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Jan. 6, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:44
January 6, 2011, Thursday, Hour #3
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Yeah, I'm doing that myself.
Oh, because I can't.
It's cool.
I'm doing it because I can.
I think it's.
No, no, no, no.
I'm doing it because I can.
I just think it's cool to be able to do it.
It is.
Well, let me see some things I'd improve upon.
Being asked here, ladies and gentlemen, there was a story in USA today, was this Wednesday, Thursday, maybe yesterday, the day before, about actually it was a story about how cable television is imperiled because people are now getting televisions equipped the ability to watch internet programming without having to have a satellite dish, without having to have cable or what have you.
Things like Apple TV and whatever others.
And I hooked that up a couple rooms in my house just to try it.
And I think it actually, to me, it's cool.
You download the TV shows or movies on iTunes and watch it on your big screen.
Quality, well, it's 720H.
It's not 1080i or 1080p.
That's the drawback.
On direct TV, you get some movies are 1080i.
Some of them offer 1080, but iTunes is 720.
And of course, the bigger you blow that up, the less the picture quality is.
And there's no closed captioning on 95% of it, which is a drawback for me.
But still, it's cool.
Apple has this thing called AirPlay.
You can sit there with your iPad and you can transfer what's on your iPad to your big screen.
So you download, you go out, you buy a TV program at iTunes, you transfer it to your iPad, and you sit there and watch it on the iPad, hit play, and then hit AirPlay.
And it moves it, if you got it all set up right, to your television set.
And you have control over it with your iPad controls or whatever remote system you use.
I hooked it up just because it was cool to do.
And I use it now and then.
I need closed captioning, though, or else I need a speaker right next to my ear.
The farther away I am from a speaker, the more the echo is and the harder it is for especially if there's music soundtrack.
You know, I'm dead trying to hear dialogue in a television show or a movie.
But if I get a speaker, and I have one, a little remote wireless Bluetooth speaker that I put on a couch right next to my left ear, and I get about 90% of the dialogue that way.
If they ever get to the point where they put closed captioning on everything on these like iTunes or whatever, I guess one of the reasons they don't is to limit download size because that's probably got to add to it.
But it's still cool.
I have not stopped watching my direct TV.
It's never going to replace that as far as I'm concerned.
But it's still cool to do.
And I'll tell you this.
I watch a lot of stuff on DVD simply because of captioning.
And for example, there's a show that I really like called Damages.
Well, oh, let's take it.
Let me get a different show.
Madmen.
Madmen is season four for Mad Men is available on iTunes, but it's not captioned.
The DVDs are not coming out until March 29th, so some of this stuff actually ends up on iTunes.
Netflix, I'm not trying to leave any of these others out.
I use iTunes, but I have Netflix too, but I don't want to sing about it.
I use iTunes.
But stuff is available much sooner than they put it on DVD in many cases.
But the DVD has the captioning.
These other shows don't.
I found one movie so far on iTunes has captioning, and that's Wall Street Money Never Sleeps.
A movie which really let me down.
Starts off with a great premise, and then the half of the movie, halfway through, just dies.
There was a John Grisham movie book that started out with one of the greatest, some little kid watches a murder in the forest or in the swamps of Louisiana, and one of the greatest openings in mystery literature.
And Anna figure Susan Sarandon starred in the movie, so what would you expect?
Anyway, this story in USA Today was all about how this is going to be the end of cable TV with more and more televisions being now.
My TVs, per se, are not equipped.
Well, they are because it happens, but I had to do a bunch of other rigamarole to make this all work.
But I just, I find these tech advances, the consumer electronics show going on.
Somebody has come out with a camera, a handheld, point-lo-shoot digital camera that has a mirror in it somehow, so that when you take a picture, like if I want to take a picture of you two, I can put myself in it right between you because there's a mirror.
You don't have to aim the camera at you and stick your man as far as it'll go.
You just take a picture, there's a mirror in it, and you end up in the picture somehow.
I saw it demoed, but I didn't hear explain how it works.
Now, this stuff all fascinates me.
And I get once the newness of being able to do it happens, I kind of get over it.
And I go back to what is most complete for me, which is anything but closed captioning.
And plus, if I can get something on 1080i, high definition, then I'll watch that instead of 720.
