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July 11, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:49
July 11, 2011, Monday, Hour #2
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Time Text
The views expressed by the host on this program make more sense than anything anybody else out there happens to be saying.
They just do.
Great to have you here.
As always, we will get to your phone calls in this hour.
I promise.
And you don't have to eat your peas.
I'll just do it.
Phone number is 800-282-2882.
Email address, lrushball at eibnet.com.
My favorite part of the press conference today was Chip Reed.
Chip Reed asked, we're preparing it now.
Cocos Jr. and the third are working on it even now.
But Chip Reed basically said two-thirds of the American people oppose raising the debt ceiling.
Think the country's head in the wrong direction.
Why are you persisting?
The answer is priceless.
I mean, the definition of tone deaf.
But I don't want to give too much away if you didn't hear it.
I'll just wait till I get it prepared for me, and I'll let you hear it on your own.
So, and I was serious before the top of the hour.
What Boehner should do is go play golf with Obama and Obama's favorite course.
Folks, I'm serious when I said the first hour, the Republicans don't have to do anything here.
This is all on the Democrats.
It's all on them.
I know the pressure is just the opposite.
The pressure's on Obama's going to compromise and put his Medicare stuff and their entitlements on the table.
He's going to make Pelosi mad.
I don't think they care about Pelosi anymore, frankly.
I think she's been marginalized.
I really don't think they care.
I think, in fact, she embarrasses him.
In fact, she did embarrass him.
There was a meeting last Thursday up there in the White House.
And, you know, Pelosi had been running around on junkets and she hasn't been in all the meetings.
And she shows up at this meeting and she said, look, why don't we just decouple the deficit and the national debt from the debt limit and just do these things separately.
And the room was shocked and stunned.
And the reports that Obama looked at her and politely told her that that train had left the station months ago.
So there was a scramble from Pelosi's office to put out a release.
Leader Pelosi, of course, is fully up to speed on all going on in the talks and blah, blah, blah.
And Stenny Hoyer put a press release out praising Leader Pelosi and so forth.
But I really think she's not really much of a factor in all this.
So it is all on the Democrats.
The public pressure, of course, is a compromise.
Got to do this.
The Republicans got to give.
Obama's got to give.
That's not the way.
That's the way it's always been done.
And look where it's gotten us.
So go play golf at Obama's favorite course and say to him, Mr. President, when you're ready to cut spending, you let me know.
Otherwise, Ramadan hits August 1st and the debt limit goes up August 2nd.
Well, that's why the August 2nd deadline, folks, is Ramadan's August.
We don't want to offend anybody.
We don't want our debt limit to offend them during Ramadan.
And this is the point.
When you boil it all down, it's the point.
Big cutting.
It will occur automatically.
The debt automatically gets serviced, unless Obama doesn't want it to.
And then the rest of the government gets cut accordingly.
If we don't do anything, that's what would happen.
Just like forget your own, forget your own life for a second, because there's so many ways that you can get help for your problem.
You get government to forget your mortgage.
But let's say you're playing Monopoly and you're rolling a dice and you're going around the board and you've accumulated, you got a couple of monopolies.
You got St. James Place and the Orange Monopoly.
Let's say you've got Marvin Gardens and the Yellow Monopoly.
You put a couple houses in all these things.
And something happens.
Your opponent has boardwalk in Park Place and you land on him.
He's got a couple houses.
You get cleaned out.
And you don't have any cash.
You've got to sell a couple of houses from your mortgage properties or you quit the game.
In order to stay in the game, you start mortgaging the stuff in order to pay rent, in order to pay your bills.
There's no, you know, you don't go to community chester chance and draw a card that says government bails you out of your mortgage.
It's not in the stack.
So pretend you're playing a monopoly and you're in that situation.
This is what's going to happen to the government.
We will start cutting things in order to pay our bills.
It's that simple.
These discussions, and here's my point about this, these discussions, these negotiations, if you will, between Boehner and Canter, the Republicans and Obama, and whoever else is in them, are supposed to be about how to manage the cuts in spending.
These talks are not about new revenues.
These talks are not about new taxes and all the rest.
This is supposed to be about cutting spending to stay under the ceiling.
We, as Republicans and conservatives, if you show up to a raise the debt ceiling meeting, you're lost.
