Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Kavanaugh hearings expose Deep State’s corrupt 2-Party System



“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.” ~ John Adams

The confirmation hearings to seat Brett Kavanaugh on the highest court in America have awakened a sleeping giant.  The hearings to seat the highly partisan, ultra-right wing Federalist Society’s choice for a life-long position on the high court sent the two corrupt parties scurrying to their partisan sides bracing for a brutal fight on behalf of the billionaire, campaign contributors they serve.

The credible charges of sexual assault during the 1980’s brought against Kavanaugh by a high school acquaintance have ripped a scab off the wounds of sexual assault victims, both male and female who have buried their horrific memories for decades.  Unfortunately for years and especially during the 1980’s, the victims of sexual assault were shamed into silence.  The Kavanaugh hearings have unearthed those latent wounds and shown the bright klieg lights on America’s hidden shame of marginalizing sexual assault thus ripping the nation apart. 

During the testimony by Ford and Kavanaugh, the two-parties’ politically charged reactions to the allegations and their often times flippant and hostile treatment of the witnesses served only to further enrage people on all sides of the spectrum.  Partisan talk radio and cable bobble heads spewed intentionally inaccurate talking points contrived in various stink tanks for utmost emotional outrage to sway the public to their respective sides causing even deeper division in the nation.

We no longer have a functioning government and all positions that are filled through the confirmation process are filled by equally corrupt, partisan hacks.   The two-party system is unresponsive to the American people and serves only the globalists who installed them in power.  Following the Supreme Court’s partisan decisions in Citizens United and in repealing Civil Rights Era laws enacted to protect the rights of minorities, money has flooded into the electoral process drowning out the voices of the people. 

The two-parties cower in fear of the very intelligence agencies they are constitutionally required to monitor and rein in.  The behemoth Homeland Security Agency that they created is an extraconstitutional monster that has irreparably destroyed the American form of self-government.  I fear it may be too late and too far gone for America to survive, but then again that was the plan all along. 

The Kavanaugh hearings have revealed the ugly reality that the two parties are not interested in vetting nominees sent to them, not by the President but by various stink tanks with a preordained agenda to further destroy the American system of government.  The parties dutifully take their sides, sparring for the cameras and then in the end confirm the highly compromised individual before them on behalf of their financial benefactors. 

It is all a grotesque show, a display that is designed to tell the American people “f” you, we don’t serve you, we don’t care about you, we will do whatever we are told to do by our overlords in spite of you.  Is it any wonder that people in America and the world are clamoring for a populist agenda, something the two parties abhor? 

The people overwhelmingly support social programs, clean air and clean water, safe food and products, safe infrastructure, regulated banks, good paying jobs, decent educational opportunity and healthcare for all.  These are all things that the majority on the high court seeks to destroy.  In the end it doesn’t matter, the politicians serve only their corporate and financial overlords.  There is no difference between the parties.  From Caitlin Johnstone at Consortium News:


Excerpt:

Extremists Unite to Diss Populism as Threat to Democracy

If there’s one thing that brings a tear to my eye, it’s the inspiration I feel when watching Republican-aligned neoconservatives and Democrat-aligned neoconservatives find a way to bridge their almost nonexistent differences and come together to discuss the many, many, many, many, many, many many many things they have in common.

In a conference at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, “Resistance” leader and professional left-puncher Neera Tanden met with Iraq-raping neocon Bill Kristol to discuss bipartisanship and shared values. While leprechauns held hands and danced beneath candy rainbows and gumdrop Reaper drones, the duo engaged in a friendly, playful conversation with the event’s host in a debate format which was not unlike watching the Pillsbury Doughboy have a pillow fight with himself in a padded room after drinking a bottle of NyQuil.

To get the event started, the host whose name I refuse to learn asked the pair to discuss briefly what common ground such wildly different people could possibly share to make such a strange taboo-shattering dialogue possible.

“Issues around national security and believing in democratic principles as they relate to foreign policy,replied Tanden. “And opposing authoritarianism, and opposing the kind of creeping populism that undermines democracy itself...”

