Did Trump even say that bad word?

image credit: uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com

Josh Dawsey at the Washington Post reports on Trump's offensive, obscene, racist remarks in a meeting with some Senators:

. . . according to several people briefed on the meeting.

“Why are we having all these people from $#!+hole countries come here?” Trump said, according to these people, referring to countries mentioned by the lawmakers.

Cue: media freak out. But did Trump actually say that? According to Jim Treacher’s brief analysis at PJ Media:

Take a closer look at Dawsey's construction there. He got this from "several people briefed on the meeting." Oh, okay. So these people, whose names we do not know, were told that Trump said this bad word by somebody who was actually in the room at the time. We're getting it third-hand.

So, who are these unnamed people? Any hints? MSNBC's Kyle Griffin gives us one.

NBC News has confirmed Trump's "$#!+hole countries" remark with a Democratic aide briefed on the meeting.

So it's been confirmed by... a Democrat. Who wasn't even in the room.

Hey, what more proof do you need?

As Treacher agrees, maybe Trump said it. Or maybe it’s Fake News, in compliance with the new standard: “If it rings true, it is true.”  

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DACA Amnesty Alert

NumbersUSA posted this Action Alert this morning:

CAN YOU HELP STOP THIS? A much-awaited bi-partisan Senate proposal is a DACA amnesty that

(1) continues Chain Migration

(2) rejects E-Verify

(3) gives green cards to TPS, and

(4) rewards parents of DACA with lifetime of work permits

In other words, the Senate proposal is the opposite of the House of Representatives DACA bill -- H.R. 4760 -- that NumbersUSA is endorsing.

Your senators need to know that their voters see the so-called balanced senate amnesty deal as a scary joke.

Phone Sen. Sherrod Brown at (202) 224-2315

Phone Sen. Rob Portman at (202) 224-3353

Pick one or more numbered items from above that you oppose and tell the Senators' staffers that is why they should make it clear that they want nothing to do with that "Durbin-Flake amnesty proposal" presented to the White House Thursday.

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Musical chairs: political headlines at cleveland.com

art credit: australianpoliticsonline.com

Musical chairs: political headlines at cleveland.com 

(just the last two days!)

Jim Renacci drops out of the Ohio governor's race to run forSenate

Dennis Kucinich to enter Ohio governor's race on Wednesday

Nan Whaley to drop out of Ohio governor's race Friday

Mary Taylor unveils Hamilton executive [Nathan Estruth] as running mate [in Governor’s race]

Richard Cordray and Betty Sutton announce joint Ohio gubernatorial ticket

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DREAMer amnesty: moral imperative or Democrat votes

image credit: jimbovard.com

The DREAMers, we are told, are in the U.S. through no fault of their own. The Uniparty’s selling point for amnesty is the “moral imperative” and compassion. But it is really all about votes, as Michael Bastasch at The Daily Caller confirms:

The Center For American Progress (CAP) Action Fund circulated a memo on Monday calling illegal immigrants brought here at a young age — so-called “Dreamers” — a “critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success.”

The memo, co-authored by former Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri, was sent around to allies calling on Democrats to “refuse to offer any votes for Republican spending bills that do not offer a fix for Dreamers and instead appropriate funds to deport them.”

. . .

“The fight to protect Dreamers is not only a moral imperative, it is also a critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success,” reads Palmieri’s memo, obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“If Democrats don’t try to do everything in their power to defend Dreamers, that will jeopardize Democrats’ electoral chances in 2018 and beyond,” reads the memo. “In short, the next few weeks will tell us a lot about the Democratic Party and its long-term electoral prospects.”

YouTube of meeting with President Trump and Senators on immigration

Yesterday's report at Zero Hedge was not encouraging about whatever bill President Trump will sign, but Trump's meeting with senators in front of the media tells me there's more here than meets the eye. 

Probably a good time to call the White House if you oppose any amnesty; the Action Alert is here.

