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Feb. 13, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:15
February 13, 2009, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24 7 Podcast.
Multitudes from across the fruited plane.
Tuning in to the show, the President of the United States doesn't want them and you to listen to.
Rush Limbaugh behind the Golden EIB microphone on Friday.
Live from the Southern Command in Sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Goody goody gum drops, ladies and gentlemen.
Open line Friday.
This is where I take one of the greatest professional career risks ever taken by a player in major media.
And that is allowing the content of this, the most listened to radio program in America, the president's program, he doesn't want you to listen to it.
The content of this program gets turned over to you.
Cool.
Rank amateurs.
Lovable rank amateurs, as I, your highly trained broadcast specialist, sit by and marvel at your content.
Here's the phone number, 800-282-2882.
The email address is L Rushbow at EIB net.com.
There was somebody out there, uh ladies and gentlemen, by the name of Peter Schiff, and I don't even know who Peter Schiff is, but Peter Schiff said that as the markets drop, we are not seeing the problem, we're seeing the solution.
When the markets drop, we know we got a problem.
The markets dropping are the beginning of the solution.
And of course, President Obama and Congress are trying to prevent the solution and make the problem even worse.
This is not just open line Friday today, folks.
This is last chance Friday.
And admittedly, our last chance is very small.
The next generation of our economy is in the hands of primarily two people here, maybe three, but primarily two since Susan Collins has already committed.
Hold in their hands the future of the United States economy.
435 representatives, 100 senators, will vote on the biggest spending spree in history without reading it.
It's over a thousand pages.
It was not made available till 11 o'clock last night.
Do you know that lobbyists got a copy of the bill before anybody on Capitol Hill got a copy of it, including Congressional staff.
Lobbyists got the bill prior to any congressional staff or members in the House and Senate.
Last night, in order for a member of Congress to read the whole bill...
Before the vote today, they would have had to start at 11 o'clock last night and read over two and a half pages a minute until the vote was taken.
Nobody has read it.
There was a promise from the Obama administration, the new era of responsibility and transparency.
That all such legislation will be posted on the internet for five days so that the public could read what is being voted on.
Ain't gonna happen.
In addition, they have reformatted the bill.
They've made it a PDF file when they posted it.
Now for those of you that don't use computers, basically what that means is that it cannot be keyword searched.
A PDF file is essentially a picture of a page.
And so you can read every page, but you cannot keyword search it.
It's not a text file, as legislation normally is posted on uh on these public websites.
They don't want anybody knowing what's in this.
They want it happening as fast as possible so nobody can know what's in it.
The so-called watchdog media, I I tell you, you know, it is it is embarrassing.
I've got some audio sound bites from the drive-by's coming up today.
One of them, Anderson Cooper last night, who was on CNN, I don't know if these people know just how much they are embarrassing themselves.
They know not only have abandoned their professional responsibility here, it's almost to the point they have abandoned their citizenship.
They have no idea what's in this, and yet they are promoting it.
Now, in the old days, you know, there are things happening in this country today, things being accepted in this country today that ten years ago would not have been.
We have the drive-by media now having become activists.
They're not journalists, they're not curious, they are simple activists.
They are promoting, they are pushing this piece of legislation without any idea what's in it.
There's not a one of them who could raise his hand and say, Yes, I've read it and I know what's in it, and here's why I think it's good.
There's not one of them.
The only way that they can stand up and say they support this, hey, it's Obama.
Change.
He won the election.
He gets what he wants.
He's our guy.
Isn't it interesting that one of the reasons mainstream journalism exists ostensibly is to is to probe people in positions of power in government.
That's one of their state.
I mean, that if there were a handbook, and there is, that would be one of the primary things.
In the old days, folks, if you if you worked in a tiny little worthless newspaper in some little burg, and you wanted to work in a bigger paper, what you had to do was find some powerful person in the town where you worked and do a profile destroying them.
Finding out how they got their power, who they cheated, who they screwed in the process, even if you had to make it up.
As long as you took out somebody in power, you got noticed by the bigger papers.
And then they brought you in.
Today, mainstream journalists are out trying to destroy average Americans who are not in power politically, who are trying to get the truth out about this legislation and this president.
And so the mainstream media is now just part of the Obama army.
