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Dec. 13, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:26
December 13, 2012, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 247 Podcast.
No, really, they ticked me off.
I gotta say, you know, there's not that much wrong with it.
But you would you would you read the tech blogs, these snarky little anti-Apple snivelling little jerks out there.
They're not I'm sure folks you happen to program happen to start in the middle of a conversation here that had nothing to do with you.
Google Maps made their iPhone app available last night.
You know, the big controversy.
Apple came out with iOS 6 and their maps app and everybody started dumping on it.
And they've been waiting with baited breath for the Google Maps app.
So the Google Maps app is back on the iPhone last night.
All these snarky little snivelling little tech jockeys are right how wonderful it is and how great it is, and that's fine.
It's a pretty good app.
But at the same time, they're sitting there ripping Apple's maps app as though it's the worst thing it's ever come down to tech pike, and that's not true.
I have I've had no problem uh with with anything I've ever tried to do on the Apple Maps.
I actually like it.
I actually prefer it to the Google apps, uh the Google Maps app, but which is also good.
Competition's great.
It's gonna make everybody better.
But my gosh, I don't know why it just ticks me off.
I get I think it's just liberals in the media, wherever I find them, I don't care if it's in a sports page, I don't care it's in a tech pages, I don't care if it's in a blogs, it just ticks me off.
There gets a bunch of idiots.
I don't know, I get to the point I'm so sick and tired of being surrounded by morons.
I'm sick and tired of being governed and dominated by low information, know nothing idiots.
And no matter where you go, you find them.
And you find them in places where you would expect to find people have reached the pinnacle of their profession.
And instead, what you find are the typical idiots.
And they're everywhere surrounded by these people.
And I don't know, some days it just ticks me off.
How are you?
Great to have you here as the uh EIB Net kicks off uh network kicks off another three hours of broadcast excellence.
Happy to uh have you with us.
The Google app, I'll tell you with a Google Maps app, I tried to find out where they're hiding their two billion dollars.
You know, Google, ten billion dollars of income that they're sheltering two billion of, and they're not paying it to Obama.
Google is doing everything they can to avoid paying taxes on on ten billion dollars of income.
So I said, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna search the Google Maps app, see if I can find out where they're hiding it.
And it took me to the Eiffel Tower.
And these tech jockeys are still out there writing how wonderful and how great it is.
I mean, I tried, look, I put in an address in the Google Maps app, and it took me to some place in Singapore.
Which is what everybody's complaining the Apple Maps app does.
I don't know.
I'm sorry, folks.
I know a lot of you people don't care about this tech stuff.
I happen to love it.
But it's not that.
It's just it's being surrounded by no matter where you go.
I and it's not just that they're liberals, it's this condescending, arrogant snarkiness.
Just bad manners.
That that that just that bugs me.
There's nothing, there's nothing more irritating than arrogant condescension from people who are 180 degrees out of face, who do not know what they're talking about.
It's one thing if a genius is arrogant and condescending and is right.
But these people who think they're geniuses and know what the hell they're talking about, you couple that with arrogance and and condescension, and it's just it to me, it's just uh insufferable.
So I'm venting a little bit.
Anyway, telephone number 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address lrushball at EIBNet.com.
Did you know that the fiscal cliff is my fault?
The fiscal cliff has been manufactured by me to scare you.
I don't know when I did this, but Tom Tom Harkin uh what was on some web show that the Huffing and Puffington Post has.
And the the the the hostette, somebody named Alicia Menendez, who probably doesn't like the Apple Maps app, was interviewing Tom Dung Heap Harkin.
And they're talking about the fiscal cliff as she said, do you hold the conservative media accountable?
Now stop and think.
What kind of wizard of smart do you have to be to to in any way relate conservative media or any media to the fiscal cliff?
The fiscal cliff is the result of a budget deal expanding a debt limit negotiated by Obama and Boehner.
What, about a year ago?
Something like that.
And so now Dung He Parkin gets a question from the Huffing and Puffing and Post about the conservative media being accountable and asking how do you hold them accountable?
Is that why the American people have an overblown sense about the challenges that we face?
The Russian emboss and their echo chambers around the country have really manufactured this.
This crisis has been manufactured by the conservatives to scare people so that we will do something here in a hurry.
