Monday, December 24, 2012

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP

-- reviewing 2012 rightblogger highlights. Your typical holiday special: Some familiar bits, some new material, and a happy ending. Enjoy!

UPDATE. While looking cartoons to break up the column I came across this:


I don't remember being able to bring loaded guns aboard commercial airliners even before 9/11. This gun-grabber conspiracy goes deeper than I thought.

80 comments:

  1. bingobangoboy3:59 AM

    If guns aren't outlawed, then only outlaws won't have guns.
    It's a useful magical formula that guarantees your enemy will always bring a knife to a gunfight.

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  2. Odder4:24 AM

    If everyone's allowed to pack major heat on airliners in this imagined and aggressively dystopian land of freedom, why are the aspiring highjackers still armed with mere boxcutters?


    --I know, "conservative" "humor..."

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  3. MatthewMikell4:25 AM

    If you could pack heat onto an airliner, wouldn't the terrorists have brought their own instead of boxcutters. OF COURSE.

    Scott Bieser is a complete f***ing idiot of extraordinary magnitude.

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  4. montag25:00 AM

    That round-up was very entertaining, Roy. From it, we can deduce that the whitey-tighteys have gone from merely aberrant to downright bull-goose looney in the space of just a few months. As the prospect of Obama gaining another term became even more likely, they were slipping over the edge with nothing more to hang onto than wishful thinking.


    2013 is going to be a banner year for political proctology.

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  5. Odder5:32 AM

    I remember boarding a flight in the mid-70s; the x-ray screener nervously informed her supervisor that "He's got a hammer in there," referring to my carry-on bag.



    Supervisor asked me why, to which I replied "I'm a carpenter." He laughed and waved me onto the plane. Oh, to relive those more innocent days of Jesus-like work and greater societal trust.

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  6. Odder5:37 AM

    Sorry, faulty temporal memory: that must have been circa '80, on second thought.

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  7. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard5:51 AM

    I think the entire "movement" has irrevocably slipped into all-fantasy all the time. Hell, everything the copy-paste troll who stopped by last post left on the thread was basically a wingnut "Dear Penthouse" letter.

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  8. hells littlest angel7:06 AM

    Thanks, Mr Edroso, for reminding us that shaking one's head and muttering, "holy motherfuck"isn't just for the holidays but for all the year 'round.

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  9. Fiddlin' Bill7:11 AM

    The toon does illustrate what's wrong with the good guy/bad guy formula LaPierre offers--I mean if you imagine some of those citizens blasting the perps and a few rounds penetrating the thin aluminum skin of the aircraft and the other citizens standing in the crossfire.

    Also, bringing 9/11 into the conversation should remind everyone of how emotional reactions then led to action: the Afganistan War, which at least until Tora Bora was fairly successful.

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  10. Doghouse Riley7:50 AM

    Interesting that the soul-searching the Republican party engaged in for fifteen minutes after the election didn't involve any discussion of putting a cork in any of this stuff. The electorate has changed! But half the electorate has always hated you. Romney took some heat for believing his own polls, but the party gets a free pass for having attributed the 2008 election to Temporary Messiah Syndrome, and for convincing itself that the entire country hates the idea of public healthcare, fell for the "Jobs Creator" routine, and, deep down, doesn't really care for the coloreds, either.

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  11. Emily8:08 AM

    My husband was an arborist and he once won a chain saw in an arborist contest in Ohio. Even before 2001, they wouldn't let him bring it on the airplane. The supervisor who got called knew the rule right away. No chain saws.

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  12. satch8:29 AM

    I've got a better one. On a flight back to the U.S. from Australia on United, we weren't allowed to bring two boomerangs that we'd bought as gifts on board. And this was in '96. Apparently the authorities didn't realize that if you try to throw a boomerang in an airliner cabin, there isn't enough room for it to make the turnaround.

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  13. satch8:31 AM

    Of course, thanks to the gun nut lobby, it is unconstitutional to keep firearms out of the hands of people on Homeland Security's terrorist watch list...

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  14. mortimer8:47 AM

    I pity our poor conservative friends. Hate and smears don't sell like they used to, especially when you have to invent most of the stuff anyway-- Obama being a communist, Kenyan, anti-Christ, liberals out to destroy America, blah blah. Meanwhile, attacks on Romney just had to tell the truth: he was a "vulture capitalist" who "looted companies" and "undermined capitalism" and was one more rich guy able to "manipulate the lives of thousands of people and then walk off with the money," and that's just what Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich said about him.

