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Sept. 4, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:19
September 4, 2014, Thursday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Welcome, the third hour.
It really is the fastest three hours in radio.
I'm I cannot believe we're already here.
Welcome, it's Eric Eriksson.
Yes, this is a Southern accent.
I will have you note I have slowed down my talking for you people.
This is an unnaturally slow pace for me.
I talk like I'm Yankee.
Actually, as a friend pointed out, all of us who are natives of Louisiana talk.
You ever hear James Carville talk?
At least you can understand me when I talk fast.
James and I get along well.
All right.
The phone number 800-282-2882.
I'm going I'm going to shift gears from what I was going to talk about.
I am a flexible host.
And instead, I'm going to channel my inner rush for a few moments.
And then I'll get back to what I wanted to talk about.
Football.
Some of you on Twitter, you can get me on Twitter at E.W. Erickson, Facebook, E.W. Erickson.
You can email me, Eric at redstate.com.
Some of you are emailing, tweeting, putting on my Facebook page that I just make it sound like conservatives hate people and we need to be liked, and we're not going to be liked if you say these things about the protesters who want more money and instead of actually working harder and getting ahead.
I have noticed this with the Republican Party.
As more and more Republicans, pay attention here, because this is so counterintuitive, it may blow your mind.
And it's right.
It is I mean, I'm I'm at the pinnacle of channeling my inner rush on this.
The more Republican strategists and Republican leaders in Washington have insisted on being liked the less.
That was my text messaging someone else hearing me on the radio.
The more Republicans in Washington and their strategists have become focused on being liked, the less they've won.
What?
How can this be?
Friends, look, you know this from your days in high school.
The kids who just will say or do anything to make you like them, you don't respect them.
This goes through life.
The people who were say or do anything to make you like them.
The politicians who will say or do anything to get elected.
Take for I mean, for Pete's sake, take the orange dude running for governor in Florida, Charlie Chris.
Nobody respects that Joker.
He was pro-life and then he was pro-abortion.
He was against gay marriage and for gamers.
He will say or do anything.
He's the most malleable man.
The reason he's orange is because he's made a play-doh.
We're silly putty.
People don't respect people like that.
And some of you, I can't believe you just said that.
We're not going to be liked.
I care about being respected.
I care about being right.
I care about telling you the truth.
As my my dear friend Andrew Breitbart, God rest his soul, used to say all the time.
The truth is not intended to hurt.
The truth is just the truth.
Speak the truth.
So many Republicans they want to go out and focus group and poll test.
What's gonna make the voters like me?
You know, probably not a lot right now, frankly.
But the voters at least are starting to respect you, Republicans, because you're standing on some principles.
I expect you to cave on repealing Obamacare and stuff.
I really do.
But at least right now you're kind of standing on some positions as opposed to Barack Obama who's going around the world and wants everyone to like him.
Everyone to love him.
My wife's got her favorite nephew.
When he was little, my wife looked at him and said something like, I love you to him.
And he turned around and looked at her and he says, Everybody loves me.
That's what Barack Obama wants right now.
Everybody to love him.
That's what Republicans want too.
They want everybody to love them.
And so there are certain topics they don't want to talk about.
They don't want to approach.
They don't want to be taken out Of context and be seen as being not nice.
They're worried about being blown up on TV for saying something.
Friends, speak the truth.
Be bold in the truth.
There is no reason to avoid certain subjects.
Now that doesn't mean you've got to be a jerk all the time.
But there's this idea by so many in the Republican Party that they just absolutely loved and liked and let's focus group to figure out what that is.
You're not going to be respected.
You're not going to want to want to look at yourself in the mirror.
What is right?
What is true?
What is just?
Focus on those things.
And then people will respect you, and with respect eventually will come people liking you.
They may not agree with you, but at least they know where you stand.
I'm I'm just, I'm so tired of Republicans who I see it when when Russ says something people disagree with, or when I say or write something people disagree with, oh, we're not gonna be liked.
I don't care.
If you spend your life trying to be liked all day long, you're probably going to be miserable.
In fact, you might, you just might fail at life.
I said it again.
Now, along those lines, this is the perfect transition point for what I wanted to talk about.
Did you know, first of all, everyone I've talked to about this story is shocked.
