Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

The willow is too close to the house.

We still have time to mess this up!

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania.  Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

This fight is for everything.

This really is a full service blog.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

The next time the wall wtreet journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Thursday Morning Open Thread: BLAT!

Thursday Morning Open Thread: BLAT!

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Why do I imagine Pelosi & Biden looking at Eugene Bozzi’s alligator-wrangling technique and thinking ‘Not bad, for a beginner’… ?

Meanwhile, because GOP Death Cult, we’re back to talking about The Trillion-Dollar Coin…

Reader Interactions

134Comments

  3. 3.

    Baud

    Having slept on it, I would probably vote for the infrastructure bill today.  But I wouldn’t begrudge anyone for not doing so.

  5. 5.

    ArchTeryx

    Josh Marshall’s gone completely doomer on the bill.  He’s absolutely convinced Manchin and Cynema are going to sink it for no other reason but because they can (and their donors oppose it).  And since the Progressive Caucus will NOT let the skinny bill pass without the reconciliation bill, they both go down in flames… as does our chances of holding Congress in 2022.

    He’s not normally the type to go all LGM.  Maybe it’s all for nothing.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    MJ is incoherent this morning. One second it’s Dems must be tough, the other it’s that Dems must be reasonable and compromise.

    Also, too, even though $3.5 trillion polls really well, it’s too high and will hurt Dems election chances. :-\

  7. 7.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud: Further rewards the bad actors.

    I wonder if it would be useful to somehow remove all projects for AZ and WV and a certain NJ Congressional district after the vote(s). Certainly so far carrots have not worked with the bad actors.

    And just to drive home the point, have the harbor master quarantine Manchin’s party boat. While he and his guests are on it.

  10. 10.

    Betty Cracker

    1) I find the Starfish tweeter’s argument about One Coin to Rule Them All utterly compelling.

    2) Regarding man vs. gator, I’m particularly impressed by the lid-drop technique. At first, I thought he’d fucked up — “you dropped the lid too soon, man!” I thought. But the lid’s descent enraged the gator, goading it into attack mode and driving it into the can. Bravo!

    Years ago at my in-laws’ 55+ community, I once watched a group of retirees remove a gator from a lawn in similar fashion. That gator was maybe a third of the size of the one pictured above, so the feat wasn’t nearly as impressive.

    What the retirees did next was, though: they tied the trashcan containing the thrashing reptile to the golf bag holder on the back of a cart and drove it to a pond for release. Again, bravo, gents!

  13. 13.

    Ken

    This is also why my conviction that The Coin should be Big as at least sixty feet tall

    Doesn’t this risk being confused for one of Batman’s rogues gallery?

    I do like the “Debt Plus One” valuation.

  14. 14.

    Baud

    Kaine guarantees no shutdown tonight. Also no default.

    Also, apparently government workers will not lose their income because of a bill he got passed after the last shutdown.

  16. 16.

    John S.

    @Baud:

    Its fascinating that politicians who usually fixate on polling will conveniently disregard it when it suits them their corporate donors.

  17. 17.

    Baud

    @John S.:

    Yeah, that whole conversation was somewhat Twilight Zone-y.

     

    ETA: Also, the conversation wasn’t among politicians but talking heads.

  20. 20.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: Usually I’m in agreement about slandering animals with a GOP association, but gators might actually deserve it. They’re basically a brain stem attached to jaws, and they’ll grab anything they think they can take down. That said, the hides are valuable, and the tail fillets are tasty if cooked right, so they do have redeeming features Republicans lack…

  22. 22.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Kaine’s a calm guy. He was Mayor of Richmond and Governor of Virginia before he was a Senator, and that’s good experience. Virginia went from red to purple to blue during his political career. I’m not saying he was responsible, but he had his eyes open and learned.

  24. 24.

    Betty Cracker

    Might mean nothing — this happened at the Congressional baseball game, and Biden talked to lots of people. But if it’s a hint of hardball, I’m all for it:

  25. 25.