You have already lost if you show up to a raise the debt ceiling meeting.
We're showing up at a meeting where the debt ceiling is about to be exceeded.
We're talking about seeing to it that that doesn't happen.
We are talking or should be about cutting spending to stay under the ceiling.
That's what voters in 2010 voted on.
Am I right?
That's what we're going to be voting on in 2012.
That is what we are saying now.
Cut spending to stay under the debt ceiling.
And it'll get cut automatically unless they do something else.
And that is why we're in the driver's seat.
This is why we can make Obama cave.
If every day in these meetings is like Saturday night was, or Sunday night was.
Actually, it occurred before Sunday because Boehner puts out his release on Saturday saying, I called the White House and said, the hell with this big deal, we're not doing it.
And even Boehner wanted a big deal at one time.
So just keep doing what you're doing, Mr. Speaker.
Make every day like Sunday night was in the meetings.
We are here to talk about cutting spending.
We are here to making sure we come in under the debt limit.
We are in the driver's seat.
This is also why, in my humble talk show host opinion, they need to get out in front of this and explain that Obama wants more taxes, more government, more spending, and he will destroy what's left in the economy.
That needs to be said.
The economy was X when Obama took office.
A portion of it has been destroyed or gravely damaged, however you want to put it.
And more of the same will happen if something doesn't change.
And they need to pound this 100 times a day.
Get in front of it.
Explain.
Don't just make excuses and be on defense and say, we're not raising taxes.
We're in a recession.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's fine to do that.
But explain by getting out in front of it what Obama wants.
Tell us what's going on in the meetings.
Not exact words.
Don't give up any confidences, but you can simply say what Obama policy is.
He wants more taxes.
He wants more government, despite what he said today.
He wants more spending and he will destroy what's left of the economy.
That's what he wants.
And the Republicans know that that's what he wants.
The simple little strategery is that it's called going on offense.
They just have to say no.
And you know, that's hard.
I mean, I will admit saying no, because then you got to deal with what people's reaction is.
You know it, and I know saying no to anybody.
A lot of people want to say no to a lot of stuff, and they never do because they would prefer to take the path of least resistance.
So a lot of people get themselves in circumstances that they utterly make themselves miserable because they don't say no.
Very hard to do, to say no.
But they did it over the weekend somehow.
Boehner did it before the meeting on Sunday, and when he got to the meeting on Sunday, he stood firm on the no.
Tell the American people what's going on in there.
Tell the American people what Obama wants.
That's how you explain your own position, by the way.
That's what we do right here on this program.
We explain liberalism more honestly than they do.
I explain to you, the members of this audience, what liberalism is and who liberals are and what their objectives are, what they want to do better than they do, because I'll do it honestly.
They won't because they can't.
They can't be honest about what they want.
They can't be honest.
Like Obama today could not be honest.
He said, I don't want to, I'm not doing this just to grow the government.
Yes, he is.
I'm not doing this just because I like more spending.
Yes, he is.
It's not my opinion.
We got two and a half years of a track record.
There's no doubt.
It's inarguable to assert Obama wants bigger government and more spending.
You can't argue with me on it.
You can try.
I mean, you can try, but you are in quicksand.
So 100 times today, a day, make sure that they say Obama wants more taxes, more government, more spending, more of the same, fewer jobs, A constantly hurting economy.
Quick timeout here, my friends.
We'll get to your phone calls when we get back here on the Rush Limbaugh program and the EIB network.
Back here before you know it.
Now, what Obama wants to do, it's the same thing as last week.
Obama wants to isolate Boehner, Isolate him from the Republican base and conservatives generally, and then he hopes he can wear him down.
So Boehner just needs to stand strong and not buckle.
And I just saw that Boehner's doing a presser at 130.
He's going to answer Obama.
That's a good sign.
I would love to hear some things in the presser.
We're not going to jip it, but we'll be rolling on the tape, and we will have any highlights after he finishes here, and we can roll it off for you.
But if Boehner holds firm, this is what it boils down to.
Boehner holds firm, it'll be Obama and his reelection team gets choked up and starts crying, not Boehner, if he holds firm.
Right now, John Boehner is more than just the Speaker of the House and a negotiator in the debt ceiling deal.