Kristol co-signed Tanden’s anti-populist rhetoric and her open endorsement of neoconservative foreign policy, and went on to say that another thing he and Tanden have in common is that they’ve both served in government. That makes you realize that nothing’s black and white and everything’s kinda nebulous and amorphous so it doesn’t really matter if you, say for example, help deceive your country into a horrific blunder that ends up killing a whole lot of people for no good reason…

“I do think if you’ve served in government… that you do have somewhat more of a sense of the complexity of things, and many of its decisions are not black and white, that in public policy there are plusses and minuses to most policies,” Kristol said. “There are authentic disagreements both about values, but also just about how certain things are gonna work or not work… and that is what adds a kind of humility to one’s belief that one is kind of always right about everything.”

I found this very funny coming from the man who is notoriously always wrong about everything, and I’d like to point out that “complexity” is a key talking point that the neoconservatives who’ve been consistently proven completely wrong about everything are fond of repeating.

Everything’s complicated and nothing’s really known and it’s all a big blurry mess so maybe butchering a million Iraqis and destabilizing the Middle East was a good thing. Check out this short clip of John Bolton being confronted by Tucker Carlson about what a spectacular error the Iraq invasion was for a great example of this:




I listened to the whole conference, but it was basically one long smear of amicable politeness which was the verbal equivalent of the color beige, so I had difficulty tuning in. Both Tanden and Kristol hate the far left (or as those of us outside the U.S. pronounce it, “the center”), both Tanden and Kristol hate Trump, and hey maybe Americans have a lot more in common than they think and everyone can come together and together together togetherness blah blah.

At one point Kristol said something about disagreeing with internet censorship, which was weird because his Weekly Standard actively participates in Facebook censorship as one of its authorized “fact checkers”.  

The buzzword “bipartisan” gets used a lot in U.S. politics because it gives the illusion that whatever agenda it’s being applied to must have some deep universal truth to it for such wildly divergent ideologies to set aside their differences in order to advance it. But what it usually means is Democrat neocons and Republican neocons working together to inflict new horrors upon the world.

America’s two mainstream political parties agree furiously with one another on war, neoliberalism, Orwellian surveillance, and every other agenda which increases the power and profit of the plutocratic class which owns them both. The plutocrat-owned mass media plays up the differences between Democrats and Republicans to hysterical proportions, when in reality the debate over which one is worse is like arguing over whether a serial killer’s arms or legs are more evil.

Neera Tanden and Bill Kristol are the same fucking person. They’re both toxic limbs on the same toxic beast, feeding the lives of ordinary people at home and abroad into its gaping mouth in service of the powerful. And populism, which is nothing other than support for the protection of common folk from the powerful, is the only antidote to such toxins. Saying populism undermines democracy is like saying democracy undermines democracy.

Amen, I now know why Caitlin Johnstone is fast becoming my favorite writers.  The Kavanaugh hearings are just a side show to lull the American people into believing there is a vetting process for justices who serve on the highest court for the rest of their lives.  There’s not.  The justices are selected for their past service to the Deep State and unwavering fealty.  Laughingly we are told these partisans are “contextualists” they are “conservatives” or even “Constitutionalists” when they are anything but.

“Blind party loyalty will be our downfall. We must follow the truth wherever it leads.”
~ DaShanne Stokes

Anyone from either party who questions the character or judicial temperance of the candidate is shot down and minimalized for even questioning the motives of the stink tank selected lackey as Republican Justin Amash found out.  From The Hill:


Excerpt:

GOP Rep. Amash slams Kavanaugh on government surveillance rulings
  
Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) on Monday called President Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh a “disappointing pick,” ripping the judge’s past rulings on surveillance issues.  The congressman cited a 2015 opinion written by Kavanaugh while serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, that found “the Government’s metadata collection program is entirely consistent with the Fourth Amendment.”

