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klbmsw · 2 years

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“Dear Republicans,

You all used to claim to be the party of ‘family values’ but then you elected a man who cheated on all three of his wives and paid a porn star hush money to not tell anyone about their tryst in a hotel room. Then you all had the audacious gall to say he was a ‘Christian’ despite the fact that he never set foot in a church for his entire adult life *and* has committed every deadly sin and broken every commandment.

I remember when you all used to say you support the blue and were the party of ‘law and order’ but then a bunch of you went to our Capitol and began to assault law enforcement and even maiming them. Now you want to sweep that under the rug and act like we didn’t see you doing it or hear the deafening silence from all of you when we all did.

I remember when you all chanted, ‘lock her up’ without specifying what charge you would like her charged with. I sure can imagine what you all would have said if President Obama had a bunch of his closest advisers indicted and he pardoned them! But what happened when it was your man pardoning his cronies and henchman? Nothing but crickets from you all.

We can all imagine what you would have said if President Hillary had appointed Chelsea to work in some official capacity. The howls of nepotistic outrage would have been deafening but your conspicuous silence when Jared and Ivanka were using gmail to conduct government business said that you all didn’t really care about Hillary’s emails, you only cared about setting new levels of hypocrisy the world had never seen before.

You all never shut up about the Clinton Global Initiative and how it did something illegal that you heard about somewhere but can never say exactly what was done. *THEN* you get to see the Trump Foundation get dissolved after it was proven in court that it had stolen money that *you* donated for veterans *and* children’s cancer and again, you said absolutely nothing but you did nod your heads in agreement that it was ‘political.’

Was the Trump University dissolution also political? Because if it was, why did Trump pay the $25 million fine levied against it? Did you even listen to the testimonials from the people who sued Trump for fraud? Do you think they were Democrats? They weren’t, they were Republicans.

I don’t know how to put this very gently but what the rest of the planet knows is that you were bamboozled, hoodwinked, led astray and basically conned by a conman. The sooner you sober up to that immutable fact, the sooner we might pull you out of that cult that you’ve transmogrified into.

You elected a crook who ran a criminal organization. Of course it’s going to be hard to ever admit that because like I said before, you all aren’t known for changing your minds about anything even when presented with overwhelming evidence.

I know this is going to be a hard pill to swallow because there were 75 million of you who thought he should be president again and the 81 million of us who made Joe Biden president are truly horrified that you would yet again attempt to suicide our democracy out of some sense of sheer petulance.

Just once I wish one of you who says, ‘there were a lot of irregularities in the election’ would actually say aloud what they actually are because I pay attention to this stuff as do a lot of journalist who would like nothing better than to win a prestigious Pulitzer Prize by proving there was some manner of fraud but of course, there was none except by people in your party doing it. All of the convictions for voter fraud in 2020 have been Republicans, all of them.

Dan Patrick offered a $1 million reward for evidence of election fraud and nobody collected but that hasn’t stopped you all from lying about it has it? Hillary conceded the day after the election and Trump is still telling the lie that the election was stolen even in the states where Republicans are in charge of the election. So you don’t like those terms either.

If you can’t win a free and fair election where you do everything you possibly can to keep black people from voting, then just give up on elections huh? That’s the prevalent attitude amongst your gerrymandered politicians. Can’t you all win in a contest of ideas if your’s are so much better?

Ah, there’s the rub. You can’t can you?

Hate doesn’t seem to flourish as much among the kids coming of voter age now does it? Tucker might pull in the 55-65 demographic on Fox but that ‘the NSA is spying on me’ nonsense doesn’t sit too well with them youngins does it?

I guess you all aren’t for the ‘free market’ of ideas anymore since you’ve lost the likes of George Will, Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson and Nicole Wallace. Now you have Marjorie Potater Greene and Lauren Boebert as your ‘brain trust’ and that’s nothing to be proud of except at the klan rallies that have spewed ‘America First’ for over a hundred years now.

You’re a party that embraces racists,

defends child-traffickers and tried to overthrow an election you lost. That treason isn’t lost on any of us and no matter how hard you try to sweep that under the rug or bury it with your endless lies, we all know what you did. The most troubling thing about all of this is that none of it was a deal-breaker for you.

You were more than willing to sit by as those traitorous insurrectionist tried to murder our elected representatives to overthrow our government so you could do what? Make Trump dictator or king?

And you all have the unmitigated temerity to call yourselves ‘patriots’?

You’re not patriots, you’re traitors to every principle this country was founded upon.

The actual patriots of this land see you for who you are and we will never surrender to the brainwashed cult you’ve become.”

- Thomas Clay Jr

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alphaman99 · 8 months

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"Who else can say that tyranny came when they were removed, and tyranny fears them still. Who else can match that glowering image of angered defiance, or is so intimately and personally entwined with whether the nation itself should rise from the ashes or sink into an everlasting shadow? The question of Trump’s freedom is also the question of America’s freedom.

The mugs can’t beat the mugshot."

Outstanding observations of the debate by Daniel Jupp.

Better a Mugshot Than a Mug

Trump compared to the also rans

JUPPLANDIA

AUG 25, 2023

Sometimes in life or politics there is a symmetry to things, even the most depressing things. So it was with the contrast of the last two days, which saw the Fox hosted Republican Nomination debate followed by the leading candidate’s appearance a day later at the Fulton County jail for a mugshot and harassment session courtesy of America’s now fully Banana Republic legal system.

The others gurned and grimaced for the cameras of a Fox network studio, sweating under the pitiless lights picking out, with glaring intensity, their utter insignificance. Trump glowered sternly in a small processing room where his greatest humiliation transfigured itself, instantly, into the truest mark of his greatness.

The first event was supposed to be the opportunity for one of the candidates to stand out from the rest. In ordinary times, perhaps it would have been. In an ordinary system, in a functioning democracy or a Republic which is not rotten to the core, this would indeed have been an important moment. Election debate, both among free citizens discussing their preferences between each other and in the contest of wits and charisma that is a staged debate between candidates, is integral to a functioning political system based on persuasion rather than coercion.

