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Oct. 2, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
36:48
443 Full Disclosure Part 2: Politicians
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Good afternoon, everybody.
It's John Q, politician here, and I have gathered you all together as potential volunteers, as potential voters, as potential supporters, and as potential future tax livestock,
I'm afraid I'm obligated to say, in order to announce that I wish to run For the Office of President, under these new laws that sadly were not announced before, I kind of got my whole candidacy bandwagon rolling.
Under these new laws, I must fully disclose what it is that I am going to be doing, and after I have fully disclosed it, then I can go about doing it.
And, of course, I've sat down with my lawyer, and we have gone over in fairly great detail the kinds of things that I need to tell you about that I'm going to be talking about When it comes to being a candidate and looking for your support,
your donations, your volunteer time, and of course eventually your vote, followed my subsequent crushing obedience to, well, most of my whims.
Now, just before we start getting into the whole what I do when I'm elected thing, I have to talk openly and honestly about About why I'm running and what has propelled me to this particular standpoint, or why it is that I've taken this particular path in my life.
And again, under the rules of full disclosure, formally, I was allowed to join the great horde of people, of politicians, aspiring politicians, who could say with a straight face and a pseudo-open heart, as we are capable of and want to do,
Who could say with a straight face, verily I have been asked to run by a group of people who think that I, and I alone, can do great things for this country of ours, and I do not seek this office out of any ambition,
but merely as a slave to the public interests and at the behest of a Powerful people who believe that in my infinite wisdom and in my capacity, my almost zen-like capacity to levitate through the worlds of political science and wisdom and philosophy, that I am going to put my own interests aside, which are not to run for office, to have great power or great wealth or great fame or great publicity,
but I'm going to set these needs of mine aside and simply submerge myself into the squalid jello of the common good but I'm going to set these needs of mine aside and simply submerge myself into the squalid I would have made that speech, and I had that speech, in fact, all...
Already, in fact, my speechwriter and I just yesterday were only arguing over whether it should be squalid jelly or fetid jelly because we felt that there were some good linguistic sets between these two words.
But unfortunately, now that these laws have come down, the truth in advertising laws have come down, The full disclosure laws have come down.
I am no longer allowed to do that because, of course, if it turns out through any subsequent inquiries that are all funded at state expense, and if found to be guilty, then get charged to my account.
If you haven't heard, and maybe you haven't been following it quite as closely as I have because it hasn't been affecting you as directly, If somebody is investigated and found to be guilty of violating full disclosure and conflict of interest guidelines and so on, then I have to pay for the full cost of that investigation, which means I have to pay for everyone to go and interview influential friends of mine, and Sunday, of course, will be under sanction of perjury should they lie.
I have a fairly significant personal stake, and of course now that I'm pretty much the only politician left running for this office because I think that most people feel that these laws are too onerous for them to comply, but I am in fact going to still give it a shot because I figured, hey, let's put the bald face right there, the bald case before the public and see what they say.
So in terms of why it is that I'm running, Well, I've always been good with words and good with people.
I mean, people just sort of...
I have a likability factor about me that most people don't have.
And so for me, it was either I was going to go into sales, but that seems like quite a lot of work, or I was going to go into politics as a sort of form of sales, but where vague rhetoric takes the place of detailed and often confusing product spec sheets.
Obviously, I'm a lawyer, and I've gone through that whole process.
Being a lawyer, I could say, has not given me an enormous amount of respect for the law, but it certainly has given me an enormous amount of respect for the way that the law can move money around and call it justice.
I mean, that is a really, really quite wonderful thing.
And having sort of recognized the power that law has to move money around and call it justice, I now have an even greater respect for the fundamental aspect of the government, which is to move money around and call it the social good.
Now, having seen the piles of money that the state does move around, and really, literally, people, if you could see the wheelbarrows of money that are carted around on a second-by-second basis, the Brinks trucks, it's like if you ever watch those water bombers open up over a forest fire, think of that, but with $1,000 bills, and you'll get a sort of sense of the kind of money that's sloshing around in the state.
A pickpocket needs very light fingers.
This is sort of the metaphor that we have decided upon in moving this sort of forward.
And again, in the interest of full disclosure, I think it's important for me to sort of put this forward.
But a pickpocket needs very nimble fingers.