    Unfortunately, all the Goopers have left to cling to is an innate, tribal sense of superiority, and still more hate. So there will be plenty of material this year, too.

    Merry Christmas, Roy et al, and thanks for the sanity dished up funny.

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  15. chuckling9:02 AM

    Nice article, but shouldn't that have come out on New Year's Eve rather than Christmas Eve. Did you kill a Christmas column as part of the war on Christmas? Haven't you effectively killed baby Jesus by not writing about rightbloggers and Him? Isn't that worse than killing people with guns at schools and crowded theaters? I know many people ponder those kinds of questions, but then the meds kick in.



    Anyway, merry Xmas to all. May your sacrifice of a turkey or ham to Santa bring many electronic devices and games to all the children in your world!

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  16. Leeds man9:47 AM

    Wingnut slogan going forward: "Open Carry For All; Engine Back-Fires Will Be Hilarious!"

    Merry Christmas, everyone!

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  17. On the other hand, on an international flight back in the 90's, my dad declared a pocket knife when he was asked if he was carrying any weapons. The official (who was French - not important, but makes it funnier) eyeballs the knife for several seconds, then says "You are a regular James Bond, no?" He let him keep the knife.

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  18. tigrismus10:07 AM

    My MIL gave me her old putter one year, one with a pretty big metal head, and I open carried it right onto the plane. Put it in the overhead and it almost fell on somebody's head.

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  19. Bieser might benefit from a lesson in physics, too. Discharging a firearm in a pressurized chamber at high altitude might not be the best of ideas.

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  20. laws of physics don't stop bad guys with guns, only hysterical and poorly thought-out political commentary can stop bad guys with guns.

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  21. Most of these guys are an admixture of abject terror and invincibility. I remember reading a forum post by a guy who was walking around strapped at an outdoor art fair. He seemed to sincerely believe that he was at constant risk of being jumped by a street gang every time he stepped outside, and the gun was the only thing that stopped it.

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  22. glennisw10:16 AM

    Not to mention the small child at lower right.

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  23. Satch - the primary purpose of a boomerang is hunting - it's only intended to return if you miss your target

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  24. redoubt10:21 AM

    Laws? Physics? That's Islamo-commie-newtonism. What are you, some kind of realist?

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  25. Well, yeah... that means you have to hit the pilot on the first try. Assuming you're on a plane without the FAA mandated boomerang-hardened door, that is...

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  26. For hijacking airliners, I much prefer a nice, heavy-flanged sand wedge.

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  27. So... a circular firing squad?

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  28. RogerAiles11:15 AM

    Happy ending? I paid for a GFE!

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  29. Mr. Wonderful11:21 AM

    Not shown: the second panel, in which one hot-head squeezes (not "pulls") off a round, spooking all the concealed carriers to start shooting. The terrorists, the shooters, and several bystanders in their seats are killed. The pressurized plane explodes, killing everyone else. USA!

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  30. zencomix11:49 AM

    Alternatively, a concealed carry gun accidently discharges while someone is sleeping, let's call it a nocturnal emmission, setting off a chain reaction of hot heads pulling off rounds.

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  31. zencomix12:00 PM

    What could possibly go wrong? Keef Richards wasn't planning on using that gun on the plane. He was only going to snort the gunpowder because he was out of heroin.

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  32. Atticus Dogsbody12:24 PM

    I once saw a guy take down Singapore Airlines pilot from 50 yards. It's an effective weapon in the right hands.

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  33. fraser12:40 PM

    Yes, of course. Because if we could bring guns aboard planes, naturally the terrorists would still bring box cutters.

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  34. I believe Qantas just requires you to stow it in your pouch.

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  35. KatWillow12:56 PM

    I had an EMPTY water bottle in my carryon. To be filled on the plane, see? The guards had a 3 minute conversation about whether to allow it on the plane. Can't have over-hydrated passengers!

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  36. wileywitch12:57 PM

    During the Viet Nam war, an uncle of mine in the Green Berets was stuck with his troops on a hill they were ordered to stay on even though there was nothing happening around them. For some reason they got mail and nothing else from their superiors. They needed socks, waterproof matches, guns and ammunition (to shoot the rats). My grandmother sent them all of these things and cookies every week through the U.S. postal system.

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  37. KatWillow1:00 PM

    One thing I know for sure, if I'm ever "lost" in my Hot-air balloon, I won't ask a conservative for directions. I guess I'll use a map or something.