    Quinerly

    Good morning from Ridgway State Park, CO! We move on today to Navajo Lake SP and to Santa Fe on 10/1. So far it’s been a great 28 days… Especially once the heat broke after our first pass thru Durango.

    My new favorite NP?

    Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP. Spent the day there yesterday. Already planning a trip back. It was foggy and rainy when we arrived. A little snow. Dark and foreboding. Mesa Verde is beautiful but Black Canyon is like Mesa Verde’s evil sister. The Cruella de Ville of National Parks. Love this park!

  28. 28.

    Steeplejack

    @Baud:

    With you on this. Just started watching the eight o’clock replay of the six o’clock open.

    Aw, hell, no. Willie Geist just said that it might be “bad optics” for Biden to go home to Delaware this weekend. WTF.

  29. 29.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Morzer:

    @Betty Cracker: I really don’t want to think about Mitch McConnell’s … tail fillets.

    Well, he’s kinda old and dried out.  Maybe consider a younger, fresher GQPer – Cawthorn or Boebert, maybe?

  31. 31.

    Another Scott

    @Betty Cracker: There was a Twitter clip of Pelosi being quite animated talking on her cell phone in the stands.  The leadership is going to find ways to get the jobs done.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  32. 32.

    Geminid

    @Baud: A liberal Catholic, Kaine did missionary work in Central America in his younger days. His father was a metalworker.

    My Atlanta friend met him at the dedication of a portrait of the federal judge they had both clerked for. He liked Kaine, said he was a nice, decent man. My friend generally tends to be cynical about lawyers and politicians.

  33. 33.

    Skepticat

    Think of how much easier (albeit not quite as entertaining) it would have been if the sidekick with the phone had helped wrangle the gator. And think also of how much the entire endeavor looks like what happens in Congress, as the gator indeed does act like a Rethuglican. I just hope we can find a garbage can big enough for most of them.

  36. 36.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Geminid: As HRC’s VP he’d have been like the true version of what Pence claims to be: religious, concerned, etc.

    Re alligator guy: I don’t know how Floridians live with those monsters wandering around the neighborhood as if they were squirrels.

  37. 37.

    Ken

    After careful review of the video, I feel sorry for the alligator, which clearly thinks it’s being attacked by a much bigger predator with wide, gaping jaws.

  39. 39.

    Soprano2

    @OzarkHillbilly: 

    Man of the decade. What I want to know is, what did he think he was going to do with that gator once he got it in the trash can? Someone told me he released it in a pond somewhere.

  41. 41.

    WaterGirl

    I kept expecting there to be another guy with another trashcan behind the gator, so at some point the gator would back into the can behind him as he was trying to get away from the can in front of him.

  43. 43.

    Ken

    @Soprano2: what did he think he was going to do with that gator once he got it in the trash can?

    Around here, you can slip the guys on the sanitation truck twenty dollars and they’ll ignore the rules about what can be discarded.

  45. 45.

    Baud

    @Ken:

    You mind your own business for 100 million years, and suddenly some hairless apes put up a bungalow in your backyard.  Hard not to feel sorry for them.

  47. 47.

    Ken

    @Baud: Everyone on the Internet is a gator trapping expert now.

    Look how quickly we all picked up virology, immunology, and epidemiology.

  50. 50.

    Quinerly

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: great trip, but don’t want to jinx it. When we reach Santa Fe, we will have done 10 motel/hotel nights and 18 nights camping in the minivan in state and national parks. Least favorite SP.. Trinidad Lake SP, CO.

  51. 51.

    sixthdoctor

    @ArchTeryx: FWIW Marshall tweeted after posting the article (in response to ArmandoNDK) that he could be overreacting and it would be totally Manchin to issue that press release and later be on board for something like 2.75T.

    I’m definitely in the “turn off media and let it play out” because the whole thing (reconciliation, debt ceiling, shutdown) is infuriating and I do nothing with that anger than wish for painful hemorrhoid attacks.