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President Trump is a dope?

cartoon by A.F. Branco at legalinsurrection.com

At The American Spectator, Dov Fischer traces the sorry history of the liberal media branding a (D) President as brilliant, and an (R) President as a bumbling moron, regardless of the factual record. Then Fischer gets to President Trump. I am posting the paragraph because it’s a handy and concise summary of the first year of his Presidency:

But is the President stupid? It depends. Without any prior political experience, he defeated a field of serious Republican candidates for the nomination and then defeated a former United States Secretary of State, U.S. Senator, Yale Law grad with half a century of political experience for the Presidency. In a year, he has set the economy booming with a huge nationwide increase in consumer confidence, a soaring stock market, sustained economic growth exceeding three percent for consecutive quarters, muted unemployment, a record number of successful appointments of federal appellate judges, and much more. He has revived the energy sector, deregulated the economy, honored promises from approving the Keystone XL and Dakota oil pipelines to recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, induced allied world leaders to start paying their fair share of NATO costs, sharply reduced illegal immigration along our southern border, restored civil liberty protections to college students accused of assault, promoted charter schools and school choice, enacted the most overarching tax reduction in the past thirty years — perhaps the most ever — and advanced an ambitious agenda for his second year. So, if that is the mark of stupid, then this guy is a dope.

The most recent attacks on President Trump’s unfitness for office or stupidity or [fill in the blank] prompted Trump’s response on Twitter, branding himself as a “stable genius.” Which, as Scott Adams of Dilbert fame pointed out, was sheer genius itself, because Trump’s detractors will keep referring back to his tweets, endlessly mocking him as a “very stable genius.”

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Action Alert Updated: No DACA No Dreamer Amnesty!

 Image credit: aldawood81.wordpress.com

Action Alert: No DACA  No Dreamer Amnesty!

UPDATE: Last week, callers were getting either a busy signal or a message that due to inclement weather, the office was closed and callers were requested to try again on the next business day. So this is a re-post for the week of Jan-08. 

Our friend Steve Salvi at Ohio Jobs & Justice Pac sent out this Action Alert:

Take Action this minute and call the White House:

White House comment line: 202-456-1111

What to say:

Ask the President to oppose any illegal alien DREAMER amnesty and to immediately end his unconstitutional DACA program.

Be polite but firm.

Need talking points or background before you make your call? The Cleveland Tea Party blog citing Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) on DACA is here. Our blog citing Mark Steyn, with link to Ann Coulter, both on the priority of stopping illegal immigration, is here. 

And yesterday, this blog linked to additional facts and background information about the DREAMers amnesty. Click here.

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More info on DACA / DREAMers amnesty

art credit: beforeitsnews.com

Re: Amnesty for DREAMers, I’ll be re-posting the Action Alert from last week, starting tomorrow, Monday (DC weather prevented most calls from being answered last week). But over the weekend, several blogs, especially American Thinker, have reported on some facts and developments that relate to DACA.   

From American Thinker blogs: Are most of the DREAMers “valedictorians and Medal of Honor-level military heroes” or are they “functional illiterates” and “underachievers”? Thomas Lifson reports here. And in another blog, Lifson sums up the dilemma for the Democrats pushing for DREAMer amnesty, and asks whether Sen Chuck Schumer can risk a government shutdown:

President Trump engineered this dilemma for Schumer by rescinding Obama’s executive order creating the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program, but giving Congress until March 2018 to come up with an alternative approach. That trap is now closing in on Schumer. He has 10 Democrat senators up for re-election in November in states that voted for Trump. Will Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, John Tester of Montana, and Claire McCaskill of Missouri be willing to tell their voters that they think amnesty for a group that includes MS 13 members is so important that the government ought to be shut down? Or, if President Trump and the GOP offer some form of amnesty that does not include chain migration (thereby rewarding the parents that illegally brought their children here) but does include border wall funding, are they willing to vote against it?

