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Jan. 12, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:47
January 12, 2016, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Hi, folks.
I'm gonna try to start the program here, but I have a feeling the door is gonna open here in a moment, and whatever I am in the middle of will be interrupted.
So why don't I just wait for the door to open like it always does, despite every year asking that it not happen, here it comes.
Oh now it closed.
Maybe they're not gonna do it.
Anyway, greetings, my friends, and welcome.
It is the Rush Limbaugh program here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, and here they come.
Exactly as predicted.
Ah, here it comes the staff here at the EIB Southern Command once again.
Happy birthday to you!
Total defiance.
Happy birthday to you of my commands.
Happy birthday, Rush.
Happy birthday.
How old are you now?
I'm an official seasoned citizen now.
Yeah.
Never felt younger either.
Except when I was a teenager.
All right, but let me make a wish and blow these out.
Oops.
There we go.
Trick candles.
No, no.
Yes, they were.
There was one that didn't go out.
I got it, though.
Anyway, that's that's a gorgeous looking cake.
That really is every favorite color I have in there.
Yeah.
Well, well, thank you all very much.
I I I appreciate it.
I realize that I can't stop this from happening.
And you know why I know?
Because it I I have had to learn how to receive.
Yes.
Um, haven't been good at that over the years.
But uh I am getting better at it.
So rather than complain and whine about how you're interrupting the program and defying my commands and wishes, I'm just gonna say thanks.
You're welcome.
I appreciate it.
Well, this year we got planned next year.
What?
Anyway, um I've always birthdays is you know, what's the big deal?
Yeah, you were born, big whoop, but unless you live in a third world country, surviving year after year is not that big a deal.
Um and you know me, folks, I don't like being the center of attention.
I just don't like being the focus of everything.
It makes me nervous and self-conscious and so forth, and then the birthdays are always that.
And there's no real There's there's there's no real achievement involved here, but but I'm getting better at it.
Anyway, it's great to have you.
Thank you.
Uh I've so many people have sent me birthday wishes, it's hard to respond to them individually.
I've tried.
But if you sent a uh a note of some kind and I haven't replied, rest assured I got it, and I'm I'm very much appreciative.
Uh telephone number here is 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address, Lrushbaugh at EIB net.com.
Uh the Politico has an article today.
Uh oh, but let me I was gonna tell the State of the Union.
I have to get something on the record here.
The the Hillary Clinton campaign, at least the way the drive-bys are reporting it is imploding.
None of what is in the news today was ever supposed to be in the news.
Bernie Sanders was never supposed to be anything other than a placeholder and and an occupier of a chair to make it look like Hillary had overcome and had won a fight, won a struggle, that therefore she was capable, but he was never supposed to get anywhere near the lead on anything.
And now he has a massive lead in New Hampshire.
Bernie Sanders has a 14-point lead in New Hampshire.
And you've got Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders coming out now, basically talking about Hillary as unqualified, unprepared, and how everything is falling apart for her.
And Biden's saying, Oh, I don't want to run, but I really like what Bernie's doing, he says.
The long knives are coming out for Hillary Clinton.
And the long knives are coming out for her in many ways, just like the long knives are finally coming out for her husband Bill, who's now being mentioned in the same sentences with people like Bill Cosby.
There are those of us who've been waiting for that to happen since the mid to late 1990s.
Anyway, details on that coming up as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears today.
One other thing to clean up.
Um I w what we had the conversation yesterday about the Steelers Bengals game on Saturday night.
And when we started taking calls yesterday, I was kind of surprised.
I I should not have been, but I was.
The first two or three calls were from disgruntled Bengals fans who wanted to disqualify everything I said because they thought it was coming from the standpoint of me being a Steelers fan, and so that I was looking at and commenting on and analyzing everything from the standpoint of being a Steelers fan.
And I just want to assure you, my commentary on that game yesterday had nothing to do with being a Steelers fan.
If I had folks, to be honest with you, that's an embarrassing win.
To win a game like that, it is embarrassing.
To win a game on 30 yards of penalties, 15 yards, dead ball foul to put you in field goal range when you have been unable to move the ball in the fourth quarter because the quarterback's injured.
I mean, well, take it, don't misunderstand.
