Tag: government

New study devalues carbon dioxide again

10:58 am

The uncertainty of science: A new study now suggests that previous climate models significantly over-estimated the effect increased carbon dioxide has on the climate.

Lewis co-authored a report with science writer Marcel Crok earlier this year that found many climate models running hot and overestimating climate sensitivity by 40 to 50 percent. The paper also criticized the IPCC for trying to hide the climate’s weaker response to carbon dioxide in its 2013 report by not giving a central climate sensitivity estimate.

Judith Curry, one of the co-authors, was also very quick to note that this result is by far not the final word. “There remains considerable meta uncertainty in the determination of climate sensitivity, including how the problem is even framed.”

Of course, if you are a global warming activist and communist, none of these minor details matter. Revolution for the climate is a must!

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New Jersey prosecutor drops prison threat against Pennsylvania gun-carrying mom

10:45 am

How nice of him! A New Jersey prosecutor has dropped the treat of imprisonment for a Pennsylvania mother who mistakenly brought her legally purchased gun into New Jersey.

Allen was arrested last October after she was pulled over on the Atlantic City Expressway for a minor traffic violation and volunteered to the state trooper that she had a gun in her purse. She erroneously believed that her Pennsylvania carry permit was good in New Jersey, and for that mistake McClain was prepared to put her behind bars for years, separating her from her two young sons. McClain’s predecessor and prosecutors in other counties took a more lenient approach, commonly approving PTI for defendants like her. But until now McClain had argued that New Jersey law did not allow such exceptions.

As a general rule, it is wise to avoid entrance to fascist states. This mother has discovered why in a very blunt manner.

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Hamas cedes some Gaza control to Fatah

10:04 am

In what appears to be evidence that the recent Israeli Gaza effort did significant damage to Hamas, the terrorist organization has agreed to give the Palestinian Authority some control once again in the administration of Gaza.

Hamas and Fatah leaders said that the agreement reached on Thursday calls for the PA government, headed by Rami Hamdallah, to “immediately” assume its responsibilities in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian sources said that the agreement allows the PA to take control over the border crossings in the Gaza Strip, including the Rafah terminal. Musa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official, announced that the Palestinian Authority government would soon manage all the border crossings in the Gaza Strip.

A second quote gives as some idea of the corrupt patronage of these two organizations:
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AG Eric Holder to resign

9:56 am

Good riddance: Attorney General Eric Holder will announce his resignation today.

Morrissey offers a lot of good analysis about why Holder might be doing this now, but I think this story might explain it best: Federal Court Denies DOJ Motion for Delay, Orders Release of Fast and Furious Documents List to Judicial Watch by October 22.

The Holder Justice Department is under legal attack from several fronts. Holder’s effort to block all investigations, from Fast and Furious to the IRS scandal, will be revealed quite soon in court, and when it does, he is going to be toast. Better he leave now then be forced to resign at a time not of his choice. As Morrissey notes,

Resigning now allows Obama to appoint a replacement soon, and Senate Democrats to schedule the hearings during the lame-duck session (and don’t forget Harry Reid’s rule change on filibusters for presidential appointments, too, which expires at the end of this session).

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Taking a close look at the political leanings of a global warming rally

9:23 am

Want to get a feel for the politics of the environmental movement? Take a gander at this detailed report, with numerous pictures, of a global warming rally that took place in San Francisco this weekend.

It was the same in New York at the People’s Climate Rally. Anyone who thinks it is the Earth these people want to save is incredibly naive. It is power they crave, and the ability to use it for their own ends.

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Russia announces plans to fund its share of ISS through 2025

8:50 am

In a somewhat unexpected development today, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin revealed today that Russia intends to spend $8.2 billion (321 billion rubles) on research and development at the International Space Station through 2025.

“The 2016-2025 draft of the target federal program provides for allocating 321 billion rubles for the ISS development and operation, including the creation of new modules for unmanned spacecraft,” Rogozin said during a visit to a cosmonaut training center. “Russia channels considerable funds into development of this area of Russian space science. We are now thinking of research projects designed to explore outer space, as well as new projects in manned cosmonautics,” Rogozin said.

Up until now the Russians have been unclear about what they intend to do at ISS. NASA had asked them to extend the partnership to 2024. Their initial response was almost hostile, with Rogozin even threatening to stop flying American astronauts to ISS on Russian Soyuz rockets/capsules. Now it appears that they have decided to up their participation with new modules and agree to the extension.

