Friday, October 23, 2009

NO TRANSPARENCY, NO SURRENDER



Remember when the Left howled to know name for name who was being snuck into the White House for discussions on energy policy? Remember the rolling outcry when the Bush administration refused to reveal its guest list, presumably comprised mostly of Big Dirty Badass Oil reps?

Now, try to recall "Gentleman Jim" candidate Barack Obama's lofty but obviously bogus declaration of new White House transparency if he came to live there. Finally, let's return to Groundhog Day Reality in this Washington Times report...


THE WHITE HOUSE HAS TOLD Congress it will reject calls for many of President Obama's policy czars to testify before Congress—a decision senators said goes against the president's promises of transparency and openness and treads on Congress' constitutional mandate to investigate the administration's actions.

Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, said White House counsel Greg Craig told her in a meeting Wednesday that they will not make available any of the czars who work in the White House and don't have to go through Senate confirmation. She said he was "murky" on whether other czars outside of the White House would be allowed to come before Congress.

Miss Collins said that doesn't make sense when some of those czars are actually making policy or negotiating on behalf of Mr. Obama.

"I think Congress should be able to call the president's climate czar, Carol Browner, the energy and environment czar, to ask her about the negotiations she conducted with the automobile industry that led to very significant policy changes with regard to emissions standards," Miss Collins said at a hearing Thursday that examined the proliferation of czars.

The debate goes to the heart of weighty constitutional issues about separation of powers. The president argues that he should be allowed to have advisers who are free to give him confidential advice without having to fear being called to testify about it. Democrats and Republicans in Congress, though, argue that those in office who actually craft policy should be able to be summoned to testify because they do more than just give the president advice.

At issue are the 18 positions Miss Collins says Mr. Obama has created since he took office. Of those, she says 10—the White House says eight—are in the executive office and not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests or requests for testimony.

Read it all.

Washington continues to beg a single question.

After candidate George W. Bush's promise never to commit American fighting forces to foreign nation building tasks back during the 2000 campaign run against sitting Vice-President Al Gore, coupled with his adminsistration's own penchant for high secrecy even when hosting important but non-life-threatening strategy sessions such as the notorious energy policy sessions. The question:

Will Americans ever again elect an honest administration to help turn this great nation back from the brink once we have truly articulated an intelligent posture on what kind of nation we seek to be?

That's considerably too much to ask of a nation in constant change, I realize. The two myths of America are greater than the sums of its parts, but the reality of both is unfortunately far less than all that, quoth the raven.

First of all, we might consider ourselves fortunate in getting a good start and setting a good example by simply electing leadership that practices what it preaches. That sounds promising and of good faith, but don't we hear this same "I'm more honest than my opponent" speech in every jurisdictional race around the country from dogcatcher to POTUS every two to four years?

Are American voters as foolish as they seem, or does the system itself, the system as we know it, the sprawling scrawling now choking system made complex beyond a single candidate's or voter's comprehension some 230 years after its founding, encourage, and in fact DEMAND, the Big Lie?

That's a scary thought, but it seems to be increasingly true. Most other more colorful, more tainted types of candidates for high office are marginalized as fringe or unelectable, even though they may very well carry within them the attributes of a capable and even admirable leader. But we reject them as less than perfect, less than diligent, less than honorable. Is this because we imagine that our leaders must meet a higher standard than that to which we hold ourselves?

However, if we are to be diligently honest with ourselves as plain citizens and immaculate voters beckoned to the audacious booth from innumerable pathways to the present case, we might begin to realize that there might possibly be many more candidates who should meet our criteria to help dilute our own hypocrisies about our own elected bodies. Because is it not true that we voters, in unbelievable proportions, would only make fringe and unelectable candidates ourselves, the great unwashed tainted beyond all doubt with our own peculiar sins and pursuits and responsibilities ?

That's why we hide in the shadows of the voting booth. Or flounder in civil apathy, tending to avoid most of the issues facing us as a people, as a good neighbor, as an American patriot, only picking one or two hot button issues in our community lives to inform ourselves enough to stake a claim in its resolution. And it is at this point we voice our opinions. It is at this point we feel our opinion trumps those of those with whom we disagree, for whom we may have cast a vote. Suddenly we become the candidate of honesty, of truth, of passion, of resolve, of leadership. No matter that we beat the dog. No matter that we cheat on our taxes, or overcharge for our services. No matter that we had a adulterous love affair last year. Our hypocrisy, just like the hypocrisy that sits in an elected office, knows no bounds. Suddenly we are charmed enough by what we deem as critical circumstances to feel our vote and our voice count for something. After all, we pay their salaries, dammit. Hell, we pay for everything that's ever been done, and we want our money's worth...

