Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Cancel the cowardly WaPo and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

In after Baud. Damn.

This really is a full service blog.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

This blog will pay for itself.

Republicans don’t trust women.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Everybody saw this coming.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / This Friday’s Trump-Dump Open Thread: Sucking Up to His Master, Putin… and #Failing

This Friday’s Trump-Dump Open Thread: Sucking Up to His Master, Putin… and #Failing

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I will not stoop to being a member of any club that would have me as a member, you loser!

Reader Interactions

93Comments

  1. 1.

    Major Major Major Major

    shocker is that Italy’s populist govt has backed Trump rather than siding with Europe

    Why is it surprising that Italy’s Russia-backed, Euroskeptical populist/4chan/ratfucker coalition should back Russia?

  4. 4.

    Mai naem mobile

    I bet the moron doesn’t know that Quebec has a lot of Ukrainian Canadians. It’s just another affront from Trumpov.

  5. 5.

    Mike in NC

    Great stuff. We’ll soon be less solvent than the economies of Italy and Greece. Another “shart of the deal” from the Master Negotiator.

  7. 7.

    germy

    “If Hillary got in, Putin would be saying ‘I wish Hillary had won.'”

    ?

    What am I missing from his statement?

  9. 9.

    Brachiator

    @Major Major Major Major:

    shocker is that Italy’s populist govt has backed Trump rather than siding with Europe

    Why is it surprising that Italy’s Russia-backed, Euroskeptical populist/4chan/ratfucker coalition should back Russia?

    Yeppity yep. BBC Newshour reports, for example, have been big on the Italy/Russian connection.

    @VOR:

    The World Bank, the IMF, and the UN all agree Russia is not in the list of top 10 economies by GDP. China, India, and Brazil are ahead of Russia in all 3 lists with South Korea ahead of Russia according to two of the three bodies. The UN has Australia ahead of Russia.

    Russia is punching above its weight. If it didn’t have nukes, some powerful oligarchs and Putin, it would barely be even a regional power. It has potential and can obviously be a troublemaker, but it is not half as important as, well, as Trump thinks it is.

  10. 10.

    Felony Govt (Formerly Old Broad in California)

    I’m still trying to figure out how Shitgibbon’s followers don’t realize that he NEVER criticizes Russia and ALWAYS takes Russia’s side. How much more obvious can he be? His batshit followers either are experts at denial, or don’t follow the news at all.

  11. 11.

    Yutsano

    @Brachiator: One of the main sources of Russian power outside of its nukes and its military is the fact that it is one of the premier natural gas suppliers to Europe. And Gazprom is not afraid of leveraging that fact to get EU leaders to pay attention.

  12. 12.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    I sincerely hope Putin’s death is agonizing for what he has done. All he has accomplished is putting the world in further danger in a moment of history that it could least afford. History will not remember him fondly.

  13. 13.

    VeniceRiley

    Offtopic good news I found at phys.org, and I’m not one for touting mice studies, but this uses an already available asthma drug; so. Good news on horizon for dementia and alzheimers patients, I think. I’m not an edge lord, but I’d totally try giving zileuton to my dad if he were alive today.
    “The study is especially exciting because zileuton is already approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of asthma. “Leukotrienes are in the lungs and the brain, but we now know that in addition to their functional role in asthma, they also have a functional role in dementia,” Dr. Praticò explained.”
    https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-06-reverse-cognitive-impairments-mice-dementia.html

  14. 14.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Major Major Major Major:
    Well, Italy does have a bigger economy than Russia’s. Putin can’t build anything so he has to tear everybody else down to his level so he can be “better”. He’s a huge piece of shit.

  17. 17.

    debbie

    Drove home through a real gully washer. It wasn’t easy keeping my eye on other drivers, avoiding ponding water, AND yelling at each stupid Trump statement that was stupider than the statement before it (“I’ve been preparing all my life” “We have a world to run” “…Hillary Clinton…” “I am Russia’s worst nightmare” “It’ll be easy” and “Everyone will be happy”). A real banner day.

  20. 20.

    MikeifromArlington

    Thing about Trump is that this schtic of his worked on reality T.V. Say something then move onto the next staged scene.

    He’s not used the public scrutinize every word he says now that his audience is something other than reality T.V. fans.

  22. 22.

    Mnemosyne

    I just spent 4 hours in a room with 16 elementary school kids doing a program with this group and holy shit am I tired. Technically, it was one-on-one in a big room with other students and mentors, but I’m still pooped. No idea how teachers deal with all of that energy all day long.

  23. 23.

    jl

    I guess good news is that Trump and his merry Trumpsters are planning to blow up GOP in the midtterms just as much as post-WWII alliances and institutions.

