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Feb. 5, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:47
February 5, 2013, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Yeah, this is one of these cigars.
I'm going to have to keep drawing on it to keep it lit.
You ever had one of those?
The draw just a little tough.
You almost get a hernia smoking the thing.
So I probably ought to just pitch it and go get a new one, but it tastes good.
That's the dilemma.
Or I could just focus on the show.
Hi, folks.
How are you?
Great to have you.
It's Broadcast Excellence, hosted by me, El Rushball.
And we have three hours straight ahead for you.
The telephone number is 800-282-2882.
And the email address, LRushball at EIBNet.com.
Bob Menendez, the senator from New Jersey, who finds himself embroiled in a bit of a sex scandal, going down the Dominican Republic with a donor from here in South Florida on a donor's plane, which happens to be a Challenger 600.
And Bob Menendez, finally speaking about this, said that, well, you know, I forgot to reimburse my donor for the flights.
It kind of a reimbursement fell through the cracks.
He actually said that an embattled Senator Robert Menendez.
By the way, all of this happened.
All of this became known before the election.
And it didn't matter.
And you know, the media, the drive-bys and so forth, they're not really interested in this.
And they're being driven to the Menendez story by Menendez and his staff.
And they're covering the story the way Menendez wants.
The Menendez staff is directing CNN to a Univision story, which all these girls down there in Dominican are virgins.
Menendez couldn't have done anything.
And you have other media people saying, you know what?
It's a Democrat.
There's no such thing as a sex scandal.
The Democrats don't out there make noise about family values and morality and all that.
A Democrat having sex with 16 year olds, no big deal.
That's been done before.
17 year old, no big deal.
18 doesn't matter.
Been there, done that.
Now, if Menendez were out there talking about family values, and yeah, yeah, we'd be on this case like white on rice, as Muhammad Ali once said.
But a Democrat, it's not possible for a Democrat to be involved in a sex scandal because a Democrat's life is a sex scandal.
is the news.
And that's what's that?
Well, the email, I don't know about the email from the girl.
I haven't really been studying the story for the same reason the media isn't covering it.
It's a Democrat, and everything they do is a sex scandal.
it really isn't big news.
When you look at...
I'm sorry, folks.
I probably should...
I shouldn't say this.
The guy in the GoDaddy commercial, kissing bar FBL, this would be Menendez to me.
That's the thing.
It gets me.
I look at this.
I said, really?
Really?
They're asking us to believe a lot here.
Anyway, Senator Menendez says that the reimbursement for the flights down to the Casa de Campo fell through the cracks.
He said it.
Not me.
Just passing it on.
We've got some audio sound bites, and we'll get to it.
No, no, I'm going to get to the Tea Party Rove stuff here in just a second.
I'm not.
No, no, no.
I'm not putting that off.
Snerdley came in and you know, you promised people you're going to talk.
I know, I know.
They think you're kind of putting it off, you know, because you're a good friend with Rove and you're afraid to talk.
No, I'm not afraid to talk about it.
Snerdley's in here saying, well, you know, they're saying that.
It's all over Twitter.
You're a good friend to Rove and you're afraid to talk about it.
You're going to try to get away with not talking about it while telling everybody you did, that they just missed it.
I would never do that.
You know, back in the old days when I was a DJ, program director at KQV Pittsburgh, Bob Harper, a brilliant top 40 programming mind, and I forget what the song was, but there was a big top 10 tune in the 70s that we weren't playing because Harper considered it morally decrepit.
And I said, why are we playing?
He said, you can never be hurt by a song you don't play.
Meaning, a song that people don't like that might cause them to tune out to a competing station.
Don't play it if you're worried about it.
But if you never play it, nobody will ever know for sure that you don't play it.
So you can't be hurt by a song you don't play.
Well, there's the same philosophy.
I can't be hurt by something I don't talk about.
Except even when I don't talk about it, I'm accused of talking about it.
There's a couple things I'm accused of talking about today.
A Republican Congress.
Let me find this.
I know I get blamed for things I haven't said.
I get blamed for things I haven't done.
I don't get credit for things I do say and do.
It's really cockeyed.
Here it grabs soundbite number eight.
I'm not even sure what the context of this is.