We are watching another negotiation-in-process.

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Progressive vs conservative solutions

 

A. F. Branco cartoon at legal insurrection

Ever since their Feb. 2016 issue dedicated to “Conservatives Against Trump,” I have been wary of National Review online. But historian Victor Davis Hanson recently published an essay on “The Great Experiment” at the NRO website, and he concludes:  

The true test of conservative solutions is to see how things are after four years of a strongly conservative president, with at least two years of a Republican Congress.

. . .

Antidote One, of unapologetic progressivism under Obama, did not lead to an economically robust and growing America, one safer abroad in a more secure world, and more cohesive, united, and stable at home — at least if that truly was the leftist agenda rather than the more hushed opposite goal of more equal but poorer Americans, America as just another nation among many, and a cultural revolution aimed at accentuating rather than assimilating race, class, and gender identities.

We shall see if the subsequent Antidote Two, of unregretful conservatism under Trump, will provide what conservatism has always promised: greater prosperity, security, and unity.

The engines of prosperity are already revving up, yet we still see anti-Trump foot-stamping, temper tantrums, and hysteria on display in the media (see cartoon at top), in academia, in the entertainment industry, and in groups like BLM and Antifa. No unity there. Yet. Perhaps when take-home pay increases due to the tax cuts, some of the hysteria will start to subside. Anyway, you can read the rest of Hanson’s essay here.

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Action Alert: No Dreamer Amnesty

 Image credit: aldawood81.wordpress.com

Action Alert: No DACA  No Dreamer Amnesty!

UPDATE: Callers are getting either a busy signal or a message that due to inclement weather, the office is closed and the caller is requested to try again on the next business day. I'll re-post this on Monday. 

Our friend Steve Salvi at Ohio Jobs & Justice Pac sent out this Action Alert:

Take Action this minute and call the White House:

White House comment line: 202-456-1111

What to say:

Ask the President to oppose any illegal alien DREAMER amnesty and to immediately end his unconstitutional DACA program.

Be polite but firm.

Need talking points or background before you make your call? The Cleveland Tea Party blog citing Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) on DACA is here. Our blog citing Mark Steyn, with link to Ann Coulter, both on the priority of stopping illegal immigration, is here. 

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Ohio Division of Liquor “Out of” Control

 headline from 1933:

image credit: mafiapedia.wordpress.com

 headline from 2018:

Ohioans Are Going to Have a Hard Time 

Buying Their Favorite Vodka in 2018

John Ellis at PJ Media reports on a development at the Ohio Division of Liquor Control:

Ohio's Orwellian named Division of Liquor Control is forcing many Ohioans who want to enjoy their favorite flavored vodka to spend their money in neighboring states thanks to its decision to place new limits on liquor sales.

. . .

Making the decision for consumers, Ohio's Division of Liquor Control has decided that over 700 liquor brands will no longer be sold in the state. According to a spokesperson [via Cincinnati Business Courier], this decision was made to, "to free up shelf space for more popular products as well as new-to-market products."

Our household doesn’t consume much in the way of liquor, but undoubtedly some Tea Party people will not be happy about this. PJ Media provides the list of banned liquor:

If you're interested in seeing the complete list of now-banned alcohols in Ohio, click here.

Read the entire report here. Out. Of. Control.

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Healthcare in 2018

cartoon by Jake Fuller via caymancompass.com

Residents in Geneva, New York have been promoting single-payer (i.e., government-run) healthcare as better than healthcare provided by the private sector:

Those supporting an effort to get universal health care in New York — including members of a fledgling organization in Geneva — hope to convince state legislators of the need through the stories of their constituents.

. . .

The goal is to gather information with these surveys to help lobby lawmakers to support the New York Health Act, which would provide comprehensive, universal health coverage to all state residents, and which would replace private insurance coverage.

Coverage would be funded through a graduated tax on payroll and non-payroll taxable income, based on ability to pay. 