And if you've ever read Oliver Twist, you know that the old, I think he's an old Jew, Fagin trains these little children who are, you know, smiling and cheerful urchins with very, very quick and light fingers to bump into people and to steal their watches and to steal their money and this and that and the other.
And then they bring the money back to Fagin.
And they give him the majority of it and keep a portion for themselves and so on.
And this really is the relationship that has propelled me into the public sphere as a politician to seek your vote as an elected official.
I'm sort of both the urchin and the distraction.
You know, like when somebody wants to pick your pocket, they'll bump into you so that you don't feel whatever is going on in your pocket.
And also, I can't remember what, magicians call it a redirect or a misdirection or something where they have one hand doing something fluttery that draws your eye while another hand does some other thing.
And so I am both the thing that bumps into you and also the distraction from sort of what is actually occurring.
Because, as we all know, a politician relative to, say, a high-priced corporate lawyer doesn't really make, on paper, a whole lot of money.
And so you may recognize that since I'm a lawyer who's good with people and fairly good with language, It could be said that I should be out there picking the pockets of corporations and other individuals through class action lawsuits and so on, but instead I have decided to run for office.
Now, it is often confusing to people in something that, you know, the reason why people say, well, I'm giving up, you know, $500,000 a year to make $150,000 a year.
A lot of people, again, in the interest of full disclosure, a lot of people will think that what that means is that I must be motivated by something altruistic because I'm giving up.
So much money in return for a smaller salary, therefore I must have some sort of altruistic impulse or motive in terms of what I'm doing, otherwise why would I give up all that money?
Well, that's not the case.
First of all, when you are a politician, you have access to information that is extraordinarily valuable to many, many people.
Of course, you participate in the creation of a good deal of laws and regulations and so on.
That cause massive amounts of money to roll back and forth in the economy.
Just think of it like those lava lamp things where the sort of oily liquid, this viscous liquid flows back and forth as it tilts.
This really is what government is all about.
The money rolls back and forth like a tide based on legislation.
As a political insider, you have enormous amounts of access to this kind of information.
And frankly, it's not brain surgery to set up a bunch of blind alley companies or to get paid in cash and not end up with any traceability for you to get rich, right?
I mean, the foundation of wealth in a political context is really based on access information and legal power, the legal power to affect legislation.
So if you think, again, in the interest of full disclosure, if you think that I'm giving up an enormous amount of salary and that speaks to my altruistic motives, it's not the case at all.
I expect to make vastly more money as a politician than I ever would have as a private citizen.
So that's sort of something that I wanted you to understand, again, in the interest of full disclosure.
Now, secondly, sort of in the sort of preamble before I decide, before I run, I'm telling you sort of why I'm running.
Well, there are an enormous amounts of, I mean, there's a shadow government.
It's you. You can sort of look at it.
And it doesn't mean a shadow government like there's other people who pass laws.
But as far as this transfer of income goes in the government, there are enormous beneficiaries to these kinds of income transfers.
And of course you know the obvious ones, the defense industry, the teachers' unions, the bureaucrats, The people who manage the wheat and manage the farm subsidies and manage the farms themselves, there are just massive, and there's people on welfare, there's people at the bottom tier as well, there's a very rich and a small amount of the very poor in terms of the slice of the pie.
It's the people who really benefit from the power of the government to move money around that have urged me to run.
Now, they themselves can't really run for office for two reasons.
One is that they're going to make even more money than I do.
I'm getting the breadcrumbs from the slicing of the loaf here.
But they can make a lot more money, so they don't have nearly as much incentive.
Even with the extra money that I'm going to make under the table, they really don't have as much incentive because they'll just make a lot more money that way.
And secondly, they're not very likable people.
And they don't have that sort of Q factor.
They don't have that sort of charisma factor that is sort of what I bring to the table.
You know, the silver lining to their thunderclouds of pillaging.
This is sort of what I bring to the table.
I put a nice face on what's going on under the table, right?
I'm sort of the, you know, like if the Mafia front is a candy store, then I'm the kindly candy store owner that makes everybody think that this could have nothing to do with organized crime.
So they're paying me off by allowing me some breadcrumbs from the hacking up of your money as a taxpayer.
They're allowing me some breadcrumbs, and of course, I get all the publicity, and everybody's going to worry about what I think and what I care about.