    Trump is supporting nice long drawn out court case blowing up PPACA protections for pre-existing conditions and community ratings.
    But everyone loves medical underwriting!
    Idiot chaotic mindless Trump trade war set to start blowing up US jobs soon.
    Brilliant ‘Coal Is The Future’ set to increase energy prices.
    Trumpsters going public with plans to gut Medicare and Social Security because of budget shortfall (thanks explicitly and directly to the brilliant GOP tax plan)

    That is the best excuse for a bright side we need to consider for the midterms.

    Edit: I first misspelled ‘Coal is the future’ as ‘Cole is the future’ because, of course he is!

  24. 24.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    I have a friend who’s a Trump fan. He thinks America! is strong again, and respected in the world again, after being laughed at for years when Obama was president. When I point out that the rest of the world does not, indeed, respect us, and that they’re laughing at us, his answer is that it doesn’t matter if the rest of the world respects us. He somehow doesn’t see any contradiction there.

  26. 26.

    Brachiator

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    I have a friend who’s a Trump fan. He thinks America! is strong again, and respected in the world again, after being laughed at for years when Obama was president. When I point out that the rest of the world does not, indeed, respect us, and that they’re laughing at us, his answer is that it doesn’t matter if the rest of the world respects us.

    Great, and sad, example of the Trumper delusion.

    The rest of the world doesn’t fear or respect America or even look to the country for practical solutions. Another pundit elsewhere noted “instead of America First! its America Alone!*” How could that be a good thing.

    * except for Israel.

  27. 27.

    Mnemosyne

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    He thinks America! is strong again, and respected in the world again, after being laughed at for years when Obama was president.

    Translation: he was ashamed that a Black president represented the US in the world and did not respect the citizens who elected Obama. Now a white man is back in the Oval Office and all is white, er, right with the world again.

    I actually had racist relatives ask me flat out during the Obama years why I wasn’t embarrassed and humiliated to have a Black family in the White House, so I guarantee you this is his thinking.

  29. 29.

    Brachiator

    a couple of OT tidbits before I leave for the day.

    I’m hearing that “Hereditary” is a superior and quite scary horror movie for those of you up for it. It stars Toni Colette.

    The documentary about Mr Rogers, ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbor” is in limited relief, and is also supposed to be excellent. Bring a few tissues to wipe your eyes.

  32. 32.

    Yutsano

    @Calouste: Norway might want to accelerate getting off their economic dependency on oil and gas faster then. Losing the local market may not make getting the stuff out of the ocean floor beds worth it.

  33. 33.

    Boussinesque

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: That’s always been my private take and something I just don’t understand about the man–he has all this power, all these resources, and he focuses on making the world a worse place for everyone else rather than a better place for his own people. I’m with you on hoping that he meets a karmic end–with climate change and a host of other problems that demand our attention, we really can’t afford to be taking this detour back down white supremacist lane he seems dead-set on sponsoring.

  37. 37.

    Jay C

    @jl:

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Ask him where this phrase comes from:

    ” a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them”

    “Some wussy libtard blog??”

  38. 38.

    jl

    @rikyrah: Trump is delusional if he thinks the world will come crawling back to the US for mercy after he throws incoherent and irrational tantrums.

    Europe, and other major and emerging economies like Canada, India, Brazil, South Africa Japan and China will more likely work together to push on ahead without US.
    If we are lucky, that is what will happen. Since will be better to rejoin that coalition than risk chaos and conflict from return to competing nationalisms around the world, and try to put the pieces back together.

    What is interesting to me is reactionary corporate backing of GOPism that led to, and is in some important ways completely aligned with, Trump and Trumpism. Ten years ago the US followed its big corporate interests and turned its back on engaging with countries like India, Brazil, So. Africa, in hopes of getting everything their way. They did for a while, but looks like it is now leading to the US losing its leadership, and losing its main international sponsor for big US corporate wish list.

  39. 39.

    Brachiator

    Another OT quickie. Sad, and this exacerbates old style American racism that refuses to see nonwhite people as part of the larger republic (and this is sometimes a liberal disease as well as a conservative one). From NPR News

    A new study shows that since 2008, more white people in the United States oppose welfare programs, in part because of increasing “racial resentment.”

    One of the reasons for this opposition, according to the report, is white Americans’ perceptions that they might be losing their financial and social status while people of color make gains in those areas.

    A further example of the data analysis:

    What was the most surprising finding?

    Honestly, to me, it was this last finding. … We showed them graphs of whites’ and minorities’ income trends — and these were made up. But in the racial threat condition, we showed them [also fabricated data] that whites’ incomes were declining.