  52. 52.

    narya

    @Quinerly: I only saw Black Canyon of the Gunnison from the overlook (and this is nearly 30 years ago . . .) and only for a few minutes. I particularly liked Death Valley, tbh. The heat almost had corporeal form. And Mesa Verde. I think we also did Zion–but that’s when my camera failed, so no pics.

  55. 55.

    Betty Cracker

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Alligators are highly protected, and my controversial opinion is that bag limits should be raised. When I was a child, they’d been hunted to near extinction and were put on the endangered species list. Now, you can’t pick up a bucket without one of those toothy fuckers popping out. I think we passed “happy medium” around 1980 or so! ///

  57. 57.

    Geminid

    @Quinerly: Alamosa is a cold and windy place in the winter! But Ft. Pickens, in the Gulf Islands National Seashore across the bay from Pensacola, is nice year ’round. A great  place to camp!

  59. 59.

    The Moar You Know

    Look how quickly they all picked up virology, immunology, and epidemiology.

    @Ken: precisely.  The death of any notion of expertise will be the eventual death of us all.

    “Give everyone a platform” they said.  “Marketplace of ideas” they said.  We never thought through what that meant, that EVERYONE would get a platform.  I bought the con, everyone bought the con.  And the internet has proven to be nothing more than a huge con job on all of humanity.  I hope we survive it.

  60. 60.

    jonas

    Whether people favor something in a poll is irrelevant. The question politicians care about is whether or not people might change their vote/support a primary challenger based on whether their congressperson or Senator supports it. Until polling shows people are willing to actually *punish* their representatives at the polls for failing to pass this thing, nothing matters.

  62. 62.

    Quinerly

    @narya: I got overwhelmed at Mesa Verde after 5 hrs. With the way I travel, I need about a week there. Planning a trip back. Love that Mancos/Cortez, CO area.

    Did Zion in 2017 on that 7,500 mile trip. Not a favorite. I hit there very early March, but it was Spring Break for Utah students. A zoo. Plus, just a few hrs before I got there, a guy had died at Angel’s Landing.

    Just did the South Rim overlooks at Black Canyon. Took about 4 hrs. North Rim had just closed, as was the portal road down to the river. Definitely want to do the other Rim and that road in the future.

  66. 66.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: No idea. My father will never get over the restrictions. He’s in his 70s and hunts legally, but he fondly remembers the good old days when no one gave a shit when or how many gators he bagged.

  67. 67.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    It seems to be general problem that people who harvest the natural world are blind to the problem of depletion. Fossil fuels workers, loggers, fishermen, etc., it’s all the same.

  68. 68.

    Steeplejack

    To their credit, the Morning Joe crew is giving significant air time to Ilhan Omar. But using Reverend Al as a buffer, let’s get that straight.

    She made a great point: that the $3.5 trillion number is already a big compromise from the $6 trillion that the progressive caucus (and maybe others?) originally wanted.

  70. 70.

    jonas

    @VOR:  Did he, even once, say it would be “bad optics” for TFG to fly to Mar A Largo and go golfing?

    To be fair, Trump never understood nor gave a crap about anything during his presidency other than airing his myriad grievances, so it didn’t matter how he spent his weekends. Biden (and other Democrats) appear to care about governing and policy, so they must be held accountable.

  78. 78.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Virginia’s white tailed deer population was just about wiped out during the Depression. They came back strong, and now provide a lot of work for automobile body shops.

  79. 79.

    NotMax

    Going, going, gone.

    :The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to remove 23 species from the Endangered Species Act (ESA) due to extinction. Based on rigorous reviews of the best available science for each of these species, the Service has determined these species are extinct, and thus no longer require listing under the ESA. Source

    Eight of those 23 were native to Hawaii, including (emphasis added)

    Kauaʻi ʻōʻō: This small black-and-yellow songbird’s distinctive bell-like call was last heard in 1987. It went extinct because of habitat destruction and the introduction of rats, pigs and mosquitoes. It was the last surviving member of the Mohoidae family and represents the only complete extinction of an entire avian family in modern times. Source

    Coincidentally on the same day came a report that a question mark assigned one plant (not part of the above lists) was premature.