And it is embarrassing to watch because as these people engage in this behavior, it is quite obvious that they are among the most uninformed of citizens in the country.
They are among the most uneducated citizens.
And yet they claim to be members of the elite, better and smarter than everyone else.
Only they are capable of probing people in power.
But don't you dare probe them.
Don't you dare try to find out what kind of life failings they've had, either in their youth or in their college days, or as adults.
Don't try to find out about their divorces.
Don't try to find out about their DUIs.
They aren't the story, they have always said.
Oh, they have become the story.
They have inserted themselves right smack dab in the story.
Their motives are just as subject to investigation as are any elected officials.
They have joined forces, they have become activists.
It is embarrassing to watch this play out.
It is as though they are unconcerned about the effect on their own lives of this legislation.
They are unconcerned about the effect on their own families of this legislation.
They are unconcerned about the effect on the country of this legislation.
None of that matters.
They don't even care to know what's in it.
They're not the slightest bit curious.
It is breathtaking to behold the dissent to which people who claim and think that they're the smartest people in the room have joined the Dunce class.
It's also quite dangerous when they join forces with powerful people to try to destroy harmless, innocent individual citizens such as Joe the Plumber.
So forth.
Oh, they still will poke at people in power if they are Republicans, i.e.
Sarah Palin.
But they will not investigate one suspicious thing, including the lie.
I, you know, this guy Obama.
I this is it's funny on one hand, but it's you know it's serious at the same time.
He goes on television a couple days ago and says, Yeah, I'm going out to Peoria.
I'm going to see the CEO caterpillars on my economic team.
He told me stimulus bill passes, and he's going to start hiring people.
So they asked the caterpillar CEO yesterday, well, no, I'm now it's gonna be a while before we start hiring people.
Uh I've looked at this.
There's not a whole lot in this for heavy construction.
Now, if there's not a whole lot on it for heavy construction, it means you don't need road graders and the things that caterpillar makes, which means there's not a whole lot of road building, bridge building, and everything else in there.
He said, out of the trillion dollars that's gonna by the way, the net cost of this thing, when you add it all up over ten years and the interest and the debt, 3.7 trillion from this $800 and whatever it is billion.
That's a calculation from our friends at the Heritage Foundation.
Askheritage.org.
Thank God for these people.
I've got in my stack here four or five different stories from the Heritage Foundation detailing, and we'll link to all of them, rushlimbaug.com, detailing things in this bill that you will not find reported anywhere else.
Their scholars have been on the case.org.
Uh, that's what I did.
Uh and in fact, well, I've got even more about heritage later on.
They've uh they've got a little film, a movie, 33 minutes it's called.
That's all it would take if somebody launched nuclear weapons against us.
The reason why this is interesting is that the uh administration and and some national security officials are saying our economy poses a greater threat than terrorism.
Some people, by the way, uh beginning to wonder if what happened last September with that massive run on the banks wasn't terrorism of a sort.
Uh I'm getting way ahead of myself as far as the content of the of the program today is concerned.
The uh the the Heritage Foundation has here's just one story.
Why the rush?
And it talks to all kinds of people.
This story, the uh the scholar who put this on the blog, and nobody knows what's in it, and one guy says, if you can tell me what's in it, and if you can tell me what's going to happen because of this, then you are trying to con me because there's nobody that knows.
The more that comes out about this bill, the less it makes sense.
Even the politico, which is one of these places, totally in the tank for Obama, reports today the projected local job creation numbers that the White House is using to lobby for the bill simply don't add up.
The Wall Street Journal reports federal agencies simply don't have the contracting manpower to manage what is a truly unprecedented explosion of government spending.
And get this.
You probably heard about this.
Harry Reid got his train from Disneyland to Las Vegas.
It's a train that travels 311 miles an hour, makes a trip in two hours.
But, and that's an $8 billion earmark.
The environmental impact studies alone will take more than five years to complete before they even break ground on the construction of this super train.
What is the five years of environmental impact studies gonna cost?
It's uh it's an abomination.
It is an outright abomination, and if there were a watchdog media that were concerned, either as professionals or as citizens, this thing would be in huge trouble.
But it's not.
