I cribbed the above title from an oped by William Rivers Pitt entitled “So This is Despair.”
“I see a president on his knees, hands outstretched, offering the best ideas and policies liberal governance has ever devised up to the voracious carnivore of GOP opportunism. I see the end of the New Deal, and a far crueler America emerging from the aftermath. I see a Democratic president voiding his bladder on all that he is supposed to uphold.
Mr. Obama got on those knees again Monday night, on national television no less, and once again begged the GOP to devour Social Security and Medicare. He gobbled up the flawed, flayed premise of the far-right's deranged argument, again, and pleaded for the chance to give away the core of what he was elected to defend.
I thought I was done being ashamed of my president.
I was wrong.”
This is what Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report declares about Obama:
... Obama is showing such extraordinary talent for obliterating poor and working class programs across the board, he’s making Republicans look redundant and obsolete.
From community block grants to Section 8 housing vouchers to child care to Pell Grants to home heating oil for the poor, Obama has preemptively savaged all that decent people hold dear in the social safety net, and is in enthusiastic, principled agreement with the Republicans that the big cuts are still to come, in Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.
Ford reflects back on the craven selling of Obama as man of the people:
As we at Black Agenda Report and honest analysts like Paul Street pointed out all along, Obama has always been a dangerous, corporate creature. But like the frog that allows the scorpion to hitch a ride on his back across the swollen river, Black and progressive misleaders act shocked and hurt when Obama stings them with his deadly budget halfway through his term. But the frog should have known the nature of a scorpion. Obama’s corporate character was no secret to anyone except those who wished not to know.
Despite being dazzled by Obama's skin color and charm, there is still a consensus among Black Americans on issues of social justice. With his draconian cuts, President Obama is violating that consensus so sharply, it cannot be papered over for the sake of racial pride.
I hope Mr. Ford is right. There is nothing as ferocious as the denial invested in someone who so breathtakingly betrays. With a potential heartbreak so massive, some will will themselves to rationalize and justify for him seemingly forever.
I know the Tea Party Congressional freshmen are callow, vile and empathy-less along with their rabid rat bastard Congressional Republican brethren who obviously don’t care about the human welfare of all Americans, only their elite cronies. I understand, too, that the Tea Party hard-ball gamespeople, ironically, are thwarting gamesman (never "statesman") Obama’s timing of selling out the citizenry while he pretends he is that so-called "only grown up in the room" willing to be faux-bipartisan and bringing on home election 2012 by triangulating his lesser-of-two-evils pose.
Ralph Nader deservedly reams the Tea Partiers in a recent article but has this to say about Obama:
The Republicans are having fun with a spineless President Obama who already has given them 80 percent of what they want and seems ready to slip further into their budgetary abyss.
Obama is willing to give them 80% of what they want but they are too avaricious and power-mad to take it without some seriously arrogant grandstanding first. Say 'pretty please,' Mr. Prez, as you beg us to doom the welfare of millions of Americans, but as Michael Hudson pointed out recently, Obama still gets to play faux-good cop because the Repubs don’t even lie about not caring about the citizens. The citizens not elite enough to matter, that is.
New York Green Party’s Howie Hawkins spelled out reality in a recent email to Party members. Ignore the media omissions, disinformation and spin, babies, spin from ALL the networks. The real deal is simple and horrifying:
It appears that Obama has been willing to offer serious cuts in a host of domestic programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Food Stamps in exchange for a future promise to raise revenues through "tax reform" that would lower the overall tax rate for the wealthy.
The biggest problem facing the country isn't the deficit. And the deficit problem was created through huge taxes for the wealthy, massive increases in military spending and a great economic recession created through the misdeeds and greeds of banks, Wall Street and government regulators.
Instead of solving this problem, the Democrats are buying into the strategy developed by Bush and Rove to create huge budget deficits so that the Democrats would agree to cut domestic spending.
The Democrats are ignoring the recession and unemployment and climate change.