It was yesterday afternoon at Washington at the Academy Health National Health Policy Conference.
Representative Michael Burgess, Republican, Texas congressman, spoke about the coming federal and state health exchanges and other changes in healthcare as a result of Obamacare.
Now, folks, would you please do me a favor and do not call this man?
I don't want you emailing his office.
Please don't fax or call.
I really don't.
It's not worth it, and it's not, you know, I never, if I ever want you to do something like that, I'll ask you specifically.
But Congressman Burgess said something that I about, said that I said something I don't recall.
Here's the soundbite.
I don't want to make this too personal, but despite what you hear on Rush Limbaugh, members of Congress are going to be covered under the exchanges.
Texas is not going to do an exchange.
So yeah, I'll be covered under that federal exchange if I choose to get my insurance through the federal government.
It will no longer be done through the FEHPP.
So this is a matter of no small importance.
There are a lot of people who will be looking to this federal exchange to be set up, to their own state exchanges, and it all does have to work on October 1st when it's switched on for the first time.
Okay, fine and dandy.
Somebody help me out.
Did I somebody do an archive search?
I have never said that members of Congress aren't going to be covered by the exchange.
I haven't discussed members of Congress healthcare in the terms of the context of Obamacare.
You know what's going on here?
I am talk radio.
So if anybody on talk radio says something, it just default gets channeled to me.
I don't want to make this too personal.
See, he's afraid he's going to get beat up by you.
These guys are all afraid that if they criticize me, you're going to rip this.
Don't call the guy.
Please don't.
Don't email none of that.
I don't want to make this too personal, but despite what you hear on Rush Limbaugh, members of Congress will be covered on the exchange.
What if I said they weren't?
I don't even know how members of Congress are going to be covered.
I don't care.
All I know is members of Congress are going to have health care and that we're paying for it.
That's all I know.
I don't know where they're going to go to the doctor.
I don't know where they're going to get it.
Exchanges are not.
All I know about the exchanges is that if the states don't set them up, that is, the bill is written as Obamacare is written right now, the feds can't set up an exchange unless they do a quick change in the bill, which would not be hard to do.
It's a given the political lay of the land.
But the original Obamacare law had a problem.
If the states don't set up an exchange, there is no mechanism for the federal government to operate one in the states.
Now, I don't know if that's been changed, but has it been changed?
Well, I didn't even know that.
But I don't know, there might have been a flap right after Obamacare was passed when the people who wrote Obamacare couldn't say whether Congress was covered or not.
I have a faint memory of that, that after Obamacare was passed, 2,700 pages, there was a lot that people didn't know.
Remember, Pelosi said, we have to pass this before we can know what's in it.
But anyway, that's a classic example.
I never said anything like this.
Despite what you hear on Rush Limbaugh, members of Congress are going to be covered by.
Did I say that they weren't going to have?
The exchanges are not forefront in my mind even as talking plus.
Anyway, anyway, I want to get that out of the way.
Eric Cantor is out saying the Republicans have to change.
Republican Party has to change.
Republican Party has to show that we want to help people.
Republican Party has to reach across the aisle.
Carl Rove and his PAC.
What is it, American Crossroads?
Is that the name of his PAC?
A New York Times story a couple days ago that basically said they are going to end up choosing Republican primary candidates so that they're not going to be Tea Partied.
The Republican establishment has had it with nominees like Sharon Angle, Christine O'Donnell, Todd Aiken, and Murdoch.
And they say no more.
And if we have to, we're going to run Republican money against Tea Party candidates to keep the Tea Party out of here because the elite say the Tea Party is destroying the Republican Party.
Let me tell you what really is happening.
Either by accident or by design, this announcement, this newspaper article about Karl Rove's intentions is only serving to unite the Tea Party in ways even now it hasn't been.
It is energizing the Tea Party in ways that it hasn't been.
And there was some after the election, everybody on our side faced a bit of demoralization.
And this has ratcheted it back up.
The conservative base of the Republican Party has now been targeted by the Republican establishment.
That's how they interpreted Rove's comments.
So what the Tea Party people now realize is that they got two political forces gunning for them, Obama and the Democrats and the Republican establishment.
Now, I want to take you back.
Grab audio soundbite number one.