They have confused people deliberately in order to try to get their way, just like hostage taking.
I apologize for that uh audio.
I'm sure it came through the Apple Maps app.
Uh, ladies and gentlemen, the uh what what Tom Dung Heap Harkin was saying there was that uh Rush Limbaugh and their echo chambers around the country have really manufactured this.
This crisis has been manufactured by the conservatives to scare people so that we will do something here in a hurry.
They have tried to confuse people, trying to get their whites like hostage take.
This I I tell you, this is sheer insanity.
This is absolute total lunacy.
Of course I'm denying it.
I have nothing to do with the fiscal cliff.
You can argue about whether or not it's a crisis.
I mean, we go over the cliff, the birds are gonna be chirping, the homelessness will be begging, the sky is still gonna be blue, the takers are still gonna be taking, and taxes are still gonna go up on the rich.
No, I didn't manufacture this to hold anybody hostile.
I didn't manufacture the fiscal cliff.
Actually, you think I ought to admit it.
You think you think maybe I maybe this way to score points with the yeah, I did do this.
This is absurd.
Crisis.
Do something in a hurry, that's Obama.
Well, I mean, one of the reasons that we don't have a budget is so that every expenditure is a crisis.
We haven't had a budget in three or four years, which is in violation of the Constitution.
Not that that matters anymore.
And do you know, ladies and in addition to me being responsible for your state of panic over the physical cliff, I lead the never surrender wing of the GOP.
This is Norman Ornstein last night on the Charlie Rose show.
Norman Ornstein, the American Enterprise Institute resident scholar.
And they were talking about the Republican Party.
Charlie Rose said, is um is Boehner less afraid of his caucus than he has been in the past?
You've got groups like uh those led by Rush Limbaugh saying, never give up, never surrender, we didn't do anything wrong, they'll come to us.
You've got others saying all we gotta do is flip the switch on immigration, turn amnesty from a four-letter word to a seven-letter word, and everything else will stay the same.
And then you've got the pragmatists saying we've got a different political environment now, and we've got to change our message and that not just the words, but some of the context of it.
Boehner is really in that group, along with people like Jeb Bush and Haley Barber.
And there are gonna be a lot of forces, though, who want to see that group fail.
Well, this is his description of the uh uh the factions fighting within the Republican Party.
And he's just described the establishment GOP, which apparently is able and willing to sit by and watch themselves uh evaporate into extinction.
Because he says, well, you know, you beehner, you're getting uh pragmatists, uh different political environment now.
You gotta change our message, gotta change who we are, not just the words, but some of the content.
In other words, we have to stop being Republicans, gotta stop being conservatives.
We gotta stop being classic coke, and we gotta screw up our recipe and become something nobody recognizes or wants or likes.
That's what we gotta do.
That's what Ornstein says.
And that's what the smart people in our party are doing.
I, leading the Neanderful never surrender wing, are saying there's nothing, we didn't do anything wrong.
We don't stand for anything wrong.
And I believe this.
I believe in conservatism.
I don't believe it's wrong.
I don't believe it's to blame for anything.
The problem is that we have people who don't know how to articulate it, don't know how to express it.
Maybe because they aren't conservatives.
And then you've got this third group that says, yeah, just come out for amnesty and everything will be okay.
And then come out for abortion and everything will be okay.
I think what this does.
This sound bite proves what I have been saying since the middle of last week.
And that is what's really underway here is an all-out full court press to get the Republicans to confess that tax cuts, you know, and maybe more than tax, not just tax cuts, but conservatism is the reason we're in this mess.
Tax cuts for the rich.
Focus on the individual, liberty, freedom.
That's why we're in this mess.
That's why the unemployment rate's still high.
That's why we're in a recession.
And here Norman Ornstein is praising that faction of the Republican parties, encouraging them, who essentially, the pressure is now on for them to confess.
By that I mean admit that what they have believed all along is wrong.
That's what he wants.
And he says these guys are, these are the guys that get it.
Uh different political environment now.
Change our message, because we were wrong.
And not just the words, because the words were wrong, but the context, because the context was wrong, and Boehner gets it.
Boehner knows the Republican Party has been wrong.
Jeb Bush knows Republican Party has been wrong.