Patrick Martin wrote this a while back on the present state of hunger in America:
“In a society which took seriously the value of human life and the future of its children, the spectacle of 50 million people at risk of hunger, including 1 million children, would be a social emergency. Given that the United States once boasted of its ability to feed the planet, the indifference to the growth of hunger at home is a national scandal. A new report from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture reveals 50 million Americans exist under the poverty line and were too poor to buy adequate food last year. That is approximately 17.4 million families. More than a third of these households, with over one million children, were forced to skip meals.”
Are these millions the people Obama is talking about when he advises DEEPER sacrifices? SHARED sacrifices? Obama promised to champion the middle class in all those campaign speeches (it concerned me that he never seemed to include mention of the lower or working classes or, God forbid, as like Clinton before him, publicly uttering concern about the "homeless"). I have come to realize that Obama relates to and is willing to champion the 6-digit income middle class. The man refuses to look left ideologically speaking, and down, economically speaking. All of us little people, struggling some since Reagan, particularly devastated by the empathylessness of Bush’s economic and military “wrecking crews”, saw Obama potentially as the next MLK or JFK. (Now we are supposed to be GRATEFUL for his not being Michele Bachmann?)
Here are a few profound and despairing statistics about conditions for the non-elites:
From the Dept. of Agriculture or Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine:
Nearly 1 in 4 American children live in households that struggle to put food on the table. That’s 16.7 million children.
Nearly 1 in 4 children in America is at risk of hunger. Among African-Americans and Latinos, 1 in 3. (16.7 million children)
1 in every 2 babies born in the United States is enrolled in WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children).
Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, 2009:
More than 1 in 8 people in the United States lives below the poverty line, which is $21,756 for a family of four in 2009. One in five children in the United States lives below the poverty line.
Most Americans (51.4 percent) will live in poverty at some point before age 65.
A person working full-time at the minimum wage earns $14,500 a year. The official poverty line for a family of three—one parent with two children—is $17,285.
From Bread for the World:
The United States has gone from 1st to 9th place among nations in the percentage of its population that graduates from college.
The U.S. is 24th in the portion of children who have a high school degree. The main reason the U.S. economy was so dominant for much of the Twentieth Century is because U.S. workers on the whole were so much better educated than other workers across the world.
Michael Snyder writes:
The crumbling U.S. economy is putting an extraordinary amount of financial stress on American families. For many Americans, "flat broke" has become a permanent condition. Today, over half of all American families live paycheck to paycheck. Unemployment is rampant and those that do actually have jobs are finding that their wages are rising much more slowly than prices are.
snip
The following are 10 facts about the financial condition of American families ...
#1 Only 58 percent of Americans have a job right now.
#2 Only 56 percent of Americans are currently covered by employer-provided health insurance.
#3 The median yearly wage in the United States is $26,261.
#4 The average American household is carrying $75,600 in debt.
#5 Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
#6 At this point, American families are approximately 7.7 trillion dollars poorer than they were back in early 2007.
#7 The poorest 50% of all Americans now own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
#8 According to one study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States were living below the poverty line in 2010.
#9 Today, there are more than 44 million Americans on food stamps, and nearly half of them are children.
#10 According to Newsweek, close to 20 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 54 do not have a job at the moment.
Jeffrey Sachs focuses on Obama’s abandonment of the poor and middle class:
The idea that the Republicans are for the billionaires and the Democrats are for the common man is quaint but outdated. It's more accurate to say that the Republicans are for Big Oil while the Democrats are for Big Banks. That has been the case since the modern Democratic Party was re-created by Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin.
Thus, at every crucial opportunity, Obama has failed to stand up for the poor and middle class. He refused to tax the banks and hedge funds properly on their outlandish profits; he refused to limit in a serious way the bankers' mega-bonuses even when the bonuses were financed by taxpayer bailouts; and he even refused to stand up against extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich last December, though 60 percent of the electorate repeatedly and consistently demanded that the Bush tax cuts at the top should be ended. It's not hard to understand why. Obama and Democratic Party politicians rely on Wall Street and the super-rich for campaign contributions the same way that the Republicans rely on oil and coal. In America today, only the rich have political power.