But the Bengals lost that game, and my commentary yesterday was all about how they decided to lose that game.
Well, what they obvious the players decided there were things more important than winning it.
And I was just totally taken aback by it.
And my commentary had nothing to do with being a fan of the Steelers and not liking the Bengals.
It was nothing more than purely 100% objective commentary and was really another in a long line of attempts and efforts to try to point out how there is politics in everything, how you can spot liberalism or the results of liberalism, such as cultural decay in every avenue of life in this country.
It has been a long-stated objective of mine.
And there is no question in my mind that the breakdown in civility and the the uh attitudinal problems that were on display by a number of players in that game are a direct result of the effects of liberalism on them when they were growing up, on their childhoods, on um the formative influences in their life.
There's no question in my mind, liberalism is entirely destructive.
It destroys things, it destroys people.
It's in the process of doing great, great damage to our country.
And it has to stop, and the evidence is everywhere.
So all I'm attempting to do here, whether it be a football game or a political speech or something happening on the screen, TV or movie, or some other pop culture event, is simply attempting to point out to people that virtually every destructive thing happening has links and roots to a political philosophy called liberalism that is the official ideology of the Democrat Party.
And I mean that, and I'm not exaggerating, and I'm not trying to create any kind of anger outrage.
Not trying to make anybody mad, I'm just telling you the way I see it.
And that's what I saw in that game, Saturday.
And by the way, I've been seeing it in the NFL long before this game.
This game is simply the latest development in a slow and steady decline of the culture, the National Football League, and our country at large.
And if you want to discuss it in further detail, then have at it.
Feel free.
Try to get through.
800-282-2882.
In the meantime, we have the State of the Union show tonight.
And this is itself, ladies and gentlemen, yet another opportunity.
I mean, look what Obama's gonna do.
His official guest is going to be a Syrian refugee.
Not some hero that the seat is traditionally been occupied by since Reagan started this tradition after the airline crash, Palm 90, Air Florida into the Potomac.
And one of the rescuers was highlighted by Reagan, invited to watch the State of the Union show, and he was pointed out.
Ever since then, every State of the Union address has featured a hero of some kind, depending On the president and his attitude toward heroism.
And I guess Syrian refugees representing illegal immigrants are now the heroes of the hour because they will be represented tonight.
In addition to that, there's going to be an empty seat.
There will be an empty seat in the first lady's seating area, the first lady's box, whatever they call it up there, in the viewing gallery at the House Chamber.
And the empty seat is to represent the 4,000 victims of gun violence in this country.
And the president's going to point all of this out.
And once again, we have a State of the Union address tonight where the president is last one is going to give it his best shot in pointing out what all the problems are.
You know what you're going to see on display tonight?
You're going to see the limbaugh theorem on display like you've never seen it.
You're going to the president in his eighth year describe problems in this country that have only worsened during his tenure, his seven years that he's been in office.
You're going to hear those problems detailed as though they trace back to George W. Bush.
Those problems are going to be things that currently exist that he will have had nothing to do with.
He's going to give a speech tonight that we reminiscent of a campaign speech he would give before the election in 2008.
You mark my words.
Where Obama will list and detail all of these problems as though he has yet to take any action on fixing them all the problems we've got, ignoring the fact that most of them have his fingerprints on them.
Legacy building within the minds and bodies of the low information voter.
The politico is all over the place today.
I can't wait to get to the two stories they have on Trump.
You talk about contradictory.
But before we get to those, the Politico has an article today with the headline, Obama struggling to get attention for the State of the Union.
Struggling to get attention?
I don't know.
When I turn on cable news, I've got it on on two monitors here.
I see one network practically wall to wall on it, and doing a countdown for the last two days on how many hours remain before the thing starts.
I have read a bunch in the drive-by media that are practically have their tongues on the floor in eager anticipation, waiting for the State of the Union address, the big and final stuff.
What do you mean politico?
Obama struggling to get attention.
In the real world, Obama would not want much attention to a honest State of the Union speech tonight.
Does Obama really want Americans to think about a State of the Union?
If they did, might write him out of town on a rail.
But instead, he's going to do a State of the Union speech.
I mean, it'll it'll feature all of his great achievements.
And he will have details on how the country's never been better and never better positioned, but he can't help himself.