    Ferns Thought to be Extinct Discovered on Kaua‘i Source

  80. 80.

    frosty

    @Quinerly: Black Canyon was one of our favorites too. Overwhelming in a different way than Zion and Grand Canyon. Very narrow, straight down, and *deep*!!!

    And no red rocks for a change.

  82. 82.

    CaseyL

    @noname: I liked Portland, but didn’t fall in love with it. Was only there for 2 days and didn’t see very much other than the main waterfront area. To me it seemed to lack the “character” of a small city while also lacking the grandeur of a big city. But again, only there for 2 days.

    I do like Bar Harbor very much, mostly for its proximity to Acadia. The downtown is adorable, albeit VERY tourist-oriented.

    Went to Schoonic Point yesterday, and was enraptured.

    Am about to check out of the hotel and head off to Bangor.

  85. 85.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @The Moar You Know: What makes you think this shit wasn’t going on back in the day? If anything it’s harder now; go look up the grifters who are driving the anti-vaccering, they have to pay another scammer for a fake four year degree and then carefully word their stuff to prevent legal action and get stoogies to hawk thier scams for them.

  87. 87.

    Kay

    Our public school district had a total loss of 5 students due to the mask mandate, out of about 2000 students. This is in a 65% Trump county.

    Do you think Trump protestors maybe get too much attention? I guess I shouldn’t be suprised since most of the protestors don’t live in the district and don’t have children in public schools, so therefore could not take their children out. Should have factored that it.

  88. 88.

    mrmoshpotato

    Revision: A 3.6T spending bill of which 100B is spent firing two particular senators into the sun

    One hundred billion seems steep. Otherwise, yes, do it yesterday.

  89. 89.

    Tony Jay

    @Geminid:

    The ecologically sound solution would be to herd 50% or more of them across country in an enormous televised deer-drive and deposit them in the areas where farmers are bitching about the reintroduction of wolves.

    The networks could double-up by having their embedded correspondents do nightly Cletus safaris in the roadside diners and $25 an hour motels they pass on the way, then at the end they could interview the wolves to ask if they feel President Biden’s nanny-state generosity is disincentivising them from hunting.

    Why has this not already been done?

  90. 90.

    Quinerly

    @frosty: did you do the North Rim? The portal road to the river? The campground? So many questions from my end. ?

    I even bought the bumper sticker AND the t shirt. I never buy the t shirt. ?

  91. 91.

    Ken

    @mrmoshpotato: One hundred billion seems steep.

    Firing something into the sun is very expensive because of the delta–V requirements.  The Parker Solar Probe is using repeated Venus gravity assists just to get within three solar radii.  Possibly counter-intuitively, the cheapest way to drop something into the sun is by a Jupiter flyby, but that takes three or four years.

    On the other hand, either plan — getting within three solar radii, or spending four years in space — will accomplish the mission goal.

  92. 92.

    noname

    @CaseyL: Portland  lost a LOT of character in the last 10 years or so.  Now it’s condos, hotels, and office buildings  that all look the same…metal and glass boxes.  Still some good restaurants though.  Hope you enjoy the rest of your trip.

  96. 96.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Baud:

    MJ is incoherent this morning. One second it’s Dems must be tough, the other it’s that Dems must be reasonable and compromise. 

    I’ve always been coherent about Morning Joe going and fucking himself.

  98. 98.

    Geminid

    @Kay: Loudon County, Virginia has had a lot of people disrupting school board meetings. A few days ago, the Board announce new standards for meeting attendees: they will have to be County residents, or have a kid in the school system. They’ll have to show ID to get in.

  100. 100.