    So I would think, rationally, that you should want to support programs that benefit whites in this condition, right? But we didn’t find that. We didn’t find that they wanted to support programs that benefit whites when whites’ incomes are declining. Instead, we found they wanted to cut programs that they perceived as benefiting minorities.

    For a great part of US history, race riots were attacks on nonwhite communities, often stoked by irrational fears that nonwhite people were taking jobs that “belonged” to white people. Trump is playing this old tune hard. And the dopes are eating it up.

    Let’s hope the mid terms can help halt this madness.

  40. 40.

    Mary G

    Thread:

    I’m seeing a lot of reports about the CA primary results as inevitable, or just a result of a lot of $$ spent.They’re missing the bigger story.The story of how the grassroots pulled together to drive ASTRONOMICAL Dem turnout in these at-risk Swing Districts.THREAD (1/12)— Ethan Todras-Whitehill (@etwhitehill) June 8, 2018

    And if a 12-tweet thread is too long, just read this one:

    AND IT WORKED.Dems made the ballot in CA-39, CA-49, CA-10, and CA-48, in some cases by 1000 votes or fewer.Dem turnout in the at-risk OC districts was up 66% over 2014, while GOP turnout was down 8%.THAT DOESN’T JUST HAPPEN.(6/12)— Ethan Todras-Whitehill (@etwhitehill) June 8, 2018

  42. 42.

    lgerard

    @germy:

    “If Hillary got in, Putin would be saying ‘I wish Hillary had won.’”

    ?

    What am I missing from his statement?

    Allow me to help you with this bromide suitable for all occasions trump

    This isn’t the first time the president has made comments that seemed bizarre or ill-informed

  43. 43.

    jl

    @Jay C: Problem is that for Trump and his base, an incoherent howl that they are fed up and not going to take it anymore, is considered a overly generous decent respect to the opinions of mankind.

  45. 45.

    gene108

    @Brachiator:

    If it didn’t have nukes, some powerful oligarchs and Putin, it would barely be even a regional power.

    What makes Russia a regional power is its vast wealth of natural resources, specifically oil and natural gas

    They can use their energy resources to blackmail other countries

  47. 47.

    Mnemosyne

    @jl:

    Trump is delusional if he thinks the world will come crawling back to the US for mercy after he throws incoherent and irrational tantrums.

    To be fair, that’s what everyone else in his life has always done. He can say and do anything he wants to his family and subordinates and they’ll just suck it up and take it.

    As a narcissist, he doesn’t understand that other people may get sick of dealing with him and nope out of continuing the relationship.

  48. 48.

    Brachiator

    @Calouste:

    One of the reasons Western Europe is racing to get off natural gas (and oil) and onto renewables.

    Europe and other places prefer natural gas to oil. This adds to Russia’s advantages.

    Non-trivial real world example. Transit buses that run on natural gas are cleaner than gasoline powered buses

  50. 50.

    David Evans

    @jl:

    ” a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them “

    He would get stuck at the word “decent”.

  51. 51.

    Brachiator

    @gene108:

    What makes Russia a regional power is its vast wealth of natural resources, specifically oil and natural gas

    They can use their energy resources to blackmail other countries

    No, they have to be able to manage their resources intelligently, even in the European market. The Russian kleptocracy greatly impedes this.

    One of the reasons why China is a major economic power and Russia is not. The Communist government reins in the Chinese oligarchs better than does Russia. Chinese billionaires contribute to the growth of the economy. Russian oligarchs are thieves who just extract their share of loot.

  52. 52.

    Mandalay

    @Yutsano:

    Norway might want to accelerate getting off their economic dependency on oil and gas faster then.

    Of all matters of concern being discussed here, the future prosperity of Norway has to be near the bottom of the list. The government’s pension fund, which only started in 1998, is worth over a trillion dollars. That wealth came directly from the Norwegian government wisely investing from its majority stake in the national oil company.

    And that pension fund is growing by almost a billion dollars a week on average, in a country of just over 5 million people. Their oil and gas could disappear tomorrow and Norway would still be fine in the short term.

  54. 54.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Brachiator:
    Perhaps the US should ramp up domestic natural gas production to compete with Russia? Doing so would lesson Europe’s dependency on Russian gas exports and undercut Putin’s power. Unfortunately, this would probably lead to a lot of environmental problems and would take several years and lots of money to do so, in any case.

  55. 55.

    Brachiator

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    Perhaps the US should ramp up domestic natural gas production to compete with Russia? Doing so would lesson Europe’s dependency on Russian gas exports and undercut Putin’s power. Unfortunately, this would probably lead to a lot of environmental problems and would take several years and lots of money to do so, in any case.