He will also start ripping and criticizing and pointing fingers.
And that's where the limbaugh theorem will be on display.
Where Obama will start talking about things that he's had seven years to deal with and has tried to fix certain things they've only gotten worse.
The presidency's an abject failure in one sense.
It's an abject failure in the sense that liberalism has failed.
There is no utopia, there is no growing economy, there is no expanding welfare or expanding private sector job base, there is no expanding pool of wealth.
People are not doing better economically.
There are not great careers and jobs to be found out there.
Obamacare is an absolute mess and disaster.
American foreign policy is an embarrassment.
It is a total failure in representing the United States and growing it and securing it.
but that's not his perspective.
His perspective is that he's a total success in his ongoing efforts to transform America.
And in the process of transforming it, i.e., changing it, it has to get worse.
By definition.
What Obama wants to do is turn this country more leftward by definition.
That's going to make it worse.
There's nothing good in liberalism.
You can go around the world and look at it.
You can look at every derivative of liberalism you want.
You get socialism, you can communism, you can look at totalitarianism, whatever derivative, and there isn't one successful example anywhere, aside from the leaders of these various countries, and they're all dictators or tyrants.
But it doesn't work for the people.
Liberalism does not improve the lives of the majority.
It improves the lives of the elites.
It improves the lives of the chosen, the selected few, who are acknowledged to be at the upper strata of society.
It is they who are taken care of.
Everybody else experiences worsened and declining existences.
New York Times has an article, the headline, Hillary Clinton races to close enthusiasm gap with Bernie Sanders in Iowa.
That could explain Hillary Clinton, you know, she just announced a plan to increase taxes on the rich.
I mean, look at all of the old standbys in the liberal Democrat playbook that they're going back to, which is the surest sign that they're out of ideas and that nothing they have done is working.
Go back to gun control, and it's also a sign that their base is not unified.
It doesn't get reported.
The Democrat Party is in as much trouble as the Republican Party is for different reasons.
But if they have to go back now to taxing the rich, if they have to go back to gun control, it is a sure sign things are in a state of great disarray.
In addition, Mrs. Clinton wants to make abortions totally free for people on Medicaid.
What is abortion?
Abortion is the killing of human life in the womb.
Who is on Medicaid?
The nation's poor.
Mrs. Clinton therefore is offering free abortions for the nation's poor.
Who comprise the majority of America's poor?
Are they not ethnics?
Hispanics, African Americans, some might say certain women.
Who is Hillary Clinton helping here?
Not helping anybody.
When you promise free abortion to people on Medicaid, you may as well be suggesting.
Well, let me put it a different way.
If a Republican came along and suggested free abortions for people on Medicaid, the first person to stand up would be Jesse Jackson and start shouting racism, and then Al Sharpton wouldn't be far behind.
And they would call it an attempt to eliminate people of color by the dastardly rascally Republican.
But yet Hillary Clinton is proposing it and is being fetted.
Praised to the heavens for such a compassionate plan.
The Democrats are wiping out their own people.
That's why they need open borders for replacements to be brought in, ASAP.
Just want to remind you, ladies and gentlemen, of a couple of things.
From Obama's State of the Union last year.
Among other things, Obama bragged, quote, in Iraq and Syria.
American leadership, including our military power, is stopping ISIL's advance.
One year ago, President said that State of the Union show.
Now, in the State of the Union show tonight, he's going to promise The moon.
He is going to promise all kinds of things that he knows is never going to happen, but he's going to promise this is legacy building.
It's establishing his intentions, which of course Democrats score big on intentions.
This will end up in the history books is what Obama wanted to do, but was thwarted at every turn by mean-spirited, uncooperative Republicans.
It's how Obama's banking on it being written.
He's going to close Gitmo.
He's finally going to do it.
He's lashing it.
Close Gitmo.
Which means he's going to free more of the terrorists from Gitmo.
He is also going to release more prisoners from our jails.
He's going to try to succeed in additional gun control laws, either actually taking some guns away or making it even harder to get them.
We have some audio sound bites coming up of uh of this, and you've got to hear Mrs. Clinton.
You just sit tight.
Come in.
Right on 800 282-2882, if you ought to be on the program today.