But these are not ordinary times, and this is not an age of persuasion any more. It’s not an age of democracy. It’s not an age of free and fair elections. It’s not an age in which any such debate has any relevance. We are living in an age where dissident opinion is silenced, no matter how expert. We are living at a time when supposedly democratic nations consider the coercion of the public, the imprisonment of peaceful protesters, the holding without trial of dissidents, and the erasure of the rights of a serving or former President, completely normal.

This is the age of coercion, as surely as it has been, and always will be, when the law is the tool of the corrupt and the highest offices of the land are subject to lawless seizure.

From the start the other candidates for the Republican nomination could not win, because in the context of everything else happening the contest is a farce. Trump was, is, and will so long as he is alive remain, the chosen candidate of the American people, of the majority of the American people, and overwhelmingly the majority of American Republican voters. Polling again and again confirms this. None of the other candidates are anywhere near him. They are so far behind him that no gap like this can be recalled by even the wonkiest and nerdiest of electoral statisticians.

But more than that they could not win because their very participation in the farce is a signal of their irrelevance. They are putting themselves forward in a broken system against a cheated man, and ordinary Republican voters know it. That makes them as complicit in the theft of 2020 as any other mainstream figure, as blind to the truth as any mainstream journalist, and as pointless a person to pin your hopes on as any other known liar. To take part in this farce with this quisling news organization is to show that you will not accept the fundamental truths that define modern America.

It is to say that you will pretend that 2020 was honest, you will pretend that the system of checks and balances is working, you will pretend that Trump did wrong rather than was monstrously wronged by others.

Everyone in love with America or with the truth, everyone who respects democracy instead of the disgusting lie of ‘Our Democracy’ (it’s the our, the ownership of it, not the democracy of it, that matters to those using this phrase) will know that the real candidate, the real President, the REAL DEAL, was not under the Fox spotlights, but elsewhere.

He was being interviewed by Tucker Carlson and then, after a short gap, he was posing for a mugshot. The truth is a criminal in Biden’s America.

The only people morally and intellectually equipped to lead the United States out of tyranny and squalor, out of it’s lowest point since the assassination of Kennedy and perhaps since the Civil War, are those the current system has labelled as unfit for office. A mugshot in this round of political persecutions and gross prosecutorial misconduct is the strongest possible marker of legitimacy and authenticity.

What says honest, more than an illegal regime trying to imprison you for opposing them?

Against this fundamental context, there is nothing that candidates opposing Trump for the Republican nomination can do. They can go all in on the lies and the disgusting inversions of what is known and factual, like Fat Christie, Pious Pence, or Little Nikki. That generally only earns boos. They can be an egregiously obvious nothing, a weak little bookkeeper type like Ada Someone, trying to out-Christie the Fat One with quivering denunciation of Trump. But what can they actually offer that isn’t the same old Swamp, the same old Republican submission wrapped in a flag?

Nothing.

All of them pretended that the emptiest, vainest, least human and least decent of them all, Mike Pence, did the right thing. None of them had the honesty or the decency to call out Pence as the Coward Judas he is. While Pence stood there with his chest out, puffed up with Satanic levels of self regard, doing his mock military, strong jawed Warrior Priest Act, a thing utterly cloying in it’s vanity and sanctimony, they all bowed to it. They all pretended he had Done the Right Thing. When that was a gross betrayal which uttered in an insane regime. When Pence DID have the constitutional authority do as Trump asked (as Trump points out, why change the law to prevent something that was already illegal, unless it wasn’t illegal before the change?).

And on pretty much everything else the offer of the candidates other than Trump is, we won’t tell the truth, and we will continue the exact same bullshit that the Democrats do. We will do the same with Ukraine. We will tell you that the FBI are honest. We will tell you that the media are honest. We will complain about spending levels but keep going with the wars and neocon military adventures that constitute the lion’s share of America’s wasted trillions. We will be the ‘God Bless America’ branch of the Let’s Fuck America policy. We will pretend our elections are honest. We will pretend that normal democracies aim to imprison the leading Presidential candidate for telling the truth. We won’t even talk about the censorship, the death of free speech, the rise of thought control, the out of control DOJ and FBI, beyond the now cliched and useless phrase ‘weaponization’.

Little Nikki called Trump the most hated man in America. Hated by whom, Little Nikki? By Democrats. By the people YOU are supposed to be opposing, not AGREEING with. What use is Little Nikki? She’s going to defend the average Republican who thinks and speaks like Trump does, or who is actually less politically correct than him on abortion or gun laws? No. She’s more interested in Ukraine’s freedom than American liberty. She’s Pence in a Dress.

You will have noticed I haven’t even mention Ron yet. That’s because Ron hardly featured, even in this pathetic field of nobodies, also rans, betrayers, traitors and Mattel Toy Robot Republicans. Ron I can almost feel sorry for at this point. Ron is terrified and desperate. You could see the fear in his eyes. It’s exactly the same punch-drunk terror that Jeb Bush had. Ron knows he has to Sound Tough, like Jeb did, but there’s noting there. nothing left in the tank. Ron is a fighter who is scared and beaten and if anyone in his corner even liked him, they would throw in the towel now and stop the punishment. Ron sold himself to the donors and Anti Trumpers. Everyone knows it. He knows it. Everything he got right in Florida has been destroyed, along with his credibility, by that disastrous choice and the trainwreck of his nomination campaign.

At his very, very best even, the Ron of 2020, there was nothing in the locker to compete with that Trump mugshot. Would Ron go to prison for us? What do you think?

Vivek of course is the only one of the lot who has read the wind and seen the smoke signals. He’s the scout who slipped away before Custer rode up. The rest are practically scalping themselves, but this Indian is smarter than that. Vivek knows what the base are hungry for, what the base are pissed off at, what the ordinary American who isn’t a Democrat shitbag is feeling. He’s the only one who knows support for the Ukraine proxy war is poison with the base. He’s the only one who realizes that bashing Trump makes you look weak and owned rather than strong and principled. He’s the one who actually seems to have ears as well as a mouth. But still….it’s all within the safety lines.