Haley Barber knows Republican Party's been wrong.
This is what Ornstein means.
And of course, how do we get out from underneath this?
We admit it.
We admit we blew it.
We screwed up.
We and our policies caused this.
Will you love us now?
And then out there you have the never surrender wing led by me, and I'm the problem.
And the never surrender wing.
We're the blockheads, we're the Neanderthals, we're the ones that are saying we didn't do anything wrong.
None of this is our fault.
And as such, we ostensibly pose the problem.
And you're in the never surrender wing, too.
I mean, if you're here, you're either just a curious liberal looking for some thrills, uh, or you remember the new Castrati, hoping and praying that something overcomes me and I become one of you, or you're one of us of the never surrender wing.
So you're in that group to the middle group here, the I don't think there is a middle group, actually.
The group that wants to say, okay, you know what?
We're for amnesty.
I mean, that's that's the uh that's the pragmatist group.
I'm proud of this.
I am proud, ladies and gentlemen, to be the leader.
I didn't know I was, but I'm proud to be the leader of the never surrender wing.
So next up, uh Charlie Rose and Ornstein discuss Rubio.
And they say that Rubio has the ability to satisfy you and me in the never surrender crowd, and still do amnesty.
And say the GOP.
Rubio is the one guy that can do this.
Let's listen to the bite.
Charlie Rose said, uh, you know who's interesting on the Republican side in terms of presidential aspirants is Marco Rubio.
Rubio is trying to walk a fine line, uh, keeping those conservatives of the never give up, never surrender category while also reaching out to those moderates.
And this is going to be a very interesting test.
Can you walk that tightrope or walk through that minefield and have success?
I think he may be the leader who's able to reach an agreement on an immigration bill, and that will give him a big impetus forward.
But whether he can navigate through the fiscal matters, but also some of these social matters after he, you know, fell a little bit flat by suggesting that he didn't know how old the earth was, that uh shows you that he's got a little work to do.
Oh, gee, I see I knew it.
This is the same thing they did to Romney.
It's the same that when George Stephanopoulos asked that question about contraception when nobody was talking about it, thinking about it, caring about it.
January 16th, in a Republican primary debate, and that that gave birth to the war on women, and so now they asked some some GQ, I think it was, magazine reporter, asked Rubio how old you think the earth is.
As Rubio's comment on it before, but the reason for that question is, you see, that fundamentalist backwoods, hayseed, hick, stupid hillbilly, pro-lifers think the earth is 10,000 years old because it says so in the Bible.
And everybody else, who's enlightened and smart and brilliant and open-minded, believes the earth is billions and billions and billions and billions of years old.
And so this question to Rubio, how old do you think the Earth is is a is a trap question.
And Rubio said, well, I, you know, I'm that's a question for scientists to answer.
I thought he answered okay, but they accused him of dodging it and trying to have it both ways on it.
And so I mean, I didn't even remember that, but you see, here's Ormstein, big political scientist.
Now Rubio's got the how old is the earth question problem.
Yeah, right.
See?
Always something.
Rubio has a how old the earth is problem.
He's answered identical to Obama's.
Identical Obama's.
But see, Obama arrives with the imprimata that he's smart, went to Harvard and all that.
Yale, wherever the hell he went, Columbia.
I think he went to all of them.
And so anyway, it's Rubio, he can do the dance.
He can keep the those of us in a never surrender crowd happy by surrendering on immigration.
And uh whatever else.
Now, while all this is happening out there, you mean this story isn't getting a lot of play, but it it should be.
Many powerful Democrats, even some of the most liberal among them, are supporting what amounts to dismantling of Obamacare, and they are using Republican language to make their case.
These Democrats are attempting to repeal some of the funding mechanisms as well as the cost containment measures that were purportedly inherent in the law.
This is a piece by Dr. Susan Barry at Breitbart.com.
Some of the most influential constituent groups facing onerous tax increases that are slated to help pay for Obama's mandates and regulations.
Senators like Al Franken, Dick Turbin, Chuck Schumer, Patty Murray, John Kerry, who served in Vietnam, uh Kirsten Gillibrand, Debbie Stabenow, Richard Blumenthal, and others voted in favor of the law, are now aiming to delay or outright repeal parts of it.