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  38. wileywitch1:44 PM

    If you are not a feminist, you can enjoy a lifestyle of sexual freedom and also take seriously the idea that sexual freedom is bad for society. If you are a feminist, that is a thoughtcrime." Which is rather like saying that if a black conservative endorsed civil rights for himself but not for other black people, that'd be cool, but any black person who took offense would be a totalitarian.



    If someone could solve this puzzle, then perhaps I could get those brain cells back. Last week is gone.

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  39. Looks like what we used to call a Polish firing squad, back in less enlightened times.

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  40. casino implosion2:19 PM

    Nothing says "freedom" like a Mexican Standoff in a pressurized cabin at cruise altitude.

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  41. Derelict4:44 PM

    All sorts of dangerous stupid packed into that.
    Yep. The good old days when anyone could bring firearms onto airplanes. I do beleive the last time we allowed that was 1903.

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  42. wileywitch4:59 PM

    Damned hippies!

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  43. DocAmazing5:06 PM

    Flanged? I like my sandwedges with the crusts cut off.

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  44. MyPetGloat5:33 PM

    "What might have happened" is the terrorists would also be packing heat. Right, cartoonist? Or does your mind only stretch so far.

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  45. AGoodQuestion5:36 PM

    Jonah Goldberg of National Review told us that the high-class black people who complained about Martin's death "are as removed from lower class black America as many white commentators are from lower class white America," an insight Goldberg proudly announced he'd gotten from Charles Murray.


    More proof that no matter what useless product you're selling, there will always be somebody eager to buy it.

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  46. AGoodQuestion5:43 PM

    Todd Beamer and the other passengers on United 93 managed to frustrate their hijackers' plans without guns. I guess their story is lacking in the satisfying KA-BOOM department.

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  47. Jay B.6:17 PM

    Well, if this were the land of the TRULY free, some asshole would be smoking too.

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  48. I learned not to travel with a vibrator in my carryon after the agent made me take it out and turn it on.

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  49. tigrismus6:29 PM

    If crustless sandwedges are outlawed for hijacking planes only outlaws will... wait, what?

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  50. wileywitch7:20 PM

    Probably not the best time to lick your licks and wink at the agent, huh.

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  51. M. Krebs9:15 PM

    Evidently our glorious victory over Christmas must wait until next year. So merry fucking Christmas, alicurati! Comfort and joy to one and all.

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  52. And then the bad jazz soundtrack started up. Welcome aboard ... Jet Blue.

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  53. Thanks, I think I saw something about that on Dynasty. However, I note also that air marshals carry weapons, so what happened on Dynasty (or maybe it was Falcon's Crest) may not comport with reality.

    P.S. Here's the patriotic version of A Christmas Carol. This one has a happy ending:

    youtu.be/wmigD5S9mNs

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  54. I hope the feats of strength went well at your house, M. Krebs.
    ~

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  55. A BAG OF GODDAMNED PEANUTS?

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  56. Provider_UNE1:22 AM

    near as I can tell there are three Negroes with guns in that cartoon. Something that might have been less than acceptable in a pre 9-11 world. The very idea might have skidmarked all of the tighty whighties in the Neo-Con universe.


    ...

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  57. Provider_UNE1:30 AM

    "...and, deep down, doesn't really care for the coloreds, either."


    And by "deep down" I assume that you're using hyperbole to describe a depression in the yard collecting an inch of rainwater which will evaporate by tomorrows noon day sun.


    Merry Xmas each and all. Cats (with which I have been charged to care for) and ubiquity (replete with multiple computers and intertron access) may follow...


    xoxox
    ...

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  58. I've actually met Scott Bieser- he published a comic by a (very left wing) friend of mine, and... he's a bit less doctrinaire than that illo would indicate.

    Still, come on, Scott.

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  59. AngryWarthogBreath7:20 AM

    The hot air balloon was one of the two that really bugged me with its stupid. Because, in the original, both the balloonist and the groundling took their whacks, and it ended up with a remarkably even-handed joke in which both targets were the butt of it. In I Forget His Name Through Not Wanting To Remember's copy-pasted version, the "you must be a Republican" was "because you're so right, so incredibly right, but I'm too stupid to understand it".

    The other one was the Obama Changing Lightbulbs one (yeah, it took me a while to realise that "just stop reading" was a better idea). Because one of them was about unscrewing the previous lightbulb and putting up a sign saying "Lightbulb Accomplished". Which relates to nothing Obama did and specifically something Bush did. You can't just copy-paste your political rivals' jokes and do a find-replace on the name, cargo cultists.