Trump is great….but he won’t say 2020 was stolen. Stop the persecution of Trump….but he will pardon the Bidens. Vivek has some great lines without ever crossing the red lines that are set by the lying mainstream. He’s slick, but it’s pretty obvious. Christie may be an abject fool as flaccid in thought as he is in flesh, but he might have got one thing right. And that’s comparing Vivek with Obama. There are a lot of similarities there. The big smile, the superficial charm, the guy who comes from nowhere with a mysterious past, the relaxation (Vivek is still a little mechanical in his movements. He’s calm like Obama, but not as fluid. At the risk of racial stereotyping, Obama has rhythm). As Obama did for Democrats, Vivek does for Republicans. He says the right things, with a little bit of jazz. Whether he feels any of them himself is another matter.

Saying is one thing, doing is something else. And Trump has DONE. The people know. They know the gas prices. They know the manufacturing jobs. They know energy independence. They know there were no new wars. They know Russia was held in check, China took a few trade hits, North Korea were negotiating, border crossings were down. As much as anyone pretends otherwise, the record was real and solid despite constant sabotage. And that sabotage itself elevates and ennobles Trump. It puts him in the angelic choirs, with the martyrs and the heroes. Who has that? Who else has that?

Who else can say that tyranny came when they were removed, and tyranny fears them still. Who else can match that glowering image of angered defiance, or is so intimately and personally entwined with whether the nation itself should rise from the ashes or sink into an everlasting shadow? The question of Trump’s freedom is also the question of America’s freedom.

The mugs can’t beat the mugshot.

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zooterchet · 1 year

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The MI-6 New England Set (King James of Scotland's Architecture Ministry)

You have to separate, your mind’s eye, from the character on print.

That way, you understand art, as being a military endevour; Greece established the cross-gender, as the separation of roles in same profession, for marriage; this way, Socrates, cannot perform a military experiment, and Aristotle, cannot enslave his wife to make his employees as gay children.

Batman: Longinus, a private detective, pre-law. The order to save a man, as governor, not to kill him; the professions of the wealthy, as for you, in academic, China.

Joker: Scorpion, a myth among those refused to police. Those parents of criminal demeanor, hippies, as following a myth of your spies; the first, as instruction, the second, as punishment, anyone reporting the first, as receiving the latter.

Scarecrow: Nietzsche, as having understood an evil industry, through roots, despite being trapped within it. The lucid, upon those feeling insane, hence mentally ill, for being degreed, with the Grue, as manipulating systems through the tradition outside the Irish Castillian Dexter.

Two-Face: Stalin, as his mother’s favorite, as having refused his mother’s beatings, through receiving them himself, to preserve his trade of male; hence, any such trade, be the leader of the future, the child having mastered it. This is the Pravda, the unit of concept, through the love of the life, the cheated wife.

Clayface: Doubting Thomas, the general of Queen Samhain; treason codes, applied to leader, hence lesbian, is that outcast, on the word of other wives; therefore, Clayface, returning lesbian, the haze mistress, to the proper wife, outside of the goodwife’s tradition.

Hugo Strange: Donald Nixon, the California Republican. Those sports and games, as having international affect, through those viewing, strange scrying eyes of the sky, Lewis and Clark’s journey.

Mister Freeze: Chiang Kai-Shek, the Taiwanese; those endowed to a murderous psychopath, as having history on screen; otherwise slain, without public event. Those dying, as electric mouse, or another insight of a famous murderer, to unlock from time, the MI-6 team having been removed from literal print of text applied.

Penguin: Lu Bu, the Kowloon-Chinese, having once orchestrated society in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, through reading own daughter’s diary; Tenochtitlan, the Forbidden Palace, Kowloon, and Pyongyang. The old friend of Longinus, one a sword maker, the other an author. Both of them spying on the Mainland, to save it from Hordes, those banking viziers beholden to women who wish to win a game for influence, not lose for strategy to poor.

Riddler: Cervantes, born with osteoperothetic bones, since conception. Density of bones, being IQ, this man has a flower in his mind, since first dalliance with self from childhood. A professional at artist sketches of art, he can move any case study of science, not people, to resemble a windmill, with the spokes moving backwards, himself having devised the structure forwards, to catch pedophiles; those of such low quotients of intellectual esteem, they can’t differentiate from a model.

Catwoman: Andrea Lou-Salome, this is a runaway girl, fleeing her childhood whenever given too many toys, not stuffed animals, the child that ejaculates on his bears and toys, her natural mate. Determines who is which character, in a unique siphons blot, but only if the Batman, is mixed with another line; hence, she will appear, for another comics line of franchise owned, given to the man's one true love; unless dead, a female villainess, the man is a pedophile, Superman raped his wife (Bob Kane).

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keywestlou · 1 year

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IF YOU WANT TO HAVE SEX AGAIN…..GET MARRIED