    James E Powell

    @Kay:

    Our massive district in Dodger Blue Los Angeles is heading for a reckoning on October 15. All teachers & staff must be vaccinated. We already have 2000 unfilled positions. If the unvaxxed are going to keep working they need to be getting first shots this week.

  102. 102.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Five! There’s so much wrong with political media coverage that it’s tough to pick just one thing to fix, but if I had to choose, I’d consider the innumeracy problem, if that’s what it is — the inability or refusal to put numbers in context.

    That one quirk has distorted public perceptions and therefore shaped cultural and policy responses in unfortunate ways on so many issues. Imagine if every media outlet had just treated the anti-mask kooks like people who believe they were abducted by aliens or something. There are probably more of the latter!

  106. 106.

    topclimber

    @Kay: Maybe farm moms are morphing into soccer moms when it comes to kids attending schools rather than petri dishes.

    My impression is the astroturfers are only effective for a meeting or two. If there are a lot of local believers, they can continue agitating but they are likely to lose sooner or later.

  107. 107.

    jonas

    @ArchTeryx: ​
      Manchin and Sinema can kowtow to their megadonors all they want. If this thing fails, they’re both toast. No point in having big donors if your base hates you and your opponents are happy to use the momentum to pile on and you get your ass handed to you in the next election. I do agree with Marshal on one point he made recently: Sinema just has no interest in being re-elected. She truly doesn’t give a shit and is angling for a cushy sinecure at some “centrist” think tank or corporate board or something. Who knows what the fuck Manchin thinks he’s going to get out of this.

  108. 108.

    Miss Bianca

    @Quinerly: As I noted to Frosty, the Black Canyon is practically my backyard (at least, it was when I lived in the North Fork Valley). Wish we could have had a CO get-together while you were here! Oh, well, maybe next time.

  109. 109.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    Our (newer) superintendent is awful, just a complete coward, so I was suprised he stuck with the mask mandate but he watches enrollment and transfers more than I do our could so maybe he knew threatening to pull your imaginary kid of of a district you don’t reside in is an empty threat. Some of it is geography. Ohio has “open enrollment” for public schools so they can switch districts.  But the surrounding schools are all mask mandates too so unless they want to fire up the giant truck and drive 40 miles they’re stuck with it. I assume the 5 are attending one of Ohio’s garbage for-profit “cyber academies”, so sad for them. I just want people to recognize that if you claim you are homeschooling but are actually at work all day what is happening is not “homeschooling” but is instead “self schooling”. That’s just a fact.

  111. 111.

    Skepticat

    @CaseyL: Let me know next time and I’ll give you a tour of the islands. Noname is so right about the way the city has changed, a great deal, and not for the better. Ugliest architecture ever, and too damned much of it, crowding the entire (still working) waterfront. Surfers and skiers tend to say, “You should have been here yesterday!” and I feel much the same way about, say, the ’80s in Portland. The coast of Maine is incredibly beautiful, however. Bangor, not so much, but I hope you enjoy your entire trip anyway.

  112. 112.

    Quinerly

    @Just One More Canuck: JoJo is doing great except for that bender he went on at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I checked in one on of this past Sunday’s posts. He is very embarrassed that this info was shared with a top 10,000??? blog. Still a little pouty.

  114. 114.

    Dan B

    @CaseyL: Gold morning from Seattle where it was supposed to be heavy rain and violent wind.  I guess it still has time but there’s some blue sky and light breeze.  And a couple Neo-Nazis and Atomwaffen got convicted in Seattle courts yesterday.

  116. 116.

    frosty

    @Quinerly: South Rim only, the North Rim was too far a drive for our schedule. And unfortunately, the portal road was closed when we were there too. We were all ready to fire up the Grand Cherokee and give it it a try. It’s a 4×4!​
     
    ETA: We had fun with the 4×4. We did a few gravel roads, along with some soft sand and rocks on the trip. Although at Great Sand Dunes we decided to turn around when we saw the sign that said something like: “Deflate your tires to 20 psi or you WILL get stuck.”

  117. 117.