    An interesting conundrum. Global warming might make it easier for Russia to tap into its mineral wealth in currently inaccessible areas.

  58. 58.

    Jay

    @Boussinesque:

    “That’s always been my private take and something I just don’t understand about the man–he has all this power, all these resources, and he focuses on making the world a worse place for everyone else rather than a better place for his own people. ”

    He’s in Russia. Russia cycled through hard Communism in the ’70’s, through failed Economic Reform/ Liberalization Lite Communism, through Collapse, Economic Looting, Gangster Capitalism, Kleptocracy, to a semi stable system of Pyramid Governance with Putin at the peak, one side, corrupt Ogliarches, one side Security Forces of the State, and a base of hackers, crackers, trolls and Russian mobs. That plus a bunch of brutal regional Civil Wars, all in roughly 30 years.

    Sadly, the Government issuing pension checks that don’t bounce, not having millions of “excess deaths” each year, having a job and being able to buy food, is an improvement.

  59. 59.

    Calouste

    @Brachiator: The Netherlands just abolished the requirement for new residential construction to be connected to the natural gas network, with a target to no longer use natural gas for residential by 2050.

    Busses are going electric. 1 in 6 busses in China already are electric.

  60. 60.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Brachiator:
    I mean it might, but that’s like saying it’s easier to get to a house’s wiring after a tornado ripped off an exterior wall and left it exposed. The house will be basically destroyed and worthless.

    The global economy will be in the shitter at that point, entire countries engulfed in war, civil or otherwise, with tens of millions of refugees. That’s the evil of Putin; he straight up just doesn’t give a fuck about humanity’s long-term future, let alone the planet’s. All he cares about is IGMFY and he’s more than willing to destroy everyone else so he’ll be the biggest asshole on block. He’s paid lip-service to climate change before but he hasn’t seemed to make any real attempts at making Russia cleaner.

    Anyway, I have no idea what natural gas deposits we have and how feasible/cost effective it would be to exploit them so that they could be used as a foreign policy tool.

  63. 63.

    jl

    @Jay: Anecdata, but when i visited Russia periodically from the Baltic countries a while back, there was a huge divide between those younger than around 40 or 45 and those older. The former were more or less like normal people you meet other places in Europe. The older ones were… I don’t know how to put it… They were very rigid and set in their ways, and seems explosively bitter about things.

    Putin is on the older side of that divide.

  64. 64.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @jl:

    The older ones were… I don’t know how to put it… They were very rigid and set in their ways, and seems explosively bitter about things.

    So like reactionary Trump supporters then?

  66. 66.

    Jay

    @Brachiator:

    Probably not, melting permafrost is bad for roads, and a warming Arctic with a lot less pack ice isn’t going to be much more hospitable when SuperStorms throw bergy bits year round.

  68. 68.

    Jay

    @jl:

    Globalization in the ‘Aughts gave a lot of younger urban Russians the ability to travel for work, school and tourism. Gave them a whole different mindset. A host of Western Companies got to tap into and entire generation of skilled Russian Grads, who couldn’t find work at home.

  69. 69.

    TenguPhule

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    Perhaps the US should ramp up domestic natural gas production to compete with Russia?

    We did that already. What happened is now the coal and oil producers are lobbying to restrict natural gas because its making them look less competitive for energy production.

  70. 70.

    TenguPhule

    @Brachiator:

    The Communist government reins in the Chinese oligarchs better than does Russia.

    Executions for corruption tend to have that effect.

  71. 71.

    Brachiator

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: Let’s see. Russia is number one in terms of proven gas reserves, followed by Iran, Qatar and the US. Russia also has 5 times the amount the US has, a huge advantage. This also puts an additional spin on Putin’s warmth towards Iran.

    The global economy will be in the shitter at that point, entire countries engulfed in war, civil or otherwise, with tens of millions of refugees.

    I believe that climate change is potentially a huge problem for the world. But I don’t know whether the bad results would be as catastrophic as some speculate.

  72. 72.

    Jay

    @Mandalay:

    Yup, and Norway also continues to take a big chunk of that Oil and Gas revinue to spend on non-Oil and Gas related Industry Sectors and Companies that massively expanded and diversified the Norweigan Economy.

    Bunch of commie Socialists

  73. 73.

    jl

    @TenguPhule: China is currently a paradox. Their political brass believes, or says that they believe, that they have adopted some kind of authoritarian managed capitalism as a way to get up to speed with high income industrialized countries on completing their ‘capitalist accumulation’ stage of economic development.