Once again, folks, I told you this was on the table.
I told you this was going to happen.
I predicted it almost literally.
And I'm not saying this so that you go, wow, this rush guy really.
I'm not looking for kudos.
I'm simply, you can trust what I tell you.
You can trust the predictions.
I know the kind of people we're talking about.
Let's go back October 19th, 2010, before the midterm elections.
And those midterms in 2010, the Tea Party swept the House.
Big margin, took the House from the Democrats.
It was a Tea Party slam-dunk landslide, and the Democrats lost seats all the way down the ballot to dog catcher level.
The Democrats lost over 700 seats nationwide in the midterms.
This is why so many of us thought that there was a good possibility to win in 2012.
So here, but three weeks, three weeks before the midterm election in 2010, I warned everybody in this audience the following.
This is how third parties are born.
These morons have no clue how short their lease on life is.
These elites, they really don't.
They have no clue how short their lease on political life is.
They seem to think that the Tea Party is going to end on November 2nd.
They think the Tea Party's over.
And once the elections have taken place, then the elites, the Republican Party as well, are going to now take over and start to manage the victories that have been secured by virtue of the Tea Party.
What will happen is the Specters and the Charlie Christs and so forth will go ahead and they'll officially become Democrats.
The worthwhile Republicans will go to the Tea Party.
And the remaining of these insider people, like the David From, the David Brooks, the Inside the Beltway, so-called conservative intelligentsia, the let's make a deal types who believe that crossing the aisle and compromise and moderates, that's what the American people want, then they think that's what this election will say.
They're going to be all that remains of the Republicans.
They'll go to the Hamptons or wherever, but they're going to be all that remains of the Republicans.
The Republicans could end up being a 10% party if they're not careful here.
They could end up being the third party and they could be the 10%.
That was me predicting exactly where we are now today with the announcement that elements of the Republican Party are now going to seek to make sure Tea Party candidates don't win primaries.
The Tea Party slash conservative base has been energized.
It's been a long time since I've seen, I'm getting feedback, email, phone calls, and this kind of thing.
People are furious about this, and they're getting focused and are coming back after having been demoralized by the election results last November.
But again, that sound bite, October 19th, 2010, before the massive Tea Party landslide victory and further evidence that I was right on the money after that landslide.
What was one of the most amazing things?
The Republican Party did not seek to capitalize on it at all.
The Republican Party sought in no way to capitalize on the birth of the Tea Party, its growth, its energy, its electoral prowess.
They sought to minimize it, diminish it, which they continue to do.
And we'll see what the end result of it is.
But right now, there's a unity and an energy.
Maybe just short of a rebirth going on.
I got Freedom Works people, people like that, Tea Party groups out there all over the country.
Let's take a brief time out and we will see.
See, Snerdley, Hika, you're not going to talk about it.
Know you're going to try to get away with not talking about it.
I just know you are.
Wrong-o, pal.
Big-time wrong-oh.
And we are back, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Now, to be fair and balanced, ladies and gentlemen, the establishment Republicans, the Inside-the-Beltway establishment types, remember, these are the people.
They supported Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio.
These are the brains.
These are the guys who are going to protect the Republican Party from you.
They also opposed Rand Paul.
Remember, they supported Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey and on and on.
There are countless examples.
The bottom line is they don't have any better record at picking winners than the quote-unquote amateur Tea Party types do.
And even when they pick winners, what do we end up winning?
We get squishy Republican moderates.
You know, my biggest problem with all of this is that, and we talked about this before, within the Republican Party, there is a huge line of demarcation.
And on the establishment Republican side, they don't see the country at risk.
There's nothing really special about where we are.
We've had deficits before.
We've had the national debt before.
The numbers are just bigger.
But there really isn't any crisis here.
We just need to start winning elections.
They're not really small government people.
They're not interested in a serious decentralization of government or reduction in size.
They are more interested in controlling the levers of power.
I mean, that's a lot of money.
And the federal budget is a lot of money.
And when you're the majority party in Washington, you are in control of the money, and that's power.
And inside the Beltway ruling class, I mean, that's a term that I've appropriated from that great story, The American Spectator, by Angelo Codeville of a couple years ago, who wrote about the ruling class.