You know, there was an article today in the paper about, I think, Laura Bush.
George Bush's wife is not that keen on Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney or something like that.
And this is a news item, what a person's wife thinks of her husband's choice of cabinet members without any particular moral analysis.
Just, you know, well, I question that judgment, but I stand by him.
And, of course, we need the people who actually get the money, who take your money, They need that kind of show.
This is the politics.
The politicians are like the waving hand of the magician to redirect your attention away from the slate of hand that's actually picking your pocket.
It's the bump into that makes you not feel the hand that grabs your cash.
So, they need me to be controversial, they need me to be personable, they need me to arouse both great affection and great enmity, right?
I mean, because if I'm loved and hated, they're happy.
If people are indifferent to me, then they're not happy.
Well, newspapers need to fill their pages, and the media needs to fill their 24x7 500 channels.
They've got to fill it with something.
And just in case the Jean Benet murder investigation doesn't rear its ugly head again, they need lots of shots of me giving speeches and me talking to this and that and the other and me walking...
Hand in hand with Saudi princes in the garden, and they need to focus on my wife's hairstyle, and they need to focus on whether I showed up for my military duty 30 years ago, and so on.
They need to focus on all of that so that you'll focus and read about all of that and think that that has anything to do with anything in terms of what's going on in the world.
So that's sort of what I'm here for.
This is sort of why I'm running for office.
Now, the last sort of component of it is the financial component.
As you're aware, or may be aware, there is an enormous amount of money that is required in order to run for office.
Tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars.
As we've noted from Steve Forbes and other people, it's fairly obvious that money alone cannot buy you the presidency, right?
That's the mistake that people who want to make money from politics make if they think they can just run themselves without the charisma factor, the Q factor.
The sort of believability factor, right?
The ability to deliver the most nonsensical lines with the straightest of faces.
This is what they don't understand, that sort of magic alchemy factor, that charisma factor.
They think that, well, it's just like I could do Brad Pitt's movie role and I would be...
Pretty much the same, right?
No, there's a real talent. There's a reason Brad Pitt gets paid like 10 or 20 million dollars a film, because he's got a lot of talent and a sort of Q factor, a likability factor, a charisma factor that makes people want to see him.
And it's not just because he's good-looking or whatever.
I mean, there's lots of good-looking people in the universe, but...
He has something special.
And it's not recognizing that something special that makes people waste a lot of time and energy and money, of course, in the pursuit of politics.
Now, people believe, for whatever reason, that I have that something special that will cause people to focus on me and will cause people to both love and hate me and to distract people from what's really going on in terms of getting their pockets picked.
So I'm a good distraction.
I'm a good sort of...
What is the...
There's this fish.
I don't know what the hell the name of it is.
I'm not obviously picked for my brains.
But there's a fish somewhere that floats deep down in the Mariana Trench that hangs a little sort of glowing light over its mouth.
And of course all the other fish sort of swim up to go, ooh, ah, the glowing light, and then whomp!
You know, the big fish sort of chomps them up.
And I think it was in the last movie that I understood, which was Finding Nemo.
So... Saving Private Nemo?
No, Finding Nemo. Anyway, so that's sort of my role.
I'm the sort of glow to get you up and staring at me and then chomp you, you know, half your life and half your money will get eaten and you'll still be dazzled by, you know, the light that is me, I guess you could say.
Of course, you know, I would have been a priest in another life, but this is the way that I'm configured now.
And so the ability or the power to...
To be able to ensure that I am a sufficient distraction, both in a positive and negative way, you can hate me and they don't care, that I am a sufficient distraction To allow the pillaging of your purse to go on unabated.
That's what they're paying me for.
And you may, again, in the past I would have said, you know, people have generously stepped up because they believe in my plan for America or whatever the hell I would come up with or plan for Uzbekistan or Australia or wherever the hell I'm running, they'll tell me.
I think tomorrow, I'm told.
And it's a swearing-in.
I'm not sure exactly where.
I assume it's an English-speaking country.
I mean... Unless you're reading this in subtext.
No, it's got to be English-speaking.
Anyway, I'm not going to run for Premier of Quebec.