Uh try to get to more of your phone calls today than we got to yesterday.
I was just loaded yesterday.
Lots of stuff.
Okay, here is what I'm talking about.
This is this is Obama on the Today Show today with uh Mount Lauer, who interviewed Obama in the White House.
They're walking along a dingy, looks like a dungeon there in the White House.
I've been there.
It's just not off the, it's right off the diplomatic entrance.
I will tell you what, if you watch this, it's obviously a lower level of the White House.
It's right off the diplomatic reception room, and uh it's where the doctor's office is, the official White House physician.
Uh there's a lot there, but then in the elevator that runs you up to the residence quarters on the upper floors of the White Houses there, too.
It's low ceiling archways.
Anyway, this this is where Mount Lauer walking along, which is of course in the TV requirement.
You interview somebody, you've got to get B-roll or live walking, strolling along, deep in conversation.
This is this is done to raise the stature of the TV journalist that the uh president would willingly, or any other guest, uh, would willingly take a stroll with a journal.
I uh know this stuff.
One of my first interviews was with Barbara Walters for something that's uh she did.
And it was at the Pierre Hotel.
Uh not far, it's a cross street from the plaza, essentially.
And when the interview is over, she said, okay, we got to go outside over to Central Park and walk through again B-roll.
I said, What?
Yeah, we gotta go over there and just we're not talking, we'll talk, but there's no microphones.
It's B-roll.
We're walking to the press.
So why would we have to do that?
Well, it's just the way it's done.
Well, what's the point?
Why why do you want to spend time showing that with no audio?
What's well, it's just it's the formula.
And it is.
So that's the mental picture I want you to see.
Obama's strolling along with Matt Lauer in the lower levels of the White House.
And uh Mount Wower says, you were gonna change the tone in Washington.
You wanted to unite people, but they are not united.
Has it been a failure?
Sometimes we look at the past through rose-colored glasses.
It's been pretty divided in the past.
There have been times where people beat each other with canes.
And we have things like the Civil War.
So there have been times where it's been pretty rough.
But there's no doubt that politics in Washington are so much more divided than the American people are.
Part of what I want to do in this last address is to remind people, you know what, we got a lot of good things going for us, and if we can get our politics right, it turns out that we're not as divided on the ideological spectrum as people make us out to be.
Well, that's a gold mine.
I mean, there's I don't uh it depends on who you're talking about here.
I've never seen the country as divided as it is in my lifetime.
I mean now, let me think about that.
Um media hated Reagan, and media hated Nixon to Watergate, but the country wasn't so much divided.
Once they'd figured out that they'd agreed or discovered that they thought Nixon was guilty.
Um The country was not divided during Reagan.
The media was.
The establishments were, but the country was all in, totally united behind Reagan.
The other interesting aspect is Washington.
He says there's no doubt politics in Washington is so much more divided than the American people are.
Well, I'm not so sure about that.
You know, the day-to-day image is of a Washington divided, but if you ask me, the Republican and Democrat establishments are on a lot of the same pages.
Which I think is what is leading to all the divisiveness among the American people.
Half the American people feel like they've got no representation of Washington whatsoever.
But the divisions are real and they are marked, and the big reason is Barack Hussein Obama and his undisguised now efforts at transforming and changing this country into something it was not founded to be.
And all of this disunity, this division is justified.
It's warranted, just like the anger associated with it, is totally justified and warranted and understandable.
And it is unique to Obama.
He has brought it about.
And he's going to sit there and try to tell the American people tonight if we get our politics right.
Turns out we're not as divided on the spectrum as people make us out to be here in Washington.
And it uh there's a lot of good things happening on there you just don't know about.
You just gotta hang in or be tough and let me finish my work.
Like Loretta Lynch, did you see what she said?
She's an attorney general.
Loretta Lynch actually said that she is in the process of putting things in place that will make it impossible to dismantle the Obama influence in the Department of Justice for years.
No matter who the next president is, and no matter who the next attorney general is, she says, we are putting in place various things to make it veritably impossible.
So my words, not hers, but the her intent, veritably impossible to unravel what we've done here.
Well, now one of the things she's talking about is putting career people into positions of great authority, not appointed people, but career people who are leftists and liberals who will not be leaving the DOJ with the outgoing administration.