    Officially, they are a communist country doing some capitalism for a while.

  75. 75.

    TenguPhule

    @jl: @Brachiator:

    But I don’t know whether the bad results would be as catastrophic as some speculate.

    Three meals away from anarchy.

    Tracking projected international food production and transportation is…not comforting.

  76. 76.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Jay: I concur. Based, of course, on my education, training, and experience as a labor and employment lawyer. It’s going to screw things up in ways we can’t predict.

  77. 77.

    Jay

    @Steve in the ATL:

    30+ years in, and we are finding out that the “doomsday” predictions of the ’80’s were wildly understated in both timeframe and effect.

    We are seeing methane burps on sea and land, melting permafrost, ocean acidification, 1:1000 year Superstorms every few years, massive wildlife migrations 50 years early.

    By some account’s, we have already seen Global Warming fueled wars.

  78. 78.

    Brachiator

    @TenguPhule:

    Executions for corruption tend to have that effect.

    True dat. The Chinese also have a reputation for being great business people, and China has managed (or mismanaged) the mercantile power of Hong Kong.

  79. 79.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Jay: yeah, that’s bad and whatnot, but oil companies have made billions and libtards have been pissed off, so it’s all good

  80. 80.

    J R in WV

    They’re fracking around the northern parts of WV, you can’t book a hotel in the area because guys from OK and TX etc are working up here to frack new gas fields. They’re destroying family farms for drilling pads, because they need 50 acres for their stuff, and in these narrow hollers, that’s the whole usable area of most farms.

    Cole has mentioned running into giant O&G field trucks on his rural roads, being run off the road. The weight of those rigs crushes farm roads into asphalt bits embedded in clay muck.

    They also release toxic liquids into the creeks, and gaseous poisons into the air, because the state’s Department of Environmental protection’s Division of OIl and Gas is owned and operated by the state O&G businesses — I’m not kidding, the O&G association get to approve (or not) the hire of all the O&G inspectors.

    Guess how much fines are paid by O&G companies? Guess how many inspectors there are in the fracking fields? Guess how many of them care about toxic crap in the air and water? Guess what they to with the open pits they store drilling waste in? They bury them in what would have been usable top soil, until toxic waste was buried in it.

    I’m not sold on increasing the production of natural gas in the US, not unless strict environmental regulations are imposed, and enforced by people not owned and operated by the O&G companies.

    In Arizona every Walmart is roofed, so everyone get to park in the shade. The roofs are solar panels, they cover the whole parking lot, same for Home Depot, lots of commercial places. The Air Force base in Tucson has miles of solar arrays a hundred yards wide. the length of the whole AFB.

    Better than natural gas!! Windmills and storage units for dark time, solar for the rest of the day.

  82. 82.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @J R in WV:
    I was advocating increasing production of natural gas more so to cut off Russia from the EU.

    It seems that that EU countries are trying to convert to electric though. Does Europe use natural gas for heating? Making sure Russia isn’t the primary supplier of heating fuel would take away their leverage over the EU

  83. 83.

    Jeffro

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    Putin can’t build anything so he has to tear everybody else down to his level so he can be “better”. He’s a huge piece of shit.

    Hmm…sounds like someone else I know…combover, long tie, short fingers?

  85. 85.

    Jeffro

    @Major Major Major Major:

    At this point the entire Western world’s right-wing has been co-opted by Russia.

    True.

    It’s so weird to think that just a few short years ago, wars were waged and won by conquering territory. Now it’s just a matter of finding your twisted, venal, corrupt souls wherever they may be, rousing them via social media and lies, co-opting their own oligarchs and politicians who were already undermining their own society, and uniting all of them under a catchy slogan like, oh, “Make _____ Great Again”.

  87. 87.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Jeffro:

    Yeah, but Putin does it intentionally. Trump is just an ignorant, toxic fool who runs shit into the ground.

  88. 88.

    Jay

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    The issue is that shipping NG to Europe, or Asia, requires liquidification at one end, deliquidification at the other end, infrastructure that doesn’t currently exist at that scale, takes a decade to build, and consumes massive amounts of energy.

  92. 92.

    Sherparick

    @Major Major Major Major: exactly. This is what they were all in on. A combination of racism, Berlusconi (who was Trump before Trump), & the stupidity of Eurozone austerity have created a situation where Italian voters are now lunaticcs.

  93. 93.

    SmallAxe

    @J R in WV:
    Maybe in Tucson they are. I’m in Phoenix and haven’t seen a Walmart nor a Home Depot with solar panel covered parking. Great idea, not practiced as widespread as you claim though.

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