Shocked, I tell you, that it is from ESPN.
71% of people say keep the Redskins as the Redskins.
Yes, I know.
Shocking, isn't it?
Because all you hear in Sports Illustrated or ESPN or the Washington Post, or they they won't even say the name Redskins anymore.
Tony Dengy apparently won't won't say the name Redskins.
It's the Washington team.
71% of people do not care.
In fact, an overwhelming number of American Indians, or if you want to be liked Native Americans, they don't care.
An overwhelming majority of them, they don't care.
But the people in Washington and New York care.
This is a bigger issue for some of them than ISIS spreading across the Middle East.
Same way it's like this Michael Sam story.
I could care less that he's gone to to be on the practice team for the cowboys.
But I got a breaking news alert the other day when it was announced that he was doing it.
Does he want to be a gay athlete or does he want to be an athlete?
The media wants to have it both ways on this story.
I could care less about Michael Sams.
He wasn't on a team I rooted for, and no offense, Mr. Sternley, he's not going to a team that I generally root for all the time.
Yeah, you're right.
Snurdly knows my wife is a huge diehard cowboys fan.
So the only reason he lets me fill in for rush is because my wife is a cowboys fan.
But I don't care about who Michael Sam sleeps with.
He's either a good football player or he's not a good football player.
Who he sleeps with after he's off the practice field should mean nothing.
But we live in a day and age where the liberal media, the left, defines you by who you sleep with.
That defines you according to the left these days.
It says more about you than it should.
I'm going to go ahead.
These stories, and the reason I bring up these stories, Michael Sam's, the Redskins, whatnot, oh, and global warming.
You know, there's more stories out there.
I'll get back to the carry thing.
He was talking about countries, not counties.
The story had a typo in it.
But apparently the Arctic sea ice is growing again.
I read a story the other day.
It was a list, somebody prepared, of around the world, the 30 some odd things you need to see now because climate change, not global warming, climate change is going to wipe them off the face of the earth, including cherries in Michigan.
The secular left in this country cares passionately about some really frivolous things.
And they expect you to care about it as well.
And they're not going to like you if you don't care about it.
So why you don't need to worry about and sweat and get get your knickers and knots over whether or not people like you.
The left in this country is hell bent on making you care about and like certain things in order to be liked, and there are things that most people don't care about.
But because of Twitter and Facebook and the internet and so many members of the media, they're convinced a majority of people do care and do see the world in the way that the world works for them.
They they see the world in a way most people don't.
They care about the Redskins.
If you if you haven't noticed, and I'm only beginning to be attuned to this thing, I'm a college football guy much more than I'm an NFL guy.
I'm I really love college football.
I I have had my countdown to college football, it has begun.
Go tigers, LSU, no one else.
The sports media in this country, as I grow up and look for more outside diversions, cooking and college football, outside of politics.
I go to church, I cook, I watch college football, I play with my kids.
The amount of liberalism that has invaded sports talk, The amount of liberalism that has invaded the coverage of sports.
Look, I care about what the players do on the field.
Are they a good athlete?
I don't care about who they sleep with.
I do not care that the Redskins name offends liberal reporters in Washington, D.C., but because it offends them, the rest of us have to be made to care.
I say all the time, and I started the saying regarding that the push in the country towards gay marriage that you will be made to care.
You will not be able to sit on the sidelines on the gay marriage topic.
You will either have to come out for it or against it, and if you're against it, they will try to drive you from business, they will try to shut you up, they will try to censor you.
But it's not just that, it's so many other issues.
It is climate change, global warming.
It is your position on the redskins, it is your position on Michael Sam's.
The left will make you care about a host of issues you don't care about.
And they will do so typically under the guise of wanting to be liked.
Friends, I would rather be honest and true and just and have mercy and respect than to worry about whether some liberal from New York City or Washington, D.C. is going to like me.
Because to be liked by them, I gotta work awfully hard to care about a bunch of nonsense that affects nothing in my or your life.
Eric Erickson in for Rush Limbaugh.
Oh, it has begun already.
The Media Matters hit Joe Sonka.
He's a liberal in Kentucky.
He put on Twitter, Mitch McConnell touted his endorsement by Eric Erickson, who said today, 30-year-olds making minimum wage failed at life.
