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July 4, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:22
July 4, 2014, Friday, Hour #2
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Anybody out there know whether No, that's not the right.
Do you ever remember hearing that Obama played tackle football or organized football?
That was news to me.
He's never written about it in um in the two uh auto autobiographies.
So I d I didn't I didn't know that he played football.
It maybe he didn't, but maybe he got a cushion somewhere and it's made him think he played football.
I don't.
Um, greetings, folks, and welcome back.
Great to have you.
L Rushbow at the EIB Network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Telephone numbers 800-282-288 to the email address, L Rushball at EIBNet.com.
So summit on concussions at the White House today, the end of the day.
Um problem solved.
There won't be any.
Well, it's it at the end of the day, uh parents will have all the information they need about concussions.
And so, problem solved.
Now, if that's since this is the way we saw problems.
Where is the where's the seminar, the summit on the VA?
Speaking of which, I don't know whether Shinnsecki knows it or not, but he's gone.
This is reaching a cacophony now.
The demands that that Shinseckey quit, and then if he doesn't quit, the demands that Obama replace him.
And the reason everybody's looking for a scapegoat.
Everybody in Washington is looking for the easiest way that they can say they're doing something about this.
And that's why Shinseki's gonna go.
It's the Washington way.
And once momentum on this kind of thing builds, and once the media starts calling on it, particularly when a Democrat is involved, when the media starts demanding you resign, what that means is Eric, you've got to go in order to save Obama.
You've got to take the fall here.
You have got to take the fall for the movement.
You've got to take the fall for the cause.
You've got to take the fall for the regime.
You've got to take all the oxygen out of the room yourself.
You've got to take every ounce of the hit on this.
And you watch.
Once they announce that Shinseki's leaving, however that's made to happen, either a firing or as resignation, it won't be long until you start seeing stories about how the VA problem's not being addressed, and we're getting progress, and uh on the on the road to getting it fixed.
And that's why they need a scalp.
Oh, gee, I can't say that.
That's why they need the scapegoat.
Well, they do.
That's what I've I've been around long enough to know how this this formula works.
And I'm telling you, the reason everybody who is demanding Shinseki be fired.
Well, not everybody.
The the vast majority, particularly on the Democrat side of the aisle, they're just looking for somebody to take the fall.
They're not demanding Shinseki go because they think that's going to improve things at the VA.
Let's go to the audio sound bites on this.
Uh start with number five.
Our old buddy McCain.
Remember McCain.
You uh we'll take you back to the grooveyard of forgotten favorites in just a second.
This is yesterday afternoon of Phoenix.
McCain held a press conference here to talk about all of this.
It's time for Secretary Shinseki to step down.
And if Secretary Shinseki does not step down voluntarily, then I call on the president of the United States to relieve him of his duties to fire him.
Come on, Eric, you gotta quit so that it can look like we're doing something, is what this means.
Come on, Eric.
You gotta follow the sword so we can all get credit for really caring and addressing the problem.
Come on, Eric, do it.
Let's go back to October 19th of 2007 on the uh the news hour on PBS with Jim O'Rara.
Uh Jim Alara interviewed, well, not Larer.
Somebody said, who's Jim Lara?
That's how he pronounced it.
Name is Jim Lehrer.
It was part of McNeil Lehrer News Hour.
Then McNeil quit went back to the farm.
And so it just became the news hour with Jim Lehrer, but he said, Jim Lara.
So that's what I say.
Same guy.
It's a news hour with Jim Mallara on October 19, 2007, he's got McCain.
He said, You called the early approach to the Iraq War the Rumsfeld strategy.
Was it the Bush strategy?
Wasn't he the president?
And wasn't Vice President Dick Cheney also involved?
And all the generals and everybody else involved.
You called it the Rumsfeld strategy?
Why?
It was the president's responsibility and the vice president's responsibility.
And behalf of these generals, there were a number of generals that disagreed.
And those generals were quote, Shinseckied.
They were thrown out.
Shinsecki was the general who said we needed 300,000 troops over there if we were going to succeed.
So, yes, the president followed the wrong strategy, but it was Rumsfeld who orchestrated it.
Here's McCain praising old Shinnsecki back in 2007.