Moreover, Rogozin’s statement suggests they are going to take a more independent position when it comes to human research in space. Up until now, they have allowed NASA a veto on flying any long manned missions on ISS, which is why no yearlong expeditions prior to next year’s have taken place. NASA kept saying no. This report suggests that once we have our own methods for getting astronauts to ISS they are going to go their own way and begin flying their own long term missions to ISS. We will fly our astronauts there on our schedule, and they will fly their astronauts there on their schedule.

Should make for some interesting news stories, eh? Will Russian and American astronauts even be allowed in each other’s modules? I am reminded of stories of messy divorces where the couples still had to live in the same house.

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Forest Service clamps down on free speech

9:47 pm

The Bill of Rights is such an inconvenient thing: The U.S. Forest Service has instituted rules requiring journalists to get a permit before they can take pictures or videos on federal land.

Under rules being finalized in November, a reporter who met a biologist, wildlife advocate or whistleblower alleging neglect in any of the nation’s 100 million acres of wilderness would first need special approval to shoot photos or videos even on an iPhone. Permits cost up to $1,500, says Forest Service spokesman Larry Chambers, and reporters who don’t get a permit could face fines up to $1,000.

First Amendment advocates say the rules ignore press freedoms and are so vague they’d allow the Forest Service to grant permits only to favored reporters shooting videos for positive stories.

The fascist nature of these new rules is revealed by this quote near the end of the article:

[T]he Forest Service is giving its supervisors discretion to decide whether a news outlet’s planned video or photo shoots would meet the Wilderness Act’s goals. “If you were engaged on reporting that was in support of wilderness characteristics, that would be permitted,” [said Liz Close, the Forest Service’s acting wilderness director].

But if you are reporting on something the Forest Service disagrees with they obviously believe they have the right to deny you a permit to film or videotape.

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The IRS versus the Constitution

1:49 pm

Working for fascists: The IRS did not just harass conservatives, it also targeted groups whose only focus was to teach the Constitution.

It is now well known that the IRS targeted tea party organizations. What is less well known, but perhaps even more scandalous, is that the IRS also targeted those who would educate their fellow citizens about the United States Constitution.

According to the inspector general’s report (pp. 30 & 38), this particular IRS targeting commenced on Jan. 25, 2012 — the beginning of the election year for President Obama’s second campaign. On that date: “the BOLO [‘be on the lookout’] criteria were again updated.” The revised criteria included “political action type organizations involved in … educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.” [emphasis mine]

Note that the targeting was aimed at educational groups, not political groups, which were simply working to teach Americans about the founding documents of our country. That the Obama IRS could somehow consider this activity political or partisan and subject to increased investigation is quite disturbing. Since when is teaching about the Constitution a Democratic or Republican issue? Or has it become one, with the Democrats now hostile to the principles of freedom for which these documents were written to defend?

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The Great Space Race

1:00 pm

Yesterday the private commercial launch company SpaceX broke ground on its own private spaceport near Brownsville, Texas.

“This feels great. It feels like the future,” [SpaceX founder Elon] Musk said at the ground-breaking. … He intends to have the first launch in late 2016, with an initial 12 launches a year. Ultimately, “thousands of launches,” he projected. Furthermore, “when we start doing commercial crew activities, I would expect us to launch a crew from here,” he said.

The significance of this construction is not trivial. This will be the first spaceport built by a private company that will be used to launch its privately-built commercial rockets, and will do it for profit. Other spaceports have been established in the last decade for the purpose of private space tourism, but none have seen anything fly, and all those spaceports were some form of quasi-government operation.

SpaceX’s Brownsville spaceport, rumored to be dubbed Mars Crossing, is not a government-run operation, however. It will be wholly owned and operated by the company, and is being built to allow them to launch commercial satellites unconstrained by the rules that make launches from the government controlled spaceports at the Kennedy Space Center as well as Vandenberg Air Force Base in California difficult and complicated.

This ground-breaking also comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that SpaceX and Boeing have been chosen by NASA to build spacecraft to ferry human astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

It also comes at the same time the Russian government has reorganized its entire aerospace industry to place it under government control, committed billions for the accelerated construction of a new spaceport on Russian territory, and launched the first test flight of its own new rocket, Angara, designed to compete for commercial market share while also reenergizing the entire Russian space effort.

Nor is that all.
» Read more

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Obamacare enrollment plunges

8:24 am

Finding out what’s in it: At congressional hearings yesterday health insurance experts described how the numbers of people actually enrolled and paying for Obamacare is dropping.