And then links to media matters.
That also does not just go for fast food workers, but for reporters as well who make minimum wage and do nothing to get better except pedal campaign talking points.
Friends, they will yet again try to take out of context things said on the EIB network.
It doesn't surprise me.
But shall we clarify that if you're working minimum wage and you have a job and you're not relying on the government, God bless you, and keep working and work harder and improve your education and get better.
But if you are standing out on the street today, getting paid by the SEIU to hold up a protest sign and say you want more money for the exact same job with no additional work on your part, you have failed at life.
If you're a 30-something making minimum wage, and you have you're not striving to do anything to improve your lot in life other than join a union, you have failed at life.
The majority of people who have minimum wage jobs are teenagers.
They're getting their start in life.
Good for them.
There are people who immigrants who have come to this country, they're learning the language, and they're starting in their 30s at a minimum wage job, and they're gonna learn the language, and they're gonna improve their skills, and they're gonna get a degree, or they're gonna work harder and they're gonna get a promotion.
God bless them.
And then there are these hacks and goons on the side of the road and reporters with them holding picket signs saying, pay me more money to get your fast food order as wrong as I did yesterday.
They have failed at life.
And the problem is there are two classes of people in this country.
There are those who are unwilling to accept the status quo and wish to always advance.
And there are those who are willing to accept the status quo, rest on their laurels and do nothing.
And many of those people are the ones who wind up failing at life.
You can make a million dollars a year and fail at life.
You can be a wreck of a person.
Or you can be standing on the street corner holding up a protest sign, demanding the government increase your wage as opposed to you going out and trying to do it on your own initiative.
By the way, what about the middle class in this?
Someone pointed this out on Twitter.
You raise the you raise the cost.
You raise the wage to $15 an hour.
What's going to happen?
Well, profits are going to go down for the business.
They're not going to be able to reinvest, so they're probably going to lay off some of these workers, making them more dependent on the government unless they can go out and find something else.
Or costs are going to rise.
Who is going to pay those costs?
The middle class.
It's just another way to do a backdoor tax on the middle class.
See, the, you know, people in the middle class tend to be focused on advancement from the lower end of the middle class to the upper end of the middle class.
And when they can get to the upper end of the middle class, guess what they might be able to do?
They just might be able to break through and become what?
A rich person.
And the Democrats don't like that.
No, no, no.
It's not because they don't like rich people.
It's that they don't like new rich people.
They they don't want the competition.
The Democrats, they Democrats love them some rich people.
Particularly rich people who are rich because of a trust fund set up by their hardworking grandfather.
Democrats love those people.
They fund the Democratic Party and they do not want competition for those people.
The worst thing for a Democrat in America is advancement through the being poor into the middle class and becoming rich.
They they do not want that.
They do not want people to see that that is possible.
They are want you to be convinced it's not possible to advance yourself in this country.
They want you to be convinced you do have to stand on the street corner and demand the government raise your wage because they don't want you clued in on the fact that if you work harder and better, you can get promoted and make more money.
You can go to school, you can get a degree, you can make even more money, and eventually you can make something of yourself, or if you just get into a modest middle class existence, you can still in a stable family help your children advance further than you.
The Democrats, they really they don't like that.
Because that means you don't need the government.
And the Democrats insist that you must be dependent on the government.
The Democrats insist that you must, I mean, in effect, no offense, people, I don't want to horrify you with the imagery, but the Democrats totally want you suckling on Uncle Sam's man boob.
That's what the Democrats want.
I know it's it's a horrific image, but that is the image of the Democratic Party right there.
I mean, I I guess never I better not say what I was about to say, or I really would get in trouble.
The Democrats, they don't want you seeing others advancing on their own initiative in this country through hard work and ingenuity.
Because then you will dare think, you will have a horrific thought to the Democrats at least, that you might be capable of doing that.
That you might actually be able to not fail at life, but succeed at life.
You might be able to advance without the Democrats' help, without union dues, without a union's involvement.
You might be able to do it, and the Democrats can't have that because they got to have union dues.
And they've got to have a dependent class of people in this country to prop up a big government that takes from subsidies from the rich to give to the poor.
They've got to do that.
The middle class in America is not a good thing to the Democrats.