And just to refresh your memory, the only reason Shinnsey addressed the Democrat convention this year.
And the only reason Shinnsecke is Secretary of the VA is because after the Democrats in 2002, 2003, somewhere around, they demanded the Democrats and the Senate all demanded a second vote on Bush's use of force authorization so they can all vote again and this time vote for it.
The original vote, a number of Democrats voted against the use of force.
Then public opinion polls are released that showed overwhelming majority of the American people supported the use of force.
So the Democrats said that they were hoodwinked and made to vote prematurely before they had all the information.
They demanded a second vote.
And Bush, he didn't have to go along with a second.
He already had his use of force.
This is the one of the real frustrating thing.
Bush had the use of force authorization.
He got enough votes in the Senate with a whole lot of Democrats voting no.
But Bush, he wanted to show unity.
He wanted to show the world the country was united behind his action.
If these Democrats wanted to get on board and asked for a second vote so they could now vote yes, he said fine and dandy.
So they all did.
Including John Kerry, who served in Vietnam, and Mrs. Clinton.
They all voted for the authorization to use force.
They voted for the invasion of Iraq.
They voted to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
Not long after, a lone voice was heard in opposition.
And it was the voice of Eric Shinseki.
And he at the time was wearing the uniform.
He was the Army Chief of Staff.
He became their hero.
He had the guts to stand up for what he really believed.
He stood up and said, whoever put this policy together or this strategy, it isn't going to work.
We can't succeed with the mission as defined without a minimum of 300,000 troops.
This provided cover for every Democrat, including Kerry and Mrs. Clinton, Dan Feinstein, who had all of them who had voted a second time to authorize the invasion of Iraq, they were now able to rally behind Shinnsec, and he became a hero to the left.
And even to McCain here.
And back in 2007, Shinnsec from 2003 on, might have been 2004, but Shinnsecki, man, he was he was the guy.
And so that's why he's the VA.
It's his payback.
But as I said on Greta Van Cestral, what are his qualifications?
She said, you know, I know Jim Shinsecki, I like him.
He cares about the military.
Yeah, but what are his qualifications around the health division?
That's the question.
Where are his qualifications?
Show me the qualifications to do this job.
It's a patronage job.
And when the uh people in, you know, down the chain of command don't know what they're doing, and you at the top haven't the slightest idea, you get a mess like this.
Ergo, we've got a mess.
I just wanted to play, because McCain's out there demanding now that Shinseki go, and it was just what uh seven years ago that Shinseki was hero.
This is how fast it changes.
And I I folks, I want to stress to you again.
Shinseki is being asked to leave so that he takes all of the hit.
Shinseki leaving, either being fired or resigning, resigning will suffice.
That will equal a solution to the problem.
It's the easiest way out for all these nattering naybobs.
Demand some schlub get canned, force him out, and then claim that the situation has been addressed and the problem has been solved.
And of course, none of that is uh is true.
Here's John Boehner on Capitol Hill this morning.
He was talking to reporters uh following a conference meeting he had with other Republicans.
The question I asked myself is him resigning uh going to get us to the bottom of the problem.
Is it gonna help us find out what's really going on?
And the answer I keep getting is no.
But the real issue here is that uh the president is the one who should be held accountable.
For the president to say he didn't know anything about it is uh rather shocking.
And so uh the president uh is going to have to step up here uh and show some real leadership.
Right.
That's what we need.
We need real leadership for the Oval Office.
Um the real question is you know, if Shinsecki does quit, he's not fired.
Will Obama be mad when he finds out?
I tell you, I knew uh I knew Obama was gonna be really mad when he found out about how bad it really is at the VA, and he was in the Hill.com.
President Obama found extremely troubling a new report from the VA Inspector General.
The White House said yesterday.
Because we know this is why this is how it happens.
He finds out in the news what's going on, he gets really, really mad.
And and the inspector general has released his report.
It's devastating, and Obama extremely troubled.
White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough briefed Obama on the interim report, which found systemic problems at VA facilities where veterans were made to wait for treatment.
Nothing new, folks.
I mean, you've heard this for the past two, three weeks.
But Obama just found out about it by virtue of being briefed by Secretary or the chief of staff on the inspector general's preliminary report.