“They’ve deteriorated quite a bit, this was anticipated to some degree, but I think it’s exceeded expectations in some cases,” said Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. For instance, state officials in Florida say their enrollments are now 220,000 lower than the administration’s count in April, going from some 983,000 to just over 762,000, a drop of more than 20 percent. A state official said some may have been duplicate enrollments because of website problems on Healthcare.gov. The others, he said, just didn’t pay their premiums and lost their coverage, a problem insurance companies are also reporting.

Robert Laszewski, of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, said, “I’ve talked to a number of insurance companies around the industry and they’re indicating that they’re down as low as 70 percent of the original enrollments they had.”

We must remember that the original announced numbers were far lower than had been hoped for to begin with. Now we are finding that even those who did enroll decided at some point that the coverage imposed on them by the law wasn’t worth the money and stopped paying for it.

But the Democrats care. They want to help. So what they their efforts are at best ineffectual and at worst destructive. We’ve got to vote for them anyway!

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The People’s Climate March leaves New York a mess

7:53 am

“Their love for the Earth is so real, they couldn’t even use a trash can.”

The images of the trash left scattered on the streets of New York is striking, especially when compared to the very clean remains after the 2010 Tea Party march in DC, and provide more evidence that the loud cries of “Save the Earth” by these demonstrators were quite shallow and insincere.

Nonetheless, this apparent hypocrisy to me is less significant than the actual agenda of these fascists as stated by them, before, during, and after the march. They want to imprison their opponents and than impose their will by force on everyone else. It is far more important to note this fact than the fact that these demonstrators are sloppy hypocrites.

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The planet debate continues

8:22 am

In a public debate about the scientific definition of a planet, the IAU’s definition, imposed about eight years ago to expressly prevent Pluto from being called one, was soundly defeated when the votes were counted.

Science historian Dr. Owen Gingerich, who chaired the IAU planet definition committee, presented the historical viewpoint. Dr. Gareth Williams, associate director of the Minor Planet Center, presented the IAU’s viewpoint [which is the definition that is presently considered official by scientific bureaucrats]. And Dr. Dimitar Sasselov, director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative, presented the exoplanet scientist’s viewpoint.

Gingerich argued that “a planet is a culturally defined word that changes over time,” and that Pluto is a planet. Williams defended the IAU definition, which declares that Pluto is not a planet. And Sasselov defined a planet as “the smallest spherical lump of matter that formed around stars or stellar remnants,” which means Pluto is a planet.

After these experts made their best case, the audience got to vote on what a planet is or isn’t and whether Pluto is in or out. The results are in, with no hanging chads in sight.

According to the audience, Sasselov’s definition won the day, and Pluto IS a planet.

Notice that two of the three debaters considered Pluto a planet even before the vote was taken. Notice also that the first debater, Gingerich, was on the very committee that the IAU had created to come up with a definition and then ignored completely when its definition decided that Pluto was a planet.

In the end, it will be the people who speak the language that will decide, not IAU bureaucrats. This little public relations event and vote tells me that the bureaucrats will lose.

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“They want to start taking — now.”

12:33 am

The two stories linked below, describing what it was like at Sunday’s People’s Climate March in New York, confirm for me what I had surmised from earlier reports prior to the march, that the march was a leftwing get-together with its central goal to use the climate as an excuse to impose leftist and communist redistributionist policies on the free citizens of America.

My headline is a quote from the second article. The full quote:

Put it all together — all the justice demanders, the tax Wall Streeters, and the spirit of Occupy symbolized by the angry pacifist — and the People’s Climate March was one long, loud, loosely organized demand that vast sums of money be taken from the wealthy and given to the clients of the coalitions and alliances and networks and task forces that make up today’s environmental justice movement. They’ve had enough of debating climate models. They want to start taking — now.

Lord help us, in that we have already tragically allowed many of these people to wield significant amounts of power, and they are using that power to impose their agenda on us all.

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Obamacare forces Alaskan doctors to close their practices.

10:37 pm

Finding out what’s in it: “It is an unsustainable system.”

“Within the last month, Fairbanks has lost three other much respected physicians for the same or similar reasons,” Dr. Wennen wrote. ”I am not the first and certainly will not be the last of the exodus of physicians from active practice because of all of this.” Dr. Wennen is far from alone in his stark opposition to the health-care law. A recent survey from the Physicians Foundation found that 46 percent of doctors in the U.S. would give Obamacare a “D” or an “F,” the Washington Examiner reported.

But the Democrats care. They want to help. They aren’t mean like those Republicans and tea party conservatives, who simply predicted that these kinds of disasters would happen if Obamacare was passed.

The disasters are happening, and the people to blame for it are the Democrats in Congress and in the White House that pushed this monstrous law through without any negotiation or discussion. Think about that when you vote in November.