So Look at Hollywood.
Hollywood is a bastion of leftist thought.
Look at how they typically portray the middle class in film.
They don't portray it in a favorable way.
Because the middle class, it's bad to the Democrats.
Because a middle class are people who are working their way up to being upper middle income or higher income earners.
And they're doing it on their own.
And the Democrats tell us that's impossible.
We were having this discussion off air.
You know the other thing?
Instead of trying to force the government to raise a wage, you know what the Democrats, what the unions could be advocating for?
Getting rid of regulation.
Making it easier for people to do business in this country.
Every job Barack Obama wants to create is a job dependent on government.
Why not try to create some jobs or get out of the way so the private sector can create jobs not dependent on the government?
Deregulate.
Loosen up the laws.
We have overcriminalized all sorts of things.
I I'm so I I'm big fans of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
I love those guys, and they have led this national movement on dec on decriminalizing just nonsense in business law and elsewhere.
We have overcriminalized this country.
Nowadays you've got to have an accountant and a tax lawyer and a criminal defense attorney to run a business just because you might run afoul of the law.
It's ridiculous.
They could do that, but no, no.
Because again, if they were to do that, it would make you less dependent on government.
Get the government out of the way.
Let people succeed in life.
All right, back to the phones.
I've talked long enough.
Wayne in Columbia, South Carolina.
My professor is the preacher at First Presbyterian in Columbia, Wayne.
Beautiful church.
Love the city.
It is a beautiful city, and thank you for taking my call.
Also thank Mr. Sterley for letting me in as well.
I just have an opinion on ISIS.
All right.
What's your opinion?
My opinion is that if you notice Barack Obama, whenever there's a rebel movement or a protest in the Middle East, he seems to run to assist the rebels or the protesters behind the uh disguise of democracy and a free society.
And I believe that he's dithering or he seems not to have a strategy on ISIS because he's a sympathizer.
He he uh advocates for these people that protests.
Wait, wait, wait, stop, Wayne, freeze, freeze.
So wait, wait, you you're a you're a 40-year-old black male, and you are accusing the first black president of the United States of sympathizing with terrorists?
Yes, I am.
I was like.
Notice Media Matters, it's not me.
It's it's Wayne doing this.
Absolutely.
Wayne in Columbia, South Carolina, but he does this, he does this very often, and he leaves these countries in chaos.
He pulled out of Iraq.
He also wanted to arm the rebels in Syria.
And if you look at the rebels in Syria before we were calling them ISIS, that's who they are.
Those rebels in Syria was ISIS, although I'm not a friend of the president of Syria, at least he kept things in control.
And I just wanted to make that point because you don't really hear it talked about in the national media except for this place.
Well, you know, look at Egypt.
He went to Egypt and he gave that rah-rah speech, apologized for the United States and inspired the Arab Spring, and it all went to chaos.
The embassy was stormed and the Egyptian military has had to step in and take on the Muslim Brotherhood.
You got a point there, Wayne, with I'm going to let you take the credit for everything you just said.
I see, I think the president ultimately thinks the United States has caused all these problems and brought it all on themselves, and that we just have to get off the world stage and let the world heal itself in some way.
Folks, this is I I get this sometimes.
You get off the radio and someone looks at you and say, you can't really believe that.
I wouldn't say it if I didn't think it was true.
I think the president of the United States thinks the United States has been a bad actor and heavy-handed in the world.
And he thinks if we would check out a foreign policy, if we would check off the world stage, that the world could suddenly get along because they wouldn't have the nefarious capitalist, greedy former colonialist Americans in their empire building, trying to stretch their legs and do things.
I I really think the president thinks that.
And he's messing things up.
You know, we are what now?
We are a week from September 11th.
I am stunned, actually.
I was noting this on Twitter last night.
I am stunned by the number of friends I have who are filling up their cars with gas, checking, getting money out of the ATM, and stockpiling stuff because they are so worried that he he's not paying attention enough that something's gonna happen next week on the anniversary of September 11th.
After Benghazi, at least it happened overseas.
I understand the nervousness we did go last year without anything happening.
I the the level of paranoia from folks out there right now on this.
I I I disagree with it, but I understand it.
I totally understand it.
Looking at the way he's run foreign policy into the ground in just the last year.