So he didn't have to read about this in the newspaper see it on TV.
Actually got briefed, and he was mad.
He was just extremely troubled.
Just like you.
Just as mad, just fit to be tight as you are, determined to get to the bottom of this and to find out what the hell happened.
He's a great guy.
Very lucky.
Ray, Livermore, California, welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
Concussion summit dittoes rush.
Thank you very much.
Great to have you on the pro.
Are you okay?
Yes.
Yes, only a slight ringing from a possible football injury.
But you had mentioned that the president hadn't uh cataloged his um football experience in his books.
And and so the ringing in his ears uh could be caused by football, but it's more likely on something that's cataloged in his books, which was the smoking of a lot of dope in a car with the windows rolled up with the chun gang.
Can that cause ringing in the ears?
I guess I uh guess it's possible because I'm not aware he played football until today.
I never heard a word about him playing football.
Nor did I ever know whether he had concussions.
It makes a lot of things clear now, but I didn't know it.
He may have read about it in the paper that he has a a brief history with football.
Anything's possible because the media takes a lot of liberties reporting on the guy.
He could have read the media reported he didn't play football in Hawaii.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
Anything's possible here.
That's a fantastic work, Rush.
Wonderful show.
Okay.
Oh, I uh appreciate thanks, go appreciate it very much.
Uh Tina, Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Hi, welcome to the program.
Tina.
Yeah, I'm here.
Well, it's your turn.
Have Adam.
Oh, geez, I I didn't think that other person was gonna talk so briefly.
Uh thanks for having me on, Rush.
I really appreciate it.
You're more than welcome.
It's great to have you here.
Um what I heard you this morning, you know, one thing that jumped right out at me was when you used the scalia quote about gay marriage to say that this is gonna lead to all kind of other implied bad things, and then you blink transgenderism in you know, getting our rights in with that.
You know, that really alerted me that I wanted to talk to you.
No, wait, no, no, no, wait.
I was reading from Time Magazine near nearly a year after the Supreme Court legalized same sex marriage, another social movement is praised to challenge deeply held cultural beliefs.
It's a whole story in Time Magazine called the transgender tipping point, and it is they who discuss the scalia Supreme Court ruling and what he meant, and they say he was right.
It's now doors are wide open.
Well, I'm really glad to hear that that you are not a you know, saying that transgender rights is a a bad thing that conservatives should oppose.
Oh no, I've been for trannies for a long time.
I said you I don't know if you've heard otherwise.
Yeah.
Well, actually, I did hear you using that term, and uh a lot of us do find that to be rather offensive because of the way it's been historically used.
Oh, I didn't know that tranny is offensive.
Yeah, it's kind of a it's kind of an argument and rude.
I thought it was taking I heard Alec Baldwin use the term uh you know when he was in trouble because he he's he has made a lot of homophobic comments.
Right.
He wrote this big apologia that ran in one of the New York uh area public.
He used the term tranny as though it were hip and an inside baseball term that that made him uh cool with the with the with the transgender.
Yeah.
You know, that is kind of the you know, the the minority viewpoint on it is that we're reclaiming that word like black people use the N-word.
But a lot of us genuinely fighting for our rights, we hear tranny as a joke on two and a half men, and we hear tranny as a joke as a deris as a derisive term all over the place.
And so we don't really appreciate it.
We would rather be called trans or trans people or trans men or trans women for sure.
All right.
I did I I I I thought it was cool and hip.
It's the you're telling me it's like the N-word, except we do you all use it amongst yourselves?
Um in certain context.
Like I will use it um when I'm talking about the way somebody else sees me.
Like I'll say something like they don't want a tranny work in there.
Well, how do people know you're a tranny?
Well, a lot of them don't, and that certainly leads to part of the problem.
You know, um people have this fear that they're gonna get attracted to somebody who turns out to be a tranny.
And one of the things about being transgender is that kind of whatever somebody's sexual preference is, you're not it.
You know, gay men don't want to have anything to do with effeminate types, and straight men don't want to have anything to do with people that got, you know, wrong plumbing or wrong history.
And you know, lesbian women are interested in certain things that just never gonna be the same, no matter how much surgery you have.
So um that definitely is a problem.
