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April 9, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:41
April 9, 2014, Wednesday, Hour #2
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And greetings, my friends, and welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network.
We come to you each day from the prestigious and the distinguished Limbo Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
There are no graduates.
There are no degrees.
Because the learning never stops.
Telephone number is 800 28282 and the email address.
L Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
You know, the our last caller said something fascinating, and I think it's true of many hospitals, of course, not all.
But actually, two interesting things here.
She said that the doctor in a hip replacement gets 1,200 bucks.
That the actual hip replacement mechanism costs eight grand, and the hospital charges 32,000 for it.
So obviously the hospital would be the primary profiteer in that arrangement.
And the hospitals were all in for Obamacare from the get.
In fact, folks, so were the doctors.
At least enough doctors to make it look like the doctor.
Remember all those Rose Garden press conferences, all those people in white coats that were standing behind Obama?
Now, some of them we found out weren't doctors.
They were out of central casting, and the regime had to send somebody out to get some white lab coats for them.
But nevertheless, when this was all brand new, I think back here, I'm reliving the frustration.
Here are these people that are do they not know, I'm asking myself, do they not know they are the targets?
Do these doctors lining up behind Obama in the Rose Garden helping him create a picture of support for whatever Obama is saying about how he's going to save, rescue, transform, improve health care.
And there were the doctors standing right with a bunch of them in white coats.
And I remember asking myself, do these people not realize that they are the targets?
Now, again, some of them weren't doctors, they were just made to look like it.
The regime phonied some of them up.
But there were some doctors that got on board.
I guess it's haunting.
I'm reliving some of the genuine anger and frustration I felt back then at people not understanding what they were in for here.
And it's like the insurance company signed on, and they were all in, like crony socialism, and the doctors made it look like another made it look like they were all in, and then the hospitals came along and an AARP.
And I'm looking at all this, I'm seeing sell out here, sell out there.
Look at a bunch of people selling out the country for what they thought was going to be personal gain.
And I understand the allure.
President called.
Either you or your association, you've got a chance to go to the Rose Guard.
You've got a chance.
The president wants to fix your business.
You want to be in close to power, gonna help you.
understand the lure of it all.
This is why I say that a massive education in ideology would Would go a long way.
It wouldn't be enough by itself, but go a long way to stopping some of this.
It would help people understand how they're being used as pawns by people who were disingenuous.
But you have to know the people are disingenuous and dishonest themselves.
Or you're gonna get tricked.
And I just remember the doctors, enough of them creating enough photo ops to make it look like they were all in on this.
Didn't even whimper.
They stood behind him in their white coats and they organized and supported Obamacare.
And now look at it.
Now Obama wants them to be essentially government employees.
And it's hospital profit business.
There's no denying that aspect, as our previous caller said.
I mentioned yesterday that I went to uh watch cochlear implant surgery.
And the Doctor gave me the address.
Catherine and I went and gave us the address about a week before.
And I said, wait a minute, this is not at a hospital.
This is this is near a mall.
So, whoa, what's this?
So get there, and it's this massive, oh man, it's b not as big as the hospital, obviously, surgical center.
And I asked around and I found out it's amazing how the free market works.
found out that surgeries in this place are dramatically cheaper than surgeries taking place in a hospital.
Okay.
Plus, did you say, or and or plus?
Well, I know looking, I don't want to get into that.
I got peed.
Yeah, and you tell them you get staph infection in the hospital.
I'm not going there.
I understand all of that, but I that's it's just the existence of these surgical centers, the hospitals.
How did all this become possible?
My contention is it became possible because people, the patients never knew what anything really cost.
Because the insurance company or somebody was paying for it.
They never really knew.
Now some of them had insurance fund catastrophic, they knew if their copay was uh some that they're depending on what their deductible was and all that, but for the most part, what things in medical care really cost people didn't know.
And now they're finding out.
But enough people uh enough people knew these surgical centers have popped up all over the place.
Surgery, not in a hospital, and it's remarkably demonstrably cheaper in uh and it largely outpatient, but if you have to spend the night, some of them you can.
I'm sure you know what I'm uh talking about.
It doesn't help that many employees at hospitals are members of the SEIU either.
Obama's favorite union.