I mean, they're of both parties.
They are inside the Beltway, the New York-Boston Axis.
But they don't see the future as threatened as you and I do.
And they don't see the country in crisis like you and I do.
Even after that huge 2010 midterm landslide defeat, there was still some embarrassment over the people who won, that those people were actually in the Republican Party.
It's actually not new, by the way.
What is new is the birth of and the surging of the Tea Party.
And so the elites have finally just said, okay, well, we've got to tamp it down now.
It's gotten too far.
We've got to beat it back ourselves.
And we are back.
Great to have you here.
Rush Limbaugh meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
A little bit of news here from the Pew Research Center, actually the Pew Hispanic Research Group.
26% of legal Latino immigrants in the U.S. haven't tried or are not interested in attaining citizenship.
That's a pretty significant number.
26% of legal Latino immigrants don't care about becoming citizens, Which the reason why that's interesting is because they have ramifications for this entire debate that we're having on illegal immigration and more specifically,
the Republican Party's heartfelt belief that unless they reach out to the Hispanic population with a stated position of a clear path to citizenship that might even include amnesty, that they don't have any prayer winning elections.
Eric Cantor said the Republicans need to better express why they're doing what they're doing.
Cantor said this yesterday.
We need to better express.
Don't anybody call Eric Cantor.
Please do not email or call or fax Eric Cantor.
Do me that favor.
He says we need to express why we're doing what we're doing.
So Cantor's, we're not getting our message out.
We're not explaining who we are.
We're not explaining why we're doing what we're doing.
We've got to do a better job of that.
He said, what this is about, it's about making sure that we can express why we're doing what we're doing.
We believe very strongly, obviously, in things like fiscal discipline, not spending money you don't have.
We also believe in that because it helps people.
But we have to do a better job of explaining it.
In a sense, he's right.
What he's basically saying is we need outreach to the low-information voter who doesn't care about this.
Last night, Governor Christie was on the Letterman show.
I haven't seen the Letterman show.
I'm not kidding, in 10 years, maybe longer.
But the television, the DVR was on CBS because the last time I had a TV on, it was on the Super Bowl, which was on CBS.
And I don't know why I fired it up last night about 11.30.
I forget.
I was going to watch something else, but it came on and Letterman was on.
And they're just wrapping up with Joe Flacco, the Super Bowl MVP from the Baltimore Ravens.
And then Letterman said it up next to Governor Christie.
So, well, I'll stick around and watch this.
And Governor Christie came out, and the first part of the interview was nothing but fat this and fat that.
Why are you fat?
Do you think about diets?
Why do you eat so much?
Have you ever tried to not eat so much?
And Christie grabbed a donut in the middle of this, started eating the donut.
Letterman started laughing.
Letterman, apparently, I didn't know this, and made a bunch of Christie fat jokes over the years.
And Christie was talking about which ones bothered him and which ones didn't.
He said the jokes that aren't funny don't bother him at all.
The governor of New Jersey was on Letterman and didn't talk about anything other than fat.
Now, I don't know what happened to the second segment because I didn't, when they went to commercial break and promote the second segment, I didn't hang around.
But I can tell you this, the Letterman audience is the low information audience, and they were eating it up, folks.
They were eating it up.
And my point is, I don't care what Chris Christie last night said or didn't say about issues.
The Letterman audience dug the guy.
And I think what Cantor is saying, I don't want to put words in Cantor's mouth, but what he's saying is we need to express why we're doing what we're doing.
He's talking about outreach to the low-information voters.
There's the problem with this, though, I think when you come up with a marketing plan, you don't tell people about it.
You just execute it.
And I think the Republicans right now are engaged in a bunch of hand-wringing and introspection.
And it seems like every day a new Republican goes to the microphones to offer an opinion about what they need to do in order to reverse their fortunes.
I think it's time they stop telling everybody what they need to do and just do it.
At some point, when you have a marketing plan, you execute it, but you never tell people what the marketing plan is because then you give people a chance to resist it.
You don't.
You execute the plan.
What is the purpose of marketing?
Marketing ultimately, everything leads to sales.
And what is sales?
Separating people from their money.
You don't tell people how you're going to do that.
You just do it.
And hopefully you make them happy to give them your money.