If you weren't here for the first hour, you should subscribe to Rush Limbaugh.com so you can hear these things.
He is just, I mean, undermined so many gains made for so long by the West.
And there are people who aren't even Rush Limbaugh listening conservatives per se.
And they're worried.
They see the headlines, they haven't tuned out the news.
They see what's happening in Iraq.
They see the president say we're going to destroy ISIS on one hand, and then out of the other side of his mouth say we're gonna make them manageable.
They've seen the president say we have no strategy.
They have seen the press reports of the military saying they've been advising the president for a year that ISIS was a problem.
They hear these things and they see a president who gives a press conference where he sounds angry and impassioned over the beheading of James Foley, and literally ten minutes later is on a golf course.
People pay attention to these things.
You got Dana Milbank, the Washington Post, liberal columnist there, who's concerned by the president's happy talk.
And you know, I've got Democratic friends, believe it or not, I do have Democrats who are friends.
And some of them are troubled, some of them are concerned, some of them are worried.
They're not necessarily stockpiling and hoarding right now.
But there are others who say, Well, I think we should trust the president.
I think we should trust the president and his advisors.
They don't think ISIS is more than a manageable threat right now.
I don't know which advisors they're listening to.
Because the ones from the Pentagon and the intelligence community who are leaking are leaking that they've been telling him stuff like this for a year.
Now, here's the interesting thing.
Uh I those of you on on hold, be patient.
I'll get to you here in a minute.
Let me make this point, though.
During the Bush administration, we had that weird occurrence of Colin Powell going to the United Nations, making the case for Iraq had chemical and biological weapons.
They were hidden, we needed to go in, we needed to do something.
And when we couldn't find them, ISIS apparently has found some of them, if I read the reports right a while back.
Not all of them, but the blame game started.
The blame game started from members of the Bush administration that the CIA had screwed up.
And so what happened?
Suddenly you saw anonymous leaks from the Central Intelligence Agency and some from the Pentagon.
Leaking damaging information about the Bush White House to undermine it.
See, the bureaucracy does protect itself regardless of the partisan affiliation of the man in the White House.
And we're starting to see that in the Obama administration.
We're starting to see the leaks from the intelligence community.
We're starting to see leaks from the Pentagon that the president is reading the intelligence.
And in fact, one of the leaks from the Pentagon to Fox News was that most presidents get their briefing.
Barack Obama not only gets the briefing, he reads the intelligence reports himself.
And they've been warning him for a year that ISIS was bad, and he's chosen to do nothing.
When you get to the point in a presidential administration that the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon are both leaking, maybe in CYA mode, maybe they are.
But they are out to let the world know That you've screwed up, you probably have a problem on your hands.
The great difference, though, between the Obama administration and the Bush administration is that the Obama administration has the circle of jerks in the press corps in its pocket.
Eric Erikson in for Rush Limbaugh.
We'll be right back.
Welcome back to the EIB network, Eric Erickson here for Rush Limbaugh.
Not behind the golden EIB microphone, though.
And and not in the Attila the Hunjair.
They sit neither of them to Atlanta, where I am.
I don't blame them.
The weather here, they never make it back out.
Good gracious, the thunderstorms.
Just the other day in the newspaper here, there was a story that we may not get a lot of rain for a couple weeks, and then it's rained every day since.
But hey, they can tell you what the temperature is going to be a hundred years from now.
They can for sure.
Robert in Phoenix, Arizona, let's go to you next on the EIB network.
Welcome.
How are you?
Thank you, Mr. Erickson.
I um wanted to um cover something, but uh apparently you had already gotten to it uh in least at least obliquely, you touched on it.
That's all right.
People are still upset with me the way I handled the story.
So let's go.
Um I had called in because you were discussing uh the statements made by Congressman Schultz.
Debbie Washington had occurred to me uh that we're gonna see a lot more of that type of comment from a lot of different non-official Democrat sources as the election draw uh in in uh 2016 draws near because uh they're doing everything they can to rehabilitate the image of Hillary Clinton.
Oh, yes.
She literally has she's uh to coin a phrase, she's the emperor with the new coat.
She's standing there naked on her record only.
No, Robert, we can't think about Hillary Clinton, that's gonna make me gouge my eyeballs out.