I'm pretty sure of that. So, in the past, I would have come up here before these full disclosure laws came along, I would have come up here and I had to say, okay, the people have generously stepped up with their donations because they believe in my plan for the fine country that you inhabit, and they believe in my patriotism, and they believe in my wisdom, and they believe in...
And what the goals that I have set for the country and they want me to just go right ahead and build that bridge to the 21st century or whatever, you know, schlockenspiel speech I come up with or phrase, you know, the thousand points of light and the new world order.
Damn the torpedoes.
And you may have thought, well, gee, I mean, he's given up all of this money in the private sector, and there are all these people who are giving him donations.
So, gosh, you know, maybe he has something that, I mean, I can't tell.
I'm no political scientist, so I can't tell particularly, but maybe he's got...
Something going down here that is really worth something because people are willing to give him money.
Well, you know, just again, because of full disclosure, my own fear of getting sued, coupled with my still rabid desire for political power...
I have to tell you that it's an investment on their part, right?
It's an investment on their part.
And let me tell you that when it comes to voting, as has been mentioned before in another forum, it is the suggestion box for slaves.
It never actually gets opened.
opened, it's just there.
But when it comes to voting, it's just sort of important to understand, and we worked for a bit on this metaphor, which we feel is accurate enough not to get me sued, but so accurate that maybe you still need to fill in a few conclusions of your own.
But if you go to Sotheby's or wherever, and you're going to bid on something, then, you know, they put up the painting or whatever, and you got your little ping pong paddle there with your number on it or whatever, and you end up bidding and you got your little ping pong paddle there with your number on it or whatever, and So I come up, and I'm the politician that you want, or I'm the party that you want, and And you bid like crazy, right?
And that, to me, is kind of funny.
Like, from the standpoint of the sort of oil painting that's up on the block, I have to tell you that it's quite funny that I see you bidding for me, because as the oil painting that's supposedly up for sale, and you're feverishly voting to bid on me, I have to tell you that I've already been sold.
You're absolutely bidding on an already sold item that's going to be shipped off to someone else, and this is just kind of a farce.
To make you feel that you're participating so that we can blame you for being taxed.
This is sort of what's important to understand.
The only way that you get to the auction block if you are a politician is if you've already been bought by whoever is paying for your campaign.
This is a very important thing to understand.
You're bidding on something that's already sold.
It's kind of a relief to say it, right?
Because it really is a big joke when we're up here watching you all run your polls and figure out who's going to be this or who's going to win.
And you're all invested in it like it's got something to do with you.
And I tell you...
It does feel like a bit of a load to get off my chest.
I mean, I never would have done it without these laws, these full disclosure laws, but I might as well, well, I sort of have to be honest or I'm going to get sued.
So the only reason that people are giving me $500,000, $200,000, $100,000, $50,000 to run for office is so that they have access to me after office, after I get into office, And they use that both to help sway the legislature and also just to have political connections that are whispered off so that they can do things to move this tidal wave of money that sloshes back and forth in the government to move it their way.
And they only have to adjust it a percent or two percent and that could be billions of dollars for them.
So, in the interest of full disclosure, I appreciate your vote.
I guess it's nice that you think that I'm a nice guy and I've got a nice haircut and I can speak with ringing conviction about nonsense syllables that are merely emotional emptiness in form.
But I have to tell you, it's kind of ridiculous.
From where I sit, it's kind of ridiculous.
And so that's sort of the part that I had to say about that.
The only reason that people are giving me money for my campaign is to make many, many multiples.
like you will never ever buy a stock that is going to make you as much money as an investment, if you're a large corporation or union, as an investment in a political campaign.
And of course you know that it's not particularly, it doesn't really have anything to do, or even approximately anything to do with principles, because, well, you know, you're fairly aware, I'm sure, that most of the large corporations give to both parties or all three that most of the large corporations give to both parties or I don't even know how many parties there are, because, again, I don't know exactly which country I'm ruling until we get to the whole signing ceremony tomorrow.
But that's obviously nothing to do with principle.
They're just hedging their bets.
You know, the way that you'll put a spread out on the roulette table in Vegas.
It's the same kind of thing.
You're not sure who's going to win. But you sure know that even the cost of making three candidates is going to be paid over many, many, many times.
And it's not just...
It's not just that they want positive obligations.
This is something that's sort of important.