And so the the fix has been in from the get-go on this, and and with the government and insurance companies working together to pay bills, people didn't really know what things cost.
Now all of a sudden, the cost of things is being learned, and there is an accompanying outrage right along with it.
Let's go back to the uh archives of our soundbite library, and this is uh Obama is in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, sound by 21.
And Obama is uh he's having a town meeting here on Obama in 2009.
He's been president for basically eight months.
If a family care physician works with his or her patient to help them lose weight, modified diet, monitors whether they're taking their medications in a timely fashion, they might get reimbursed a pittance.
But if that same diabetic ends up getting their foot amputated, that's 30,000, 40, 50,000 immediately, the surgeon is reimbursed.
Well, why not make sure that we're also reimbursing the care that prevents the amputation?
Right?
That will save us money.
Right.
And that is classic.
The doctors don't make the 30 to 40 to 50.
The hospitals do.
But the doctors didn't.
The doctors don't.
Medical associations, surgeon associations that let it be known that you're talking 1200 in an amputation below the knee.
What they get paid.
But that's not the point.
The point is here's Obama demonizing.
As a means of creating class warfare and class envy, all for the purposes of gaining control of the healthcare system and rebuilding it, remaking it in the way he thinks it ought to function, with everybody in it being a government employee.
With the ultimate dream of it all being single payer.
And I just look, I don't mean to be beating a dead horse here, folks.
But I just when all of this was happening, I couldn't understand.
maybe I was naive.
I just couldn't understand why so many people apparently were willingly duped into going along and helping and facilitating this.
I was asking myself, if I can see that this is a fraud, if I can see that none of this is true, if I can see this guy's got ill intentions of our healthcare system, why don't these people?
It isn't hard.
There's no mystery.
What's happening here?
Why are so many people going along with this?
And I came up with the answers.
Well, the lure of being close to power.
The thinking that maybe the closer to power you are, the richer you're gonna get.
Crony socialism, crony capitalism.
Uh then there was the uh union connection.
But I just to this day.
So I'm sitting here thinking this need not have happened.
And I'm not living in a fantasy world.
It has happened.
I've got to deal with it in that reality, what is is, obviously.
But damn it, it didn't have to.
There had just been enough people confidently informed or bravely willing to oppose instead of acquiesce.
You go along with it.
I gotta try to find something.
I got an email from a friend of mine last night who wanted to explain to me why it's hard to teach conservatism to people.
Ah, here it is.
Dear Rush, quick story.
Pardon the uh snipples.
I just the tail end here now finally defeating the ravages of the common cold virus.
I'll try to hit the cough button more often, such as just then.
Quick story, Rush.
When I was in my early 30s, I arranged for a large condiment packing plant in New York to take care of producing a food product that I was selling, needed it produced in the eastern part of the country, and they suggested I visit their plant in New York.
And I accepted, not knowing that they would fly me on their company plane.
Well, I knew it was a company plane, I didn't know what kind.
It was a small turboprop.
And I was scared.
When I got the airport, I was scared.
I was expecting a jet.
That's a corporate entity, and it was a small turboprop.
And I had to get on board, but I was scared to death.
And within moments after takeoff, somebody on the plane noticed that I was very tense.
Now I'm not a good passenger on commercial jets, and this was flat out scary to me, this little turboprop puddle jumper type thing.
So somebody suggested that I go up and sit next to the pilot in the jump seat.
He said, let the pilot explain to you what's going on here.
So that you'll understand that there's nothing to be afraid of.
You're you're telling yourself stories.
You're imagining that nobody's in control of this.
You're imagining that you're at the whims of whatever you can't control up here at 20,000 feet.
Go up and talk to the pilot.
So I did.
And the pilot proceeded to explain how the plane worked and how it flew and everything that calmed my nerves, spent a lot of time explaining the redundancy safety features of the airplane and just everything that was helpful.
I said, after 20 to 30 minutes, I was totally relaxed.
And flying in that airplane became fun.
And the pilot even played around a little bit to make it more interesting.
Showed me how to bank, how to raise a nose, lower the nose, explain to stall, all of these things.
Basically, the pilot showed me how he was in control of it.
Things that would have scared the heck out of me an hour earlier.
And now here he gets to the point with the analogy.