Amash disagreed with that ruling, saying it creates “a rubber stamp for the executive branch.”  “Future decisions on the constitutionality of government surveillance of Americans will be huge. We can’t afford a rubber stamp for the executive branch,” Amash tweeted.  He also included a quote from Kavanaugh’s opinion in the case, stating “that critical national security need outweighs the impact on privacy occasioned by this program.”

Kavanaugh had written the concurring opinion in 2015, rejecting a request to rehear a case on whether the National Security Agency’s program on warrantless phone metadata collection was legal.  Trump on Monday tapped Kavanaugh to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.  Conservatives have largely applauded the appointment, while some prominent Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), have vowed to oppose the pick.

Amash is not the only GOP lawmaker to have been critical of Kavanaugh's past rulings.  Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) has also been a critic of some of Kavanaugh's past rulings on surveillance.   After the announcement of Kavanaugh as the nominee Monday, Paul said he would review the pick with “an open mind.”

When Senator Rand Paul says he will view the nominee with “an open mind” he means he will toe the line.  What kind of “open mind” must you have to consider voting to put someone who defies the Constitution of the United States on the Supreme Court for the rest of his life?  Judge Napolitano succinctly described Kavanaugh’s anti-Constitution rulings on the court he serves.

 
There are many, many reasons to reject Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, and many, many questions that should be asked by the two parties, but won’t be asked, not by Republicans and not by Democrats.  Why won’t they at least ask?  From Mother Jones:


Excerpt:

The Many Mysteries of Brett Kavanaugh’s Finances
Who made the down payment on his house? How did he come up with $92,000 in country club fees?

Before President Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, he had a lot of debt. In May 2017, he reported owing between $60,004 and $200,000 on three credit cards and a loan against his retirement account. By the time Trump nominated him to the high court in July 2018, those debts had vanished.

Overall, his reported income and assets didn’t seem sufficient to pay off all that debt while maintaining his upper-class lifestyle: an expensive house in an exclusive suburban neighborhood, two kids in a $10,500-a-year private school, and a membership in a posh country club reported to charge $92,000 in initiation fees. His financial disclosure forms have raised more questions than they’ve answered, leading to speculation about whether he’s had a private benefactor and what sorts of conflicts that relationship might entail.

No other recent Supreme Court nominee has come before the Senate with so many unanswered questions regarding finances. That’s partly because many of Kavanaugh’s predecessors were a lot richer than he is. Chief Justice John Roberts, for instance, had been making $1 million a year in private practice before joining the DC Circuit as a judge.

The poorer nominees had debts, but explainable ones, such as the $15,000 Sonia Sotomayor owed to her dentist. Neil Gorsuch came the closest to financial scandal when he disclosed that he owned a mountain fishing lodge in Colorado with two men who are top deputies to the billionaire Philip F. Anschutz, who had championed Gorsuch’s nomination.

Kavanaugh’s finances are far more mysterious. During his confirmation hearing last week, he escaped a public discussion of his spending habits because no senator asked about it. But on Tuesday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent Kavanaugh 14 pages of post-hearing follow-up questions, many of which involved his finances. On Thursday, Kavanaugh supplied answers, but he dodged some of the questions and left much of his financial situation unexplained.

A number of the questions Whitehouse sent Kavanaugh dealt with the house he bought in tony Chevy Chase, Maryland, in 2006 for $1.225 million. Kavanaugh would have needed $245,000 in cash for the traditional 20 percent down payment on the house. But in 2005, when his nomination to the DC Circuit was pending, Kavanaugh reported a total net worth to the Senate of about $91,000, which reflected a mere $10,000 in the bank and $25,000 in credit card debt. According to his financial disclosure forms before and after the purchase of his house in 2006, Kavanaugh’s liquid assets and bank balances never totaled more than $65,000, and those balances didn’t decline after the purchase of the house…

Other questions from Whitehouse addressed Kavanaugh’s unusual debt history. Not long after Trump nominated him, the Washington Post reported that since joining the DC Circuit Court of Appeals as a judge in 2006, Kavanaugh had run up a significant amount of debt that often appeared to exceed the value of his cash and investment assets. His debts on three credit cards, as well as a loan against his retirement account, totaled between $60,000 and $200,000 in 2016, according to his financial disclosure forms. The next year, his debts vanished…