All told there are 16 Democrats, powerful Democrats are trying to defund Obamacare because it's going to hit their constituents like a load of bricks.
And it's going to harm their reelection chances if they happen.
It is from the Wells Fargo Gallup Small Business Index, U.S. small business owners, net capital spending intentions for the next year.
The next 12 months plunged to minus 14 in November.
Now, what does that mean?
Minus 14 is the lowest level in more than two years, according to the Wells Fargo Gallup Small Business Index.
This is down from net capital spending intentions of minus one in July.
What this means is that the nation's small business owners intend to pull back on business investment.
Even more than they intended to in July because they have negative expectations, economic growth for the next 12 months.
Now, I'll give you an illustration.
In 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, this index, the Wells Fargo Gallup Small Business Index on capital spending intentions was at anywhere from plus 28 to plus 16.
Its low was minus 23 in 2009.
Now it is minus 14.
We've had a therefore a net drop off of 30 points.
You see it on a graph, it made a little bit more sense.
But as recently as 2008, small business net capital expenditure expansion spending was big.
It was huge.
And now it's at minus 14 for the next.
So it means no economic growth.
It means small business, which does most of the hiring, isn't going to be doing any.
It is Rush Stonewall Limbaugh here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Great to have you here.
So the small business grinds are not going to expand in their businesses this year.
According to the latest survey that we just had, the uh the 12-month expenditure, and by the way, uh survey came out in November.
What happened in November to dampen the spirits of small business people, I wonder.
But their projections on capital net investment, net capital investment, next 12 months, negative 14.
And this dovetails with a story from the Federal Reserve, ladies and gentlemen.
The Fed is projecting the unemployment rate will stay elevated until late 2015, suggesting that it's going to keep short-term interest rates low for the next three years.
Latest economic forecast released yesterday after the Fed's final meeting of the year, little changed from September, but they coincided with a new communication strategy announced by the Fed that links future interest rate increases with unemployment below six and a half percent.
Unemployment rates now 7.7%, and the Fed says that's not changing for three years.
I want to take the occasion of this report to go back and revisit something that the Washington Inside the Beltway Intel uses in their analysis of the fiscal cliff and what Obama wants.
If you've heard it once, I'm sure you've heard it a gazillion times, that Obama doesn't want to start second term with a recession.
He doesn't want unemployment going back up.
He doesn't want it.
He wants a great legacy for secondary.
He doesn't want blow that out the water.
That's no way.
Obama doesn't care about economic growth.
That's not what he's into.
He's into government growth.
It isn't going to get any better.
There are no expectations, even that it's going to get any better, folks.
Sad fact is that among people we who vote, we appear to be outnumbered.
We appear to be outnumbered by people who don't care whether the economy is going to grow or not.
And the sad reason for that is that they simply don't understand economics.
They don't understand the relationship of price to supply, for example.
Something as simple as that.
They just don't understand the economics 101 characteristics.
It's really an amazing thing to see how successfully the left has blown up education in this country.
You know, before the election, we're all speculating uh we reached a tipping point or not.
I don't know how you can say we haven't.
Among people who vote, now maybe nationwide we haven't, but what difference does it make?
We are governed by the people who vote.
And the people who voted, it was pretty clear the takers dominate, and that's exactly what this was.
I I A lot of people want to try to sugarcoat this.
No, these are people that are morons, Rush.
They uh really know what they were doing.
I have have decided to formally reject that, just like I reject the notion that people voting to raise taxes on themselves in California was the result of them being fooled.
I don't believe that.
I think they knew exactly what they were doing.
And I I think of the people who vote in this country, the low information voter is dominating.
And the low information voter really is not aware of how low information he or she is.
And they are voting for the status quo.
They're voting for more of what life was like the past four years.
They clearly didn't vote for any change in it.
And don't tell me that Obama convinced him he wanted the economy to grow and that he won't.
That's not what he convinced them of.
He convinced them that the problem is that the rich aren't paying their fair share.
That was his theme.
His theme was the successful and the achieved are not paying their fair share.
And that he was going to get it from them.
And then the inference is that once he gets it from them, they're going to end up with more than what they've got now.
Back to this story on the Senate Democrats urging the undoing of Obamacare.