But the smaller the screen, it doesn't matter.
But if you've got big screens, the more you blow it up, the bigger it is.
Anyway, the greater the degradation.
Anyway, greetings and welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh here, the EIB Network.
Great to have you here.
You know, this New Jersey, New Mexico governor that just wiped out this bogus environmental board on the basis that the things that people were doing there were anti-business, just wiped it out.
One of the most underreported stories of 2010 was the flip from Democrat to Republican in so many state houses, governors and legislatures.
And 700 seats in state legislatures.
I mean, this, we've talked about it here, how big the shellacking was, but it was largely underreported because it's not good news for the left.
It's a horrible harbinger for the Democrats.
And the more this, like this New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, is doing stuff like this, and the new governor in New Jersey, Martinez, I mean, wasting no time.
That's why I, and these new arrivals, Republicans in Congress are just like this.
I don't think the media and the Democrats really have any idea what happened in this election.
I don't think they understand the level of commitment.
We have a group of people who ran for office saying they're going to do X and Y, and they start out doing X, Y, and Z.
And they're committed.
And they know that they're going to get an excrement sandwich every day from the media and an anal exam, but they're prepared to deal with it.
And, you know, once this stuff starts happening, and more and more freedom and liberty is going to be breaking out all over the country at state and county, even city levels.
News from the New York Times: December retail sales are weaker than expected.
You remember all of the wonderful stories about the great retail season having prior to Chris.
Oh, it was a great comeback.
And it was due to Obama, the Obama recovery.
We had all that great unemployment news.
Even last week, great unemployment news.
But now the week, John Boehner takes the gavel in the House.
December retail sales are weaker than expected.
And guess what?
They're blaming the weather.
But didn't that snowstorm hit the Northeast after Christmas?
Yeah, it hit after Christmas.
Not before it.
Well, never mind such little details.
Never mind.
And here, new jobless claims, new claims for jobless benefits moved higher last week, but a decline in the four-week average to a nearly two and a half-year low indicated a trend toward better labor market conditions remained intact.
These people are so deluded.
They find a little chip of grass in a pile of mud and they call it a diamond.
Could never manage to do that with Bush.
Jobless claims up, underlying trend down.
That's Reuters.
AP, more people applied for unemployment last week.
More people applied last week for unemployment benefits one week after applications fell to the lowest level in more than two years.
But last week's increase isn't enough to reverse the downward trend.
Oh, no.
See, last week the big news was how low it was.
And shockingly, gosh, it's gone up again.
Does the AP know that last week was the week before Christmas when they were taking all these surveys and results?
Of course it's going to be down.
Unemployment claims are going to be down.
They're just scrounging for every little morsel of what they might be able to portray as positive news when there isn't any.
Now, more people apply for unemployment aid last week one week after applications fell to the lowest level in more than two years.
Now, how is it possible that unemployment has been trending down for so many weeks and yet the percentage of people unemployed has either remained steady or even gone up?
Now, are the news media and their bosses in the regime lying to us in an effort to drive up the economy?
And while we're asking rhetorical questions, whatever happened to all those record-breaking private sector jobs ADP just yesterday said were created.
I didn't have this yesterday.
I had it.
I didn't tell you about it.
ADP, automatic data processing.
I think that's Lautenberg's company.
Payroll Bunch.
They said that was either last quarter or last month, 292,000 jobs are created.
Last month?
Whoa.
Yeah, okay, where is that news?
I mean, 292, that's ADP.
Whatever happened to all those record-breaking private sector jobs if more people applied for unemployment last week and the trend is sadly downward.
Folks, the economic activity is like a famed Potter Stewart, U.S. Supreme Court, said, define pornography.
I can't, but I know it when I see it.
Well, economic growth is the same thing.
You know when it's happening.
You know when things are trending up and you know when they're stagnant and you know when they're declining.
So the media can try all they want that we're really going over.
The trend is up there.
A little backslide the last three out of four weeks.
Well, we're still trending up.
They don't have that much power.
They still have a lot.
They don't have enough to automatically influence people to the extent that they used to.
All right, phone calls, as promised, coming right up.
And as promised, we go back to the phones and Boston.
This is Adam.
Nice to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Well, Omega did it was Russian, and thanks for having me on.