    On the plus side, I can vent my irritation at the not-funny trolling into my hot air balloon and I'll never have to land again.

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  60. AngryWarthogBreath7:24 AM

    Well, see, the terrorists aren't American, so they wouldn't understand the freedom-bringing glory of the Gun. They can only wield lesser weapons, such as box cutters, or they take a -5 alignment penalty to all attacks due to not being equipped with the Second Amendment.

    Now, excuse me; any moment now someone's going to say something about insurgents with machine guns, and I need to get my voice all trained for the la-la-la-la-las while sticking my fingers in my ears.

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  61. Provider_UNE9:38 AM

    Merry effing Xmas Alicubats!!! I have just finished the placement of the "War on Christmas™" Machine gun nests here at the compound.


    The two adorable cats I am sitting send their greetings as well. I think a bath and an omelet are indicated. And then a movie and a nap or two.


    I love all of you snarky bastards and may next year be better for you than this one.


    xoxox,
    k

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  62. Watch out for the Wingnut Panzergruppen!

    ~

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  63. Provider_UNE11:23 AM

    They are always on my Radar™!
    ...

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  64. You can tell he's not that doctrinaire by the lack of turbans and long beards on the hijackers, and that he put more than one nonwhite person among the other passengers.

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  65. Halloween_Jack11:51 AM

    Dude could have been blindsided by a dreamcatcher at any time; you can't be too careful.

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  66. Halloween_Jack11:52 AM

    Something tells me that there's a certain kind of TSA agent who just lives for those moments.

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  67. Halloween_Jack11:58 AM

    On maybe the second-to-last airplane trip that I took (this would have been several years ago), I flew back from North Carolina with a six-pack of ginger ale (really good ginger ale, too--has a real bite to it) in glass bottles in my carry-on. It wasn't until I was in the air that I thought of the disconnect between not even being able to carry a keychain-sized Swiss Army knife with me and being able to bring on what could be turned into half a dozen very nasty weapons in a few seconds. Of course, this was before the TSA decided that sealed bottles could contain binary liquid explosives.

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  68. DocAmazing1:19 PM

    One with dreadlocks, no less. Many wingnuts would faint dead away at a person wearing dreads that wasn't a fright wig or safely 2-D on an album cover.

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  69. Captain Goto2:04 PM

    Blenheim's? Charlie Kurault had a bit about them...back in the 80's, I was with the family as we drove up from the Carolinas, and got some from a gas station store we passed. Good stuff.

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  70. Halloween_Jack2:47 PM

    Yes! It is as to the more common brands of ginger ale as the sun is to a sun lamp.

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  71. geraldfnord4:38 PM

    ¬extraordinary magnitude
    You have, our gratitude!

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  72. geraldfnord4:38 PM

    'Facts' are for faggits.

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  73. geraldfnord4:40 PM

    But now guns are within the law, and my in-laws have guns.

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  74. geraldfnord4:57 PM

    I thought that only the practice weapons returned at all...I always wanted a Lawn Kligat set for Xmas, but the damn Fe-duh-ration Gummint outlawed 'em. (Next they'll be coming for my ignorance and poverty---I' d like to see them_try_.)

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  75. geraldfnord5:01 PM

    Well, if one's going to be embarrassed, it might as well be a Rabbit.

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  76. geraldfnord5:06 PM

    Point of fact: Mythbustered a few years back.

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  77. BigHank5311:02 PM

    For those of you contemplating mayhem aboard an airliner, I draw your attention to the first-aid kit, which will be located on the left side of the aircraft directly behind the cockpit. (Widebodies may well have more than one.) Within said first-aid kit there will be an oxygen bottle. It's about eighteen inches long and three in diameter. The brass valve is fairly easy for an adult male hand to grasp. Weight's about five pounds.


    Congratulations! There's a cage match at 30,000 feet, and you've got the steel club!

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  78. Halloween_Jack2:31 AM

    Air marshals, of course, have special training that your average Gun Counter Gomer doesn't. And, of course, the "patriotic" version of Dickens' tale was An American Carol.

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  79. The Dark Avenger11:01 AM

    Or mugged by a gang of tole painters.

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  80. Kristophr12:41 PM

    Before terrorists started hijacking aircraft in the 1970s, carrying a firearm on board an aircraft was not a big deal.


    If you were bringing a cased rifle for a hunting trip, the stewardess would ask you if she could stow it in the first class coat closet.

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