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US Politics: Out in the Cold


DMC

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7 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

You're correct, but the number is not what you think it is. Most of the people who identify as independent vote along a party line, and 'true' independents are about 10%. 

Not only that (which is a basic fact it's not clear Schultz understands), but in terms of party ID the number of Independents have ranged from 33-37% since 2009.  This isn't something new.

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15 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

It's awesome that the Democrats' desire to reinstate higher taxes on the wealthy, which still come nowhere near Eisenhower tax levels, and expand public health care and education are somehow "hard left" and comparable to the "genocide lite" agenda of the Republican Party.

Oh wait - it's the green new deal, isn't it? That's the super scary thing. 

Nah. It's the 70% tax on super rich people. 

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Like how even Bloomberg's response to Warren's proposal devolved into something like this:

Billionaires are terrified that the vast majority of the public and the electorate wants them to pay substantially more taxes.  And they act like their opposition is representing some "silent majority?"  GTFO.

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2 hours ago, Lollygag said:

The R's went hard right (genocide-lite!) and now the D's look to hopefully go hard left. People in the middle do exist and now they've no place to go. What could be expected? The extremes are allowed their extremist candidates (they really are), but moderates/centrists/independents are supposed to sit in the corner and shut up? Neither wants moderates/centrists/independents/swing voters, whatever. Base only. Message is crystal clear. 

Add to that, the number of people id-ing as independent/non-affiliated has been growing for some time. 40%ish now, I believe. There's an increasing number of fiscal conservatives/social liberals and they've been increasingly uncomfortable in their respective lesser evil for a long time as the Rs have moved socially whatever's to the right of conservative, fiscally astronomically hypocritical, and now the Ds are going hard left and toting things like the deficit is a-ok and it's totally ok even if it hits the Moon. Criticizing them or not liking them really, really hard won't make them go away and stop being inconvenient.

If the Ds keep going left, he won't be the only independent unless they organize. And they might. The more crazy the Rs look, the farther left the Ds go only makes it more certain. A socially liberal person won't go Trump and a fiscally conservative person won't go far left, at least in this current environment. So...what? As for throwing the vote, to a centrist, the hard left move of the Ds looks just as dangerous to getting Trump elected. The throwing the vote accusation goes both ways. We'll see who's right in time. 

As for Schultz, it's the Trump model all over again. Identify a disenfranchised part of the electorate which is large enough in size, tell them what they want to hear, have the resources to make it happen, and then move in with your own agenda. D's are leaving the door wide open for any opportunist to come in and preach fiscal conservatism and social liberalism and they're opening it wider all of the time. After Trump got elected, how could they resist? 

If the D's think they can get more votes by moving left and picking up people who typically don't vote at the cost of alienating the middle, that's a choice. A risky one. But it still has consequences like Schultz coming in as an independent when the movement has been growing quietly for some time, and more loudly since Trump. The Rs hard right move combined with a simultaneous hard left move may have just lit a fire under a third party/independent movement - if D's keep this hard left preference. 

And after saying Trump can't get elected almost daily during the last election and getting it shoved down our throats as to just how very wrong we were every time we said that, I'm not saying Schultz can or can't get elected. But stuff has changed. A lot. 

 

Kind of laughable that some people think the Ds are going hard left, when it's still that case that about half of the politicians here in our mainstream right of center party reckon they'd be Democrats if they lived in the USA. And most of the politicians in our mainstream left of center party would be in the left-wing fringe of the Democratic party. And yet, here I am still living in a largely neo-liberal, market economy. Heck even the leader of the most right-wing party in our parliament was hoping for a Hillary Clinton win in 2016.

The R's haven't only lurched themselves to the right, they've lurched the entire US political spectrum to the right. 

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House panel set to kick off debate on presidential tax returns

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/31/house-panel-set-to-kick-off-debate-on-presidential-tax-returns-1140794

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But the hearing is likely to also touch on the Ways and Means Committee’s efforts to acquire and release Trump’s returns through current legal channels. Trump broke with four decades of precedent in 2016 when he refused to divulge his tax returns, citing ongoing audits, after at first saying he would disclose them.

Democrats vowed to seek Trump’s returns if they took over the House, and some progressives have been pressing Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) to be more aggressive in his efforts.

Neal, as chairman of a congressional tax committee, has the power to access anyone’s tax returns under a century-old law that’s rarely been invoked. But Neal has also consistently said that the committee should move methodically, because the administration is almost certain to mount a legal challenge to any attempt to acquire Trump’s returns.