Right now, as far as Obama's concerned, John Boehner is the lifeline to Obama's political future.
Oh, yeah.
If Obama can get Boehner to cave, if you look at it that way, that may from Obama, and Obama's out there saying, if they don't budge, there's no deal.
Fine.
If there's no deal, then we start cutting.
The law of the land right now is the current debt ceiling.
That's the law of the land.
If we don't do anything and write a new law, guess who's going to be in violation of it if they don't abide by it?
Obama and the Democrats, not us.
Right now, Obama looks at Boehner and sees his route to reelection by getting Boehner to cave.
That's a lot of pressure to be under for Boehner.
But that's the way Obama has set this up.
Now, if the Republicans are to save the country, this is axiomatic.
If the Republicans are to save the country, they cannot allow the Democrats to rebuild their party on the backs of snookered Republican leaders.
Because we're playing for keeps here, short-term, long-term, you name it.
The Democrats had their chance in Obama's first two and a half years in office, and their actions told us who they are and what they believe.
Their actions told us where they want to take the country.
We got the evidence now, folks.
And what Obama's doing is pretending here that a raise in the debt ceiling is sort of a truce.
The grand spirit of compromise.
Parties coming together to do what's best for the country.
Yada, yada, yada.
But it's no such thing.
What it is, raising the debt ceiling and the snooker, making sure that there are all these new spending increases, but no tax cuts, just like 1990, just like 1982.
It's an opportunity for Obama to reload for his 2012 reelection effort.
That's what's wrapped up in this.
Make no mistake about it.
That's, as far as Obama's concerned, that's what this negotiation is all about.
He doesn't care about the debt ceiling or any of that.
In a passionate policy sense, it's just a marker along the way.
He wants more government.
He wants more spending.
And of course, he needs a debt ceiling raise to be able to do that.
But the only way he gets there is by forcing a giant Republican cave.
And if he can make that happen, that's his ticket.
That's his lifeline 2012.
I'm sorry, somebody told me I'm wrong, but that's how I see it.
That's why the pressure on Boehner is enormous, but not from us.
I mean, we don't the word the pressure to compromise is not from us.
It's not from his base.
It's not from his voters.
Obama's essentially saying, John, I need you to be reelected.
That's what Obama is saying.
That's the negotiations boiled down to one sentence.
That is the whole ball of wax boiled down to one sentence.
John, I need you to get re-elected in 2012.
What, do you disagree with me on that, Snerdley?
It's exactly what it means.
I need you, bud.
Let's go play golf.
I need you to get re-elected in 2012.
All right, let's go to the phones.
I promise that.
I got the chip read question and Obama answer ready to go, but I want to let Churchill, Tennessee, will start first.
John High, great to have you on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Megan, East Tennessee, Ditto's Rush.
Thank you very much, sir.
My grandson, a Rush baby, by the way, and I, Jake, were watching the president, and he was listening to that and started crying.
So I decided to give you a call.
Two points.
Number one, where does the president get off that he doesn't believe in continuing resolutions when that's all the Democratic Congress was running the government on for two years?
And my second question is: he talks about budgets.
Where's the Democrats' budget?
The debt's been gone for so long, it's been missing.
We've had to send Carmen to San Diego to go look at it.
See, that's that's you've just nailed their game.
Their game is to do nothing.
Know the Republicans will be responsible and do something and have at them for it.
It's a strategy.
I mean, you might want to say that it's irresponsible, that they're not meeting their constitutional requirements.
Oh, yeah, that's true, but it's a strategy.
Do nothing, force the Republicans to take it all on, and then come in and say, Well, what is this?
What can be irresponsible?
Here we go.
The usual tax cuts for their rich buddies and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Corporate jet owners.
That's the strategy.
See if they can pull him off again.
That's what they're aiming for.
Laura Fraser, Michigan.
Hello, and welcome to the program.
Hello.
Thank you.
It's a pleasure.
My question is: why isn't the Republicans pounding over and over again to let the free market take its course and government get rid of all regulations, you know, all that baloney?
Why don't they just keep sending that message like Obama keeps sending the same old boring message?
Why don't they keep, why don't they do that?
Well, I don't know that they're not.
I very rarely have heard them say, get out of the way.
Government, get out of the way and let the free market.