    Quiltingfool

    @Betty Cracker: After the successful capture and release, I picture everyone gathering for beer and barbecue!  Cool block party, yes?

    The only wildlife I observed from my sewing room yesterday was a young coyote running from the woods across the road into my yard and then into the woods behind the house.  Then, when hubby came home from work, he noticed a mass of crusty stuff with tiny bones on the railing by the garage and he asked me about it.  Owl pellet, says I.  Most likely a barred owl.

  118. 118.

    Jeffro

    @Quinerly: (late to the party here)…our family went to the north rim on our trip out west this past summer.  Just unbelievable.  We stayed in one of the smaller cabins at the lodge.

    Out of all the places we stopped, north rim and Canyonlands were our favorites!

  120. 120.

    frosty

    @Geminid: I checked the school  board meeting schedule here and our little district already has the same requirements in place: be a taxpayer or have your kid in school. I’m going to go to the next one and see what kind of craziness my Trumpy neighbors are up to.

  121. 121.

    Quiltingfool

    @Kay: Come sit next to me, sister.  I would get “home schooled” kids in my classroom, and most of them were really far behind academically.  Once in a while we would get home schooled kids who did okay, but the reason they had been home schooled is their parents had jobs requiring lots of moving to different places, and they wanted to keep the family together.  Those parents were serious about teaching their kids and they did a decent job.
    Mostly, though, parents would pull a kid out to “home school” because the kid kept getting into trouble, or the parents faced trouble because of truancy.

  122. 122.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Think is this has to be one of the most MAGA stories in the last six months.

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trumpfellas

     Corey Lewandowski, the much-fired Trump soldier, was canned as the head of the MAGA Action Trump PAC. This came after he was accused of groping, harassing and stalking a Trump donor at an event in Las Vegas on Sunday night. Given Lewandowski’s reputation and rap sheet this is a highly, highly plausible accusation. But it also came simultaneously with charges from a pro-Trump publication a day before that Lewandowski was having an affair with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.

    Raping the hand that feeds them.

  123. 123.

    trollhattan

    I see United is firing about 600 unvaccinated employees. Wonder how many suddenly “get religion” and get the jab?

    OTOH I don’t want to fly an airline staffed by disgruntled employees, nomsayn?

  124. 124.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @mrmoshpotato: You fools! Fire their sorry butts into Venus. Cheaper and easier to reach, nearly as hellish – and a very small but positive contribution to the eventual terraforming of the place.

  126. 126.

    trollhattan

    @frosty:

    “Deflate your tires to 20 psi or you WILL get stuck*.”

    *”And even if you do deflate them, you’ll probably get stuck anyway.

    Having hiked parts of the (in) famous Rubicon Trail, those people are nuts. (TBF, a few are also dead.) The lurid scrape marks on boulders and slabs are something to behold. The stains from various spilled fluids are quite unsurprising.

  127. 127.

    Tony Jay

    @Ksmiami:

    I mean, you can try, it’s certainly worth a shot, but wolves are smart animals with excellent taste. I don’t know what you could offer them to swallow that much concentrated bullshit.

    Alaska? Are you using Alaska much?

  128. 128.

    Kay

    @Quiltingfool:

    It’s the worst-kept secret in the county. Everyone says it, but quietly and only among “friendlies” – judges, teachers, social services workers, physicians. It’s a really Right wing area and they don’t want to incur the wrath of conservative religious or Trumpety-dumps who hate government.

  131. 131.

    Tony Jay

    @Ksmiami:

    Well they are short and hairy* and drink too much to dull the pain of their past sins, so the permanent aggression isn’t that surprising. 8-)

    *unless were talking about the Australian subspecies jackmania screenhoggius

  132. 132.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @trollhattan: The bit about sexually assaulting the donor is really what blows my mind.

    “This rape false charge is just more of radical feminism emasculation American men,… oh, and we of the Trump Org would like to thank the accuser for her donation.”

    Everyone is little people in that world.

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