You bet.
I earlier you were talking about the health care reform and how they're trying to repeal it.
And you asked, why do they need another bill to repeal the bill?
And there's actually a pretty simple answer to that.
Essentially, when the founders wrote the Constitution, they did it that way so that the original bill would stay in the Constitution or on the books.
So it's sort of like a second.
I just lost the battery here in my cochlear implant.
So I'm going to have to read, if you're saying, I have to read what you say until the break when I can figure this out.
The battery might have died.
So let me go back and see if I understand what you said.
You said the founders wrote the Constitution.
They did it that way.
So the original bill would stay in the Constitution on the books.
So it's sort of an act.
Okay, what we were talking about was repealing health care, and the Democrats are upset because they want to add amendments to it.
And I asked the question, why add amendments to something that's being repealed or wiped out?
So even if, and I don't know what you're saying, I've never heard what you're saying, but even if the original bill stays, why add amendments to it when it's going to be repealed?
What's the point?
Okay, go.
I assumed you were asking why they need another bill to repeal the original bill.
And the reason for that would be so that the original bill stays on so future generations will still see the poor health care bill and learn from it in the future.
Unless I might.
Okay, no.
My question was why add, yeah, you did misunderstand.
My question was, why add amendments to something that's being repealed?
What I said was that they're going to offer, Moehner, in his whole conversation about repealing, says we want to replace it with bill common sense reforms and so forth.
So I'm going to have to find out if there's a provision that says bills even repealed have to stay there so people know what was there.
But they have a bill and it's a repeal bill and it's one page long and it just totally strikes out the existing bill.
And see, the whole argument, Democrats are trying to gum up this works.
They want to add amendments to a one-page bill that says we're getting rid of something.
And that's, it's kind of a rhetorical question.
You know, there's no reason to amend something.
This is just to get more earmarks or spending or what have you in it.
It's a trick, pure and simple, that they want the media to go along with.
To get their pork in there, but essentially the other bill is going to have to be written because you can't technically repeal the original health care reform bill.
Essentially, you have to counteract it with new laws that basically cancel out all the amendments in the original health care bill.
Well, no.
If that was the case, then you'd need a similar page bill.
This is over 2,000 pages that will be repealed with one page, and it's an up or down vote.
They don't have amendments to upper down votes.
So I think it's probably my fault, but I think you're a little mistaken because you misunderstood, obviously due to my lack of clarity in what I was raising a question about.
Okay, moving on.
John Sparta, New Jersey, you're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
And remember, I can't hear you, so I can't interrupt you.
So when you finish, stop, and I'll respond.
I'm reading what you're saying.
Sentence behind you.
Oh, very good, Rush.
I'm sorry to be calling you to disagree with you on something.
I've been listening for so long.
Well, I love that.
I can't hear you.
Oh, you can hear that?
No, I'm reading.
I'm reading what you're saying.
Go ahead.
Sorry.
Anyhow, I got to bring it back to the last hour because I got to take task with something that you brought up on the stagehand unions in New York.
The guys over at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center.
My son is a member of the stagehand unions.
And he doesn't, you know, first, my son is, he works long hours.
He makes pretty good money for doing what he's doing.
He works long hours, puts a lot of effort into what he does, and he works odd hours and many days.
The guys over at Carnegie and Lincoln, they're at the top of the game.
Those guys have been in the business for a long time, have amassed skills and everything to bring to the table.
That union is one of the few, I think, that are what you'd consider a free market union.
You're not going to pay the money to see the shows to get in that pays them unless you enjoy what it is that they give you.
So you're taking them to task for how much they make.
I find that kind of, yeah, I hate that argument.
You know, because they make so much money, they're somehow bad.
That's the same argument that the Democrats and the liberals use against the.
Oh, no, no, no.
First place, they are the sons and grandsons in that union.
It's not a meritocracy.
And I'm not talking about how little or long they work or how hard it is.
I do know that a stagehand who raises and lowers the curtain pushes a button.
All I said was that the New Jersey Bergen record is reporting the average salary for the stagehand union is $292,000.
I don't know what your son makes, but that's the average, $292,000.
I throw it out there.
Other people can decide whether it's excessive or not.