He says, Rush, I think conservatism is scary to people that don't understand it.
They don't get why it is safer, why conservatism is safer than command and control central government with good intentions.
They don't understand how conservatism will provide them even more of whatever it is they want.
The safety features of limited government, they don't see it.
They don't they they think big government is safe safety feature.
They think big government is the hammock or the safety net, and there are millions of experienced, passionate, engaged consumers and business owners making decisions in conservatism.
The odds of them all screwing up at the same time are virtually nil, but people are scared.
They don't.
Conservatism scares them based on what they've heard about the media or heard about it from the media, the whole notion of being on their own.
He says, look what happened when the Soviet Union fell.
People that have been taken care of, however poorly and insufficiently, for 70 years, all of a sudden on their own were scared to death.
Rush, it's the same thing here to people that do not understand conservatism.
Now your listeners understand it.
Your listeners don't fear it.
They love it.
They want more of it.
They want entrepreneurs to go a little crazy.
They know the economy isn't going to crash with people taking risks.
Your listeners and people understand conservatism know that there are bold risk takers, i.e., stunt flyers, and they want them to do it.
People that listen to you, people understand conservatism know that an economy based on people who know their strengths and weaknesses and have learned from the mistakes and are willing to take risks, are far better off than a bunch of people behaving like robots waiting for the latest handout.
But that's safer, Rush, to people that don't understand what conservatism is and the way it's been maligned and impugned in the media.
It's really a fear, this guy's point is like a fear of flying that has to be overcome.
Then he got into the suck-up portion of the note, where he said, Rush, you are America's real anchor man and the real pilot.
You're piloting this airplane.
You've taught conservatism so that we know it isn't scary.
It isn't what the news media and the late night clowns make it out to be.
It's the safest form of governance there is.
It's the most productive way to organize people's affairs ever.
But many low information voters are scared and they're ignorant.
They are white-knuckle political and economic flyers.
Imagine if that pilot talked to me like Obama and his propagandists in the news business and late-night TV comics talk about conservatism.
I would have never got an airplane again.
If that pilot would have insulted me, told me I didn't know what was best for me.
If he said you're stupid even be here, I would have been scared to death.
When explained properly, flying, conservatism are understood to be the safest methods of travel, commerce, and government, but it has to be explained properly.
Back in a second.
Okay, folks.
I need your attention.
I just I feel a little guilty here, because I just played a small little trick on you.
And I thought I would wait until I got an email or a phone call from somebody to point it out.
But I that would be cruel.
I need to take you back to the woman who called and complained that the hospitals are the one getting rich.
The hospital costs $8,000 to buy whatever's necessary for hip replacement.
They charge $33,000 for it.
That doctor gets 1,200.
And I agreed.
And I start talking about the surgical centers, which are alternatives to hospitals.
They're not unionized hospitals, our market came into life, and there's a cheaper option for surgery, different place than a hospital.
But I just want to remind you something.
There are hospitals going broke, too.
Hospitals, emergency rooms, primarily, not only, but really badly, in places where there is rampant illegal immigration.
The ERs are closing because nobody pays.
It's easy to blame hospitals.
And for some people, it's easy to blame doctors.
And for a lot of people, it's easy to blame the insurance companies.
And every time you do, you are playing into the hands of the left.
Every time you blame a hospital and put the blame for what's gone wrong in healthcare on them, or if you put it on the doctors, or if you put it on the insurance companies, you know what you're really doing.
You're saying we need a government to come in and fix it all.
The government is why it's all broken, folks.
That's what gets lost.
Every hospital's not raping people.
Every hospital's not getting rich.
Every hospital's not just blowing people off left and right.
Some of them are going broke too.
What happens when they treat people that don't pay, who don't have insurance.
People who use their services and don't pay the insurance doesn't pay because there isn't any, or whatever they need isn't covered.
They eat it.
Well, they charge everybody else, but not everybody can pay the point.
Are you denying that some hospitals are going broke?
Are you denying hospitals are going out of business?
You the point is I'm just telling you that you're playing in, we all play into the left hand, though the Obama's hands.
We start blaming insurance companies or hospitals or doctors.
It's an open invitation for the left.
Okay, we'll fix it.
You're right.
Those people suck, but we're the good people who will fix it.