The White House didn’t fully address how Kavanaugh managed to incur all that debt and pay it off in a matter of months on his federal judge’s salary of $220,600 a year. (His wife left the workforce in 2010 and returned in 2015, when she took a part-time, $66,000-a-year job as the town manager in their village of 225 homes.)…

(Kavanaugh worked in private practice for only about three years, in between stints at the office of the independent counsel during the Clinton administration.)…  (Kavanaugh had a privileged, private-school upbringing as the son of a Washington lobbyist for the cosmetics industry and a state prosecutor.)…

The White House has worked hard to frame Kavanaugh as a mainstream fellow who, just like ordinary American dads, loves sports and drives the carpool. Publicly disclosing the extent to which his parents or in-laws may be subsidizing his high-end lifestyle could probably undermine that portrayal.

Hmm, “no other recent Supreme Court nominee has come before the Senate with so many unanswered questions regarding finances.”  The only justice that came close was the Federalist Society’s nominee “Neil Gorsuch” who was championed by billionaire “Philip F. Anschutz” whose two deputies own a mountain fishing lodge along with Gorsuch in Colorado.  That seems really “fishy” to me.  Who is this billionaire Anschutz who championed Gorsuch?  Well according to an article in Salon:

“Anschutz, whose business empire ranges from real estate and telecommunications to railroads and oil and gas, is first known to have been connected to Gorsuch in the early 2000s, when Gorsuch represented both Anschutz and his companies as an outside counsel from the firm Kellogg Huber, according to The New York Times. Given Anschutz's ownership of conservative publications like The Weekly Standard and The Washington Examiner, it is quite likely that he shares a sense of ideological kinship with Gorsuch, who has long been on the conservative end of the political spectrum.”

Interesting that Anschultz owns the conservative rag “The Weekly Standard” home to the “Iraq-raping neocon” Bill Kristol.  Anschultz’ Weekly Standard has been hired by Facebook to censor its content.  That is what our Supreme Court has become, it’s truly disgraceful: 

With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective, toward which all their deceit is directed, is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection. ~ Henry A. Wallace

So how well does the Supreme Court work when it’s packed with justices whose life-long seats on the high court were bought by billionaires with cases slotted to come before it?  Is the court truly nonpartisan calling balls and strikes fairly?  From Chuck Baldwin at Lew Rockwell:

Excerpt:

He Blew It!

Donald Trump was elected President on the promise that he would drain the swamp and dismantle the Deep State. And many conservatives and Christians thoroughly believe that Trump is actually doing what he promised. But is he? I think not.

Donald Trump had one chance to prove that he was serious about draining the swamp and dismantling the Deep State. ONE CHANCE. That one chance was his first two years in office. AND HE BLEW IT.

Trump appointed more Deep State CFR members and Bilderbergers (including Neil Gorsuch, James Mattis, John Bolton, et al.) to his administration than Barack Obama. And don’t be taken in by all of the political bickering surrounding Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

The conservatives’ defense of Kavanaugh is as irrelevant as the liberals’ accusations against Kavanaugh…  In addition (and more relevant to the 9/11 discussion), Trump brought Deep State warlock, Rudy Giuliani, to the White House. As Mayor of New York City, Giuliani, more than any other single individual, provided cover for the real attackers of 9/11 by overseeing the massive effort of destroying the evidence from that horrific crime scene.

Rudy Giuliani is the quintessential Deep State operative. The criminals who masterminded and carried out the 9/11 attacks could not have succeeded without the help of Rudy Giuliani. He was a major player in 9/11. Yet, Trump brings this conscienceless Deep State puppet into the White House and gives him one of the most trusted positions in his government.

Had Trump been serious about draining the swamp and dismantling the Deep State, he would have begun immediately after being inaugurated exposing the major Deep State players from both parties (including the Clintons, Bushes, Dick Cheney, Giuliani, Michael Chertoff, etc.) and from the alphabet agencies that have millions of skeletons (literally) in their bloody closets. But instead of exposing them, Trump continued to cover for them or even HIRE them.