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Obamacare to cut tax refunds in April

11:18 am

Finding out what’s in it: After comparing the annual income and the amount of health credits received, the IRS is expected to take the tax refunds from a significant number of Americans who it determines received an overpayment of credits.

Your solution? You have to be able to predict with complete accuracy exactly how much you will earn. This of course is impossible for people like me, who is a freelancer, or for owners of businesses that depend upon sales to determine their income. Such people haven’t the slightest idea what their income will be from year to year.

Also, if you read the article above I dare you to then tell me Obamacare hasn’t made everyone’s lives more complicated. Just trying to figure out what this whole issue is about glazes the mind. Trying to figure out how to avoid a mine buried in Obamacare itself is practically impossible.

But remember, the Democrats and Obama care. That’s all that matters, even if that caring bankrupts us all.

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India inks space deal with China

10:06 am

The competition heats up: India has signed a cooperative agreement with China to work together on several space projects.

Asked about the areas of focus, [Isro chairman K Radhakrishnan] said: “Right now, broadly speaking, it will be natural disasters and remote sensing, which are natural choices. But by March-April 2015, the joint working team would have prepared a roadmap, chalking out various options and opportunities for concentrated efforts in space exploration.”

This article is among a lot of articles from India this week about space and the upcoming orbital insertion of their Mars Orbiter Mangalyaan. As I’ve said repeatedly, this emerging prosperous and capitalist nation is space happy!

Also, when you click on the link make sure you scroll down to read the secondary sidebar piece at the bottom titled “After Mars, Kathakali beckons Isro chief.” There they describe the other culture interests of the head of India’s space agency, and how he plans to spend his time after he steps down in December. It will give you a flavor of India’s culture and how it differs from ours, even as it strives to emulate us.

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Global warming advocates finally admit their focus is politics, not science

11:26 pm

In writing a propaganda piece selling a global warming protest planned for Sunday in New York, this so-called journalist noted that if the crowd exceeds 100,000 “then the ‘People’s Climate March’ will likely mark the moment when global warming transitions from being a science and policy issue into a full-fledged social movement.”

The writer goes on to rave about the diversity of the expected protesters, even while noting the following:

The People’s Climate March is backed by an unprecedented coalition of 45 major labor groups, including heavy hitters such as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — a group that Henn said “doesn’t mess around” — along with prominent grassroots environmental organizations like 350.org as well as religious organizations.

In other words, it is a union/leftist coalition and isn’t diverse at all.

Regardless, after reading that first quote highlighted above, words fail me. This is an outright admission that this movement has no interest in the data and in fact doesn’t want anyone else to have interest in the data either. They want to impose a political agenda on society, and are using a made-up scientific crisis to do it. Worse, a whole generation of climate scientists have abandoned the pursuit of science in order to help them.

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Ohio teachers threaten strike because they are being switched to Obamacare

5:36 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Teachers in Reynoldsburg, Ohio have announced that they will go on strike rather than accept a school contract offer that takes them off employer health insurance and forces them onto Obamacare.

The school board says it wants to give cash payments to teachers to buy their own health insurance on the “new state insurance market.” Ohio did not set up a state exchange which means teachers would need to purchase their insurance through the federal exchange under this plan.

That federal exchange is Obamacare.

The comments at the link are entertaining, as they all recognize the irony of this story: These teachers and this union almost certainly supported Obamacare and Obama. They did it brainlessly, for partisan reasons, without considering for one second the real life consequences of the law their Democratic lords were writing and passing, consequences that conservatives desperately tried to explain to them. Now they have to live with it, and they don’t like it.

The sad part of this, however, is that you can safely rely on them to still vote Democrat in the next election. If you are brainless once, what will make you have a brain later?

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Tennessee cheerleaders defy a ban on pregame public prayers

5:02 pm

Despite a ban on any pregame prayers at a Tennessee high school, forced on the school to avoid court suits, the school’s cheerleaders led the crowd in prayer anyway.

Prayer organized by school officials is inappropriate and unconstitutional. Prayer organized by students, however, is completely appropriate and constitutional. I would hope more students do this kind of defiant behavior, because the anti-religious organizations that threatened lawsuits are increasingly challenging the rights of the students, and that effort must be resisted.

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The disaster and ensuing coverup of the Obamacare website

10:48 pm

New reports reveal significant corruption in the Obama administration’s botched effort to create the Obamacare website.

The Government Office of Accountability released a report earlier this week detailing the security flaws in the site, but a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released yesterday is even more damning. Titled, “Behind the Curtain of the HealthCare.gov Rollout,” the report fingers the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversaw the development of the site, and its parent Department of Health and Human Services.