Certainly not and keep one's breakfast down.
Exactly.
But uh the fact is that surrounded only by her record, she is naked.
She has she has a hideous, horrible record, much like probably the visage of her naked.
You know, I believe it was Rush Robert who said that if you strip away all the scandals connected to her, she has no record.
Has no record.
So the only thing they can hope for they will say enough times from enough sources about how horribly women are being treated, and you may even see it about other Democrats calling Democrats that, as long as those Democrats are on their way out in an effort to create an illusion of how abused the women are after the war is over.
There is uh an investment on the part of the Democrats to play up this war on woman thing women thing for the Hill.
Now, folks, if you've been living in a cave or on a picket line for the last twenty-four hours or so, Debbie Washerman Schultz said that Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, gave women the back of his hand and pulled them by their hair.
Why?
Because in Wisconsin, on average, women make less poor per hour than men at the same job.
Now, people are upset with me because I said she was attacking the president.
That she was accusing the president of of beating up women.
She was.
She may have said Scott Walker.
She may have meant Scott Walker.
She may have meant that in Wisconsin women make less than men for the same job.
But in the White House, women make less than men for the same job.
So if she's saying that if women make less than men for the same job, that's like giving them the back of their hand, dragging them by their hair backwards.
Then that must be what President Obama does.
Because the same situation applies there.
The number of people who that just soared over their head, that just i i it's staggering.
But Robert has a point here.
They are going to do this full-on hysteria leading up to 2016 to try to galvanize women for Hillary Clinton.
There's a point here that many people miss.
They're so focused on Republicans lost women.
Republicans lost minorities.
Republicans didn't really lose white women in 2012 with Romney.
They didn't lose married women.
The demographic skewed against them based on turnout models.
Single women certainly tend to be more Democrat.
But Mitt Romney did well with married women.
The Democrats have got to make women's victims.
They depend on women feeling like they are victims in order to win in 2016.
Let's go to Dave in Houston, Texas, next here on the EIB network.
Dave, welcome to the show.
Hey, Eric.
Just a shut note, I agree with Wayne.
But that's not what I called about.
Um I don't think these people on these ticket lines are thinking very far into the future.
If they get their wages raised to $15 an hour, how many of them are going to be able to afford to eat at McDonald's?
Right.
Well, it's not just how many of them are going to be able to afford to eat.
It's like I had a buddy one time who his company, he was a small company, they hadn't had a pay raise in a while.
And the company was finally going to pay them more money, and the workers got together and realized that the raises that they were going to be offered, it was going to throw them into a different tax bracket, and they'd all wind up coming home with actually less take-home pay than where they were.
So they they went in for health care benefits instead and swapped around.
At least look, the unions don't care, and they're not trying to educate the workers on the logical outcome and the consequence of what they're doing.
If they want to make more, yeah.
Work hard, make more money, incentivize them to make more money.
But overnight flipping the switch from whatever they're making to $15 an hour financially, do they understand the impact?
That's not to say that making more money is a bad thing, mind you.
If they can work harder and make more money, God bless them.
But the reason the SEIU is doing this, the reason the White House is doing this, is not to really help these people earn more money.
It's to line the pockets of unions and offset costs of Obamacare and raise costs elsewhere on the backs of the middle class.
So more and more people are dependent on the government.
Eric Ericson, in for Rush Limbaugh.
Here we come to the end.
I'll actually be back tomorrow.
Unless, well, assuming they'll let me back on, Eric Ericsson in for Rushland.
Okay.
I will get now to the story.
John Kerry.
He gave a speech where he says it is the United States' biblical responsibility to confront climate change, including to protect vulnerable Muslim majority countries.
Kerry said scripture.
This is from Breitbart TV.
Kerry said scripture in particular, the book of Genesis, make clear it is our duty to protect the planet.
And we should look at Muslim countries with a sense of stewardship of earth, adding, the responsibility comes from God.
What is the old testament say about marriage?
And and uh well, I I guess I mean if John Kerry wants to get all Old Testament on people with being stewards of the earth and and global warming, does he really does he really want to stand behind that?
I'm I I don't think so.
I mean, let's play this out logically.
This whole democratic position on gay marriage, I guess.
What does the Bible say?
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