I did make the joke it's not far more sensible to send your kid to become a member of that union if you get in rather than become a violinist at Carnegie Hall or anywhere over at Lincoln Center.
But I'm not opposed to people making money.
I don't know.
Free market union, you could say free market in that they sort of blackmailed the performers.
They shut down the stage for 19 days, so forth.
But if you wonder why tickets to Broadway shows cost what they cost, I mean, that's one of the factors.
The violinists, I know people here.
The violinists at Carnegie Hall make $100,000 a year.
They're the top in their field.
And it's the violinists and the performers on the stage that people are coming to pay, perform, and so forth.
It's, hey, it is what it is.
I'll draw a teacher analogy when we come back.
Hi, and welcome back.
We are back, ladies and gentlemen.
I replaced the battery here in my cochlear implant.
I can now hear.
I knew, ladies and gentlemen, I knew when I did the stagehand story that somebody was going to call.
I'm going to be a relative of somebody who worked there.
But I've been waiting.
I knew somebody was going to call.
So what do you have against somebody making $292,000?
I thought you were fine with people.
I'm totally.
Somebody willing to pay it for that work.
Fine and dandy.
I do know that opera tickets at the Met top out at around $435 a pop, so you're not going to have a whole lot of people other than the upper crust going to sit there and listen to an opera.
They just hiked the prices up 11% this time last year.
And by the way, the Metropolitan Opera, other places at Lincoln Center get a boatload of taxpayer money through grants, National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, and so forth and so on.
People all the time complain about how little teachers make.
Another complaint is how much athletes make.
Let's turn it around then.
Let's use the stagehand versus athletes.
Let's say that you're a Yankees fan, Derek Jeter.
Let's say Derek Jeter makes, I'm going to pick up some arbitrary numbers here.
Derek Jeter makes half a million dollars a year and the ushers and usherettes make $2 million.
Would that make sense to you?
Because that's what's, I mean, if the stagehands are making three times what the performers make, in other words, Derek Jitter's making $10 million, let's say $10 million, so the ushers and usherettes are making $30 million.
Well, obviously the economics of that aren't going to work out because nobody's coming to Yankee Stadium to watch the ushers and usherettes.
Well, you might have some perverts show up, but I mean, you're not going to fill the stadium of people who want to watch the ushers and usherettes seat people or wipe off seats or what have you.
Teachers, everybody, teachers notoriously underpaid because of the truly crucial and important task they have of indoctrinating our youth.
And they, okay, let's make teachers, let's raise their, let's pay them $500,000 a year or $300,000, like stagehands.
You know what your property taxes are going to be?
And you are paying.
I mean, the Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall are being subsidized.
That's the only reason they can stay in business.
If they had to stay, I guarantee $455 a ticket at the top at the Metropolitan Opera is not enough to support the place, to keep the lights on, to pay the stagehands, the performers, and everything else that has to go on in there.
And the same thing at Carnegie Hall, unless there is a whole lot of subsidizing going on.
And it's, there's a, I've, let me find the story here.
There's a battle shaping up between private sector and public.
Here it is.
It's the Wall Street Journal.
It's an editorial.
No, it's Bill McGurn, a noted friend of mine, by the way.
Labor's coming class war.
Private sector union workers begin to notice that their job prospects are at risk from public employee union contracts.
And I don't have time to go through the whole story here with you, but believe me, now the stagehands are not public sector.
They're private sector unions, but they are an exception for the amount of the average salary they make of close to $300,000 a year versus the performers who, again, the violinists top out at $100,000.
So there's a battle coming because everybody sees now what the public sector, i.e. government unions, are making.
And make no mistake, the government unions are every bit as attached to the left-wing socialist agenda in this country as Obama is.
They're inseparable.
And their objective is to break the private sector, break the bank and the private sector, to bust its will, to pare it down.
There is an animus they have against it.
And it's a coming battle, not just between private sector unions and public sector unions, private sector employees, period.
Private sector employees, forget private sector unions.
Private sector employees make half, on average, what government union workers make, or government employees don't even have to be unions in this case.
All right, Mike Jackson, Michigan, welcome to the EIB Network, sir.
It's great to have you here.
Hello.
God bless you, Rush.
Thank you.
This is exactly you set me up perfectly.