But of course, it has long been detected that the backroom behavior of these dutifully elected officials is not much better, and often much worse than the moral turpitude we exercise in our own lives. Values? In flux, dear, always in flux. But that's okay we say as we admonish ourselves once the initial firestorm has passed, and wasn't enough to drive them from office already. We forgive them after a good public spanking since they are so learned, handsome maybe, most assuredly rich. It is for these reasons they deserve our support, not because they are any better at doing there jobs as we are at our own, or as we could be in doing theirs.

So while we feel obliged to judge others who actually may or may not meet our moral standards to any greater degree than we might meet or fail them ourselves, we are in effect judging those seasoned politicians who obviously have more information at their disposal than we part-time patriots do. Isn't that their job? We always want it both ways.

But if they can't explain their job to us without lying, why are they in that position in the first place?

How stupid and irrational is this behavior? But the pattern never changes. We continue to vote the same earmarked scoundrels back into office, even after their lofty lies, outright hoaxes, and squandered opportunities have been revealed. We continue to decide elections often based on frivolous distinctions of honor and honesty, only to have those distinctions smeared into oblivion within a few tracks of the first term. We like to pride ourselves on thinking outside the box in our many endeavors, yet we continue to refuse relative newcomers who wander onto the political scene from any other mold than the ones we have been trained to respect.

I think something needs to change in this country, and it has nothing to do with a candidate's penchant for stretching the truth into an outright lie. My patriotism is not silly putty.

Oh yes, the two myths of America I mentioned above.

That's the Good America of Christopher Columbus, George Washington, The Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, The Greatest Generation, MLK, and Barack Hussein Obama, and then there's the Bad America of pretty much the same elements, just flipped in their moral perspective. It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, I have always and will continue to subscribe to the Good America meme.

Apparently, that puts me on the fringe. Don't worry, fellow Americans, I'll learn to live with it.

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Monday, October 19, 2009

THE THIN VENEER



In his article—Confessions of a Cultural Drop-out—published by Pajamas Media, Victor Davis Hanson slays the huffing and puffing dragon of popular culture. His last few paragraphs begin with eerily the same language I just this past weekend used to describe my own general malaise which can also be summarily dismissed as simple aging by those who, in Kierkegaard's terms, simply refuse to make distinctions , so I start here...

A FINAL, ODD OBSERVATION. As I have dropped out of contemporary American culture and retreated inside some sort of 1950s time-warp, in a strange fashion of compensation for non-participation, I have tried to remain more engaged than ever in the country’s political and military crises, which are acute and growing. One’s distancing from the popular culture of movies, TV, newspapers, and establishment culture makes one perhaps wish to overcompensate in other directions, from the trivial to the important.

Lately more than ever I try to obey the speed limit, overpay my taxes, pay more estimates and withholding than I need, pay all the property taxes at once, pick up trash I see on the sidewalk, try to be overly polite to strangers in line, always stop on the freeway when I see an elderly person or single woman with a flat, leave 20% tips, let cars cut me off in the parking lot (not in my youth, not for a second), and patronize as many of Selma’s small businesses as I can (from the hardware store to insurance to cars). I don’t necessarily do that out of any sense of personal ethics, but rather because in these increasingly crass and lawless times, we all have to try something, even symbolically, to restore some common thread to the frayed veneer of American civilization, to balance the rips from a Letterman attack on Palin’s 14-year-old daughter or a Serena Williams’ threat to a line judge, or the President’s communication director’s praise of Mao, civilization’s most lethal mass murderer, or all of what I described above.

I don’t fathom the attraction of a Kanye West (I know that name after his outburst), a David Letterman, Van Jones, Michael Moore (all parasitic on the very culture they mock), or the New York Review of Books or People Magazine (they seem about the same in their world view). So goodbye to all that.

Horace called this reactionary nostalgia the delusion of a laudator temporis acti, the grouchy praiser of times past for the sake of being past. Perhaps. But I see the trend of many ignoring the old touchstones of popular entertainment and life as a rejection of establishment culture—a disbelief in, or utter unconcern with, what elites now offer as valuable on criteria that have nothing to do with merit or value. I was supposed to listen to Dan Rather because Murrow once worked for CBS? I am to go to the Cinema 16 because Hollywood once made Gone With the Wind or On the Waterfront?

I don’t particularly like the idea that I want little to do with contemporary culture. But I feel it nonetheless—and sense many of you do as well.