People often think that I'm going around trying to trick people, and so I will often, if I'm going to a bar.
Well, what what okay, so you're a transgender.
What what how would you trick somebody?
What are they afraid of?
Um they're afraid that well, uh you know, again, from their perspective, they're afraid that I'm gonna present as a real woman and trick them into having sex.
I mean, that's what you see on Jerry Springer.
at some point...
Three times a week.
Okay.
At some point...
Uh, even if you do trick them, they're gonna find out that they've been tricked and it's not gonna work, right?
I mean, if they think you're a guy, but you're not, at some point they're gonna find out if they have to try to have sex.
Well, a lot of times people have oral sex or anal sex in the dark, and that's the kind of thing that you're gonna do.
Oh, that's right.
I didn't even think of that.
Yeah.
I didn't even think it.
Oh, you're right, because everybody, yeah, has yeah.
Oh, gee.
You know, there is a scene, if there's this cartoon show about a family that they have a dog that plays a person, and the dog who plays the person accidentally had sex with somebody that he didn't know was a post-operative transsexual, and when the dog finds out the dog burfs for 30 entire seconds of the cartoon.
Is that family guy?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, this is that's I can see where that would be insulting.
I I can see where that would really, really upset you.
And so we're operating in that kind of an environment right now.
I'm living in a weekly rate motel because nobody will rent me an apartment, nobody will um have me in a kind of a roommate situation.
Well, then they've they have to Well, wait a minute, then they have to know then.
If uh uh don't you know from my voice?
I Well, no, you're not gonna trick me on.
What a gorgeous mosaic our audience is.
What a gorgeous mosaic, cross section of America.
The audience of this program is.
It is a beautiful thing.
And here we are, uh wrapping up a busy broadcast week for me, folks.
I guess I had better.
I was gonna wait till the end of the program because it's gonna be a big downer for you, but I am um I'm gonna take a real vacation.
I mean, and in where I really intend to actually get away.
Catherine and I both are gonna do this starting this afternoon, and so I'm gonna be out all next week.
We'll be back on what is it, June the 10th?
Let me check real quick here.
June 9th.
It's uh June the 9th, Monday, June 9th, yeah, okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Uh that's right.
Monday, June 9th to be back.
So uh just want to have everybody know this in advance rather than sneak out of here and not tell you and have you tune in tomorrow and find out that you that would not be fair.
So I just wanted to get it out.
Here is uh Jeff Grand Junction, Colorado.
Glad you called.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Thanks, Russ.
Uh dittoes.
Um I called to ask you about our troops in Afghanistan, like specifically how uh how you think Ulama's speech the other day at the Naval Academy effect, let's say a marine on the ground in Afghanistan right now.
Well, that's kind of um it's a it's a challenging question because I'm not one.
And I I really I have such respect uh for military, the discipline, you know, they follow orders.
And he is the commander-in-chief, and as far as uh public perception goes, uh he is the commander in chief, and they're gonna they're gonna act accordingly.
Now, I also uh I I'm telling you, I'm in awe as I grow older of the uh of the military.
But Catherine, I'll just share you something.
The best way to describe this is to give you uh an actual example.
We watched Captain Phillips, the movie on TV the other day, which was about the Somali Pirates uh hijacking the Maersk, Alabama.
And I have to tell you, at the point in the movie where the Navy shows up to deal with the situation, we're we're standing up and cheering.
And there's not a whole lot in America right now.
I'm I'm gonna shoot you straight.
There's not a whole lot that happens in this country that makes me stand up and cheer.
Not nearly as much as there used to be.
But the U.S. military does.
Every time I stand up and cheer, when I see it portrayed, such as in a movie, or when I know when it happens for real, when they show up, the forces of good have arrived.
I mean, the essence of the good guys are on the scene.
And it's I swell with pride.
That's why when I when I listened to the president's speech at West Point, I I cringed, but I'm not active duty military or retired.
I'm not military, period.
So all I can do is judge the same way you did, and that is I saw tepid applause.
I I didn't see uh uh a whole lot of enthusiasm.
I didn't hear a lot of inspiration.
The sound bites that we had in this the portions of the speech I heard sounded like the president was making excuses for the country's past again.
It did.
It really sounded like a uh a self-conscious, defensive speech.
