, that all these people who jumped at 1 percent adjustable rate mortgages and now are facing foreclosure because their five-year period is up and the rate jumped to 9 percent will get to keep their 1 percent rates.
That's right. You and I and tens of thousands of others, who stayed a responsible course with our finances, now get to pay for the tens of thousands of others who couldn't see past the ends of their noses and/or thought they could get something for nothing and damn the consequences.
The media, you see, is too interested in looking under every rock in the state of Alaska to concern themselves with the truth behind the biggest financial scandal in this nation's history. And because they're not interested, we're not getting anywhere near the truth why this happened, let alone a means to ensure it won't happen again.
Instead, we're depending on the arsonist to put out the fire.
(Imported from Oct. 1, 2008)
Oh I wonder, yes I wonder
I'm wondering why the networks aren't on this? Why the New York Times and Washington Post and LA Times aren't splashing this across the tops of their front pages?
Geez, I wonder where the cries are for hearings and investigations and resignations?
I wonder ...
From the Washington Times today:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has directed nearly $100,000 from her political action committee to her husband's real estate and investment firm over the past decade, a practice of paying a spouse with political donations that she supported banning last year.
Financial Leasing Services Inc. (FLS), owned by Paul F. Pelosi, has received $99,000 in rent, utilities and accounting fees from the speaker's "PAC to the Future" over the PAC's nine-year history.
The payments have quadrupled since Mr. Pelosi took over as treasurer of his wife's committee in 2007, Federal Election Commission records show. FLS is on track to take in $48,000 in payments this year alone - eight times as much as it received annually from 2000 to 2005, when the committee was run by another treasurer.
Lawmakers' frequent use of campaign donations to pay relatives emerged as an issue in the 2006 election campaigns, when the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal gave Democrats fodder to criticize Republicans such as former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas and Rep. John T. Doolittle of California for putting their wives on their campaign and PAC payrolls for fundraising work.
(Imported from Oct. 1, 2008)
Geez, I wonder where the cries are for hearings and investigations and resignations?
I wonder ...
From the Washington Times today:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has directed nearly $100,000 from her political action committee to her husband's real estate and investment firm over the past decade, a practice of paying a spouse with political donations that she supported banning last year.
Financial Leasing Services Inc. (FLS), owned by Paul F. Pelosi, has received $99,000 in rent, utilities and accounting fees from the speaker's "PAC to the Future" over the PAC's nine-year history.
The payments have quadrupled since Mr. Pelosi took over as treasurer of his wife's committee in 2007, Federal Election Commission records show. FLS is on track to take in $48,000 in payments this year alone - eight times as much as it received annually from 2000 to 2005, when the committee was run by another treasurer.
Lawmakers' frequent use of campaign donations to pay relatives emerged as an issue in the 2006 election campaigns, when the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal gave Democrats fodder to criticize Republicans such as former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas and Rep. John T. Doolittle of California for putting their wives on their campaign and PAC payrolls for fundraising work.
(Imported from Oct. 1, 2008)
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