People give to my campaign not just because they want to have access to my power after I get elected, but also they're deadly afraid that if they don't give me any money and then I get elected, then they're totally screwed.
Because then I won't even take their calls, and it will quite quickly get around that I won't take their calls.
And, of course, anybody who's in a political kind of business or a business associated with politics, which is just about all businesses, including now we brought Microsoft into the fold, which was great.
But the CEO would very rapidly be tossed out.
The managers would be tossed out because they had offended a political leader by not contributing to his or her campaign, and so they're totally screwed.
You will give a present to the local mafia godfather even if you don't expect any favors.
You just don't want your store to accidentally burn down.
And if your competitor...
It's a market of brutality, right?
So your competitor might give money to my campaign and you don't and then he wins.
Not only does he get access, but the legislation that I'm going to pass is going to be beneficial To him and against your interests, right?
So this is why, I mean, a shakedown would be one way of putting it, but until these laws were put into place about full disclosure, nobody really liked to talk about it like that, right?
We like for you to worry about Al-Qaeda and organized crime and Teens going on bumfight wildings and crap like that.
We don't want you to sort of actually look at the core of the system that's in place.
So that sort of...
Why? I have the capacity to run.
I get the Q factor. People want to give me money because they want to profit from my power and also because they're afraid that if they don't, I'll nail them.
And basically the vote that you're going to put forward is sort of bidding on...
On a product that's already been sold.
But, you know, it's cute that you do it anyway.
I mean, I think it's cute.
I think it's funny.
And, you know, it's like watching those horses that supposedly can do math by sort of pawing on the ground.
You know it's like silly, but it's kind of cute, right?
And that's sort of what it looks like from up here when I see you all feverishly voting and being positive or negative towards me.
Like I'm a... I'm a sort of shiny-toothed, shiny-haired frontman for the people who are grabbing all of the money that's sloshing around back and forth that's kind of taken from you by force.
Now, when I do get elected, of course, there are several things that I have to go through, which I might as well mention now.
These are going to be more brief, but...
I have to do the whole I honor and respect my opponent, it's the peaceable transfer of power, and so on.
And then what I have to do is I have to sort of, I've got, you know, this hundred days and legislative agendas and so on.
And so what I need to do is to start, and quick, right, I need to start paying off The favors of the people who gave me money to pay for the advertisements, mostly attack ads, that got me elected.
So I need to start enabling or enacting a vast amount of legislation that is going to be favorable towards the powers that got me in.
Now, again, sort of because of this full disclosure thing, I might as well be candid about this, because I can't suit if I don't, or if I'm not.
It's just important to understand that this is not the legislation you hear about, right?
There are bills in the Congress or the Parliament or whatever the hell it is, wherever the hell it is that I'm going, that they sort of...
they're like...
1,200 pages, 1,500 pages.
No human being has any clue.
No single human being has any clue what's in them.
And there's stuff which can't be, like, you know, like defense spending and so on, that can't be cut.
Like, it's in the legislature.
I mean, it's a law we passed ourselves, so of course, you know, it's like gravity.
It's just a fact. And what happens is the laws sort of get created, and then they get amended, and then they get amended, and then they get amended, and everybody's tagging on, right?
Everybody's, you know, putting their scoop into the fish tank, so to speak, to get the water.
And so there's this constant amendment, and these bills are being persistently amended, and more parasites are hanging on to the jugular of this bill literally up to, like, 20 minutes before the voting begins.
So, this is an important thing to understand.
Once I'm in power, you will see me signing legislation.
You will see me championing legislation.
I have no clue what's in there.
I really have no clue what's in there.
I do know the little bit...
That's in there that's central to my interests as a politician, right?
Or rather, that's central to the interests of the people who put me here, right?
So, you know, when it comes to these massive mammoth constantly revised legislative laws or bills or regulations...
Nobody ever rates them all the way through before they're passed because, as I said, they're being amended and printed and all the way through the night before the morning of the voting.
And the only thing that people care about is that their own corner that is paying off the people who put them there, that that part, this is why you get these huge ungainly bills, which I don't think is in that little how a bill becomes a law, the kind of sing-song thing, which, you know, is highly useful for us.
You think that there's some sort of singing, dancing process.
But it's like a swarming, right?
It's like a swarming. Or like a shark attack would probably be a closer metaphor, right?