These people should be careful what they wish for. Even with the Obamacare mandate eliminated, repealing the entire Obamacare bill remains a legislative priority for President Trump. It should be a priority for McConnell and Ryan, because this is what government-run healthcare looks like (posted at Hannity.com on Jan-03-18):

The United Kingdom’s National Health Service announced this week that it was canceling all “routine operations” until February, saying all “non-emergency” procedures will be delayed after a flu-outbreak left hospitals overcrowded and under-funded.

According to the Telegraph, the nation’s government-run health services axed over 50,000 operations in every hospital in the UK following claims by doctors that patients were being treated as if they were in “third world countries.”

. . .

The chaos comes as prominent Democrats and liberal legislators like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders advocate for a similar, single-payer healthcare system in the United States. Left-wing advocates often point to Canada and the United Kingdom as an “ideal” vision for the future of America’s health industry.

The NHS is closing clinics, cancelling surgeries, the hospitals are overcrowded, they are even “running out of corridor space,” and there are ambulances lined up outside. 

At present, the Senate does not have enough GOP votes to repeal Obamacare (see here). The elimination of the mandate was a good start, but just a start. I still think that if the exemption from Obamacare currently enjoyed by members of Congress were eliminated, they'd find a way to get the job done.

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It can happen. Hillary to Trump.

THE TRUMPET @Hillary Is 44 

It can happen. During the election cycles when Hillary (that’s “Felonia von Pantsuit” to you, Kurt Schlichter) was a potential or actual nominee for President, there was a website called “Hillary is 44" – and it promoted Hillary in every way possible. Then, in 2016, something happened to the website. On the 2017 anniversary of the November 2016 election, "Hillary is 44" published this:

On November 11, 2016 we traveled from being the premier Hillary Clinton website to an endorsement of Donald J. Trump for President.

On November 4, 2016 we predicted that Donald J. Trump would win the election. We provided a map of a state by state analysis. We declared on that Friday before the Tuesday elections three states “too close to call”. Those states? Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, all of which Donald J. Trump won.

Since then, the website has morphed into an informed and perceptive resource for those attempting to follow and understand the developments and dynamics of the Trump administration, his strategy to drain the swamp, and so on. If you had told me in October 2016 that this pro-Hillary website would flip to one that celebrates our “MAGAnificent” President, I’d have laughed out loud.

It can happen. 

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Fake News Propaganda – a Case Study

art credit: Henry Payne cartoon at Townhall 

Happy New Year! I’m starting off 2018 with a close-up look at how the media manufactures Fake News.

Frank Miele publishes news commentary in the Daily Inter Lake, a Montana newspaper. On Dec. 30, he ran an editorial about an AP wire report, the misinformation it contained, and his subsequent efforts to wrench a correction out of the AP higher-ups (h/t Thomas Lifson). It is a bit of a read, but I am linking to it, because it provides a look inside a newsroom and how “Fake News” gets so widely disseminated. It is also a classic illustration of Trump Derangement Syndrome infecting the media pushing progressive propaganda. The Russian Collusion phony baloney is starting to collapse of its own weight, and Miele’s report is related to that, insofar as Andrew McCabe is one of the cast of characters at the FBI. Miele’s report starts off:

I took a rare shift as news editor last Saturday, which gave me an unexpected chance to put my finger in the dike holding back the flood of fake news caused by those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome. 

As I was sifting through the Associated Press news report looking for wire stories worth putting into the Sunday paper, one story on the news digest caught my attention right away: “President Donald Trump reacts to reports about the retirement of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe by retweeting falsehoods about McCabe’s wife.” 

“Oh no,” I thought. “What has Trump done now?” Because even though I am a Trump supporter, I’ve learned that Twitter can be a cause of trouble in the Trump administration as well as a frequent force for good.

But when I looked up the story, I discovered that my worries were unfounded. So, unfortunately, was the story.