But don't neglect reading it all..

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Monday, October 12, 2009

RETURN OF THE BIRTHERS

Obama
AFTER FIRST OBSERVING the notorious "birther" movement back in July, 2008, long before many in the nation had tuned into the election, even before the financial crisis finally broke, which I anticipated atop the formidable shoulders of others here and here and here, there is finally a break in the courts for the "eligibilty to serve" suit to get heard.

In what could prove to be a turning point in the legal challenges to Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president, a federal judge in California, also a former US Marine, has scheduled a hearing on the merits of a federal court case raising those questions.

While there have been dozens of legal challenges to Obama’s status as a “natural born citizen,” many of have summarily dismissed while others still languish in the lower courts.

The US Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama’s American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama’s citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Complicating the situation is candidate and President Obama’s decision to spend sums estimated from the hundreds of thousands of dollars to several millions to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions.

It has been concluded that the “Certification of Live Birth” posted online and widely touted as “Obama’s birth certificate” does not in ANY way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same “short-form” document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true “long-form” birth certificate—which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician—is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny.

Congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a “natural born citizen,” although, defying both official protocol and common logic, no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama’s claim to a Hawaiian birth.

The birthers are considered fringe folks, crazed radicals, racists, and inconsequential, but here's a look at the latest fring controverst, this time on the left. First, let's go to Big Hollywood.

And now, let's take a peek at the firestorm created by a White House spokesman who said the "Internet Left fringe needs to grow up, and take off their pajamas so that this administration can get on with more important issues" here's that link. Or something like that. Here's another take.

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Thursday, October 08, 2009

SUNSTEIN SAYS AMERICANS TOO RACIST



BUT HEY WAIT, there's more, this Sunstein fellow says that Americans are too racist FOR SOCIALISM. And he defends communism and the welfare state but says that this nation's 'white majority' opposes programs aiding blacks and Hispanics. What about all those obese out of work white folks still clinging to guns and religion? Guess they don't even figure into the race-baiters wealth redistribution strategies.

Methinks, of course, we need a new deck. That race card is so frayed, we can see it coming, and it's ALWAYS coming, from the bottom of the deck, from the top of the deck, from somebody's cuff-linked sleeve, yes, it's always coming from somewhere, no matter how skewered the results...

Socialism? This despite the fact that nearly every former socialist nation, including those in western Europe, are warning the US that socialism isn't all it's cracked up to be, as even they are moving away from the organizing system that suffers from too much rampant idealism and not enough bootstrap periphery.

In "The Second Bill of Rights," WND reported, the self-professed communist Obama aide Cass Sunstein proposed a new "bill of rights" in which he advanced the radical notion that welfare rights, including some controversial inceptions, be granted by the state. Among his mandates:

  • The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
  • The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
  • The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
  • The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
  • The right of every family to a decent home;
  • The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
  • The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
  • The right to a good education.

    The Obama czar's controversial comments were made in his 2004 book "The Second Bill of Rights," which was obtained and reviewed by WND. On one page in his book, Sunstein claims he is "not seriously arguing" his bill of rights be "encompassed by anything in the Constitution," but on the next page he states that "if the nation becomes committed to certain rights, they may migrate into the Constitution itself."

    Later in the book, Sunstein argues that "at a minimum, the second bill should be seen as part and parcel of America's constitutive commitments." WND has learned that in April 2005, Sunstein opened up a conference at Yale Law School entitled "The Constitution in 2020," which sought to change the nature and interpretation of the Constitution by that year.

    Sunstein has been a main participant in the movement, which openly seeks to create a "progressive" consensus as to what the U.S. Constitution should provide for by the year 2020. It also suggests strategy for how liberal lawyers and judges might bring such a constitutional regime into being.

    Just before his appearance at the conference, Sunstein wrote a blog entry in which he explained he "will be urging that it is important to resist, on democratic grounds, the idea that the document should be interpreted to reflect the view of the extreme right-wing of the Republican Party."

    That's rich. Notice how Sunstein in his first amendment says that everyone should have the right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation. He didn't mention that everyone has the "right" to a publishing contract, or a paying gig in the arts, a cush talking head job, or a gravy train in politics.

    Rather, he intends his own brand of segregation touting a system that demands that everyone participate in this new slavery, the new feudalism, enunciated and controlled by the prestigious oligarchy of beautiful and bright, hand-picked elites who know to toe the party line, and are amply rewarded with entry into the gated communities of government from on high.