They're there for life for as long as they want to stay here until somebody fires them.
And I guarantee you, what they're counting on is, let's say, new president, pick your name, whoever it is, a Republican president comes in and starts firing people you know left and right, the media and Obama, in this case Loretta Lynch, are going to start squealing like stuck pigs and throwing allegations and accusations around.
This is going to happen no matter what the Republicans do.
Whoever becomes the next president, if it's a Republican, had better get used to what's going to happen because it's also going to be unprecedented.
The involvement of not just Obama, by the way, but a lot of people in his administration who were going to do everything they can to continue to be involved in the governing of the country.
Compared to say somebody like George W. Bush, who vanished, who disappeared, who didn't have a single comment for years about what Obama was doing, because that's the gentleman's agreement.
The election's over, the new president won.
He gets to do what he wants to do.
He's the there's a implied trust that every president elected is going to revere and honor the Constitution.
And so you get out of the way.
You had your time as president, you're gone, and you stay gone.
And most prior Reagan was that way.
Clinton was for a while, but that was mostly because of Lewinsky.
But it didn't take long for Clinton to get back in gear.
He and Al Gore both got back into gear going overseas and making speeches against the United States and against the Bush administration to both American allies and American enemies.
So here's the next bite from Obama.
This is the big dose of the limbaugh theorem, I think you can expect tonight.
No, I think we went through a lot over these last ten years.
Stop that just a second.
Stop that.
I forgot, I forgot to tell you what Matt Wower's question is, and it's kind of relevant.
This was it was not a continuation of the previous comment.
Matt Wauer said.
Well, now I know in your speech it's traditional to say the state of the union strong.
And when it comes to the emotional state of our union, when I go out and talk to people, the words I hear them most often in terms of how they're feeling right now.
They talk about fear.
Talk about frustration.
Talk about fatigue.
Any of those words surprise you, sir.
No, I think we went through a lot over these last ten years.
We went through Katrina.
We went through the Iraq War.
We went through the worst financial crisis in our lifetimes.
Why?
We are still battling terrorism.
People are still recovering from some of the economic blows that hit.
And it is sometimes important for us to step back and take measure of how far we've come.
There you have it.
That's it.
That's the limbaugh theorem on display.
Matt Wower says the words I hear when I talk to people out there, fear, frustration, fatigue.
Obama answers, well, it's understandable.
And he lists things that happened before he took office.
Hurricane Katrina.
The Iraq war.
In other words, George W. Bush.
George W. Bush.
Worst financial crisis.
And I don't want George W. Bush.
These things all happened before Obama took office.
Still battling terrorism as though that all predates him too.
Still battling terrorism as though it's, yeah, just another part of the day, like so many other things going on.
None of what the president wants to acknowledge the American people are afraid of have to do with him.
None of what's happened the last seven years are a factor in people being afraid, fearful, frustrated.
This is what I mean by the limbaugh theorem on full display.
He's going to clearly try to blame, continue to blame as much as he can on Bush and what he inherited, and then claim that if people are upset and unhappy and dissatisfied, it's because of that stuff.
Not because of things he has done.
So in effect, Matt Wower with a softball question hey, Mr. President, when I go out there, the things I hear from people, they're fearful, they're afraid, they're frustrated.
And what does Obama have in his reservoir to come back with?
Bush and Bush.
Yeah, Hurricane Katrina, people still living over that, Matt, still very afraid.
Yeah.
And the Iraq war, you understand, Matt?
People so ticked off about the Iraq war.
Oh yeah.
Still afraid, still humiliated, still embarrassed.
And then the financial meltdown, Matt, all that stuff that happened with Bush, yeah, it's understandable people are.
He could not list or point to a single accomplishment.
I like to put myself in these positions and imagine how I would answer questions.
So if if I'm president, I'm walking down the hallway with Matt Wower, and he tells me that when he talks to people, he hears frustration and fear.
I would point to things that have happened that I think are good that I've been responsible for.
Come up with positives, and I would say, yeah, I can understand some of it, but we're on the turnaround now.
Things are looking up.
This is what we have planned, blah, blah, blah.
It are finally, but no, Obama has nothing positive.
Obama has nothing he can point to in his own seven-year resume.