Well, okay, you're not hearing those exact words, but in the debt negotiations, I mean, you're hearing him say, this is not, we don't raise taxes during recessions like this.
You might have a point that they don't use the words free market and talk philosophically about it enough to satisfy you.
I think that's just a function of constantly being reactive or reactionary, whatever the proper use of the root word is there.
The president sets the agenda or tries to, and everybody else reacts to it.
That's common, whether the Republican is Democrat or Republican.
And, of course, the press has always got these guys on defensive.
But I've been asked questions of why don't Republicans do this for me.
I don't know.
Hi.
How are you?
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh.
Yeah, I said we weren't going to jip Moehner, but he's there.
Let's listen to a little bit of Boehner just to see what he says.
Unemployment is enacting more government policies that will destroy jobs.
There we go.
What the American people want is for us to work together to remove government barriers that are getting in the way of job creation and real economic growth.
Two of the biggest obstacles to job growth that we face are out of control, entitlement spending, and the current tax code.
And I think the fundamental questions are this.
Can you control government spending without fundamentally reforming entitlements?
I think the answer is no.
Do you need to raise taxes in order to get control of spending?
I think the answer is no.
If you want to see an increase in government revenues, then let's grow the economy and create jobs, broaden the tax base, and lower rates.
As Senator Rubio said last week, we don't need more taxes.
What we need are more taxpayers.
So our disagreement with the President is not about closing loopholes.
None of us are fond of loopholes.
Our disagreement is over the idea of raising taxes on the very people that we're asking to create jobs in our country.
All right.
I agree with the president that the national debt limit must be raised.
And I'm glad that he made the case for it today.
But the American people will not accept, and the House cannot pass, a bill that raises taxes on job creators.
The House can only pass a debt limit bill that includes spending cuts larger than the hike in the debt limit, as well as real restraints on future spending.
My colleagues and I believe we should enact a balanced budget amendment to keep the federal government from spending us into the same situation again.
I think we also need real reductions in spending right now and spending caps to ensure that any progress that we make is not undone in the future.
Listen, I agree with the president we cannot allow our nation to default on our debt.
But to prevent a default, a bill must pass the Congress.
And a bill that doesn't meet these tests can't pass the House of Representatives.
This is the message that we will take again to the White House today and hope that we can work our way through this.
All right.
That's John Boehner, and he's basically laying it out.
You want tax increases, and I can't give them to you.
We don't have them.
We don't have the votes.
There aren't going to be any.
It will not pass the House of Representatives.
You know, yeah, we'd all like to see that ceiling raised.
It has to be raised.
But the bill must pass Congress to prevent default.
I don't think I don't look at he's the speaker and he would know much better than I do.
But I there's not going to be a default anyway.
Apparently, not willing to say that.
As I say, it's easy for me to sit here behind the golden EIB microphone as the mayor of Rielville and suggest that what they need to do is get out in front of this and say what Obama wants.
You know, after Boehner explains his position, he needs to tell everybody what Obama is doing too.
What is Obama?
He wants more spending.
He wants more taxes.
He wants more government.
He wants more of what has happened to destroy the economy.
He wants more of it.
And I would remind everybody, like we did, that last December, Obama's out there praising tax cuts as a way to keep the economy going.
Send him that soundbite and let him take it into the negotiation.
And this is what you said in January.
So we'll see.
But it sounds like a good old-fashioned standoff now, but it doesn't change the reality.
John Boehner is Obama's lifeline to re-election.
That's all Boehner is to Obama, nothing else.
He's not a golf buddy.
He's nothing other than that.
If he can get Boehner to ultimately cave, Obama's re-elected.
That's what he knows.
I'm sorry, folks.
It's the only way to look at this.
When they go in that meeting room and Obama sees Boehner, he sees 2012.
He sees if I can force this guy to cave, I don't care what the House vote is.
I don't care if I lose the vote.
If I can get this guy to cave and put my tax increase for a vote, even if it loses, I win.
And I get re-elected.
That's what Obama thinks.
All he's got to, because if Boehner caves, it's bye-bye GOP.
That's the thing that everybody must understand.
If Boehner caves, it's bye-bye GOP.
It had nothing to do with the policy changes that might happen.
If Boehner caves and takes a tax increase vote to the House and it loses, Obama still wins because the Republican base is so ticked off at that.