IF YOU WANT TO HAVE SEX AGAIN…..GET MARRIED - https://keywestlou.com/if-you-want-to-have-sex-again-get-married/I came across an interesting video on YouTube titled: If You Want to Have Sex Again - Get Married. A humorous 10 minutes. Discusses no sex marriages. Describes most of today's marriages as involving masturbation, loneliness, cheating and shame. As can be readily noted from the title and description, the presentation is full of inconsistencies. Happily presented. The host is sex therapist Maureen McGarth. I am going to hit some of the highlights. You must watch the video to get the full flavor. After the first year, McGarth says most marriages are boring. No wonder she shares, most people have lived together 10 years before without the benefit of marriage. They marry and in due course may have sex less than 10 times a year. Her theory applies to heterosexual and same sex marriages. Where one learns about sex affects its quality in marriage. Boys and men learn from internet porn. A place lacking in intimacy. Females from their mothers and girl friends who place the fear of God in them. Pregnancy and STDs. McGarth said the most popular position for marrieds having sex is one of them on their hands and knees during the act. Generally, the man! A commonly asked question is when does sex/sexual desire end. Some believe int the 40s. Others, various decades. McGarth advises well into the 80s and 90s. However, most are unaware. Exercise a necessary activity in order to have a good sex life. Gets the blood flowing. The largest sex organ is neither the clitoris/vagina nor the penis. It is the brain. McGarth's final piece of advice: Settle all marital arguments in bed naked. I have merely scratched the surface. Watch the video for pure enjoyment or to learn something. Whatever, a valuable 10 minutes. From sex to college basketball. Syracuse basketball. Applying McGarth's observations, Syracuse basketball today is about as good as marital sex. Illinois blew out Syracuse last night 73-44. My heart can't take it! Illinois destroyed Syracuse in the second half outscoring Syracuse 43-21. Syracuse's record now stands at 3-4. Why, Lord? Syracuse's defense horrible. Actually horrible is giving it too much credit. Non-existent a better description. The defense was outstanding in the first half. Disappeared in the second. Boeheim's post game interview lasted less than 2 minutes. Embarrassing. Boeheim said what he had to. The reporters asked few questions. Out of respect for Boeheim. Syracuse plays Notre Dame saturday. Syracuse has a new Dome. The Carrier Dome opened in 1980. The new Dome this year. I have not seen it. However from photos' and description, absolutely magnificent. Its 50,000 seats are not going to be full nor is the Dome going to be a money maker unless the football and basketball teams do better. Fans, even Syracuse fans, are not going to attend unless the teams win. Fact of life. I have seen it the past 40 years at the Carrier Dome and other sport facilities throughout the U.S. Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes was convicted by a jury yesterday of sedition and other crimes arising out of January 6. The most serious "seditious conspiracy." A technical way to describe Rhodes a traitor. Good for 20 plus years in jail. Time for indictments to move forward. Time for political and private leaders involved to be charged and tried. Including Trump. Bess Levin wrote another interesting article re Trump's anti-Semitic dinner guests. The article published 11/28 titled "Surprise: A Number Of Republicans Don't Want To Condemn Trump's Dinner With A Couple of Anti-Semites." Levin's opening sentence: "They know where their bread is buttered." Followed in the next paragraph by: "In the year 2022, the number one thing that unites the Republican Party is bigotry and hate. Hate for the Black people. Hate for (non-white) immigrants. Hate for anyone who isn't Christian. Hate for the LGBTQ+ community. Which is why it surprises no one who has been paying literally any attention whatsoever that a number of GOP lawmakers apparently don't want to probably condemn Donald Trump's recent dinner with men who have made names for themselves as virulent anti-Semites." Maya Angelou: "Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to the loneliness." Enjoy your day!

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gwydionmisha · 2 years

Video

youtube

Republicans Admit They Can't Win Without Cheating

#Republicans #Gerrymandering #Voter Suppression #Redistricting #War on Democracy

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stephen-barry · 2 years

Video

youtube

Republicans Admit They Can't Win Without Cheating

#youtube

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therealvinelle · 3 years

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I've always wondered this, but what do you think the Cullen's political viewpoints would be, given their individual backgrounds? if vampires don't change after they turn, then surely they would all be extremely racist (especially Jasper). would this not come up at some point? they aren't like the Volturi because the Volturi are too old to care, but the Cullens are young enough that they have been brought up with opinions on stuff like sexism, racism, homophobia and the like.

Oh fuck.

You get an early answer because otherwise I'll just chicken out and delete this one, pretend I never saw it.

UMMM.

Since I'm guessing you meant American political viewpoints, we need a disclaimer. I am not American, and not too knowledgeable about your politics. Not just in the sense that I don't follow the day-to-day drama, but as I am not an American citizen there are several things I don't know, can't know because I've never lived in your country and therefore can't know what the effects of living in a country ruled by American policies is like. What I do know is based off of the news in the foreign section, social media (by which I mean tumblr posts), and Trevor Noah's Daily Show.

I am an outsider looking in.

Which is really rather appropriate, since the Cullens are too.

The Cullens go to high school and college, Carlisle works, they pay taxes, they own real estate, and submerge themselves in American culture. Esme, Edward, Rosalie, Emmett, and Bella are young enough that this is in many ways their world, and apart from timeouts they've more or less spent their entire lives, human and vampire, integrated into American society.

Not fully integrated, mind you, they do what they need to to fit in and get to school or, in Carlisle’s case, to work. They go no further. No extra-curriculars for the kids, no book clubs for Esme, no game nights for Carlisle. They walk parallel to humans, not among us.

In addition to this they're obscenely rich, which puts them another thousand miles from the experiences of your average American. They won't deal with the health system, which means healthcare is a non-issue, they're not going to need welfare or other social programs, unemployment is another non-issue. Name your issue, and the Cullens don't have personal stake in it. Even the climate crisis won't be a problem for them the way it will for us.

What I'm trying to say is, American political issues are a concept to them, not a lived reality. Just like they are for me. So hey, you made a great choice of blog to ask.

I'll also add here that you say the Volturi are too old to care, and I agree- from an ancient's point of view, racism is a matter of "which ethnicity are we hating today?", and it all looks rather arbitrary after a while. Same with every other issue - after a while it all just blends together into "what are the humans fighting over today? Which Christian denomination is the correct one? Huh. Good for them, I guess."

I can't put it any better than this post did, really. The Volturi are real people, humans are nerds and tumblr having Loki discourse. Aro thinks it's delightful and knows entirely too much about Watergate (and let's be real, Loki discourse as well), but the point I wanted to get at is that politics really don't matter to vampires.

And I don't think they matter to the Cullens either.

So, moving on to the next point while regretting I didn't put headlines in this post, I'll just state that I don't think vampires' minds are frozen. Their brains are unable to develop further, and they can never forget anything, but... well, this isn't the post for that, but in order for this to be true of vampires they would barely be sentient. They would not be able to process new impressions, to learn new things, nor to have an independent thought process. Yes, we see vampires in-universe (namely, Edward, who romanticizes himself and vampires) believe they're frozen and can never change, but there is no indication that this is a widespread belief, or even true. Quite the contrary - Carlisle went from a preacher's son who wanted to burn all the demons to living in Demon Capital for decades and then becoming a doctor and making a whole family of demons. Clearly, the guy has had a change in attitude over the years. Jasper, in his years as a newborn army general, slowly grew disenchanted with his life and developed depression. James initially meant to kill Victoria and hunted her across the earth, then became fascinated and changed his mind about it.