 

 

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You really don't get to condemn racist and homophobic attacks that you willingly and purposely set in motion with your rhetoric. You own these brown-shirts, asshole.

 

Trump condemns 'horrible' attack on actor Jussie Smollett

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/31/trump-condemns-attack-jussie-smollett-1140398
 

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President Donald Trump on Thursday called the attack on “Empire” star Jussie Smollett “horrible,” condemning the assault by individuals who the actor alleged referenced the president’s campaign slogan as they attacked him.

Smollett, who is black and openly gay, was attacked in Chicago just after 2:30 a.m. Tuesday, the Chicago Tribune reported, by two people who also poured an unknown chemical substance on the actor and wrapped a rope around his neck before fleeing the scene. The two assailants also allegedly yelled racial and homophobic slurs during the attack.


Police are investigating the episode as a potential hate crime.

“It doesn’t get worse, as far as I’m concerned,” Trump said of the attack during an Oval Office exchange with the White House press pool on Thursday.

Smollett told detectives that as the attackers wrapped the rope around his neck — which a friend of the actor described as a noose — they yelled, “This is MAGA country,” the Tribune reported. Trump did not comment on the alleged reference to his campaign slogan

 

.

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I remember when AOC came out with the 70 percent rate proposal I said she should have started at 90.  Now, someone basically has:

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Weeks after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., made headlines by calling for a top marginal income tax rate of 70 percent in an interview with “60 Minutes,” her fellow freshman congresswoman, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., suggested that the rich could pay even more.

“There are a few things that we can do,” Rep. Omar said in an interview with “Through Her Eyes.” “One of them, is that we can increase the taxes that people are paying who are the extremely wealthy in our communities. So, 70 percent, 80 percent, we’ve had it as high as 90 percent. So, that’s a place we can start.”

 

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1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Oh wait - it's the green new deal, isn't it? That's the super scary thing. 

Nah. It's the 70% tax on super rich people. 

It might be the green new deal depending on what is in it -- some of the ideas are probably worse for the rich than a 70% marginal tax rate for income over $10M. According to this article, we should find out sometime next week:

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Sen. Ed Markey is working with New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on a Green New Deal bill, according to Giselle Barry, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts senator.

The exact text and timing of the bill haven’t been finalized, Barry said Thursday morning. However, Axios reports that the two Democrats could introduce the legislation — aimed at addressing climate change by investing in clean-energy jobs and infrastructure — in their respective congressional chambers as soon as next Wednesday or Thursday.

Markey is (somewhat ironically) the junior Senator from MA, but he's been in Congress for over forty years. I don't know enough about Ocasio-Cortez to guess whether she is interested in something plausible or something aspirational, but I suspect Markey is going for the former. Of course, they're unlikely to get anything like this past the Republican Senate or past Trump, but it can be very useful for the 2020 elections.

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2 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

It's awesome that the Democrats' desire to reinstate higher taxes on the wealthy, which still come nowhere near Eisenhower tax levels, and expand public health care and education are somehow "hard left" and comparable to the "genocide lite" agenda of the Republican Party.

The ideas aren't the problem. They're nice. The potential consequences and execution problems are hard left. That and D's don't seem to care about the details beyond the pretty stuff and it freaks people out. There's a reason it hasn't come about yet despite how pretty it is. 

And btw, I didn't mention taxes. Varying degrees of raising taxes on the rich has broad support. 

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11 minutes ago, Altherion said:

I don't know enough about Ocasio-Cortez to guess whether she is interested in something plausible or something aspirational, but I suspect Markey is going for the former. Of course, they're unlikely to get anything like this past the Republican Senate or past Trump, but it can be very useful for the 2020 elections.

Markey's legislative history during those forty years does not suggest he'll produce something that's passable.  He was one of two names on the 2009 cap-and-trade bill that passed the House and didn't even get a vote in the Senate.

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2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I keep seeing this as an argument being made, but as far as I can tell it is entirely bullshit. The most 'hard' left choice so far has been various flavors of medicare for all, which has been a Dem platform idea in some form since 1992. Taxing the rich has been a Democrat platform choice since the 1930s or earlier. What exactly is the platform that you feel is so incredibly 'hard left'? And who is being left in the cold by this?