Hello, Tea Party.
You know the drill.
That's all Obama is trying to do is to wear Boehner down between now and Ramadan so that Boehner eventually caves.
Ramadan being August 1st.
And they say we go into default on August 2nd.
You be the judge.
Here's that soundbite that I referred to earlier.
Chip Reed, I'll read the question.
Chip Reed said to Obama, you said that everybody in the room is willing to do what they have to do, wants to get something done by August 2nd.
But isn't the problem the people who aren't in the room, in particular Republican presidential candidates, Republican Tea Partiers on the Hill, the American public?
The latest CBS news poll showed that only 24% of Americans said that you should raise the debt limit to avoid an economic catastrophe.
There's still 69% who oppose raising the debt limit.
So is this a problem that you and others have failed to convince the American people that we have a crisis here?
And how are you going to change that?
Let me distinguish between professional politicians and the public at large.
Yeah, the public is not paying close attention to the ins and outs of how a treasury auction goes.
Stop saying Obama is saying people are too stupid to know the ins and outs.
They're too stupid to understand how all this works, Chip.
Your question's idiotic because the voters that you're talking about in your poll don't know what they're talking about.
He goes on to say, you know, they're too focused on their own lives to pay attention to this, the ins and outs.
And they're depending on us to solve this.
Here, listen.
They're worrying about their family.
They're worrying about their jobs.
They're worrying about their neighborhood.
They've got a lot of other things on their plate.
We're paid to worry about it.
I think, depending on how you phrase the question, if you said to the American people, is it a good idea for the United States not to pay its bills and potentially create another recession that could throw millions of more people out of work?
I feel pretty confident I can get a majority on my side on that one.
And that's the fact.
If we don't raise the debt ceiling and we see a crisis of confidence in the markets and suddenly interest rates are going up significantly and everybody is paying higher interest rates on their car loans, on their mortgages, on their credit cards, and that's sucking up a whole bunch of additional money out of the pockets of the American people.
I promise you, they won't like that.
Stop the tape a second here.
Now, if you ask the American people, it's a good idea for us not to pay our bills.
That's not going to happen.
Somebody on the Republican side needs to sit there and say we are not going to default on Ramadan.
DeMint has been saying it.
Yeah, in fact, I think I've got a bite of DeMint saying it, but there needs to become a Republican chorus.
Now, what Obama is saying here, and I'm not going to play the rest of it because it's nothing different.
And by the way, you know where that started?
John Edwards.
I'm a speech pattern expert because I'm an impressionist, so I like to mimic people.
And I noticed that John Edwards said that a lot.
Every time I listened to him speak, when he got into the presidential sweepstakes, started showing up these debates.
And he'd look out and be like, hey, hey, are you Paw?
How long have you been Paw?
And they start talking about the and.
And it wasn't long after that Obama started saying, and in the same way.
It says press conference, eh.
And here, listen a little more.
You'll see I'm right.
Listen to a little more of this.
Now, I will say that some of the professional politicians know better.
And for them to say that we shouldn't be raising the debt ceiling is irresponsible.
They know better.
And, you know, this is not something that I am making up.
This is not something that Tim Geithner's making up.
We're not out here trying to use this as a means of doing all these really tough political things.
I'd rather be talking about stuff that everybody welcomes, like new programs or the NFL season getting resolved.
New programs.
Unfortunately, this is what's on our plate.
It's before us right now, and we've got to deal with it.
So what you're right about, I think, is not saying it there, but you'll notice it in the future.
He's saying, and just, I don't know.
I just noticed these things in the irritated.
But that's essentially the way he chose to answer the question, exactly what David Fluff said, by the way.
The American people aren't going to be worried about employment numbers and the status of the unemployed.
The American people aren't going to care about that.
When 2012 comes around, they're not going to worry about the unemployment rate or what's happening to their neighbors.
They're only going to be worried about what's happening to them.
He starts talking about all this stuff that's going to suck money out of people's back pockets.
What the hell does he think tax increases do?
James Pethakoukis, a buddy at Reuters, the columnist, he said what Boehner did on Saturday and Sunday was like Reagan at Reykjavik.
He said it was like Reagan at Reykjavik.
Boehner passes on a bad deal.