This really, really is a big story.
And it's not getting any play at all in the mainstream media.
But one of the reasons this is happening is that in these states, medical device makers, for example, in blue states are going to see their taxes go up, uh, their businesses are going to be penalized, brand new fees, brand new charges.
And all of these Democrats that are now urging the undoing of the funding mechanism for all this, they knew exactly what was happening beforehand.
They voted for this, knowing exactly where this was going to take them.
And now that they got it passed, now that they were loyal Democrats, and now that they they did what they had to do to support the president, now it's time to try to undo this.
Get this passage.
It turns out that Senators Franken and Klobuchar have been enlightened of these facts by medical device companies in their home state of Minnesota, which is, I think the largest or one of the largest medical device manufacturing states in the country.
Franken and Clobushar have joined 16 other Democrat senators who now share the same view that Obamacare must be unfunded.
In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Din G. Harry, these senators have asked for a delay in the medical device tax.
But what they're actually aiming for is a full repeal of this part of the law.
So the delay repeal bug, this this desire to delay and repeal, appears to have bitten members of the health care industry as well.
There were some doctors.
I know you'll remember this.
There were some doctors, hospitals, and drug companies who originally supported Obamacare.
You know why?
Because it was chock full of subsidies for many of them.
It was why GE supports the government.
They were getting subsidies to do windmills and stuff.
$800 billion here, $700 billion there, some $200 billion over here.
The same thing Obama was promising various hospitals, doctors, medical groups, exemptions if they would support his plan overall.
And of course, people, rather than put the country first, put their self-interest first.
And in this case it was selfishness, not self-interest, and they went ahead and they said, look, if the rest of the country's going over the tubes, but I can keep myself from going over the tubes, I'll do it.
And that's what happened.
Now they want out of it.
Knowing full well what they supported.
In a way, this is outrageous.
Not just these senators, but there were some doctors, there were some hospitals.
Remember the AMA early on was all for Obamacare?
Because everybody was trying to suck up to Obama.
Some were scared of Obama, didn't want to get on his bad side, they knew what kind of guy he is, didn't want to be punished.
That's a large part of it, by the way.
That's a very big part of it.
When you have statist type leaders like Obama who are willing to use the federal government to punish, you don't really want to risk it.
You don't even want to get on his bad side.
Sophie wants Obamacare and it's going to destroy the health care system, but you get an exemption carved out, you'll do it in order to keep the government off your back.
And that's exactly the threat that Obama used.
Okay, so now they supported it because they were going to get their carve outs, their exemptions, their subsidies.
Now all of a sudden it's 18 senators and some of these doctors and hospitals and medical groups who all of a sudden now, after it's passed, and after John Roberts contorted himself like a pretzel to find this stupid law constitutional.
Now they want out of it.
Gutless wonders, every damn one of them.
Where were they, knowing full well where this was going?
Where were they before this thing passed?
Where was their guts?
Where was their courage to stand up and oppose it?
They knew full well this day was coming.
These people did not have to pass the bill to find out what was in it.
Everybody knew what was in this.
It was just an easy cop out to say, I don't know what's in it.
It was a cop-out to say, well, I'm supporting my president.
Well, that's a cop out.
I'm staying loyal to my party.
It's a cop out.
I want I want insurance for 30 million people that are not covered.
Whatever silly excuse they used to justify their support of this thing.
And I just they're worthless.
They're worthless then.
But now, here's the thing.
I don't know whether they're going to be able to succeed.
There's 18 senators want to defund this.
Because all politics is local in this case, and now it's going to hurt their constituents.
And now that might mean it's going to hurt their reelection and it's going to hurt their state economies.
But all of this I contend was known before these people all got on board this monstrosity.
The independent payment advisory panel, this is the death panel.
The independent payment advisory panel, the board of unelected officials that will determine which medical treatments and procedures are too costly for some patients, is supposed to impose cost controls on federal medical spending.
Threatened by these cost containment provisions, these members of the health care industry and these senators are now intent on eliminating the panel.
They want to eliminate the death panel.
Again, it's the independent payment advisory panel.
This is the bunch that determines who gets paid, how much they get paid, who gets treated, how much is going to be spent on the treatment, and who doesn't get treated, and instead who gets the pill.