And the things the president was proud about, obviously, I I couldn't imagine the cadets or other military people who heard the speech being proud.
For example, early on, he very proudly, as though this is a serious achievement, a grand accomplishment.
He said, You are the first graduating class that I will not be sending into battle.
And we had a caller yesterday who made the point, well, fine and dandy, but this is what they're trained for.
They come out of their lieutenants, if I'm not mistaken, they're officers in in waiting, and they are trained for this.
And they've committed to a number of years of active service in exchange for attending the academy.
And for the commander-in-chief, look, nobody wants war.
Don't misunderstand.
It's not that everybody can only judge the effectiveness of the military by virtue of how they do in combat.
I know full well the power of deterrence.
I know, for example, that you have a large force, hoping you'll never have to use it, that you build giant uh weapon systems as deterrents, hoping that you don't have to use them.
Just the fact that you have them will deter enemies.
That's what's missing.
We're not deterring anybody.
We've got the ability to project more power than the world has ever known, but it is apparent to everybody that we don't have the will to project that power.
In fact, to more and more people, it it is apparent that projecting that power is not good.
It's almost immoral.
It's almost uh cheap and the easy way out.
And so I don't know how they hear that.
We'd have to ask them, and and you know, some of them would, you know, if they have anonymity would probably tell us the truth about how all of this affects them.
But remember their oath and what they're sworn to do.
They are sworn to defend and protect the country no matter what.
No matter who the president is, commander-in-chief, the discipline, the uh commitment, the training they all get.
I mean, they do their jobs, uh, whatever the circumstances.
And I I think they will triumph and sustain regardless the various regimes or administrations that pass through uh Washington,
D.C. He said, for example, I would betray my duty to you and to the country we love if I sent you into harm's way simply because I saw a problem somewhere in the world that needed fixing.
So no troops to Syria, Nigeria, Chad, the Congo.
I mean, what are our national interests there?
We've sent troops to those, well, not Syria.
The argument is right now boots on the ground.
A lot of the anti-Obama military people that are speaking about it are trying to go to great pains, tell everybody look, we're not saying we need to send military troops everywhere.
We're not saying we need to have boots on the ground.
So even the people disagreeing with Obama's foreign policy are trying to make it clear that they're not just talking about sending the military everywhere.
What they're talking about is an attitude that's missing.
Cheney called it weakness.
And it is.
I think it's lack of interest.
I really think it really boils down to lack of interest.
This isn't...
That's not...
He's not there for he's there to reform this country domestically and fix whatever he thinks the problems are since it was founded.
He's there to make the Democrat Party a permanent majority, no matter what else and the heck with any of this other stuff.
All it is is a distraction.
And he's got to act like he cares.
And he's just not that good at faking it, folks.
That's my assessment.
You get right down to it.
Appreciate the call, Jeff.
Thanks much.
I have an obscene profit timeout.
Be right back after this.
Yeah, I forgot to I forgot to ask.
I had a I made a note to ask.
We had a transgender caller on the program, the last caller in the previous half hour, named Tina.
And uh Tina had misunderstood something I said.
She thought I was speaking when I was reading something from Time magazine.
So Tina was a little irritated and wanted to explain things to me.
And I ended up saying, no, no, no, no.
I have uh uh great uh respect, appreciation for Tranny.
And she told me that that's not cool, that that word is kind of like the N-word, that only transgenders can use it, and they don't do it very much.
And at that I made a note to ask her a question because she was still talking, and I covered the note up with a piece of paper, and it's a salient question.
Does that mean trans fats?
I mean, what how do you react when you hear people talk about trans fats?
But I never got a chance to ask.
So hopefully I will have an opportunity to ask that, clarify whether or not that's offensive.
Because we don't want to use it if it's speaking of which, what is the latest on this Redskins business?
I've got the uh here it is.
This is from the politico.
After getting the support of 50 senators last week, the groups behind the push to change the Washington Redskins name are now appealing to new faces.
Every player in the National Football League, the Oneida Indian Nation and the National Congress of American Indians, which are leading the change the mascot campaign, are sending a letter asking the players in the NFL to take a stance against the Redskins name.
Uh wait a minute, Congress of American Indians.