When I read AP reporter Darlene Superville’s story, it was immediately obvious that she had either misunderstood Trump’s tweet or intentionally lied about it. She also plainly didn’t know the meaning of the verb “retweet,” since Trump had tweeted an original statement, not a quoted one.

Getting to the truth will take a bit of context, so here goes . . .

And he goes on from there in some detail. He eventually gets a correction from the AP, but here’s his conclusion, and one which I will put in my mental file for the next time I have a conversation with a liberal on media propaganda:

It was a small step, but an important one. Yes, I felt like the little Dutch boy who put his finger in the dike to stop the floodwaters, but it may be a hollow victory in the war on fake news. I have to wonder about all those hundreds of editors who put the same erroneous story in their newspapers or websites last weekend without question. Didn’t anyone other than me question the accuracy of the report? Besides, with the power of the Internet, the damage may be irreparable. I checked on Tuesday and found out that the fake version of the story was listed in a Google search 7,790 times whereas the corrected version only appeared on 5,710 websites.

Let the reader beware. 

You can read the rest here. It’s an uphill battle, so please pass it on!

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Happy New Year ~ 2018

Gif credit: 9to5animations.com

pinterest.com

from the Cleveland Tea Party

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Rep. Dave Brat on immigration – THE issue in 2018

R McKee cartoon credit: teapartyamerica.blogspot.com

Rep. Dave Brat spoke to Breitbart about the immigration issues ahead of us in 2018. Brat (R-VA) is the one who beat Eric Cantor, then the House Majority Leader, in the primary – and his upset victory put the amnesty bill on hold. But amnesty is the creature that wouldn't die.

Brat discussed Congress’s considerations to codify the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy into federal law.

Congress must prioritize four repairs for the immigration system before contemplating any DACA-style amnesty negotiation, said Brat: 1. Ending chain migration and the visa lottery; 2. Mandating employer use of E-Verify; 3. Construction of a southern border wall; and 4. Interior enforcement of immigration law.

The four aforementioned “permanent fixes” must precede any DACA negotiation regarding amnesty for illegal immigrants, said Brat: “It shouldn’t be about trusting or hoping, the permanent part has to come first, you see in that place and then you negotiate later.”

The rest of the report is here.

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Mark Steyn on illegal immigration

We can expect a lot of work in 2018 to do what we can to block the passage of DACA, start building the wall, and end chain migration. My fave, Mark Steyn, guest hosted for Rush Limbaugh yesterday, and his segment on illegal immigration and The Wall were reported at both Breitbart (“Mark Steyn: In the End, Trump Presidency ‘Will Stand or Fall on How He Tackles Immigration’”) and on Steyn’s blog page (“The Wall Is All”). The transcript report by Jeff Poor at Breitbart is below.

“[T]here’s a lobby — there’s lobbies for everything in this country,” Steyn said. “And there’s a strong lobby for illegal immigration. There’s a strong lobby for refugees, which again is a completely fraudulent operation by and large. Trump won because a significant [number of voters] were serious about building a wall, about ending illegal immigration and about doing something about people who walk into this country illegally, stay here illegally, take jobs illegally, get driver’s licenses illegally, use Social Security numbers illegally. And at some point … I would have liked him to hold the inauguration ceremony on the southern border and for it to culminate after the oath of office with him ceremonially laying the brick in the wall. But in the end, his presidency will stand or fall on how he tackles immigration.”

Steyn pointed to how low-skilled mass immigration has impacted the American economy, and there is a demand for low-skilled workers. He added that it isn’t just policy for Trump that is important [but] shifting “attitudes” as well.

“In the end, the Trump presidency I believe will stand or fall on how permanently he manages to shift not just the number of people coming into the country, but how he manages to shift attitudes towards remorseless unskilled mass immigration,” Steyn added. “That’s what got him elected, and that’s what [will] actually be the basis on which his presidency is judged.”