    Sunstein
    Notice also, the usage of the word "decent" when describing certain guarantees this new world order claims to represent. Who gets to decide what is decent or just shy of Shantyville? Who tells me that what I choose to attain or acquire or inherit is too extravagant, and what in all this decision-making is based on criteria other than the equalitarian limits of the open marketplace? We've all seen this movie before. From the September 29 issue of New York Times, itself a bastion of liberal pretentions:

    "Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling response, let alone taken advantage of the right’s failures.

    German voters clobbered the Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II. Voters also punished left-leaning candidates in the summer’s European Parliament elections and trounced French Socialists in 2007. Where the left holds power, as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack. Where it is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless."

    No matter what methodologies these aggressive statists intend to use in cutting the materialistic pie, we are told that we will be guaranteed decent jobs, decent health care, decent wages, decent lives. Meanwhile why are these cut-throat millionaires doing all the talking, doing the deciding for us? As constitutional Americans we are already guaranteed an equal opportunity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, within the realms of moral responsibility. We are not guaranteed a bowl of soup, a box of rocks, a diamond ring, or a job, but we are at liberty to pursue any and all of these things.

    But a totalitarian statism is like a skin disease which encompasses all and threatens to spread to every organ in the body, and I respond with a deliberately loud and progressive—NO THANK YOU!


    “The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism', they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”
    —Norman Thomas, Socialist

    As for me, I would rather fail completely while chasing a dream, embrace my aching inner hobo, and take my God-given liberty to my grave than to play with the scorching fires of committed communism. The founding fathers knew what they were talking about as they studied man's history in dealing with other men. We were warned. And now, perhaps, the greatest threat to America as a freedom-seeking nation since the Civil War is upon us.

    That peculiar stealth threat is already upon our shores. While Mister Obama signs away our rights of freedom of speech to the OIC-dominated United Nations, we must ponder how quickly and where the enemy may pounce next.

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  • Wednesday, October 07, 2009

    CONSIDERING THE SECOND AMENDMENT



    As breaking news that an illegal gun ring has been snared in a sting by the Feds hits the media wires as I write this with the knowledge that the Supreme Court will soon address the right to bear arms issue again in a case from Chicago, it is more important than ever to remember why the Second Amendment is important, even precious to Americans who understand the consequences of ignoring the much maligned US Constitution.

    We who appreciate the wisdom of our learned and conceptual founders have no choice but to oppose those in favor of touchy feely gun eradication laws, which leaves us helpless to defend ourselves and our families from intruders of every stripe, and worse, creating an environment where the rise of an oppressive fascist government intent on enslaving or abandoning its citizenry is inevitable.

    Mari Thompson of Second Amendment Sisters offers a sterling remembrance.


    A COMMON ERROR in Constitutional interpretation is the failure to examine the document in the context of its original meaning. In fact, Thomas Jefferson once wrote to Supreme Court Justice William Johnson, suggesting to him that when examining and interpreting the Constitution, he should study the time in which the document was written, and “carry himself back to that time.”

    This would seem to be good advice for today. The recent Heller vs. DC case might have gotten more votes in favor of Heller had the Supreme Court of today done just that.

    We certainly know that during the time of the writing of the Constitution, every male citizen above the age of 16 was counted as a member of the militia. All males were assumed to own weapons (which most of them paid for), and be ready to muster when the call came. Of course, the first call for the militia was to fight the British in what has become known as the American Revolution.

    Today, as during the early days of this country, the people are still the militia, in the usage of the word at the time of our founding. The actual purpose of having armed citizens was to guard against an overbearing government. In the inimitable words of our National Spokesperson, Suzanna Gratia-Hupp, when speaking to Senator Chuck Schumer and other members of a Senate committee: “The purpose of the Second Amendment is to protect all of us (the people) from all of you (the politicians).”

    We now live in a country that has been promised “Hope and Change” by our new president. Since we have no details of what “hope” and what “change” he was speaking about during the election, the Second Amendment is more important than ever. We must be ever more alert to signs of any government entity trying to erode the God-given and constitutionally enumerated right to keep and bear arms and all other constitutionally guaranteed rights.

    Mari Thompson is President of SAS, and is also one of its founding members.

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    Tuesday, October 06, 2009

    A NATION OF CRIMINALS

    HERE IS A FRIGHTENING LOOK at ourselves, recently published in the Washington Times by reporter Brian W. Walsh, detailing the horrors of overcriminalization and the government's rush to prosecute Americans for minor offenses. Kathy and George Norris were quiet, industrious Americans whose only crime was to not have the proper paperwork on a specific number of orchids they purchased overseas in their small orchid supply business.

    terrorists
    "You don't need to know. You can't know." Those are the words Kathy Norris, a 60-year-old grandmother of eight, heard when pursuing court officials the day after federal agents had subjected her home to a furious search. The agents, six of them, wearing SWAT gear and carrying weapons, were with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, spent half a day ransacking the Norris home in Spring, Texas. No questions were answered while they emptied file cabinets, pulled books off shelves, rifled through drawers and closets, and threw the contents on the floor.