I just hope I can get my brain to work here.
The left has been very...
Don't worry about it.
Mine will take over if yours stalls.
I knew that.
The left has been real patient putting this plan together.
You know, you can call it socialism, progressivism, Cloward and Piven, Bill Ayers style thing.
And there is going to be a battle.
There's going to be shutdowns.
There's going to be problems, probably specifically tied to the cuts the Republicans are going to want to make to get this madness under control, the spending.
But they're building loyalties.
Like you said, we don't care.
We're glad when people make money, but they're building loyalties, and these people are going to fight to keep all this money they're earning.
The unions, the government workers.
You've got the class warfare.
You've got the media preaching to everyone.
You've got the socialist professors teaching the kids to hate America and all that.
Everything you talk about every day, and God bless you for it.
But it's all a part of a plan.
You can call it whatever you want.
I'm a Christian man.
I've always called it because I'm kind of a go-to person for people.
They come and ask me why, why, why?
And these people aren't dumb.
It's not stupidity.
I always call it good versus evil.
I'm a Christian man, but I know you don't probably want to get off into that, but that's what I call it.
But there is going to be problems.
It's going to be, we're going to be Europe soon.
I believe that.
They're going to shut down transportation, you know, food delivery, all that.
I really feel it's coming because they're not going to want to give up their big salaries.
They're going to fight.
They're going to battle for what they've got.
Well, you're seeing that in Europe, too.
Well, I mean, just playing the devil's advocate here.
Can you blame them?
No, no, exactly.
What they've got is the result of negotiated agreements and contracts.
That's what they would tell you.
Exactly.
It's blind loyalty.
Yeah, yeah.
They don't see the bigger picture.
They just see, you know, they want to keep buying their everything, their toys, their everything.
It's blind loyalty.
They don't see it as good versus evil or whatever.
They just want to keep living their life.
Well, but doesn't everybody?
Exactly.
Exactly.
But it's that blind loyalty to the cause, you know, and they don't even maybe not even realize it's for a bigger cause, but it really is.
That's why the government wants to keep giving in quotes, giving away free medicine, free food stamps, everything.
It's all to keep the votes rolling in.
If you give them...
Well, you mentioned Cloward Piven, the...
The purpose of Cloward Pippin is Piven Pippin is to overload the welfare system.
Just overload.
It can't survive.
It totally crashes.
Nobody has anything.
You have total chaos.
You have anarchy because nobody has anything.
Because without anybody working, there's nothing produced and there's nothing to transfer and nobody has anything.
The people expecting to live off government largesse, there is none.
The government expecting to live off Social Security, well, there is, if you take Cloud Piven out to its natural conclusion, and during all this, you have these people who say the government is good.
It is the only good.
They'll do nothing but rely on government.
Cloward Piven's whole point to destroy America, their whole objective to destroy America capitalism, is to so overload the system with people who are not working, but who are being given much more than livable wage benefits and so forth.
They knew that that couldn't be sustained.
And when the chaos comes, when the anarchy comes, the theory is that out of that will arise the great dictator who will then reassemble the country without a constitutional convention.
You'll have a Chavez or a Castro.
Somebody will rise up out of this and finally produce the workers' paradise and assign people X, Y, and Z, where they can live, what they will do, what kind of work they'll do.
And freedom will be a thing of the past.
That's the objective.
I know it's hard to understand because people living in America, the vast majority of them would look at the country and say, what is it about this you want to destroy?
What in the world, all of the wealth that's been created here?
Well, because we didn't get any, we're getting screwed, and we're going to make sure everybody else gets screwed and suffers along with it.
We're going to show you what it's been like.
Because they think when the great dictator arises from the ashes, that they will be the chosen ones.
They'll be the ones that'll finally be in the circle of enlightenment.
The big click, the chosen few who run things.
And like my dad always said in a laughing way, he said, son, these liberal media people, if they ever really got a communist government here, the first people to put in jail would be them.
And the people would employ them.
And the first thing to be taken away from them would be their cameras and in their microphones and in their pens and in their paper.
They'll be the first, the biggest supporters of this stuff are the first to go to jail.
He laughed about it.
I said, sounds almost worth trying.
And my dad, who didn't see humor in this kind of stuff, chastised me for the comment.