But instead of hiring Deep State toadies like Giuliani, Trump should have created an independent commission to thoroughly investigate 9/11. If he had been serious about dismantling the Deep State, that is exactly what he would have done. But he didn’t; and he won’t. He won’t because Trump is determined to keep the crimes of the Deep State covered up…

From this point on, it doesn’t matter to a tinker’s dam what Trump does or doesn’t do, as he has proven that he either didn’t mean a word he said while campaigning or didn’t have the man stuff to actually follow through with what he promised. From now on, Trump will be simply dancing the famous Potomac Two-Step all over Washington, D.C…

Folks, let this sink in: the Deep State has nothing to do with partisan politics. It has nothing to do with the entire left-right political wrangling, name calling, posturing, etc., that consumes the mainstream media. All of that is nothing but public theater to distract the American people from what is really going on—OR NOT going on.

Donald Trump had one chance to prove he was serious about draining the swamp and dismantling the Deep State: his first two years in office. And the 17th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks serves as just another reminder that HE BLEW IT!..

We have been bamboozled, folks. Everything we’ve been told about 9/11 and the “War on Terror” is a big fat LIE…  

If enough of the American people could come to grips with the truth about 9/11 and the “War on Terror,” it would change the course of history, save thousands and even millions of lives and, yes, save our republic. As it is, the deception of 9/11 and the “War on Terror” envelops both political parties in Washington, D.C., including Donald Trump—and even America’s pastors and churches.

Sad, but true.  There are VERY FEW in our government that give a rip about the American people.  Most are there to perpetuate the myth of 911 and to protect the perpetrators embedded in our government as well as other governments.  There is one bright light in the congress and that is Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.  Whitehouse knows that Kavanaugh hearing is a sham.  Excerpts from Whitehouse’s openingstatement before the Kavanaugh hearing.


Excerpt:

Whitehouse Reveals Kavanaugh’s Pro-Corporate, Right-Wing Record in SCOTUS Hearing Opener

Washington, DCAt today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) pinpointed Kavanaugh’s troubling bias in favor of right-wing and corporate interests throughout his career in Republican politics and on the federal bench, and compared Kavanaugh’s partiality to the same bias that has taken root in Chief Justice John Roberts’s Supreme Court…

A review of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence during the Roberts Era reveals that in the most controversial and salient civil casesthose decided by bare 5–4 or 5–3 majoritieswhen the right wing of the Court has voted en bloc to form the majority, they do so to advance far-right and corporate interests a striking 92 percent of the time.

In those cases, the “Roberts Five”Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Anthony Kennedy, and Justice Antonin Scalia (replaced last year by Justice Neil Gorsuch)have reliably voted in lockstep to help Republicans win elections, to protect corporations from liability, to abridge civil rights, and to advance the far right social agenda.

A review of Brett Kavanaugh’s jurisprudence on the D.C. Circuit reveals that in the most controversial and salient civil casesthose decided by bare 2–1 majoritieswhen Kavanaugh is in the majority with another Republican-appointed judge, he votes to advance far-right and corporate interests a striking 91 percent of the time…

Further, in these cases, the Roberts Five has endorsed the positions advanced by the high-profile conservative groups the Chamber of Commerce, the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, and the Washington Legal Foundation 100 percent of the time. In its 5–4 decisions, the Roberts Five have opened up the doors for dark money to flood the political system, rolled back important voting rights and environmental protections, and made it easier for employers to discriminate against their employees…

An examination of District of Columbia Court of Appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s written opinions reveals that he sided with conservative amici curiae (“friends of the court”) 91 percent of the time. In these cases, Kavanaugh wrote opinions limiting collective bargaining rights, letting polluters pollute, blurring the line between the separation of church and state, protecting corporations from liability, and expanding the scope of the Second Amendment…

When the Roberts Five saddles up, THESE SO-CALLED CONSERVATIVES ARE ANYTHING BUT JUDICIALLY CONSERVATIVE.  They readily overturn precedent, toss out statutes passed by wide bipartisan margins, and decide on broad constitutional issues they need not reach. Modesty, originalism, stare decisis, all these supposedly conservative judicial principles, all have the hoof prints of the Roberts Five all across their backs, wherever those principles got in the way of wins for the Big Republican interests.