Had these people been incapable of change, Carlisle would still be hating demons, Jasper would be in Maria's army, and James would still be hunting Victoria.

It goes to follow, then, that they are able to adapt to new things.

The question is, would they?

Here I finally answer your question.

So, we have these people who don't really have any kind of stake in politics, who keep up to date all the same (or are forcibly kept up to date because high school) and are generally opinionated people.

Where do they then fall, politically?

(And this is where you might want to stop reading, anon, because I'm about to eviscerate these people.)

Alice votes for whoever's gonna win. She also makes a fortune off of betting each election. Trump's 1 to 10 victory in 2016 was a great day to be Alice. MAGA!

The actual policies involved are completely irrelevant, she does this because it's fun. Election means she gets to throw parties. Color coded parties for the Republican and Democratic primaries, and US-themed parties for Election Night! (Foreigner moment right here: I at first wrote "Election wake" before realizing that's not what y'all murricans call it.)

Alice loves politics. Doesn't know the issues, but she sure loves politics.

Bella votes Democrat. She actually knows about the issues, and cares about them. This girl is a Democrat through and through.

Carlisle doesn't vote. I can't imagine it feels right. Outside of faked papers he's not a US citizen, this is meddling in human affairs that he knows don't concern him.

More, this guy has never lived in a democracy.

In life, Carlisle lived under an absolute monarchy that, upon civil war, became an absolute theocracy. From there he learned that vampires live under a total dictatorship.

For the first 150 years of his life, democracy was that funky thing the Athenians did in history books thousands of years ago, no more relevant to him than the Ancient Egyptian monarchy is to me. Then the Americans, and later other European countries started doing this.

Good for them.

There's this mistake often made by those who view history from a... for lack of a better term, a solipsistic standpoint. A belief that the present day is the culmination of all of history. “My society is the best society, the most reasonable society; all the others had it backwards. Thank god we’re living in this enlightened age!”

The faith in our current system of government is one such belief. We (pardon me if this doesn’t apply to everybody reading this post) have grown up in democracies, being told this is the ultimate form of rule, and perhaps that is true - but remember the kings who have told their subjects they had were divine and the best possible ruler based on that. Remember also that most modern democracies haven’t actually been democracies for very long at all, America is the longest standing at some 230 years (not long at all in the grand scope of things) and they have a fracturing two-party system to show for it.

Every society, ever, has been told they’re the greatest, and their system of government the most just. Democracy is only the latest hit.

This is relevant to Carlisle because he’s immortal and decidedly not modern. Democracy has not been installed in him the way it was the rest of the Cullens, Jasper included. To him- well, it’s just not his world. He has no stakes in our human politics, and as he is older than every current democracy and has seen quite a few of them fall, he’s not going to internalize the democratic form of rule the way a modern human has.

I think the concept of voting is foreign to him.

It requires a level of participation in human society that he’s simply not at. He does the bare minimum to appear human so he do the work he loves, but nothing more, and I find that telling.

As it is I think he'd be iffy about his family doing it. He won’t stop them, but in voting they’re... well it’s kind of cheating. They’re not really citizens, none of this will affect them, and by voting they’re drowning out the votes of real human voters. He does not approve.

Edward votes Democrat. He's... well he’s the kind of guy who will oil a girl’s bedroom window so he can more easily watch her sleep without being discovered, justifying it to himself as being okay because if she were to tell him to get lost he’d stop immediately. Same guy is so sure that he’d leave and never return again if she wanted him to, except this is the man who returned to Forks to hang around his singer, knowing there was a significant chance he might kill her. To say nothing of his Madonna/Whore complex, or of the fact that he tried to pimp out his wife twice, and was willing to forcibly abort her child.

This guy is very much in love with chivalry, with being an enlightened and feminist man who supports and respects women, while not understanding the entire point of feminism, which is female liberation.

He votes Democrat because he’s such an enlightened feminist who cares about women’s rights.

Emmett doesn’t care to vote, but if he has to he votes Republican. The guy is from the 1930′s, and has major would-be-the-uncle-who-cracks-racist-jokes-if-he-was-older vibes.

Esme doesn’t vote, that would require getting out of the house.

More, I just... can’t see it. I can’t see her being one to read up on politics and The Issues, period, but if she has to then I doubt she’d be able to decide.

Jasper doesn’t vote. Alice can have her fun, he does not care.

There’s also the whole can of worms regarding the last time he went to bat for American politics.

I imagine he stays out of this.

Renesmée doesn't vote. She has no stock in the human affairs. Who would she vote for, on what grounds? When Bella tries to pull her to the urns, she points out that she's three years old.

Rosalie, guys, I’m sorry, but that girl is definitely gonna vote Republican. Perhaps not right now as it’s become the Trump party of insanity, but the Mitt Romney type of Republicans? Oh yes.

And for the record, yes I imagine she does vote. To step back from politics would be another way she was relinquishing her humanity, and that’s not allowed to happen. So, yes, she goes to the urns, less for the sake of the politics involved and more because like this, she’s still a part of society in some way.

Now, onto why I think she’s Republican, I think it’s both fiscal and social.

This girl was the daughter of a banker who somehow profited off of the Depression, and who then became part of a family with no material needs that would soon become billionaires thanks to Alice. Poverty to Rosalie is a non-issue, as it is I imagine she views it as a much lesser issue than what she’s had to deal with. The humans can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, Rosalie’s infertility is forever.

Rosalie’s empathy is strongest when she’s able to project onto others, and she won’t be able to project onto the less fortunate at all.

Then there’s the fact that the Republican party is all about traditional family values, and pro-life.

Rosalie, a woman from the 1930′s who idolizes her human life and who‘d love nothing more than to get to live out this fantasy, is down for that. And as of Breaking Dawn she’s vocally pro-life, so there’s that.

This all being said I don’t think Rosalie cares to sit down and fully understand these politics she’s voting for, the possible impact they’ll have- that’s not important. What’s important is what voting does for her.

TL;DR: I bet anon regrets asking.