The government is the reason the system is broken.
Yeah, this is a day for sadness or frustration or what have you.
I really I cannot believe one of the one of the men that I idolized growing up.
One of the men who I wanted to be like growing up, Hank Aaron, who's now eighty, broke the babe roof home run record, is out there saying the Republican Party is today's KKK.
It's just sad.
It's just so silly.
I don't know.
He was speaking to USA Today on the 40th anniversary of his then record-breaking 715th home run.
And he said that it's the Republicans who are hindering Obama's job performance.
Well, that's just silly.
Republicans have not made any effort to stop Obama.
I mean, not seriously.
Hank, the Republicans are trying to find ways to make it look like they agree with the guy on various things.
Henry Aaron said, sure, this country has a black president, but when you look at black president, President Obama's left with his foot stuck in the mud from all the Republicans of the way he's treated.
The bigger difference is that back then they had hoods.
Now they have neckties and starch shirts.
He didn't even originate that.
I don't know who.
Did Rangel was Wrangle the first?
Was he the first guy that said that?
Well, you're right.
Wrangle did say it years ago.
Yeah, they used to wear hoods, but now they wear staunch shirts and red joys.
Henry Aaron.
I liked Henry Aaron so much, I even didn't mind when he went on the dinosaur show and had breakfast with his wife.
Scrambled eggs and bacon, actually ate back in the days when it wasn't a big deal to eat on TV.
And Nina Shore saying, What do you do?
You play baseball.
I'm just kidding.
She knew what he did.
So Henry Aaron is comparing that the Republican Party to the militant wing of the Democrat.
The KKK was a bunch of Democrats.
But that's not even the point.
The point is that it's just silly.
I gotta go back to the phones.
Uh it's disappointing.
It's what it is.
Charlene in Surfside Beach, South Carolina.
Welcome to the program.
I'm glad you waited.
Hello.
Hi, Rosh.
How are you today?
I am fine.
Thanks very much.
You're welcome.
I'm calling to make a comment about people begrudging doctors and surgeons, their wages.
And as I was telling the class screener, this has been a soft spot with me for a long time.
I don't see people lining up and racing to go to school and give up sometimes 10, 12, 14, 16 years of their lives to get an education so that they can heal people and come out.
And now they're told that we'll give you enough so that you can eat.
I don't see anybody else racing to do this.
And you're right, it is class MV.
And that women was right.
The surgeon's wife, they do not make what people think they make.
They've also got business overhead rushes.
You saw the surgery centers, their officers, their nurses and med techs do not work for free in offices.
Not any what these doctors do.
What pull in 30,000 a surgeon and I mean a surgery and stick it into the pocket?
No.
That's not how it goes.
These guys are making.
I've seen Medicare.
I'm sorry, Medicaid Medicare reimbursements go down to sometimes 10 and 25 cents on the dollar.
I know.
That's why it's ludicrous.
Leave it.
I don't understand why doctors just don't bump out of Medicare.
I hear all the complaints, and I understand they're real.
Well, a lot of them are a lot of them are planning to.
You know, fine.
You know what?
I also understand the devotion some of these doctors have their patients, too.
Don't want to leave them high and dry.
But Charlene, look at you know as well as I, this is this is so predictable, 2009.
Obama starts accusing surgeons of unnecessary procedures to enrich themselves.
It wasn't going to be long before doctors and their obscene salaries and profit were going to end up being a target.
And I'm just, I want to reiterate something, folks.
I know how easy it is to complain about a hospital or an insurance company or a doctor.
I just want you to know that every time you do it, you are playing in to the Democrat Party's hands, playing into Barack Obama's hands.
I guarantee you when these little leftists out there listen to this program and they hear all of you complaining about a hospital, they're just rubbing their hands in glee because they're gonna say to themselves, yep, the only solution is the government.
We're the only ones that are fair.
The government will fix it, the government will make sure that they don't get ripped off.
The government makes sure they'll bring those hospitals in line, they don't bring those insurance companies in line.
I'm telling you, the reason the American health care system is the mess that it is, is traceable to the earliest days of the government getting involved in it.
And it's only gotten worse, and we reached a tipping point.
That was when patients no longer were able to pay standard ordinary everyday medical costs.