Does anybody in his or her right mind that the biggest spending spree in history has to be voted on before anybody reads it today, or that the economy will collapse?
It's the same modus operandi.
We don't have time.
Obama wants this.
We have to vote for it.
It's last chance Friday.
If you think the only thing that can save our economy is that Congress vote today before anyone has time to read it, then you probably are one of the 50% of non-taxpayers who are not gonna have to pay for this.
However, oh, do you know this thing also gets rid of welfare reform?
This thing totally gets rid of welfare reform.
This bill will reward governors, will reward state governments for the more people they enroll on non-work required welfare plans.
Everything we told you about health care is in the final bill.
It sets up the bureaucracy for national health care.
Two billion dollars.
I've been asked this by everybody when I run into them.
Two billion dollars is there for acorn for neighborhood stabilization.
It's down from the four, but still the the Democrats are using your taxpayers to fund one of their organizations that engages in illegal voter fraud, uh or voter registration, vote fraud in essence, and uh and other things.
Now, interesting.
When we get to the Senate for the vote today, Senator Kennedy is too ill to make it.
He will not be able to get to Washington.
They need 60 votes on this.
Harry Reed says he's going to try to find a parliamentary rule to ensure that neither Spectre, Collins, or Snow is the 60th vote.
He is going to protect them.
He's going to find a way that they get to vote prior to where they would in the roll call so that their votes are tabulated before the magic 60th vote takes place.
That's why this is last chance Friday.
It's the last chance for Olympia Snow and Arlen Specter to understand what they hold in their hands.
What they hold in their hands is the next generation of our economy in the tank.
It's in the hands of two Republicans, the Republicans in the House cannot stop this.
We'll be right back.
Once again, from the Heritage Foundation, true cost of the stimulus, 3.27 trillion.
All of the major news outlets reporting the stimulus bill voted at a conference committee last night has a meager $789 billion price tag.
The number is pure fantasy.
Nobody believes that the increased funding for programs the left loves, like Head Start, Medicaid, Cobra, the earned income tax credit is in any way temporary.
No Congress under control of the left will ever cut funding for these programs.
So what is the true cost?
Representative Paul Ryan, Republican Wisconsin asked the CBO to estimate the impact of permanently extending the 20 most popular provisions of the stimulus bill.
What'd they find?
Well, there's a chart and a table here that Heritage publishes.
The true 10-year cost of the stimulus bill is two and a half trillion dollars in spending.
You have to add another $744 billion in debt servicing.
The uh total total bill is now uh $3.27 trillion.
Senator McCain calling it generational theft, which is um exactly what it is.
Now, those of you who are new to the program or because of all this, if those of you who are new to the uh whole concept of paying a pension attention to legislative politics.
My instinct tells me that some of you say, what's the big deal amount spending?
I mean, we uh all of your life you've maybe heard peripherally that we're running budget deficits and that we have a national debt that this high, and that you've uh you you've never seen the sky fall because of it.
Well, you are now.
I mean, that's that's the bottom line here.
The uh number one culprit in what's happening now is debt at every level you will find irresponsible, unmanageable debt from the some prime crisis to the toxic assets that were created to try to give value to the subprime mortgages, which had none from the get-go, to the government owing more than it can ever pay back to individual consumer debt.
It's just out the window, and it's now it's it's it's in the process of all coming due.
And the best thing to do is to let it play out.
We are going to pretend that we can manage our way out of this with big government, big brother helping us uh uh experience as little pain as possible when in fact what they are on the verge of doing is gonna cause pain that you can't believe.
This is going to be so inflation, and and by the way, Heritage touches on that too today.
And you can see all this at AskHeritage.org.
Uh they touch on the the inescapable inflationary aspects of this down the road.
That's it's impossible for inflation not to increase, and probably dramatically because of all this.
But aside aside from all that, the reason that all of this spending matters is that we have lived in a capitalist country all of our lives, and there have been battles throughout our nation's history between people who believe in liberal socialism and capitalism, because capitalism is said to provide unequal, unfair outcomes.
Capitalism features winners and features losers.
Liberalism pretends to level the playing field and say there will not be any losers if long as we have central planning and people who have compassion at the top running it.
Well, what's going to happen here in order for liberalism socialism to prevail, they have to find an enemy.