I think I heard healthcare for all referred to as an orphan of the New Deal or something like that so I'm under the impression that the idea is older than that. By extreme I mean highly controversial, not that it's a bad idea in itself. 

Heard taxing the rich is actually popular so I don't consider it extreme. Lots of disagreemnt on exactly what that should like, how effective it would be and how to avoid certain consequences. 

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

You're correct, but the number is not what you think it is. Most of the people who identify as independent vote along a party line, and 'true' independents are about 10%.  

I know that. I don't know what a true number would be. The articles I'm seeing miss some very important points and read like ways for the respective parties to justify to themselves why they're safe to move to the left/right. In short, they don't look at circumstances which create consistency in vote, but conclude the consistency is hidden party loyalty. Ds are also assuming that these patterns will hold with a move to the left, but we saw it collapsed somewhat when the Rs moved right. If the circumstances change, to some unknown degree, the votes will change. I think it's more accurate to consider them a bit of a wildcard. The link doesn't work - have another? 

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/conservative-or-liberal-its-not-that-simple-with_us_59ea34f7e4b034105edd4e32

 

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

It will continue to make them irrelevant, as there just aren't that many of them. Even if their numbers are increasing, they still represent a pretty small minority, especially a minority whose first goal is not anything like deficit spending or social liberty. 

Are there stats on that? In my area, we're a dime a dozen and this is the group causing the Rs to shrink. Not sure if I'm in a bubble though. They're already relevant. They're running a third party candidate that people are worrying will spoil the election. People used to think the Trump block was irrelevant too. 

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

This is pure projection. He hasn't preached fiscal conservatism; he's preached no new taxes on the rich. He's mentioned he's against the deficit, but when pressed said he is not willing to commit to any plans. And on the social liberal side, he has absolutely ZERO comments on this. Not one! 

He's running as a cipher. 

Yup on projection. I don't have hard proof. But people aren't going to let a disenfranchised group go, especially after seeing what Trump did. Maybe I'm cynical. Folks seem to really want to be president. 

I'm not sure what you consider fiscal conservatism, but he's talking deficit reduction and taxes. He's pro-choice and discourages the social conservative hot button culture war issues. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/01/30/howard-schultzs-policies-reduce-debt-cut-entitlements-oppose-medicare-all-taxes-wealthy/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.956c98cc76e9

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Here are some of the policies that Schultz has promoted that he may believe can power him to the White House.

The debt is the “greatest threat” to America. The federal government’s debt burden has ballooned to $21 trillion, with debt as a share of the overall U.S. economy expected to rise to 105 percent by the end of 2029, according to a report published Monday by the Congressional Budget Office. Annual federal deficits are nearing $1 trillion, or around 4 percent of the total economy, the CBO said. That’s a historically high number, given that deficits typically fall in periods of low unemployment and economic growth, which the United States is currently experiencing.

https://www.salon.com/2019/01/30/howard-schultz-shuts-down-meghan-mccains-abortion-complaint-culture-wars-are-a-distraction/

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"But there's also a culture war raging in this country," McCain responded to Schultz. "So, like a question I thought is: Did you support Brett Kavanaugh becoming a Supreme Court justice?"

After responding in the negative, McCain asked Schultz what type of person he would put on the nation's highest court. Before he could even answer, McCain tagged on a second question, "Pro-life?"

"Well no," Schultz answered, explaining "I'm a pro-choice person."

"But these are culture wars," McCain said. "Like, you've already lost me. I'm really pro-life. So like –"

"I shouldn't lose you," Schultz interjected.

"Which lane are you going on?" McCain responded.

"This is the problem: We should be able to disagree on those kinds of issues and yet come together on what's most important for the country," Schultz said.

"But being conservative and my conservative pro-life values are very important to me," McCain said. "And you're trying to win over, I assume, a lot of Republicans, and there are just some issues we're not going to meet in the middle on. It's why we have been a two-party system since 1865 since the Whigs. "

Schultz then grasped hold of the conversation by explaining to McCain that the most important thing facing the U.S. right now was neither abortion or any other "culture war" issue. As it turned out, the very GOP talking points she had just recycled had hampered their ability to get to the meat of the issue.

"The most important thing facing the country right now is answering the question in the affirmative, and that is: Do we believe that our children and our grandchildren are going to have a better life than we do?" Schultz asked. "And most Americans today believe that is not the case, and that is unacceptable to me. So I want to do everything I can to restore a sense of financial security and a real belief in the promise of the country."