#long post #twilight #twilight vampires #twilight meta #twilight renaissance #politics #history #twilight history #carlisle cullen #alice cullen #bella swan #renesmée cullen #jasper hale #rosalie hale #emmett cullen

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republicansaredomesticterrorists · 30 days

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Traitors support traitors.

#republicans can’t win without cheating #rfk jr is not a democrat #rfk jr is backed by the same oligarchs that back trump #republican assholes #traitor trump #crooked donald #Trump sycophant #traitor #Jan 6th insurrection #Trump coup #maga morons #resist #never trump

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mushi-shield · 3 years

Video

youtube

Tom MacDonald - "Fake Woke"

I think it's crazy I'm the one who they labeled as controversial And Cardi B is the role model for twelve year old girls There's rappers pushing Xanax at the top of the Billboard But if I mention race in a song I'm scared I'll get killed for it It's backwards, it's getting exponentially dumb It's more difficult to get a job than purchase a gun Eminem used to gay bash and murder his mom And now he doesn't want fans if they voted for Trump We're ashamed to be American, you should probably love it 'Cause you have the right to say it and not get strung up in public As children we were taught how to walk and talk But the system wants adults to sit down and shut up Cancel culture runs the world now, the planet went crazy Label everything we say as homophobic or racist If you're white then you're privileged, guilty by association All our childhood heroes got MeToo'd or they're rapists They never freed the slaves They realized that they don't need to change They gave us tiny screens, we think we free 'cause we can't see the cage They knew that race war would be the game they'd need to play For people to pick teams, they use the media to feed the flame They so fake woke, facts don't care about feelings They know they won't tell me what to believe in They so fake woke, same old, safe zones They so fake woke, facts don't care about your feelings I think it's crazy how these people screaming "facts" but they fake woke Hate their neighbor 'cause he wears a mask or he stays home Has a daughter but his favorite artist said he slays hoes Picks her up from school, music slaps on the way home Censorship's an issue 'cause they choose what they erase There's a difference between hate speech and speech that you hate I think Black Lives Matter was the stupidest name When the system's screwing everyone exactly the same I just wanna spend Thanksgiving Day with food and my family Without being accused of celebrating native casualties We got so divided as black and white and political Republicans are bigots, libtards if you're liberal There's riots in our streets and it's just getting worse Y'all screaming defund the police, y'all are genius for sure They're underfunded already, they're way too busy to work Order food and call the cops, see what reaches you first Segregation ended, that's a lie in itself That was a strategy to make us think that we're trying to help They knew that racism was hot if they designed it to sell We buy up every single box and divide us ourselves They so fake woke, facts don't care about feelings They know they won't tell me what to believe in They so fake woke, same old, safe zones They so fake woke, facts don't care about your feelings Use violence to get peace and wonder why it isn't working That's like sleeping with a football team to try and be a virgin Politicians are for sale and someone always makes the purchase But you and I cannot afford it, our democracy is worthless If a man has mental illness call him crazy, say it silently When countries going crazy we accept it as society Get sick and take a pill when the side effects get you high You get addicted like these rappers dying fighting with sobriety Censoring the facts turns our children into idiots They claim it's for our safety, I'll tell you what it really is Removing information that empowers all the citizens The truth doesn't damage points of view that are legitimate They're tryna amen to a-men-and-women How'd we let them make praying a microaggression? Instead of asking God for the strength to keep winning We cheat to get ahead and then we ask 'em for forgiveness Feminism used to be the most righteous of fights But these days it feels like they secretly hate guys I don't trust anyone who bleeds for a week and don't die I'm just kidding, but everything else that I said is right They so fake woke, facts don't care about feelings They know they won't tell me what to believe in They so fake woke, same old, safe zones They so fake woke, facts don't care about your feelings

#Tom MacDonald #youtube

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thedreadpiratejames · 2 years

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#republicans can’t win without cheating

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theteej · 4 years

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on white performative anxiety on election night

Ok, here we go. I had decided that I would not watch the election results unfold last night because quite frankly--it was clear that it would be a close race, and just like with sports games it takes a particular type of narcissistic imagining to think that constant watching will change the impact of an event simply because you watch it. Also, this isn't a sports game--it's people's lives. So I ordered a pizza and worked through three unread X-Men collections (decent, by the way--especially the new take on Marauders).

By 8pm I was getting frequent texts, and despite putting my phone in another room, i heard the buzzing enough to get me off the couch. I logged onto social media to see a flood of white Democrats having a complete meltdown as if the election had been called. And that same existential dread/despair cataclysmically reverberating across social media in New Zealand, South Africa, and Australia. I was so confused. What the actual fuck were people upset about? He hadn't conceded. Most states hadn't been called. The responses felt so much like being in high school or college where I'd studied for exams and felt reasonably prepared but then got overwhelmed in the psychic energy of performed anxiety/fear/studying that everyone did around finals. Hell, in pre-covid times I had to limit my time on campus as a professor in the last week because the palpable miasma of fear/anxiety/performative freaking out was too much for me, even though I WAS JUST GRADING THE FINALS. Honestly, I was baffled. Why were people like this? They knew that Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania were not going to count their early voting polls first, and the in person would screw Republican. WHY WERE THEY FREAKING OUT?

And then it slowly dawned on me. They really had believed their own lies. They thought there was going to be a magical, massive blue wave of repudiation of President Trump, after the xenophobia, the racism, the wanton cruelty, the vicious fascism. They needed to believe that this moment would redeem them, this electoral moment would fix them. And they were mourning, almost disproportionately, this sense of utter collapse. They were treating the reality of the closeness of the election as somehow equivalent to the idea of a Trump re-election victory. What the actual hell.