Obama could have cut hundreds of billions of dollars in spending that has been wasted on America's disastrous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen, but here too it's been all bait and switch. Obama is either afraid to stand up to the Pentagon or is part of the same neoconservative outlook as his predecessor. The real cause hardly matters since the outcome is the same: America is more militarily engaged under Obama than even under Bush. Amazing but true.
... Obama is on the verge of abandoning the poor and middle class, by agreeing with the plutocrats in Congress to cut spending on Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and discretionary civilian spending, while protecting the military and the low tax rates on the rich (if not lowering those top tax rates further according to the secret machinations of the Gang of Six, now endorsed by the president!)
Laura Flanders writes of the preposterous degree of abundance for the super-rich in our recent past, escalated not reduced thanks to the Obama administration:
In 2009, as million of workers lost their jobs, on Wall Street at the thirty-eight biggest firms, investors and executives earned $140 billion -- the highest sum ever.
James Madison famously wrote that the new American republic was to be "a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people," not aristocratic privilege or hereditary right. Yet in 2010 undisclosed private donors and multinational corporations funneled millions of dollars into our media, saturating the airwaves and skewing the election.
As all this has been shaping up, as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson point out, government in our era not only failed to push back on the tide rising at the top but "put its thumb on the scale, hard... on the side of those who had more weight."
This is what Derrick Crowe says on the money draining into one of many of our military misadventures:
The costs of this pile of failure are huge. It costs us $1 million per troop, per year to maintain our occupation of Afghanistan. That's $2 billion every week. Politicians at the federal level are contemplating ugly cuts to social safety nets, while politicians at the state level are already shredding programs that protect people suffering in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. In this context, the admonitions from the White House and the Pentagon to be patient while this misbegotten strategy limps along the progress-road-to-nowhere seem perverse. The American people have been patient for roughly a decade now, but that patience has run out.
Jeanne Mirer and Marjorie Cohn recognize that Obama could profoundly change -- CHANGE -- the plight of the poor and middle classes of America with a "stroke of his pen," if he had the moral and political imagination and will. Apparently he is not emotionally, politically and/or ideologically capable of such an FDR moment! But the opportunity was and still is there. He just needs to care enough about the people he took an oath to represent, rather than his criminal elite cronies!
The WPA was quickly implemented. By March 1936, 3.4 million people were employed and an average of 2.3 million people worked monthly until the program ended in June 1943. During its existence the WPA employed more than 8,500,000 different persons on 1,410,000 individual projects, and spent about $11 billion. The average yearly salary was $1,100, a living wage at the time. During its 8-year history, the WPA built 651,087 miles of highways, roads, and streets. It constructed, repaired, or improved 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, 8,192 parks, and 853 airport landing fields.
Today our infrastructure is crumbling, and loss of revenue is forcing many cities and states to cut basic services. About 15 million people have become unemployed since the crisis hit in late 2008; a million and a half of them are construction workers. The need for a direct jobs program is either as great, or even greater than during the Depression. But, in light of the election results, is such a program possible? Can the President directly create jobs by executive order? The answer is a resounding yes. Remember when the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which created the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was passed, one of the purposes was to preserve homeownership, and promote jobs and economic growth.
Much of the TARP money has been repaid and the administration refers to the profit on the payments. If one assumes an average cost of one job is $50,000, 6 million jobs could be immediately created for $300 billion. 12 million jobs could be created for $600 billion. Because this is already appropriated money, Congressional Republicans could not block it. This direct job creation would be bold. It would also be highly stimulative. It would not add to the deficit because it is already appropriated money. Furthermore, one third of it would come back immediately in taxes, and more importantly, the growth in demand from this number of added jobs would expand private sector job growth and grow the overall economy.
This country has a lot to do to get its economic house in order. It is heavily dependent on the financial services industry which only promotes speculation and unregulated bubbles. It is largely controlled by the defense industries which have promoted two and possibly more wars. It is beholden to the extractive energy industries, whose owners are funding the “tea party,” thus putting environmental amelioration on indefinite hold. And it is more and more influenced by the prison industrial complex which promotes hostility to immigrants, and takes resources from education and other vital areas. For the last 30 years it has relied on anti-union and anti-worker policies, which has forced the hemorrhaging of high paid manufacturing jobs to low cost countries and driven down wages for U.S. workers which can no longer be papered over with unsustainable debt.