They have to find demons, and they have.
The demons now are the achievers in this country.
As I have always said, the left never seeks to make lives more equal by elevating those at the bottom so that they too might become more prosperous.
Liberalism socialism targets people at the top as uh achievers and punishes them, tries to take away from them so that everybody is equally miserable.
All of this spending is going to mean far less money in the private sector where your jobs are.
If employers have far less money to expand and hire and invest via borrowing, then you're you can kiss uh massive reemployment goodbye for a while.
So we find ourselves, ladies and gentlemen, here on Last Chance Friday in a new era of responsibility, as articulated by President Obama, the man who does not want you listening to this program.
President Obama said his administration is going to be the most transparent in our nation's history.
Now, according to the CyberCash News Service and a lot of other people now, not one senator will have read the final porculus spending bill before they vote on it.
I want to share with you a couple quotes from President Obama before the porculus bill was voted on in the House and the Senate.
One of uh President Obama's statements was all of you are committed to building a more responsible, more accountable government.
And part of what that means is making sure that we're spending precious tax dollars wisely and cutting costs wherever possible.
During this period of economic emergency, families are tightening their belts, so should Washington.
Folks, it doesn't matter what he says is how he says it.
Because this is the direct opposite of what has happened.
Now, if I sit here and I say President Obama's lying, nobody wants to hear that.
They're gonna hate me.
They're gonna think I'm nitpicking.
They're gonna think I'm a sore loser.
Which goes to illustrate the state in which we find ourselves.
Because this is an out lie.
What has happened is the opposite of responsible.
There is no accountability.
There is no precious wise spending of tax dollars here.
It's irresponsible as hell.
There are no costs being cut whatsoever.
And Washington is doing the opposite of tightening its belt.
This is the largest spending increase in one piece of legislation in the history of this country.
And not one, there's no evidence in this country for 80 years that anything like this has ever worked before.
And then Obama said this.
And those of us who manage the public's knowledge.
Remember that.
Those of us Who manage the public's knowledge will be held to account to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
None of this except manage the public's knowledge is true.
That's exactly what I really never thought of government doing that until Obama came, and that's exactly what they're doing.
Government as an entity that manage manages the public's knowledge, and he's got his willing accomplices in the drive-by media doing just that.
They are managing the public's knowledge, and they are targeting anybody who wants to get the truth out about what this administration's doing.
I don't like harping on this stuff since I'm the target of it.
It sounds like sounds like sour grapes, but Bill Clinton was the latest to join the chorus on the fairness doctrine yesterday.
Isn't it in Maurice Henshey, member of Congress of New York today?
Tom Harkin the day before.
Debbie Stabenow the day before that.
We've had five or six days in a row, and it's made to look like it's just happening coincidentally.
Clinton was being interviewed on Hispanic radio.
And he was asked about the fairness doctrine.
Oh, yeah, you know, yeah, the limbaugh guy is pretty entertaining, but I tell you, we need ballots out there.
I mean, big money's always gone to right wing radio.
We've got to change that.
Mr. President, big money goes to American Idol.
Big money goes to the Super Bowl.
Big money goes to successful media presentations.
We don't raise funds here.
Look, it I'm I'm really uncomfortable talking about this because I don't like sounding like a victim.
But make no mistake, they are targeting, and they make they're going to make every effort at coming after voices of dissent and leading the charge to silence voices of dissent will be the drive-by media.
They're excited about it too.
It's the First Amendment.
The First Amendment's under assault, and the very people who have constitutional mention for whom the First Amendment was largely written.
Members of the press are going to eagerly sign up to silence the voices of dissent.
To manage the public's knowledge.
I mean, this is frightening, frightening stuff.
In addition to all the lies about accountable government, responsible government, spending precious tax dollars wisely, cutting costs wherever possible.
None of this.
None of this that Obama said is happening.
None of it.
He goes out and he says this caterpillar guy is going to start hiring people after the stimulus passes.
Caterpillar guy says, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm going to do that.
It's going to be a while.
The media is harping on the caterpillar guy saying he backstabbed Obama.
The caterpillar guy never said anything publicly about this.
Obama's the one who did.