 

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Here's the problem. Let's assume that there are, bizarrely, a perfect number of independents of 40% or so that will literally change their vote most of the time. And let's say that all of them - again, totally bizarrely - prefer fiscal conservatism and social liberal policies like this mythical version of Schultz happens to promote. (he doesn't, but again, we'll assume this). The problem is that even WITH that, he still loses.

Because states aren't 30/30/40. They are very different, and for the most part those differences heavily favor the parties. 

Take, for example, California. Right now, California is arguably heavily blue. Even if you take 20% out of each side, you end up with something like a 50/40/10 split. Independents aren't going to win that. That goes for most of the heavy blue states. 

Same is true for the red states. You might get Texas - but that's it. If you simply take every state that is not heavy blue, or heavy red, you are left with 212 Dem, 199 independent, and 127 red. 

Remember, this is the BEST outcome you've got - that somehow you come in second, and you get the House to choose who wins. 

You're assuming the goal is to win in a traditional sense. I'm cynical and yes, I think Schultz may well be capitalizing on the Trump model. It fits and if it's not him another's gonna try it if they can. But the people supporting him aren't. There was no big push for a third party which perfectly reflected fiscally conservative/socially liberal before Trump. Both parties have forced this group into choices of varying degrees of fiscal yahooism, someone who's toeing the line of genocide, and now, the furthest of the left if the Ds pass on the centrists and it looks like they are. There's also a strong distrust of extremes on either side (seriously - read more on what Schultz is selling). Who do you think keeps government divided? Not the staunch party loyalists on either side. 

A Schultz loss which forces no one to get the majority electoral college vote results in Trump going out, Dems get their far left candidate who the middle really doubts can get Trump out but they're in with a strong warning to be more responsible with the progressive agenda (lots in the middle like the progressive type things like Medicare for all, etc, there's just deep distrust that they can actually accomplish that and the unicorns that fart rainbows type-message doesn't help), and both parties get a major smackdown for trying to pretend the middle doesn't exist and this stupid idea of both parties throwing in totally (becoming enslaved in the R's case) with their most extreme elements comes back in check. The middle has a place to go again. That's a win. 

 

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1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Kind of laughable that some people think the Ds are going hard left, when it's still that case that about half of the politicians here in our mainstream right of center party reckon they'd be Democrats if they lived in the USA. And most of the politicians in our mainstream left of center party would be in the left-wing fringe of the Democratic party. And yet, here I am still living in a largely neo-liberal, market economy. Heck even the leader of the most right-wing party in our parliament was hoping for a Hillary Clinton win in 2016.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democrats-and-their-voters-have-lurched-left-as-2020-nears-theyre-betting-the-rest-of-the-country-follows/2019/01/22/ba2e9800-1b55-11e9-9ebf-c5fed1b7a081_story.html?utm_term=.4df6fdf80b7e

Dems have gone left. By quite a bit. It's a mainstream view for good reason even if you don't agree. 

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For years, Democratic presidential candidates have been skittish about taking positions that were considered too liberal, for fear of scaring off moderates and independent voters. That caution seems to be gone, along with soul-searching about making explicit appeals to conservative voters.

 

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

The R's haven't only lurched themselves to the right, they've lurched the entire US political spectrum to the right. 

Trump is locked into a minority approval rating and a lot of the D's victory was Trump protest votes. Not sure where you're coming from that the entire spectrum has shifted right. 

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5 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

Trump is locked into a minority approval rating and a lot of the D's victory was Trump protest votes. Not sure where you're coming from that the entire spectrum has shifted right. 

He's talking about this.

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28 minutes ago, DMC said:

Markey's legislative history during those forty years does not suggest he'll produce something that's passable.  He was one of two names on the 2009 cap-and-trade bill that passed the House and didn't even get a vote in the Senate.

The green new deal is guaranteed to be not passable for the next two years simply because Ocasio-Cortez is associated with it and Republicans control the Senate. The question is whether it is going to be something plausible such as that 2009 bill (which didn't get a vote in the Senate, but did have some Republican support in the House) or something radical like a federal jobs guarantee or some of the other ideas which are being bandied about.