The President cannot solve all these problems overnight, but with a stroke of a pen he can use already appropriated money to create millions of good green jobs, and move down the road to recovery much faster. Any opposition to this from the Republicans will expose their hostility to anyone but the richest members of society, and give the progressive movement ammunition to take the offensive.
With Obama, whether he is spineless as Nader contends or soul-less as Ford does, the results are the same. He is a catalyst for the fast hardening of soft fascism in America! $14 trillion was extorted from the American citizenry by the oligarchs who did their deregulated evil and are ready to perpetrate more -- and what would and could stop them -- in accountability-free (for the elites, at least -- don't be an immigrant or a whistleblower here) Obama world. Obama had and has a lot of help and cover from both sides of the aisle and the corporate media for his inhumane betrayals, but if you aren’t feeling despair about HIS choices by now, you don’t really get it. And if you don't get it, you are part of the problem -- the PROFOUND problem -- not the solution.
[cross-posted at correntewire and sacramento for democracy]
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And he wears ugly ties, too.
You forgot to add that, Libby.
Really ugly ties.
You forgot to add that, Libby.
Really ugly ties.
No, Frank. I don't think he does.
Gonna take a Jazz cruise on the Hudson tonight, Libby...my wife and I. Leave Chelsea Piers at 6:30...travels down to the statue...up the East River under the Brooklyn Bridge...back around the Battery up to the piers again.
The NY and NJ skylines are spectacular. (Much better than Obama's ties!)
Hope all is well with you.
f.
The NY and NJ skylines are spectacular. (Much better than Obama's ties!)
Hope all is well with you.
f.
It wasn't that long ago that he said something like, "tried to convince them but they wouldn't budge." This was after he said several times that he would compromise on dozens of things before the negotiations even began even while the Republicans said "No compromise." Then he apologized to the business community who he forgot to actually stand up to. What was it that he apologized for? Not giving them enough corporate welfare?
I never noticed how ugly his ties are but I can think of what he can do with them.
I never noticed how ugly his ties are but I can think of what he can do with them.
Frank, Was thinking about those ties. I am sure they are of the finest silk , and wonder just how much they cost each and if there is a tax-paid consultant to advise him on them. I mean, starving children or a tie that looks good on the tube, now what would hold Obama's attention longer? Imaging being so vitally important to the president.
You have a good time tonight. Are you trying to tell me re your pleasant evening planned that I am taking things all too seriously and should void my mind of the reality that, say, 1 out of 4 American kids (soon to be more) go to bed hungry each night? I was hoping you might heed that reality above. Do you think that is not a real statistic or is ego defensiveness obstructing serious talking points henceforth with us? I can't believe you don't care about suffering in America and the globe. I honestly believe Barack Obama does not have such a moral compass. Why would people with a moral compass defend him who does not? Who has shown such little indication of one.
Zach-yes, Obama, the pre-emptive compromiser extraordinaire. He is so over-prepared to compromise, he's got compromises on the table that weren't even a twinkle in the Republican rat bastards' eyes yet. He writes THEIR wish list for them. As Glen Ford said, Obama is making the Republican right redundant.
You have a good time tonight. Are you trying to tell me re your pleasant evening planned that I am taking things all too seriously and should void my mind of the reality that, say, 1 out of 4 American kids (soon to be more) go to bed hungry each night? I was hoping you might heed that reality above. Do you think that is not a real statistic or is ego defensiveness obstructing serious talking points henceforth with us? I can't believe you don't care about suffering in America and the globe. I honestly believe Barack Obama does not have such a moral compass. Why would people with a moral compass defend him who does not? Who has shown such little indication of one.
Zach-yes, Obama, the pre-emptive compromiser extraordinaire. He is so over-prepared to compromise, he's got compromises on the table that weren't even a twinkle in the Republican rat bastards' eyes yet. He writes THEIR wish list for them. As Glen Ford said, Obama is making the Republican right redundant.