To dispel any of it.
No, what Obama wants to do is affirm it.
Well, yeah, Matt, they ought to be mad.
Hurricane Katrina, yeah, Matt, they ought to be scared.
Financial crisis.
Yeah, Matt, they ought to be ticked off.
Iraq war.
Yeah, Matt, they ought to be mad.
George W. Bush is still alive.
I find it puzzling, curious, even marginally incredible.
That Obama's instincts are not even to go positive.
I don't think he knows how.
You know, as it died in the wool liberal, all you are is an apocalyptic critic.
That's how you get where you're going.
You're an agent of crisis.
You're an agent of fear.
You sponsor it.
You promote it.
Fear and crisis.
That's how you get what you want.
That's how you get people supporting it.
You scare the hell out of them every day.
Undeniable truth of life.
There isn't any positiveness in liberalism.
There isn't any optimism.
Optimism is the enemy of liberalism.
By definition.
If there's optimism, there can't be any liberalism going on.
Mike Obama demos that, proves that.
To the phones.
Eric in Margate, New Jersey.
You're first today.
Welcome.
It's great to have you here.
I called to talk about the Centsi game.
Yeah.
Rush, that had to be the ugliest football game I've seen since watching the old Oakland Raiders.
They weren't trying to beat him.
City Sitzy was trying to mug them.
That one dude tried to break that dude's neck.
And those Centre fans, they're as bad as the Philly fans threw in Santa Claus and throwing snowball at the wreck years ago.
You know, my wife said, What do you why did you watch the game?
I couldn't stop watching it.
I said that game was so ugly.
Well, the whole game wasn't.
The fourth quarter was, and there were indications.
You could see the pot was boiling from the get-go.
Folks, I don't know, I didn't mention this to you, and I don't know how many of you know it.
But during pregame, each team gets one half of the field to warm up.
They had a veritable military cordon at the 50-yard line to keep these teams separated for the one hour, the 45 minutes of pregame.
And it wasn't military people, officials, referees, but giant security people straight down the 50-yard line, making sure the teams did not interact during pregame.
And when the game's now, it's it's tough to single out any football games.
It's worse than anything I've ever seen.
And then you say, since the John Madden Raiders.
And I know it's a reference to George Atkinson and uh and Jack Tatum.
And back then, you know, Chuck Knoll, a coach of the Steelers.
After Lynn Swan had been taken out of a playoff game with a forearm shivered in the head and he wasn't even in a play.
I think it was by Atkinson.
In a post-game comment, Chuck Knoll talked about there being a criminal element in the NFL.
Well, George Atkinson sued.
The lawsuit went to trial.
It eventually settled.
So that look, it it's what happened in Cincinnati is uh not unique in any stretch.
The difference is that it happens while the league is active trying to make sure these kind of things don't happen.
It's happening in utter defiance of authority.
It's it's happening in utter defiance of the rules, even if you disagree to them, they play in the game, the rules are the rules.
Uh it's it's happening even at the expense of winning the game, which is the purpose.
Uh I think it's it's it's tough to single out one game and say it's worse than ever.
It was just bad in its own right and in and of itself.
Uh it was bad.
It was stupid.
Uh that's what I can't I can't get over was how stupid.
I've never seen a game lost this way.
I have never seen it.
There may well be games, and there are many games I haven't seen nearly every game played, but I have never heard, and I've never heard of a game being lost in this fashion.
And it was done purposefully.
All of it could have been avoided.
It none of it needn't have happened.
None of it was provoked.
And even if it was, walk away.
You are 1425, whatever it was, seconds away From the next step in the playoffs.
When your team hasn't been since 1991.
Anyway, I appreciate the call, uh, Eric.
We got a quick timeout.
We got more people want to talk about this.
I'm telling you, it's a big deal, folks, culturally.
In ways that uh people may not even be able to specifically say, but they understand, they get it.
We'll continue after this.
So Snartley tells me that people from Cincinnati are calling him just in a rage.
I'm not coming at you people today as a Steelers fan.
I told you at the outset, this is kind of an embarrassing way to win the game.
I'm not I'm not gloating at all here.
I'm worried.
Look, there's some things I just can't come out and say.
I've got to hope you people pick up on it.
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