That's when it was over.
That's when there became when no market relationship to cost versus service, it was over.
And that would be true of any business.
If the cost of a hotel room was more than anybody could afford hotel business would go out of business.
Any business would.
The healthcare business stayed in business, ended up being subsidized with insurance companies, you name it because the government saw it.
Every government, every government in a history of governments has seen health care as the easiest way to command and control over the population.
They've all done it.
I don't care.
Castro, you name it, mouth a tongue.
Don't care where you go.
Even Hitler, yes, anybody, any socialist organization, the Western European democracies, health care.
It's a moral right.
And once they got involved in it, is the that's the that's the easiest the path with the fewest obstacles to command and control the whole population.
Every time you start blaming one of these entities, and and in some cases it may be justified.
I mean, maybe there are charlatans everywhere.
There are doctors rip people off, there are hospitals that do.
Um standard, it's human nature.
But anytime you start blaming an industry or blaming a collective group of doctors or whatever, you are playing right into the left's hands.
I'm just warning you.
Um the official program observer with a raised hand indicating a question.
It's an ugly question.
Okay, see, I you put me to mind here.
I don't know what the question is gonna be, yet you're gonna ask it while we're live.
And I may be on the spot with the all right, so what is it?
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
See, see, this is here's the question.
And it's the wrong question, and it is not it nobody has said this.
The question was, well, what would happen?
Ask me that again.
How many the exact way you asked me that question?
Yeah.
Okay.
What would happen long term if there were no Medicare Medicaid?
Well, if you're assuming somebody wants it to happen, or you wouldn't ask me to question.
You're thinking that what I'm saying, the government's the problem, Medicare Medicaid, got to get rid of them if if we're going to fix the health care system.
Uh well, it's an it's a natural assumption.
If you hear a guy like me saying the problem with health care is the government, and the only way we're going to fix it and bring actual market factors back into play, people being able to afford what things cost, then you're naturally okay, you've got to get rid of Medicare and Medicaid.
So the question was, well, what are the long-term effects of getting rid of it?
So that's classic.
I haven't even said get rid of Medicare and Medicaid.
So your question paints me as the big denier to people who are sick.
That's not the solution.
You don't go cold turkey on anything.
This has been standard operating procedure for 50 years, 30 years.
You just don't take it away.
Just like you don't, you don't alcohol, you don't just take it away.
In a lot of things, you've got to taper people off of things, particularly something like this.
The fix for this is long term.
The fix for this is not overnight, and it incumbent in the fix is teaching people about the conservative jet and how it flies.
And having people not afraid to take risks.
But some people, as is the case in everything, not just health care, there are certain people in our country, you can express it as a percentage, who are simply incapable of taking care of themselves.
Literally genuinely incapable.
Those people, you help.
What we've done is expand that number to way beyond what's real with the American Disability Act or with the Victim Status Act of 2013, or whatever it is that we've done.
And we've created this entitlement mentality over a course of a number of years.
When I left home in Pittsburgh uh to go to Pittsburgh in 1971, I thought nothing of it.
Today that's a scary thing to people 20 years old.
Leave home to what what guarantee did you have?
I didn't have any.
I had a guy tell me that I would he'd pay me 175, what was it, a month or a week?
I forget what it was.
But it wasn't much.
Uh but it was more than I was making living at home.
But it was what I had to do if I if I wanted to realize my dream, I had to pack everything I had in my pottiac Le Mans in the middle of winter and head to Pittsburgh.
Didn't have a place to live when I got there.
None of that was taken care of.
Had to find all that when I got there.
On the way, my windshield wipers stopped working in a blizzard.
I kept driving.
Every gas station I saw, I pulled in, said pour some anti-freeze on the windshield, and I kept going.
Today, uh some people do it, but that wow, I that's too risky.
Some people.
Back then it was not a big, it's just what you did.
Um I think about the frightening aspects of it.
But the because there was always home if it didn't work out.
I'll admit that.
Could always turn around and go home if it didn't work out.
But that's the last thing I intended to do.
There was no way I was going to do that.
But in fixing this, that's why I like the the whole medical savings account business.
I think the one of the first things to do, not my idea either.