All true. Worst part is that it reflects the vast majority of people in this country: we want to appear to do right while doing wrong all along.
I'll come back to comment.
This is interesting work libby......
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This is interesting work libby......
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No, Libby...I was not trying to do what you suggested.
I was trying to inject a light, friendly note.
Doesn't seem to work with you.
Keep doing your best to get a Republican in the Oval Office. I suspect you will not be much happier in your world when that happens.
I was trying to inject a light, friendly note.
Doesn't seem to work with you.
Keep doing your best to get a Republican in the Oval Office. I suspect you will not be much happier in your world when that happens.
Frank, I am sorry.
Minimizing what I am saying about the plight of people at the hands of the Obama administration does make me defensive. Discussing Obama angers me. I feel more like a survivor and less like a victim when I let myself feel seriously justified moral indignation. OS is a microcosm of IRL where many people exist in their Obama fogs of denial.
btw, I hope you had a nice time down there with the jazz cruise. I am sure with the nice weather and on the water it was glorious.
I am putting out my moral indignation, especially these last couple of days at OS, to fight for "our" world, not just mine. I am grateful for the read-hits but with only 3 in the ratings endorsements I wonder just how many others see the Obama administration as threatening and damaging as I do. I tried to make the best case I could for my perspective with the most provocative title I could find.
I don't want be incrementally desensitized to the horrors that keep on ambushing us collectively. Obama had 80 million people at his back and he betrayed us who had been so cruelly traumatized by the nightmare terms of Bush. Yes, I know, the entire political system betrayed us. All three branches of that system have betrayed us save for a handful of people who tried to speak out about the amorality and the lack of empathy. It awes me there have been so very few.
There is a story about a guy who spends his life on a street corner on a soap box pleading with the passersby to hear him out about the state of the world. After years of walking by this guy, someone finally stops and says, "Why do you do it? No one seems to be heeding what you are saying?" The preaching guy says, "When I started out, I wanted to change them ... " -- he indicates the pedestrians streaming by. "But now I do it so THEY won't change ME!"
If most Americans choose the "ostrich stance" they are dooming us to fascism. We still have a chance to fight back. We are no longer in the equation when the media discusses politics about our governance. Our collective will is infantilized by the heartless talking heads. The power and control egos. The puppets for the oligarchs ... the CRIMINAL oligarchs. They robbed us of $14 trillion and we are not supposed to have noticed.
Who was it who said, if you are not seriously outraged, then you are not paying enough attention?
This country got economically raped by Bush and economically date-raped by Obama. Time to acknowledge outrage and protest at BOTH crimes.
Minimizing what I am saying about the plight of people at the hands of the Obama administration does make me defensive. Discussing Obama angers me. I feel more like a survivor and less like a victim when I let myself feel seriously justified moral indignation. OS is a microcosm of IRL where many people exist in their Obama fogs of denial.
btw, I hope you had a nice time down there with the jazz cruise. I am sure with the nice weather and on the water it was glorious.
I am putting out my moral indignation, especially these last couple of days at OS, to fight for "our" world, not just mine. I am grateful for the read-hits but with only 3 in the ratings endorsements I wonder just how many others see the Obama administration as threatening and damaging as I do. I tried to make the best case I could for my perspective with the most provocative title I could find.
I don't want be incrementally desensitized to the horrors that keep on ambushing us collectively. Obama had 80 million people at his back and he betrayed us who had been so cruelly traumatized by the nightmare terms of Bush. Yes, I know, the entire political system betrayed us. All three branches of that system have betrayed us save for a handful of people who tried to speak out about the amorality and the lack of empathy. It awes me there have been so very few.
There is a story about a guy who spends his life on a street corner on a soap box pleading with the passersby to hear him out about the state of the world. After years of walking by this guy, someone finally stops and says, "Why do you do it? No one seems to be heeding what you are saying?" The preaching guy says, "When I started out, I wanted to change them ... " -- he indicates the pedestrians streaming by. "But now I do it so THEY won't change ME!"