I started to see a lot of "I can't believe it's even this close" statuses. I put down my pizza in annoyance and kept reading. There were so many variations on the time-honoured "this is not who we are" canard so many people tell themselves about America. People were mourning, in real time, the lie they'd told themselves. There was a fundamental believe that Trumpism, the vile populism and toxic mix of racism and other oppressive elements, was an "aberration" that could be corrected. There was a willing disbelief that this was not part of the very core of this country, that 'America' as a concept is a bad place--one made entirely possible through enslavement and genocide and one that was absolutely fixable through a simple electoral action. And it's wild, because that's never been the case. Not now, not ever. I remember in 2008, being overwhelmed by white people wanting to celebrate Obama with me, but I was also keenly aware of racism and the fact that my own state had just voted to take away same-sex marriage. Dr. Jim Barrett, a professor in my graduate program at Illinois, stopped me, a new, black graduate student who he didn't know, and said, "isn't the election great?" and i said, "I'm from California, and I'm more worried also about how easily people can dismiss queer rights." He paused for a second, and then said, "but we did it this time with Obama!" Here was a full-grown man with a PhD in American history casually telling a black graduate student (WHOSE NAME HE DID NOT EVEN KNOW) how great it was to be able to absolve oneself of responsibility via an electoral process, and to imagine an America without self-criticism, just redemption.

And that's what was at the heart of this baffling pre-capitulation, one that exceeded even the easy stereotype of the always-losing Democrats. BIDEN HADN'T EVEN LOST. He had (and as of now still) leads in electoral votes! But everyone was moaning, gnashing teeth, and grieving. But what they were really grieving was their own innocence. Their naïve assumption that they could be the heroes in a story, in a history of violence that was expressly built for them, even if they wanted to deny it. Trumpism sells a fantasy of white revanchism, of recovery, and even those whites who imagine otherwise can't exorcise it via a ballot because the entire system of it is at its core, still violent and racist. Y'all seriously wanted a parade, a movement repudiating this. What America do you live in? Did we not go through the same black summer? Of course we didn't. You saw this summer as a moment of profound alliance building and a recapturing of a mythical value of inclusion. We saw it with surprise--oh white people either just realized that black lives are cheap, or they were sufficiently bothered/bored enough to perform about it.

So much of this is a navel-gazing performance of anxiety. 2016 was traumatizing for people who didn't want to think Trumpism was America, but it IS. And it's done in your name.

This morning, I saw even more of this. A friend and colleague wrote a lengthy status about her anxiety about it all and hope that 'good' would prevail, and bemoaned the lack of a real wave of change. A friend, family member, or colleague of theirs immediately commented with pro-Trump sloganeering. And she did nothing. She kept commenting. This broke me for a second. How could she not see what a joke all of this was? What she was? Here she was bemoaning a lack of some sort of prelapsarian goodness, trying to make some sort of "we'll get through this message," and she couldn't even see what she was doing. There was no acknowledgment, no censuring, no pushback, no RESPONSE to the Trump sloganeering, because she could not fathom the idea that this was connected to HER. The disappointment she felt, that so many people expressed on social media? It was performative, it was a mourning one's inability to distance oneself from genocidal, suicidal logics of all of this populist turpitude. She couldn't even denounce the very Trumpism on her own fucking wall, in response to her comment. Of course there was no blue wave, of course there was no rebuking. Why should there be? There are no consequences. Just white folk hoping civility will save them, with the same baffling surety as King Canute commanding the waves to cease lapping at the feet of his throne. The whole event felt like a farce--people attempting to distance themselves from a violence done in their name by refusing to even pushback against he very violence that endangers millions of people, incarcerates children, kills with impunity.

I feel, once again, like I'm the one person who felt confident for an exam during finals week. Everyone's freaking the fuck out, performing, demonstrating a goodness, trying to foolishly imagine the country as good. I think back to March, when black voters in South Carolina made very clear what was going to happen. White people were not coming to save them. Electoral legerdemain was not going to happen, there was no last minute deus ex machina. There was the brutal calculus that many people don't see the fascism as bad, and remain so insulated that they don't care if the brute returns, so much as the lesser peoples are put in their place. Those black voters saw that their best chance was the utter uninspiring, safe, and milquetoast flavour of whiteness, Joe Biden. And they were right. We can push that one, perhaps. Make changes. But this was always going to be a bitter slog, and at most, a close thing. America is a bad place. We cannot redeem it through performance, through simply voting. We don't exorcise our structural violence with selfies and dashes of ink on sealed papers.

Now that we know this, we can actually push back against the attempted voter fraud that IS happening right now, and then hope that this mediocre blue man wins. And then maybe y'all can join us in doing the hard, daily work that also involves critically acknowledging our own complicity, investment, and inclusion in a violent, illegitimate space. We have to live in these contradictions, to push and transform it, and remember that there are no cheat codes here. Just grinding work, and no cookies or congratulation.

Be fucking better, y'all.

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somethingusefulfromflorida · 3 years

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Losing candidates of the last 60 years

1960: Richard Nixon, Vice President (1953 - 1961), unsuccessfully ran for governor of California in 1962 after which he threw a piss baby shit fit press conference where he vowed to retire from politics, but rescinded that vow to run for president again in 1968, this time successfully because the Democratic vote was split between liberal northerner Hubert Humphrey and conservative southerner George Wallace (Nixon won with 43.4% of the vote, a record low not broken until Bill Clinton with 43.0% in 1992)

1964: Barry Goldwater, Senator from Arizona (1953 - 1965, 1969 - 1987), segregationist, staunch "states rights" activist, mentor to Ronald Reagan, father of modern conservatism, retired in the 80s, replaced by the more moderate John McCain

1968: Hubert Humphrey, Vice President (1965 - 1969), former senator from Minnesota (49 - 64) father of modern liberalism, would be considered a progressive by today's standards, pro-civil rights, later re-elected to the senate (71 - 78, died in office).

1968b: George Wallace, governor of Alabama (63 - 67), staunch segregationist, made Barry Goldwater look like MLK, famously stood on the school house door to try and stop integration, didn't let black people vote, nearly assassinated in 1972, paralyzed, continued serving as governor (71 - 79, 83 - 87), renounced racism later in life, claimed he was never truly racist, just pretended to be because he supported "states rights" (bullshit). Most recent third-party candidate to win a state.