“Officials at CMS and HHS refused to admit to the public that the website was not on track to launch without significant functionality problems and substantial security risks,” the report says. “There is also evidence that the Administration, to this day, is continuing its efforts to shield ongoing problems with the website from public view.” Emphasis mine]

The evidence includes emails that show Obamacare officials more interested in keeping their problems from leaking to the press than working to fix them. To me, that demonstrates both a coverup and incompetence.

But hey, this must all be the fault of George Bush! We have got to vote Democratic so that they can do more of this for us!

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Obamacare could leave 2 million families without insurance

12:03 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Because of the way Obamacare is written, two million family members might not be able to get health insurance at affordable rates and will lose the insurance they presently have.

Essentially, the problem is this: Obamacare allows employers to offer insurance to their employees but not their families. However, because the employee has what Obamacare considers “affordable” health insurance in this situation, the employee cannot get any subsidies to pay for the cost of insurance for his or her spouse or children. Thus, the kids and spouse are left in the lurch.

But that’s okay. The Democrats and Obama care about you, even if the policies they force down our throats bankrupt us and ruin our lives. What matters is they care. And that of course means we must all blindly vote for them again and again and again until society falls apart (as it did in cities like Detroit).

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Judicial Watch demands right to cross-examine IRS officials

7:05 pm

Citing the apparent IRS cover-up, Judicial Watch has asked a federal court for the right to cross-examine IRS individuals under oath.

Judicial Watch is also seeking information about missing documents from as many as eight additional IRS officials involved in targeting Tea Party and conservative groups. Judicial Watch argues that the IRS’s unwillingness to provide this and other crucial information: “information that the IRS was ordered to disclose to this Court, under oath, more than two months ago – demonstrates that the only way the information is ever likely to be provided is if discovery is allowed and Judicial Watch is permitted to cross-examine agency witnesses…”

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More computer crashes and lost emails at the IRS.

5:17 pm

Cover-up: In testimony at House hearings on Wednesday, IRS chief John Koskinen admitted that computer crashes continue at the IRS.

“Hard drive crashes continue as we speak,” Koskinen admitted at a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee hearing when asked if any computers had recently crashed under his watch. Koskinen admitted that destroying records would be an act “not consistent with the law,” but maintained that there’s no evidence that the IRS intentionally destroyed records. [emphasis mine]

The simple fact that the IRS proceeded with the destruction of Lois Lerner’s hard drive and Blackberry, even as the investigation was on-going, is direct evidence that the IRS did intentionally destroy records. They, and Koskinen, are breaking the law, and spitting in the face of Congress and the American people as they do it.

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NASA has chosen Boeing and SpaceX to build manned spacecraft to ferry crews to ISS

1:12 pm

The competition heats up: NASA has made a decision and has chosen two companies to ferry astronauts to and from ISS, and those companies are Boeing and SpaceX.

I am watching the press conference on NASA television. Some quick details from NASA here.

This is a reasonable political and economic decision. It confirms that SpaceX is ready to go and gives the company the opportunity to finish the job, while also giving Boeing the chance to show that it can compete while also giving that pork to congressional districts.

Some details: After NASA has certified that each company has successfully built its spacecraft they will have then fly anywhere from four to six missions. The certification process will be step-by-step, similar to the methods used in the cargo contracts, and will involve five milestones. They will be paid incrementally as they meet these milestones.

One milestone will be a manned flight to ISS, with one NASA astronaut on board.

One more detail. Boeing will receive $4.2 billion while SpaceX will get $2.6 billion. These awards were based on what the companies proposed and requested.

I will have more to say about this tonight on Coast to Coast, as well as on the John Batchelor show.

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Air Force to decide SpaceX certification on December 1

12:39 pm

The competition heats up: The Air Force has set December 1 for its deadline for certifying SpaceX as qualified to launch military satellites.

“I root for SpaceX to come into the competition,” Gen. John Hyten, head of Air Force Space Command, said during a speech Tuesday at the Air Force Association’s annual conference. But he warned that the company may not be ready in time. “The most important thing for this nation is assured access to space that works all the time,” he said. “That’s why the certification for SpaceX, hopefully by Dec. 1, is a big event. But if they’re not ready on Dec. 1, we have to stand up and say that, and that’s going to be difficult because I want competition.”

It sounds like the Air Force is setting this date as when it will decide one way or the other, regardless of anything SpaceX has done. I also suspect that, because of politics, this decision will hinge on what NASA decides today concerning its commercial crew contract.

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