I just saw it out there on Fox News, Ellen Weiss, who looks like a liberal NPR executive, but that's all I will say.
She's the one who actually fired Juan Williams.
She got the instruction from Vivian Schiller, who's the CEO, to fire Juan Williams for whatever reason.
So she fired Juan Williams.
The woman that actually did it, Vivian Weiss has been canned, relieved of duties.
Vivian Schiller, who ordered it done, still there, but she had her bonus for 2010 stripped because of the whole Juan Williams thing, which means I guess Juan Williams can now go back to NPR and Fox can do another two weeks of stories on it.
The only thing, well, that would have happened, would have had to have happened on a certain Fox show for this to last for two more weeks, and it didn't.
At any rate, what else?
My wife sent me a note.
This flabbergasts me.
A friend of hers had his identity stolen today.
Friend of hers learned that his identity was stolen.
How can that be?
I mean, I can understand some of you who haven't yet signed up for Life Lock having your identity stolen, but a friend of my wife's shit.
I mean, it happened out there.
And the poor guy faces a nightmare now.
He just had a baby.
And he faces a nightmare putting all this back together.
Don't have details on to what extent it happened, but I mean, it's this is the time of year, and a lot of certain times of the year where identity theft is more prevalent.
Uh, back in September, scam artists targeted children during back to school.
January is risky because this is when employers and banks are sending out all the year-end documents of W-2s, 1099s, brokerage statements, and all these things have your social security number on them.
So, all somebody has to do is just start robbing mailboxes and opening mail and seeing what's in there.
I don't know if that's how this particular guy had his identity stolen, but this is how it happens a lot this year.
It needn't happen.
All you have to do is have LifeLock.
They are the premier identity protectors out there.
They will protect your information, and unlike their competitors, they won't sell it to anybody, either magazines or anybody else that buys mailing lists.
They will not do it.
They hold on to it.
They have the best identity alert system there is.
Somebody gets hold of your social security number, credit card data, whatever, and tries to use it.
You get a phone call while it's in the act in many cases, and that's how it gets shut down.
LifeLock's number is 800-440-4833.
And use my name when you call, save 10%.
It's already ridiculously low priced anyway.
LifeLock 800-440-4833, SAFE 10%, offer code Rush.
Larry in Byzalia, California.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Great to have you here.
Yes.
Hi.
It's an honor for me to speak with you, Mr. Rush.
And I just wanted to comment regarding your views on government regulations.
Yeah.
Would you agree with me that some government regulation is good?
Well, the premise that government must regulate is something I would reject because the starting point's much too broad.
Some government.
Now, you're asking if there's some government regulation that is sensible?
Yeah.
But not enough.
Okay, like, for example, with cars.
For, you know, we used to have cars.
I'm 60-some years old.
And in my day, when I was a kid, our cars got, what, 16 miles to the gallon of gas.
Yeah.
Today, today, you can't even buy a car that gets only 16 miles per gallon.
Why did that happen?
Because the government kept saying to the car makers, you have to produce cars that will meet these standards regarding miles per gallon.
I live in the San Joaquin Valley.
Yeah.
20 years ago.
Wait a minute.
Miles per gallon's got nothing to do with air quality.
I have a car that gets eight miles a gallon.
I'm proud of it.
And I bought it.
I didn't modify it.
I have a car that gets maybe 10 if I lay off of it a bit, but my car gets nowhere near 16 miles to the gallon.
And I am proud of that because I don't fall prey to all this Jack Spratt skies falling conventional wisdom stuff.
But if you, if you want to, it's a free country.
Go right ahead.
Just don't make me drive the moped when you go buy one.
Here is a story, and you're going to see a lot of this if you haven't already.
Los Angeles Times Tea Party Freshman Embrace Status Quo.
After campaigning against DC's ways, new Republican lawmakers quickly turn to lobbyists and fundraisers.
Kathleen Hennessy and Tom Hamburger, Washington Bureau, LA Times.
Nice story.
Nice way to try to denigrate them.
Bunch of phonies.
Let's, Kathleen, why don't we wait until they pass some legislation and see how they vote?
And then you can get back to me on whether or not they are embracing Pelosi status quo.
We'll see you tomorrow, folks.
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