Well, in this case, the Republicans want votes, and they also want money, obviously.
You don't tell people how you're going to get their vote.
Just go do it.
But I guess we're going through this period of introspection now, and there's this great concern in the Republican Party about the Tea Party and the fringe cooks and the pro-lifers and the anti-immigration people and the gun nuts.
And the Republican Party is worried.
Oh, my God, what are we going to do about the gun nuts, the amnesty, anti-amnesty types, anti-immigration?
What are we going to do about these hayseeds, farmers?
What are we going to do about it?
And so they're going public with this.
And it's an internecine war, and it's been going on for quite a while.
I think one of the things that the Republicans obviously don't do well is explain conservatism.
Would you agree with that, Snerdley?
I don't think they explained conservatism very well.
And I really think that one of the reasons for that is that many of them are embarrassed of it because of the forces arrayed against it inside the beltway.
I mean, conservatism is the epitome of uncool.
Conservatism is the epitome of unhip inside the beltway and outside.
And so they're a little bit reticent.
But even the ones who are conservative have a tough time explaining it.
I think that's clearly something that needs to happen before they're going to be able to make a connection with people.
And then, of course, make conservatism part of the pop culture.
And there are ways to do that too.
But again, in that instance, you don't talk about how you're going to do it.
You just do it.
And if you talk about how you're going to do it, you offer people resistance or give them an opportunity to resist it.
A lot of people look at sales and marketing as efforts to fool you, efforts to lie to you.
I mean, they use car sales would look at the image people like that have or any salesman, their images.
They're never honest with you.
They're always trying to run a scam on you.
I mean, this is just the image.
So you tell people how you're going to separate their vote from them or their money from them.
You're giving them just a chance to build up resistance to it rather than just executing the plan.
Now, we got some Cantor soundbites.
He was on CBS this morning today.
Nora O'Donnell said, you got a big speech today asking the Republican Party to change.
Is this about tone or is it about ideology?
What this is about is about making sure that we can express why we're doing what we're doing.
We believe very strongly, obviously, in things like fiscal discipline and not spending money you don't have.
We also believe in that because it helps people.
In the same way, we've got to address the plight of so many working Americans right now and those who don't have any work and say that, yes, we've got policies that will help you in terms of giving you an opportunity for a quality education, in terms of trying to help you bring down the cost of health care.
We've got some real policies that we want to put to work to help people, and that's what this is about.
You've seen the, saw a chart the other day, a comparison in the growth of food stamps to the growth of employment.
The employment line, as you know, is flat or trends down.
You put it on a chart.
The food stamp line is heading up at a 45-degree angle.
In other words, there are more people signing up for food stamps every week than there are people getting jobs.
And once they're on unemployment, they're on for 99 weeks.
I mean, this is a, it's a pretty big challenge to explain the values of work if you don't understand it.
It's, you know, Ron Paul said his so-called farewell address to Congress, his last speech on the floor of the House.
He said, it's amazing how hard it is to sell freedom today.
And that struck me because he's right.
Freedom equals responsibility.
It's a hard sell.
There's a lot of easier choices out there right now with Obama in the White House and the current makeup of the Democrat Party.
Food stamp growth, just to give you 75 times greater than job creation.
Food stamp growth, 75 times greater than job creation.
We don't have access to the mainstream media, so marketing is the only way we get the message out for conservatism.
Marketing and behavior.
Marketing and living what you believe.
Marketing and putting into practice what you believe.
But Ruby, or Kantrick says, clearly we need to do a better job of explaining why we're doing what we're doing.
Well, one of the things that we are in favor of is people working.
Now, how bad is it if after you state that position, you've got to pause and explain to people why that's a good thing?
If we've gotten to the point, for example, where we have to explain fiscal responsibility, if we've gotten to the point where we have to explain what we mean by you should get a job, if we have to take the time to explain why that is good for you and your country for you to work, my God.
No, we're not.
We're raising children.
If that's the case, we're dealing with children.
So anyway, Nora O'Donnell said, no, Charlie Rose, he had to get in on this.
Charlie Rose said, there's this issue, Eric, seems to be going on out there.
Republican Party clues that the party has to rebrand and reform.
Governor Jindal called it the stupid party.