    This particular American nightmare began with the search in October 2003 only officially ended when Mr. Norris was released from federal supervision in December 2008 after two years in the slammer, 71 years old, unnerved, a mere ghost of his former self.

    Two Congressman, Chairman Robert C. Scott, D-VA, and ranking member Louie Gohmert, R-TX, conducted a truly bipartisan hearing in Washington earlier this year, giving voice to the increasing number of Americans who worry about this sort of "overcriminalization."

    We wish this hearing well. This type of heavy-handed prosecution is no way for a great nation to behave. We will strongly resemble a corrupt, broken nation if this level of law enforcement against ordinary citizens is allowed to persist. How long before we regain our composure, our faith, our honesty, our compassion, our sense that we are a nation of reasonable men and women, and not merely a land of hidden laws, information and thug antics...

    And yet we coddle so many others who thumb their noses at America herself...

    Read it all.

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    Thursday, October 01, 2009

    SCHOOLHOUSE SHARIA



    A RECENT PEW RESEARCH poll shows American attitudes about Islam trending toward accepting the narrative that organizations like CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) are peddling. This narrative includes the propositions that Islam is and historically has been a religion of peace and that Muslims are the victims of a great deal of discrimination in this country.

    Not coincidentally, this faulty narrative is being peddled in many of our public schools. Small wonder more and more Americans are falling for it. Several months ago the ACT! for America Mission Viejo (CA) chapter completed an eye-opening report about the disinformation and outright propaganda showing up in public school curricula and textbooks that deal with Islam.

    We have written frequently on this topic, but that pales in comparison to the Orwellian "newspeak" that has recently been handed down by California's education establishment with respect to teaching Islamic studies. For instance, as reported in the Investors Business Daily editorial below:

    ...the suggested framework glorifies Shariah as a liberal reform movement that "rejected" the mistreatment of women that existed in Arabia before Muhammad and his successors conquered the region, according to Accuracy in Academia. The guidelines claim that Islamic law established for the first time that men and women were entitled to equal "respect."

    This astonishing example of historical revisionism is just one more reason why we communicate such a sense of urgency to you about the rapid advance of radical Islam and creeping shariah here in the United States. Our window to build the organized resistance to defeat this is not twenty or thirty years long—it is more like five to ten at best.

    Over the past two decades college campuses have become hotbeds for pro-Islamist, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and anti-American indoctrination. This has now made its way into our public high schools and middle schools.

    If an entire generation of American students are successfully indoctrinated with lies, such as that shariah Islamic law established that men and women were entitled to equal respect, the chances that we can successfully roll back the rising tide of radical Islam dim immensely.

    As Adolf Hitler is reported to have said to the adults in Germany, "I care not what you think...I have the children."

    Recently, Fox News reported that the head of CIE—now known as the Institute on Religion and Civic Values—misled California education authorities about his academic credentials. For one, Shabbir Mansuri never received a USC degree in chemical engineering as he has claimed, Fox says.

    The group's Web site no longer includes the claim. These are the folks who are teaching your children about Islam in public schools. Parents have protested, even sued, but to no avail.

    For example, parents of seventh-graders in the San Francisco area, who after 9/11 were taught pro-Islamic lessons as part of California's world history curriculum, sued under the First Amendment ban on religious establishment. They argued, reasonably, that the government was promoting Islam by mandating that their kids participate in Muslim role-playing exercises such as designing prayer rugs, taking an Arabic name and essentially "becoming a Muslim" for two full weeks.

    Children also were told to recite aloud Muslim prayers that begin with "In the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful," and memorize the Muslim profession of faith: "Allah is the only true God, and Muhammad is his messenger."

    But a federal judge appointed by President Clinton told parents in so many words to get over it, that the state was merely teaching kids about another "culture."

    California's 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision, ruling that it was OK to put public-school kids through Muslim role-playing exercises. The decision was a major victory for the multiculturalists and Islamic apologists in California and across the country who've never met a culture or religion they didn't like—with the exception of Western civilization and Christianity.

    You can't teach the Ten Commandments in public schools. But teaching the five pillars of Islam is A-OK.


    Read it all

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