And now, after it's been found constitutional by gutless Supreme Court chief justice, after it's been found constitutional, everybody being harmed by it now comes forward quietly, by the way, because this you don't you're not going to see much of this in the drive-by media.
This is still in the never surrender crowd media.
Led by me, of course.
And they're working under the covers, under the scene, behind the scenes to try to prevent this debacle from happening.
And as Dr. Susan Barry concludes in her piece here, it appears that many of the groups which originally supported Obamacare want to be able to have their cake and eat it too, and Senate Democrats seem poised to allow them to do just that.
The question is, without these sources of funding for all the Obamacare mandates, and without cost containment, how will the law be implemented at all?
See, what the let's review very quickly that the medical professionals, the doctors, the hospitals, uh drug companies, and the senators, they want this independent payment panel disbanded.
Well, that's the bunch that determines what gets spent and what doesn't.
They determine who gets what and who doesn't get what.
They want to disband that panel, and they want to be exempted, in this case, from the new taxes On the medical devices and whatever other thing that I don't know what Schumer wants his people protected from, but in Minnesota it's medical device manufacturers.
So they want Obamacare to stay in force for everybody else, but they want the mechanism to penalize their constituents ripped out of the law.
And so the question is: well, if you if you rip the funding mechanism out of the law, and then you take this independent payment advisory panel and you rip them out of the law, that's cost containment, ostensibly.
That's the bunch that determines what we're gonna spend and what we're not gonna spend, so that's cost containment.
You take those two things out.
Uh how can you implement the law at all?
That's that's where this is.
Now, don't misunderstand.
I don't expect this not to be implemented.
I'm not pointing this out for that reason.
I'm just saying, there's this 16 senators and a bunch of these people, all of them just couldn't wait to vote for this thing, who now want to be exempted from it, folks.
They're not going to the mat to keep you exempted.
They want their own constituents and themselves exempted.
That's what having their cake and eating it too means.
They voted for it and they got credit.
Now they want to not be penalized by the most gutless type of maneuver you can see in politics.
Yeah, so suddenly all these Democrats now want waivers from Obamacare, and they want funding mechanisms wiped out of the legislation.
Elizabeth Warren, for example, she gave her wholehearted approval to Obamacare, and now she is one of the senators that wants to take that back.
She's an Indian giver.
Yes, I intended to say that, snurdly.
Elizabeth Warren, heap big squaw Indian giver.
Try this.
Aetna, health insurance premiums may as much as double for some small businesses and individual buyers in the U.S. when the Affordable Care Act's provisions start in 2014.
Aetna CEO says Obama health care law will double some premiums.
I asked people over for dinner last night, among them the chairman of a major American corporation who almost started crying, telling me what Obamacare was gonna mean for the employees he's going to have to let go in order to provide health care for the employees he has left.
He almost started crying.
These are people that make 25 to 40,000.
They're gone.
He can't afford to keep them and give everybody health care.
So he's had to make the decision.
Some people have to go if he's going to be able to provide health care according to this law for his remaining employees.
Nope, did not vote Obama.
He's not particularly political either.
But he didn't vote for Obama.
But this is happening all over the country now.
And here come these uh these these people who want special consideration, among them 16, 18 U.S. Senators, all Democrats and hospitals and doctors who now want waivers.
Barbara Walters last night announced her most fascinating person of the year.
If you didn't see it, and if you don't know, when this person got involved in the news, I said, this is the biggest resume enhancement this person could have, if he's a liberal Democrat, or if he wants to become one.
Here is Barbara Walter's announcement.
We argued for months about who should be our most fascinating person.
And then a Washington scandal solidified our choice.
We chose a man who has held this fight before in our program just two years ago.
But General David Petrayas, who has not chosen this year for his war record or his exemplary service to his country.
This is about military honor colliding with sex and lies in the digital age.
There you have it.
A sex scandal makes him the most fascinating person of the year, Barbara Walters, nothing to do with his military record.
Already been there done that.
We awarded him fascinating for now he had sex.
Somebody who's not his wife.
That's what we love at Barbara Walter's show.
That's what that's what counts.
To make my point, I'm just reading a tech blog.
A tech blog during the break.
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