You've got Senator Rubio talking about immigration reform.
I mean, is this a recognition the Republican Party's not spoken to the American people about issues that concern them and how government can work for them?
Our party has always stood for the conservative philosophy of self-reliance, of faith in the individual, accountability in government.
But what we're trying to do is to explain that these proposals of ours actually can help people.
And we'd love to see the Democrats join us in trying to set aside differences and seeing we can come together to actually give some relief to the millions of Americans, frankly, who just want their life to work again.
We're trying to be constructive to help people again, Charlie, and hopefully we can bring folks together on both sides of the aisle, something that has not happened too often here in Washington, so we can provide a path to a better future for more Americans and make their life work again.
Well, okay, we have to convince people that we don't want to hurt them.
We have to convince people that we want to help them and our ideas are good for them.
Our ideas can actually help people.
And then we've got to get the Democrats to agree with us and cross the aisle so we can all work together on this.
Now, I have to take a brief time out.
I just looked at the clock.
Let me do that.
We will continue with mere moments.
Don't go away.
I don't think there's any doubt, ladies and gentlemen.
I don't say this happily at all.
I don't think there's any doubt that even now, a whole bunch of Republicans don't understand what the Democrat Party is trying to do.
The Democrat Party, a White House on Down, is literally trying, in a political sense, in the political arena, annihilate them.
The Democrat Party is trying to wipe them out.
The Democrat Party wants the Republican Party to be extinct.
They want it to be a vanishing species.
They're not interested in helping the Republicans get their message out.
They're not interested in making government smaller.
They're not interested in promoting self-reliance.
The Democrats have no interest whatsoever in promoting individualism or self-reliance, accountability in government, smaller government.
There's not one Democrat anywhere who is interested in any of that.
And thus, there is no Democrat who's ever going to cross the aisle and work with the Republicans to make the Republican agenda a reality.
The Republicans are going at some point, they may never get there, where they're going to have to realize that if they are to prevail, they are going to have to engage in a political fight that results in the defeat of the Democrat Party, not bipartisanship and not crossing the aisle and working because they don't have anything in common.
There isn't any common ground between what Eric Cantor said the Republicans hope to do and want to accomplish and what the Democrats want to accomplish.
There wasn't any common ground in the fiscal cliff negotiation.
There's no common ground in the debt limit deal.
There isn't going to be any common ground when we get to the sequester.
There isn't any right now.
There just isn't.
There's no area for compromise.
This is a political battle to the death.
Democrats are on the march.
They don't want to have to wake up every day and even deal with the existence of Republicans.
They want to wipe out any effective opposition.
Not get along with it.
Not compromise with it.
Anyway, Sylvia, Clinton Township, New Jersey.
Great to have you up first today.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
You know, the thing is, I don't think that Karl Rove and that party are trying to get rid of the Tea Party.
I think they're trying to get rid of the idiots that just splash over onto everybody else and make you look like the stupid party, as Bobby Jindel says.
And realistically, Rush, you don't help.
I mean, when you call a law student a slut, that just offends a lot of people.
And when you like say all these, you know, the stuff about no common ground, et cetera, when the president puts forth a health plan that is basically the Heritage Foundation plan and Mitt Romney's plan, and no Republican will work with him and get additional things like, you know, torture.
I'm sorry.
Sylvia, I'm sorry, you're misrepresenting who you are.
You can't call here and be honest about who you are.
It doesn't make any sense for me to talk to you.
You and I have no common ground.
And you are illustrating my precise point.
You mischaracterize things I say.
You mischaracterize what's going on in the Republican Party.
You're an Obamaite, which is fine and dandy, but you and I don't have any common ground.
And there isn't any right now between the Republicans and Democrats.
And that is just the way the Democrats want it.
Sorry about that, folks.
Sylvia is a seminar.
She's from Rutgers.
She's from New Jersey.
She's well known.
But you see, Snerdley is a sucker for people who tell him they love me.
He thinks I'm so underappreciated.
He just, he thinks that people don't really have enough appreciation for me.
So when a caller tells him that they love me, I'm giving you seminars because I want to use the tune.
Hoping to hear from more of you.
That's how you get past Snerdley.
Tell him you love me.
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