Medical savings account, health savings accounts, and put people back in touch with what their medical care actually costs, and therefore have that determine how much they seek.
And then over here you have catastrophic insurance to handle genuine catastrophes that nobody can afford out of their own pocket.
Those happen.
But now that's the way everything in health care is treated as nobody can afford it.
That's where it's gotten to.
Nobody can afford health care.
That's what everybody believes.
And if you get really sick, you go bankrupt.
That's what everybody believes.
Everybody's out there scared to death over this.
Unnecessarily so.
But that once again serves the purposes of government.
Anyway, I gotta take a break here.
I'm looking at a story.
We're talking about it.
Uh yeah, I'm gonna here this means to do it for the Medicare.
We've done the story, but there's a little addendum to it.
Medicare paid a tiny group of doctors.
It's this AP story.
The first salvo in the war on doctors, and how they shouldn't be profiting from making people well and all that.
This is the story that some doctors made three million dollars for Medicare and Medicaid.
One doctor made twenty-one million.
Well, who will you want to know whose doctor that is?
Topping Medicare's list of doctors getting rich off of Medicare, Medicaid, was Florida ophthalmologist, an eye doctor named Salomon Melgen,
whose relationship with the da da da da Democrat Senator Robert Menendez made headlines last year after news broke that Menendez used this doctor's personal jet for trips to the Dominican Republic for women he did not know.
Medicare paid Senator Menendez's donor 21 million dollars.
That's who the doctor got 21 million is.
A crony and donor of a Democrat senator.
Here's Joe in Memphis.
Welcome, sir.
Great to have you on the EIB Network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
Um I wanted to disagree with uh Ian who called last week, and if there's time I had a comment about your audio books.
Okay, fine.
Ian is the 33-year-old who called remember it.
He said he was scared, or it's scary or something like that.
Yeah, he he was saying that the conservative message just doesn't resonate.
It's too scary to people.
And I wanted to completely disagree with that.
I I personally I hate defeatism.
I think w what we need in a presidential candidate is muscular conservatism.
I think people follow a strong leader.
Um I grew up in the 80s and I saw it work with Ronald Reagan and I also remember.
You know, I agree, I go back and forth.
I've looked I I have people telling me, Rush, we've got to be real gentle with the way we approach these people because they're scared and they don't like being yelled at, and uh and and I'm I'm thinking that's just not how this has happened.
I've I've I've responded to confident, forceful, uh aggressive, optimistic people in my life.
Oh, absolutely.
And and I remember a voting block that came forward called the Reagan Democrats, and I've never heard of a McCain Democrat or a Christie Democrat, by the way.
But I think we're looking for Christy Republicans, actually, but another but I think there's millions of conservatives out there that don't even know they're conservatives yet because they've never had a presidential uh Well, I think there's some truth in that.
Like that 33-year-old has never seen a conservative win anything.
That doesn't help either.
Right.
And I I know it sounds silly, but I thought of it this way.
I thought if somebody their whole life has been fed hot dogs, and then one day somebody gives them a steak, how are they?
They would imagine how they would respond.
Okay.
And they would never enough of that.
We got 40 seconds.
Get to me.
Get to my books before we run out of time.
You're my fourth favorite audiobook reader at this point right now.
And I'm an aficionado.
I've probably listened to hundreds or thousands of audio books.
And I love the Rush Revere.
Fourth favorite?
Yeah, fourth.
Well, I ought to hang up on you.
I I can't lie.
I've listened to, I mean, I've listened to the Harry Potter books, I have to admit, they're they're at the top of them.
But you you're uh but you know, you're you're going up against uh you you've only put out three uh or four audiobooks to my to my knowledge, but but I think you're excellent.
No, I've got two.
I got two out, and they're out at the same time.
I have uh the way things ought to be in the and uh and oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, that's right.
That's right.
I forgot.
Going back to the 90s, and and then see I told you.
Yeah, but those are two different genres.
The books out of the children's books now, which uh I've looked at it, you know, that's good.
It's good for me to hear that I'm fourth in something.
It's actually good for me to hear that, folks.
A dose of cold water, right smack dab in the face, so that I too can understand what it's like to suck.
That's right, folks.
You are listening to the fourth best reader of audiobooks.
You've got to get them to find out what fourth best sounds like.
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