I thought that was an offensive term.
Well, it's but it's quite I guess it's kind of like the the NAALCP, the National Association of Advanced of the Liberal Colored People.
They, it's the traditional name of the organization, they can use it.
Just like the uh National Congress of American Indians.
But if I were to say American Indians, whoa, that'd be a problem, right?
Uh that's the way they said it in the Westerns when I was growing up, but I realized now that was very insensitive and insulting.
And the Indians in the movies acted that way too.
They were never happy.
So the National Congress of American Indians uh want they're leading the charge here to get all the NFL players to do what?
Uh Well, they're sending letters to the teams and they're tweeting directly to the players with the hashtag.
Oh, it's a hashtag campaign.
That's right.
Right side of history is the hashtag.
The Twitter hashtag.
So now they're bringing out the big guns.
No, they're trying to get what they're I think what they're heading towards here is they're trying to get some players to boycott games against the Redskins.
That's where they're ultimately headed.
They want to get some some socially conscious players refusing to play against it in the NFL, against a team that calls itself the Redskins.
Why else in the letter?
I mean, what would the end result be?
Well, it was not just consciousness raising.
They were actually the well.
When they bring out the hashtag, you know they're bringing out the big guns.
You know what I read today?
I think I think it was Cindy Adams in the New York Post.
And she was she either wrote it or s herself or as she was she was reporting somebody else's advice.
And the advice is that if you go to a hotel, you check into a hotel, and something's wrong, you don't get the right room, or the room isn't good, or the services aren't what you were told, or anything goes wrong.
Don't go to the front desk and do not waste time arguing with anybody at the hotel.
Just go to Twitter and post a tweet about how rotten X and X such a hotel is, and it will be changed instantly.
That's what the advice was.
So that's why I I see now they're bringing out the big guns on this Redskins business.
They've got a hashtag here, right side of history.
They've tried, look at they've tried talking to Snyder.
They've tried talking to Goodell to talk to Snyder.
They've tried to go to the other owners to talk to Snyder to talk to Goodell.
Uh they've tried talking to Bruce Allen, the president GEO, uh, CEO general manager of the Redskins, that hasn't gotten them any worse.
And now they're gonna big guns.
Time for the hashtag now.
You know, I'm sure it was a last resort.
That's right.
That's right.
They are going to go to players who use the N-word against and about each other on the field to pressure the Redskins to change their name.
Exactly right.
But well, no, no, that's not a fact.
The effective, certainly, you're not getting this.
The hashtag.
They should have done this first.
But they tried all the other direct appeals.
Now, essentially, they're trying to uh uh enlist this massive number of low information Twitterverse people to get this thing done.
Big no, no, they'll they'll never they'll no there one thing about the left when they get on, they'll never give up.
There is no permanent defeat once they decide they want something.
The Redskins name is going to be changed at some point.
Well, I I don't know when, and I don't know under what circumstances, but the Redskins name is gonna get changed.
And I predict to you sooner rather than later.
Show me where the opposite is happening in this country.
Show me where they're not getting what they want.
Show me.
What you give me, get give me, if you think that that uh that they're gonna lose this fight to get the Redskins to change their name, show me where they're losing such fights.
Show me who's even pushing back.
Snyder is one of the few all over the country who's even pushing back on such an effort.
Yeah, I'm just I'm just telling you, just telling you, you can you can think I'm wrong, you can think I'm right, but I'm just telling you.
I'm using intelligence Guided by experience.
No, I don't know what the new name is gonna be.
Four skins?
We got you covered?
I don't know.
But it's not gonna be Rushlin Ball, meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
And as usual, half my brain tied behind my back.
Just to make it fair.
You know, the solution to the uh the Washington Redskins controversies right in front of our face.
And you don't even have to change the name.
Just change the mascot.
Just change the icon.
To a potato.
A red skin potato.
You know, dress it up, have a flashy-looking potato, maybe put a football helmet on the potato or something, and then keep calling them the Washington Redskins.
There are red skinned potatoes out there.
Aren't there?
I mean, that'd be the fastest.
They'd have to change the name of the team, just change the mascot from from uh Chief Nakahoma, whoever, to a potato.
Maybe you can call them the Watergate burglars.
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