That if you don't get the bite, then the bite goes to the next shark.
And so you'll bite the shark, you'll bite whoever's in the water or whatever's in the water.
And it's a real frenzy, right, that goes on.
And nobody has a clue about what the bill or the law represents as a whole.
They'll know their little bit about, does it get my guy...
$50 million or immunity from taxes or does it keep his offshore accounts okay?
Does it keep his capital gains or does it lower it or does it at least prevent it from being raised too high?
Does it impose sanctions on his competitor which he can wriggle out of?
Does it put an import duty on foreign goods so that he can raise his prices?
Or, you know, is it good for the union or is it whatever, right?
Whoever has got... The power, right?
And yeah, you're going to say, well, what about minimum wage laws and so on?
Certainly the people who give you minimum wage, who get paid minimum wages, aren't donating a lot.
Well, sure, of course. But of course, you know, minimum wage laws have nothing to do with With getting money for the poor, minimum wage laws have everything to do with paying off unions, right?
The unions want the minimum wage laws to go up so that there's less competition and so that they can justify their own raises, right?
So they say, well, look, the minimum wage went up.
We have to go up, too, right?
So all of that stuff is pushed for by unions who actually do contribute money.
There's really not a lot. I don't get a lot of minimum wage people in my office.
I don't think I would allow them in my office because, frankly, they kind of give me the creep.
So, that's sort of a thing to understand, that, you know, I'm going to get out there and I'm going to talk about what's going on in the legislature and my agenda and my desire to make the country a better place and I'll have all these highfalutin things about making the world a safer democracy and All of the claptrap nonsense garbage that spews out constantly from people like me.
It comes as easy to us as breathing.
I'm not saying I'm proud of it, but hey, a man's got to make his living, and sometimes the woman who's not too bright but with nice legs can swing a purse and make some money, and it's not that far off from me.
I'm sort of polished. I'm sort of chatty.
I'm sort of likable. I'm vaguely bright, and I'm good with language.
So that's my profession, for want of a better word.
So, you know, that's a thing, too, that people will sort of get mad at me about this sort of government, right?
But, of course, the government that you see has almost nothing to do with the government that is, right?
I mean, it's an important thing to understand.
The government that you see, the people in the ministers' conferences or the congressmen's conferences or whatever, the people that you see standing and applauding, I mean, this is just a kind of sham, right?
It's a kind of sham. We're puppets, right?
There's nothing to do with the real thing that's going on with government, which is using the police and the military to move massive amounts of money around the economy, right?
I mean, or from one group to another group or basically from you to us.
I mean, that's, you know, I've got to be frank, right?
This is sort of what's going on.
And so you're going to get all fussed about me, and of course that's the whole idea, that you get fussed about me and you don't worry about the people who are actually profiting from the Federal Reserve or whoever's printing your fiat money or the international bankers.
You want to get focused on me and whether I mispronounce a word or whether I'm smart or not or whether I... I took drugs or didn't, or whether I served in the military or didn't, or did I draft Dodge or whatever, right?
I mean, that's what you want to get focused on, and really that's sort of, I'm the shiny thing that you play with and throw away in frustration while your kidneys are removed from the back with a spoon.
So I just sort of wanted to point that out to be clear.
And so that's really the point of sort of what it is that I'm doing.
I'm more than happy to be a sort of shiny front for special interests.
It's a fun job. You get to travel, and of course people take your photo, and people think that you're very important, which is kind of cute, right?
I mean, that's... It's funny, but it's cute.
And so I just sort of wanted to have this discussion with you so that you could make an informed decision, right?
I mean, it's like the Viagra commercials or whatever, the weird purple pills that you don't know what the hell they do.
I just sort of wanted to go over this in the interest of full disclosure.
So that you could make an informed decision about whether or not you want to participate in this kind of funny slave theater.
And if you don't, whether or not you feel that you have somehow to blame for the problems in the country will of course be up to you.
Everyone can do whatever the heck they want as far as that goes.
But I'm not sure...
That it would make a whole lot of sense to not at least go forward With the understanding of what's really going on so that you can make better decisions and have a clearer understanding of what is going on in the world around you and what politics really is all about.
And that, of course, will help you to stay the course, to stay with the program.
And we couldn't be happier about that particular outcome.
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