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4 minutes ago, Altherion said:

The green new deal is guaranteed to be not passable for the next two years simply because Ocasio-Cortez is associated with it and Republicans control the Senate. The question is whether it is going to be something plausible such as that 2009 bill (which didn't get a vote in the Senate, but did have some Republican support in the House) or something radical like a federal jobs guarantee or some of the other ideas which are being bandied about.

It got 8 of 176 House GOP votes.  Nothing to write home about.  A Markey/AOC bill has a good chance of passing this House as well.  What I meant is not only will it obviously never come to anything in the GOP Senate, even if the Dems held the Senate - as they did in 2009-10 with 59-60 members - it still wouldn't even get a vote.  I doubt it will be radical, but you'll surely claim it is.

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Attack of the Fanatical Mullets

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/opinion/howard-schultz-president.html

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Why is American politics so dysfunctional? Whatever the deeper roots of our distress, the proximate cause is ideological extremism: Powerful factions are committed to false views of the world, regardless of the evidence.

Notice that I said factions, plural. There’s no question that the most disruptive, dangerous extremists are on the right. But there’s another faction whose obsessions and refusal to face reality have also done a great deal of harm.

 

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But I’m not talking about the left. Radical leftists are virtually nonexistent in American politics; can you think of any prominent figure who wants us to move to the left of, say, Denmark? No, I’m talking about fanatical centrists.

 

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8 hours ago, Lollygag said:

The R's went hard right (genocide-lite!) and now the D's look to hopefully go hard left. People in the middle do exist and now they've no place to go. What could be expected? The extremes are allowed their extremist candidates (they really are), but moderates/centrists/independents are supposed to sit in the corner and shut up? Neither wants moderates/centrists/independents/swing voters, whatever. Base only. Message is crystal clear. 

Add to that, the number of people id-ing as independent/non-affiliated has been growing for some time. 40%ish now, I believe. There's an increasing number of fiscal conservatives/social liberals and they've been increasingly uncomfortable in their respective lesser evil for a long time as the Rs have moved socially whatever's to the right of conservative, fiscally astronomically hypocritical, and now the Ds are going hard left and toting things like the deficit is a-ok and it's totally ok even if it hits the Moon. Criticizing them or not liking them really, really hard won't make them go away and stop being inconvenient.

If the Ds keep going left, he won't be the only independent unless they organize. And they might. The more crazy the Rs look, the farther left the Ds go only makes it more certain. A socially liberal person won't go Trump and a fiscally conservative person won't go far left, at least in this current environment. So...what? As for throwing the vote, to a centrist, the hard left move of the Ds looks just as dangerous to getting Trump elected. The throwing the vote accusation goes both ways. We'll see who's right in time. 

...

 

Even translated to factual positions "fiscal conservatives/social liberals" isn't where the hole is in US politics, that is where the libertarians exist.

GOP is currently "fiscal conservative"* and socially reactionary; Democrats fiscal moderates and social moderates (sweeping up a lot of the more progressive voters because those don't have anywhere else to go to); libertarians cover "fiscal conservatism"* and a very selective section of social liberty;

The potential seems to be in community-oriented fiscal moderates/social conservatives, which is where the GOP has been haemorrhaging for example immigrant votes in recent elections. Basically the US, most Anglo societies, could do with a CDU.

*fiscal conservative only the in the US political debate sense

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2 hours ago, Seli said:

GOP is currently "fiscal conservative"*

And just to be clear, although I think most everyone who is reasonably astute already knows this, a lot of this so called "fiscal conservatism" has nothing to do with maintaining a reasonable debt/GDP ratio (and by the way, if you tell me alarmingly that the debt is 21 trillion dollars or whatever, I already know you're trying to yank everyone's chain, as that number by itself is meaningless), but instead is just a cover to oppose spending on various social programs.

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24 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Radical centrists, which is who Krugman is attacking here, have been around for a very long time.  That he's attacking them for many things that have nothing to do with radical centrists betrays a certain naivete.  The radical centrists are not responsible for Howard Schultz.  Steve Schmidt and David Frum are responsible for Howard Schultz.

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3 minutes ago, DMC said:

Radical centrists, which is who Krugman is attacking here, have been around for a very long time.  That he's attacking them for many things that have nothing to do with radical centrists betrays a certain naivete.  The radical centrists are not responsible for Howard Schultz.  Steve Schmidt and David Frum are responsible for Howard Schultz.

You maybe very well right. But, he says what needs to be said about a lot of so called centrist and their so called "reasonableness" on several public policy issues. 

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