My guess is it was Obama trying to shape and manage what the caterpillar CEO was going to say by announcing it to the world before the meeting with this caterpillar CEO to his credit when asked about it by ABC.
No, I don't think we're going to.
And then do you know that Anthony Zinny thought that he was promised the ambassadorial posting in uh in Iraq, and then he later found out he wasn't, but he thought that he was.
And it was somebody else who came out of a meeting with Obama who said that was convinced he was nominated for something or going to be appointed to something, and he ended up not busy.
This is three separate instances where people come out of a meeting with Obama thinking they've just been named to something or said that they're going to say, and none of it's right.
Now, I guarantee you, if this were a Republican president, and all these things were happening, we would be close to mounting impeachment hearings.
Just over the cabinet nominations and the withdrawals and the tax cheats and all of that.
But now we have all these people who think they're told one thing by Obama.
Turns out in private, turns out they heard him wrong.
They're not one Bit of curiosity to explain this.
There are just instant attacks on the people who say something opposite.
Rumbo.
Now here's few audio sound bites to illustrate what's going on here.
This this is classic.
This illustrates this is embarrassing, too.
This is David Schuster, PMSNBC.
And it illustrates the ignorance.
It illustrates the shill.
The depths of unprofessionalism and catastrophe to which the mainstream media has shrunk.
Rush Limbaugh says it's a trillion dollar failure filled with quote porculus.
Critics have slammed the stimulus bill warning that hundreds of billions of dollars of spending will be wasted on pork.
Let's take the argument.
Could wasteful spending be just what we need.
Okay, here's a member of the press who doodly reports what critics are saying.
That's in the handbook.
And then what's new to the handbook is destroy the critics.
When I get started at this show, the critics, they were the heroes.
The critics, all the minorities, the critics of the majority, they were the heroes.
They were excused if they wanted to go throw condoms in the middle of a mass at St. Patrick's.
We were told that we had to understand why.
We had to understand their grief.
It was the only way they could be heard.
The critics of the Pope had to have their voice too.
Now the critics are the ones that have to be silenced.
The critics have to be destroyed, and the media is doing Obama's work for him in this regard.
This question could wasteful spending be what we need.
This question asked by David Schuster evidences.
A total ignorance of history of this country, a total ignorance of finance and of economics.
And yet, somebody at NBC has judged him qualified to host programs on this network.
He doesn't know anything.
He only knows how to parrot the latest liberal plan, President Obama plan, what have you.
And he's learned very quickly how to take out or try to take out the critics.
Because you see now, it's the critics who stand in the way.
Let's go to the House of Representatives this morning.
Representative David Scott, Democrat Georgia, and David Dreyer, Republican California, arguing about the written version of the Porculus bill.
Our economy has leaks and holes in it all throughout.
That's why you've got a thousand pages there.
Because it's big.
Our economy is big.
This last November, the people of the United States made a decision.
And that decision was to put Barack Obama as president because they wanted a new direction.
He has pleaded.
Yep asking for help.
I say, Mr. Speaker, let us give him the help.
Here is David Dreyer.
We do have a thousand pages here.
This was put online after midnight.
We all voted in favor of 48 hours.
You voted in favor of 48 hours to allow the American people and our colleagues to see this.
We all understand the urgency of this matter.
Has my colleague read this?
Many of us have been trying to go through it since after midnight in the rules committee.
I was up until 3 o'clock this morning reading it.
The gentleman will suspend.
Just as you have done, Mr. Riley, you were here debating it last week.
Two and a half hours he went through a thousand pages.
The gentleman Wilson's hat.
That was Ellen Tosher running the place at the time, shutting down the argument there between David Dreyer, the Republican David Scott, the Democrat, uh, on Fox News Channel happening now yesterday.
Jane Skinner talking to Chris Van Holland, the Democrat from Maryland.
She says, Look, can can you guarantee that there's nothing been added back into this bill that have been taken out that'll be upsetting or a surprise to anybody?
I boy.
I I I around here I I cannot guarantee that.
What I can say is that most of these provisions have been very publicly vetted.
But, you know, I'd be hard-pressed to say that there's nothing in here that would be a surprise.
The suspension of reality continues.
Publicly vetted.
None of this has been publicly vetted.