1972: George McGovern, senator from South Dakota (63 - 81), lost every state but Massachusetts and DC, in part because President Nixon cheated (Watergate scandal, Nixon hired goons to wiretap DNC and steal intel from their HQ, forged a letter to discredit strong candidate Edmund Muskie to he would drop out and give the nomination to weak McGovern, tried to plant McGovern's campaign literature in Wallace's assassins apartment so conservative southerners would associate the attack with the Democratic Party and vote for Nixon instead)

1976: Gerald Ford, President (74 - 77), Republican House leader (65 - 73), became VP in 73 after Spiro Agnew resigned due to a bribery scandal. Democrats controlled Congress, so Nixon nominated Ford because he was a popular bipartisan mediator who the Democrats wouldn't object to, became president when Nixon himself resigned due to Watergate (Ford is the only president who was never elected to the presidency of vice presidency), started out super popular but tanked his credibility when he pardoned Nixon for his crimes

1980: Jimmy Carter, President (77 - 81), governor of Georgia (71 - 75), elected as a Washington outsider, humble peanut farmer, boring, malaise, fumbled Iran thrice (the revolution, recession, and hostage crisis), lost re-election to actor turned governor Ronald Reagan (segregationist Goldwater's protege; started his career giving anti-union speeches in the 60s despite being the president of the Screen Actor's Guild, a major union), had a much more successfully post-presidency than presidency, Habitat for Humanity, philanthropy

1984: Walter Mondale, Vice President (77 - 81), Senator from Minnesota (64 - 76), protege and successor to Hubert Humphrey, decent man, very boring, lost every state but Minnesota and DC, would later become ambassador to Japan under Clinton (93 - 96)

1988: Michael Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts (75 - 79, 83 - 91), army specialist (55 - 57), rode in a tank wearing a bullet proof vest and doofy headphones, looked like an idiot, actually polled ahead of VP Bush for a while, forgettable

1992: George HW Bush, President (89 - 94), VP (81 - 89), relatively moderate before becoming Reagan's VP (referred to trickle down as "voodoo economics"), said "read my lips, no new taxes," then raised taxes, oversaw Gulf War, sent the troops in, Iraq retreated without a fight, war was over in a couple days. Didn't invade Iraq, didn't topple Saddam; his son claims this is why he lost re-election, so he invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam in 2003, to finish what his daddy started. Faced opposition from both Democrats under Clinton and Independents under Perot; Perot didn't win a single state, but took 19% of the vote, the strongest third-party campaign all century

1992b: Ross Perot, businessman, independent, very strong candidate, qualified for debates with the major party candidates, closest thing to a 3-way race we've had since Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 (Wallace won some states in 68, but only had regional appeal; he was only on the ballot in the South, only conservatives liked him, whereas Perot was a nationwide spoiler)

1996: Bob Dole, senator from Kansas (69 - 96) senate majority leader (85 - 87, 95 - 96), fought in WW2, has a bum arm, the senate's version of Newt Gingrich, helped defeat Clinton's healthcare plan (he's part of the reason we can't have nice things). He was VP candidate under Ford in 76; Ford's VP Rockefeller was too liberal (yes, liberal Republicans used to exist, just as conservative Democrats exist), so Ford replaced him with the conservative Dole to appeal to Nixon and Reagan voters (Reagan almost unseated Ford in 76 for the nomination)

1996b: Ross Perot again, Reform Party, didn't get nearly as much support this time around (only 8.4%)

2000: Al Gore, Vice President (93 - 01), senator from Tennessee (85 - 93), very boring, but competent, actually won the election but Bush's brother was governor of Florida and illegally stopped the recount, delaying it until it was too late to restart it (subsequent investigation shows Gore would have won the recount and therefore the presidency), used his post-VP career to be a climate change advocate

2004: John Kerry, senator for Massachusetts (1985 - 2013), unremarkable but competent, lost because Bush started 2 wars and the country didn't want to change horses midstream, later became Secretary of State under Obama (13 - 17), and climate envoy under Biden (a position Biden made up to try and appeal to green advocates, but it doesn't really mean anything because he opposes the green new deal)

2008: John McCain, senator from Arizona (1987 - 2018, died in office), succeeded Goldwater but not nearly as conservative (at least, not a segregationist; he defended Obama as "a good man" when a Karen called him an Arab, got booed for it), Vietnam veteran, war monger (wanted to bomb Iran after Bush bombed Iraq and Afghanistan), actually saved healthcare by voting against Trump and McConnell's Obamacare repeal (he didn't support Obamacare, he just didn't want millions of Americans to lose their insurance; the Republicans didn't have a replacement plan, they were solely dedicated to getting rid of Obama's)

2012: Mitt Romney, governor of Massachusetts (03 - 07), relative moderate (Massachusetts is the bluest state in the country), super Mormon, hates poor people, kind of racist in a grandfatherly way ("oh, peepaw doesn't hate black people, he just grew up in a different era"), once wore brown face to try and appear tan to Hispanic voters, later became senator from Utah (2019 - present), first senator to ever vote to convict a president of their own party in impeachment (twice!)

2016: Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State (09 - 13), senator from New York (01 - 09), First Lady (93 - 01), boring gramma, disingenuous, moderate but pretends to be progressive, wasn't responsible for Benghazi but blamed for it anyway, out of touch, thinks she's the hottest shit since sliced bread, coasted to second place because she thought she didn't have to try, thought she deserved to be President, actually won the popular vote, but lost the electoral college because of low voter turnout, high third-party media coverage, and a major rightward swing in the Rust Belt

2020: Donald Trump, president (17 - 21), no prior experience, dumbest person to ever hold the office (makes George W Bush look like. Rhode's Scholar), diet Fascist: all the ideology, none of the appeal (fascists are usually good speakers, but Trump only had a base of about 35 - 40% of the country, which he couldn't grow, so instead he tried to shrink the opposition by attacking voting rights and calling the election fraudulent), super racist, super sexist, petty, vindictive, cruel, childish, spent the first two years just undoing everything Obama did for no other reason than he just hated the man (there are legitimate reasons to hate Obama, but Trump chose racism and jealousy over valid criticism), first president to be impeached twice, first president to have members of his own party vote to convict him, had a cult-like following among Republicans, close to zero support from everyone else

2024: TBD

#elections #history #American history #us history #long post

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