The litany of Roberts Five decisions explains why big Republican interests want Kavanaugh on the Court so badly that Republicans trampled so much Senate precedent to shove him through; so let’s review the litany…

Here’s how the rigged game works: big business and partisan groups fund the Federalist Society, which picked Gorsuch and now Kavanaugh...  big business and partisan groups fund the Judicial Crisis Network, which runs dark-money political campaigns to influence Senators in confirmation votes, as they’ve done for Gorsuch and now Kavanaugh. Who pays millions of dollars for that, and what their expectations are, is a deep dark secret…

The sad fact is that there is no consequence for telling the Committee fairy tales about stare decisis, and then riding off with the Roberts Five, trampling across whatever precedent gets in the way of letting those Big Republican interests keep winning 5–4 partisan decisions.

Every. Damned. Time.

Well not to worry America, we have an opposition party of fighters.  The Democrats are going to join together as a bloc and stop the confirmation of another right-wing, partisan hack with an anti-Constitution agenda.  The people have a Constitutional warrior in the Democratic Party, there will be no backing down.  From SplinterNews:


Excerpt:

DNC Chair Gives the Thumbs-Up to Any Democrats Who Might Vote for Kavanaugh

There is absolutely no reason—political, moral, strategic, you name it—for any Democrat to vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. There are plenty of good reasons for Democrats to vote against Kavanaugh, starting with the very basic one that a far-right partisan who has been credibly accused of multiple incidents of sexual assault should not be let anywhere near the Supreme Court.

It’s also pretty stupid, when your party is trying to harness the energy of a hyper-mobilized base fueled by women and people of color, to have members of your party stick their necks out for a man who has become the ultimate symbol of elite, white, patriarchal anger and entitlement.

But don’t tell that to Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez! In an onstage interview with Wall Street Journal reporter Reid Epstein at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin on Friday, Perez was asked whether he thought it was acceptable for a Democrat to vote for Kavanaugh. After some hemming and hawing, he finally gave his answer: sure!..

Again! Let me stress! At this point, voting against Brett Kavanaugh should be the most basic thing possible for anyone calling themselves a Democrat! This was true before his Senate hearing, but voting to confirm him after that hellish frenzy of male disgust at the mere idea of female power should get you run out of town instantly! When you say that it’s fine for Democrats to back him, you are saying that the rage and anguish and fear that people—especially women—feel about his potential confirmation is meaningless to you! This is not complicated!!!

As long as Democrats like Tom Perez keep selling out their voters like this, they will keep sending the message that there is no reason to trust them with anything.

The confirmation hearings to seat Brett Kavanaugh on the highest court in America for the rest of his life have awakened a sleeping giant.  While the American people clamor for a populist agenda, the corrupt two-parties continue to pursue unending war as they allow America to disintegrate and fall into disrepair and neglect.   We no longer have a functioning government and all positions that are filled through the confirmation process are filled by equally corrupt, politically partisan hacks.  

The two-party system is corrupt and unresponsive to the American people and serve only the globalists who installed them in our government.  The government that rules us is not elected by the people, it is elected by money.  The awakened Sleeping Giant can’t find its way out of the darkness that has enveloped the world while he slept. 

Unless in the unlikely event Donald Trump withdraws Kavanaugh’s nomination he will be confirmed.  The Supreme Court is already tainted and horribly corrupted just like the rest of our government.  For America there are no do-overs, no atonement for the sins of the two-party system, just the continued death knoll for “of, by and for the people government.”  I fear it is too late for the American people, but I must believe that our Democracy can withstand this fascist takeover.  God, I hope so.




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