Steyn’s page is here. Ann Coulter recently published an article along the same lines, at Townhall and Human Events here. Her take is that if the United States does not stop illegal immigration, then all other issues are essentially academic. 

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Serious course correction on the S.S. Trump

Ben Garrison cartoon credit: governmentpropaganda.net

Kurt Schlichter does not take prisoners. He does not mince words. His latest column at Townhall, titled “Trump Ends 2017 Residing In His Enemies’ Heads” is an optimistic preview for what’s to come in the New Year:

Slowly, it’s dawning on Trump’s enemies – on our enemies – that this isn’t just an unfortunate, temporary bump in the road to the Californiaization of America, but a U-turn. The people who elected Donald Trump were something his allegedly conservative Never Trump opponents never were: serious about being conservative.

It’s easy to grift the donors with big talk about culture wars and policy initiatives when you never expect to be in a position to actually pull them off. But the Normals finally got sick of election year bomb-throwers morphing into pliable puffboys once their reps crossed into the Beltway. And that’s how you got Trump.

Schlichter’s description of Trump’s election as “a U-turn” reminded me of Mark Steyn’s reaction when Barack Obama was re-elected, since it suggested that the American electorate lacked the will to effect a “serious course correction.” And that is surely because the GOPe ran another RINO candidate, in that instance, Mitt Romney. A lot of conservatives stayed home on Election Day. 

Now here we are on board with President Trump, making the U-turn, making the serious course correction. The rest of Schlichter’s column is here.  

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Mr Speaker on Fake News

Photo credit: painepubllishing.com

Speaker Newt Gingrich’s latest emailing is titled “The Republican 2018 Surprise: Victory.” A short extract:

[Scott] Adams, the author of Dilbert, has a list of 20 political opinions and predictions made about President Trump and his Administration, which were just plain wrong. He suggests if you were wrong about 15 or more of these assertions, you might quit talking about politics while Trump is in the White House. By Adams’s standard, most elite "analysts" would have to be quiet, because they have been so consistently wrong about Trump.

As I listened to the end of the year "analysts," I was struck by how little they know, how little they have questioned their own mistakes, and how mutually reinforcing their false information has been.

These are not analysts. These are liberal propagandists. Much of what they assert is just plain wrong. Fake news is, sadly, an accurate term. And the topic about which they have been the most fake is the GOP’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Newt predicts a GOP win in the midterms. But that would not be enough. I can’t help but hope that in the process of draining the swamp, members of the UniParty, including those with an (R) after their name, are exposed as the corruptocrats that they are. 

Newt’s column is online here.

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Three on the Fox bench

art credit: worldartsme.com

Subtitle: Hosts who don’t interrupt

Over the Christmas break, the pinch-hitters are guest hosting most of the prime time news and opinion broadcasts at Fox. In some cases, the bench team outperforms the regular hosts.

Guest host for Sean Hannity is David Webb. He is intelligent, he listens, and he asks follow-up questions. Webb is calm and collected and measured, never strident or frenetic.

Guest host for Tucker Carlson is Mark Steyn. Disclosure: Mark Steyn is my favorite online commentator/blogger. But Steyn as host, even when saddled with a ghastly line-up of guest talking heads, is informed, incisive, and FUNNY. (And when he is a guest on Carlson's show, he usually has Tucker in stitches).

Daytime host Brian Kilmeade subbed for Hannity or maybe it was Laura Ingraham, and not once did I reach for the mute button. He also has co-written a book about Andrew Jackson and The Battle of New Orleans and hosted a recent Sunday night special on the subject. It was excellent, and I hope Fox re-runs it.

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Handy tax chart from Powerline

Steven Hayward at the Powerline blog just published a “handy tax chart to annoy your liberal friends”; it highlights provisions in the recent GOP tax reform bill compared to the previous tax code.

If you have trouble embiggening the chart with a click, just go to the Powerline blogpost here and scroll halfway down.

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