Now, for those of you who are new to the program, were not paying attention or weren't alive or old enough in the 80s, Ronaldus Magnus and Mikhail Gorbachev, he of the expanding birthmark on the forehead.
And for those of you that weren't alive or weren't paying attention, that birthmark on Gorbachev's forehead, it typified Soviet expansionism.
The thing grew as the Soviet Union grew.
That birthmark got bigger and bigger.
And then it started to shrink a little bit as the Soviet Union started contracting and ending up in trouble.
If you look at that birthmark up close, if you get a picture, in fact, I met Gorbachev at George H.W. Bush's birthday party.
I forgot it was in 19, what was this?
Gee, I don't even remember when it was, but it was a big birthday party.
It was at Reliance Stadium in Houston.
And I met Gorbachev.
And we have a picture, and we ended up, I was wearing almost the same jacket that he was wearing.
Gray suit.
At any rate, we took the picture.
They took the picture down in Houston.
And when they sent it to me, the birthmark had moved to my forehead from Gorbachev's.
It's funny.
We'll put the picture up at rushlimbaugh.com.
We'll put it up right now.
Coco Jr., go find it.
Anyway, they met at Reykjavik, Iceland, and Gorbachev made a typical Democrat proposition, leftist, whatever.
He proposed to Reagan, if you do X, then we'll get rid of all nuclear weapons 20 years from now or some such thing.
That's not exactly what it was, but the meat of it was a total destruction of all nuclear arms.
And Reagan said, nope, nope, not the way.
And let me tell you something.
There were people in Reagan's administration who wanted to take the deal.
Elite Washington wanted to take the deal because it was always the Soviets who were the honest ones.
And of course, even this is 1987 when this happened, 86 or 87.
And even then, it was Reagan who was the problem.
Old man, finger on the nuclear button, called him the evil empire.
Who knows what he's going to do?
And there was pressure on Reagan to take the deal.
He didn't do it.
And George Schultz, who was his secretary of state at the time, in a press conference right after Reagan walked out.
I mean, they literally walked out of a little hut that they were meeting in.
Gorbachev followed him out.
They shook hands.
And Reagan said there shaking his head.
Nope.
He walked out of the negotiations.
They did not officially end.
He got up and walked out there saying no.
Of course, the era of Reagan is over, they want to tell us.
So Gorbachev follows, and then Schultz, George Schultz, makes, I have never been prouder of my president than today.
George Schultz, the Secretary of State of the Times, said this.
And that's why James Pethakoukis at Reuters is saying that Boehner had his Reykjavik moment in saying no to Obama over the weekend.
John in Houghton, Michigan.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hi.
Thanks, Rush.
Appreciate you taking my.
You bet.
I read an article this weekend.
I think there's a third option for Obama to claim, another option for Obama to claim victory here.
One is if he can weaken Boehner, like you've said, then he wins.
The other option is, according to the article I read, that there's some language in the 14th Amendment that prohibits any law that would enable the federal government to do business.
And it was tested in 1935 by the Supreme Court.
And recently, Treasury officials have floated this as an idea through back channels to say, you know, actually the whole debt ceiling discussion in itself is unconstitutional.
And if they can't come to an agreement, hang on to the scenes.
Where are you reading that from?
I read that online.
It was on Drudge.
There was a link from Drudge about the constitutionality of the debt ceiling discussion.
Did you read the link?
I followed the link.
Did you read the link underneath it?
No.
Well, the link underneath it points out what a bunch of poppycock folly that is.
You read an AP story that came straight from the White House.
If you hang on, not on the phones, I promise you I will lead the next segment with this, and I will show you how that option is a lie, how it is a fraud, and how it is nothing more than a White House construct.
They're basically saying the 14th Amendment has a clause in it that nobody's ever noticed before that empowers the president to spend money and the Congress can't say anything about it.
Imagine.
Bam!
An official Washington and the think tanks are trying to make this true.
It's a lie, and I'll explain why at the top of the next hour.
Okay, folks, the second hour of our busy broadcast, Ilfinito.
However, or la faminidata.
Regardless, we've got another exciting hour to go.
And as I promised, I'll put this 14th Amendment charade in perspective and wipe that out of the way when we get back.
And then we'll continue with other stuff.
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