What people in this country know about the contents of this bill has come from that media that the Obama Democrats want to shut down.
Gotta take a brief time out here, folks.
It's uh last chance Friday.
We'll be back.
Right after this.
Open line.
Last chance Friday, and we go to the phones.
And we're gonna start in Newburn, North Carolina.
This is Edwin.
Glad you called, sir.
Nice to have you here.
Hey, Rush.
Uh Megadiddoth.
I'm a longtime fan of your show.
Right, right, right.
It's been a it's been a thrill to listen to you over the years.
Sometimes, Rush, I have two points.
Sometimes, Rush.
I I would wish I I don't think it ever happened.
Can you go one week without being so critical to everybody?
Who's being critical?
No, you I at times you can be very critical.
And I I You misunderstand, Edwin, if you were a regular listener, uh you would understand that I'm trying to be inspirational, informative in education, though I love America.
I hate to see it in the process of being so damaged this way.
And it's just, you know, I'm I'm I'm sorry I have a full knowledge of American history.
I have a full understanding of the ideological intents of liberals versus conservatives, and I steadfastly oppose liberalism.
It is a core principle and belief wherever it is.
I'm out to educate people to its dangers so that it can not reach the position it has reached today.
And uh it's we've we face a tragic future, Edwin.
I it's my duty to inform people of this.
Well, I and you do, and you do a marvelous job, don't you?
I know that.
Thank you very much.
But um uh at times I sometimes I'll I listen to you and uh I want to take a can of spam and just throw it on my radio.
I mean, how how would you like if somebody was critical about you on the radio for as many hours that you're on during the week every day?
Edwin, you know.
I mean I next you're gonna ask me, why don't we just give Obama some time here or something?
No, no, you know you know what I'm saying.
Like they gave George W. Bush time.
No, I I've written to President Obama, and I wish that he and you would get together on the next because I don't think this whole call Edwin.
President Obama has told the country not to listen to me.
Oh, see that but see that's that's just stupid because I think that information is power, and from a person of my perspective who is an American, a minority, who served on in the military.
I think information is power.
And I think that somebody in his administration You have a perfect conservative resume.
You have everything except the knowledge to go along with it.
Otherwise you wouldn't be questioning me about anything that I'm doing and you're saying if you're such a fan.
You ask Edwin, you you how would I like being criticized?
Uh fifteen hours.
Edwin.
I mean, I look at you you're forcing me to talk about myself here.
I I I do not like because it sounds like complaining.
Edwin, you don't know what criticism is.
I not only face criticism, I've got ex-presidents saying I should be shut down, Edwin.
I have had the Senate majority leader try to have me censored and thrown off of the radio.
I have had a f the the the I am criticized multiple times every day on the most obscure wacko leftist websites you can imagine.
How would I like it?
Edwin, I am a target, but I don't care.
I'm willing, you know, pioneers take the arrows.
My friends, uh and I d that none of that matters to me.
And I love my country, Edwin.
And I don't believe in sitting around and giving somebody a chance to destroy it.
That's not patriotic.
I would be failing in my duty as a citizen to just sit back under the notion, hey, give him the benefit of the doubt.
Hey, give him some time.
Hey.
He's a new president.
Give him a honeymoon.
Not while he is fundamentally, and he promised to do this, not why he is fundamentally transforming this country into a country it has never been.
I'm not gonna sit around under any pretense and let that happen.
I am not gonna be bipartisan.
I'm not gonna give the benefit of the doubt to somebody about whom I have no doubt.
I know exactly who Obama is, I know exactly what he plans.
It's happening in front of our eyes.
You ought to wake up and see it, Edwin.
You ought to be able to see what's happening.
And it ought to alarm you if you are the citizen that you have described to me in this phone call.
Frankly, my friends, don't worry.
Edwin, thanks very much.
I appreciate it.
Don't worry, I didn't buy it.
We know that's a seminar caller.
Big fan, listen to you for years, love your show, but I'm happy for these kinds of calls.
They um whoever inspires these people to call think that these calls are going to provide massive embarrassment when in fact they're just hanging curveballs.
So give me more Edwins out there, leftists.
Bipartisanship.
Yes.
We're supposed to sit around and there's a compromise what we believe in just to get along.
Let me ask you a question.
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