If most Americans choose the "ostrich stance" they are dooming us to fascism. We still have a chance to fight back. We are no longer in the equation when the media discusses politics about our governance. Our collective will is infantilized by the heartless talking heads. The power and control egos. The puppets for the oligarchs ... the CRIMINAL oligarchs. They robbed us of $14 trillion and we are not supposed to have noticed.
Who was it who said, if you are not seriously outraged, then you are not paying enough attention?
This country got economically raped by Bush and economically date-raped by Obama. Time to acknowledge outrage and protest at BOTH crimes.
rated
Libby, thanks for your response. I appreciate what you said in that posting.
I respect that you forcefully voice your opinions and concerns. For those of us not in office and without the clout of big dough…voicing opinions and concerns publicly and loudly are probably the best things we can do. Doing so is citizenship in action. Certainly, I try to do the same.
We disagree on our assessment of Obama, Libby…and it makes sense that we both put our feelings out there for consideration by others. I suspect you would like to persuade others to your way of thinking on these issues…and I know for sure I would like to persuade others to mine. That is the way things go with people enjoying freedom of speech.
Yeah, the river was exceptional last night…the cool breeze and terrific jazz was a welcome relief from the stifling heat of July…and the heat of concern about the direction in which our country is going.
I think we can agree that both of us hope that things start to improve for everyone.
I respect that you forcefully voice your opinions and concerns. For those of us not in office and without the clout of big dough…voicing opinions and concerns publicly and loudly are probably the best things we can do. Doing so is citizenship in action. Certainly, I try to do the same.
We disagree on our assessment of Obama, Libby…and it makes sense that we both put our feelings out there for consideration by others. I suspect you would like to persuade others to your way of thinking on these issues…and I know for sure I would like to persuade others to mine. That is the way things go with people enjoying freedom of speech.
Yeah, the river was exceptional last night…the cool breeze and terrific jazz was a welcome relief from the stifling heat of July…and the heat of concern about the direction in which our country is going.
I think we can agree that both of us hope that things start to improve for everyone.
Mark, thanks for the [R]!
Frank, we both want what is best for our fellow citizens.
This from Robert Kuttner of American Prospect:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/28-9
"This may sound churlish at such a moment, but in addition to blaming the recklessness of today’s Republican party, the man who deserves substantial blame for this impending economic doomsday is Barack Obama. For two and a half years, he has been all but training the Republicans, Pavlov fashion, to keep rejecting compromise. He has done this by rewarding them with a treat every time they up the ante or move the goal posts.
"Obama’s job, as a crisis president, was to define the nature of the economic disaster and the way out of it, to move public opinion in his direction, and then to make it very costly for Republicans to resist. That’s what the great crisis presidents have done.
"Instead, his manner—conciliation at all costs—in addition to costing the Democrats a midterm blowout, has only produced a more radical and intransigent Republican Party. Even this week, his manner at his address to the nation was earnest, professorial, even pleading. So if the Republicans, like Europe’s leaders of 1914, miscalculate and create disaster, the responsibility will partly be theirs but also partly our overly eager-to-please president."
Frank, we both want what is best for our fellow citizens.
This from Robert Kuttner of American Prospect:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/28-9
"This may sound churlish at such a moment, but in addition to blaming the recklessness of today’s Republican party, the man who deserves substantial blame for this impending economic doomsday is Barack Obama. For two and a half years, he has been all but training the Republicans, Pavlov fashion, to keep rejecting compromise. He has done this by rewarding them with a treat every time they up the ante or move the goal posts.
"Obama’s job, as a crisis president, was to define the nature of the economic disaster and the way out of it, to move public opinion in his direction, and then to make it very costly for Republicans to resist. That’s what the great crisis presidents have done.
"Instead, his manner—conciliation at all costs—in addition to costing the Democrats a midterm blowout, has only produced a more radical and intransigent Republican Party. Even this week, his manner at his address to the nation was earnest, professorial, even pleading. So if the Republicans, like Europe’s leaders of 1914, miscalculate and create disaster, the responsibility will partly be theirs but also partly our overly eager-to-please president."
Wow, those people are really smart.
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