Memorial Weekend Open Thread
Because people keep hogging all the thread.
--
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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References -
A Master Class in TV acting. Enjoy!
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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)But this is the best preacher I've ever seen:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=MwsWskgKe5E
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)Anyway, I'd just like to say WHO CREATED YO A--? WHO CREATED YO A--, SATAN??
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )that when I change my username, it'll be to Conversate.
--Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. - W. Somerset Maugham
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| parent )er, conversate, er, beeeyatch.
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| parent )the posts I discarded. I had to really work to get my final submission up to juvenile level.
--Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. - W. Somerset Maugham
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| parent )A well-made movie about an important moment in US election history, but it left me with a "so what?" feeling. It did some things very well, had some oddly slanted portrayals of certain individuals, but overall failed to capture the importance of FL 2007. Perhaps not surprisingly, since the recount fiasco was only the barest shadow of the full scale of problems with US elections.
The movie skewers a number of people, some undeservedly. But it skewers SCOTUS for its Bush v. Gore decision, quite possibly the worst ruling ever handed down by the court, and if the film does nothing else, reminding people how bad that ruling was is worth the price of admission. How often in common law does a court rule that its own ruling has no bearing on any similar cases?
"It's too complex for us to make a merit-based decision, and anyhow we're out of time" is a pretty odd legal standard.
Katherine Harris' questionable purging of out-of-state felons and people whose names sound like the names of felons gets quite a bit of coverage. If the election was 'stolen' it was by vote softening tricks like this, all of which were fait accompli by election day. That's the real importance of the FL 2000 story, and still a feature of election gamesmanship that hasn't been fixed, as far as I know, to this day nationwide.
Anyhow, the film also makes Warren Christopher look like a spineless putz, Katherine Harris a clueless egomaniac responsible for most of what went wrong, James Baker a political brawler, but is fairly even-handed overall, refusing to demonize the Republicans as a group or to make Gore's side look like put-upon angels.
I was expecting an epilogue to the film discussing the NORC recounts of the Florida ballots, which had Bush still winning by slight margins in most of the agreed-upon standards of recount. But no, HBO declined to mention the unofficial recounts.
The moral of the story? Pick candidates that win by large margins.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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). . .for a dose of perspective:
Dred Scott v. Sanford: invalidated congressional law limiting slavery in the territories, led directly to the Civil War;
Plessy v. Ferguson: put the stamp of approval of "separate but equal" in the US for the next fifty-eight years;
Buck v. Bell: gave the go-ahead to involuntarily sterilizing mentally handicapped people in the US for the next eighteen years*;
Bush v. Gore: Court failed to go along with Gore's efforts to steal the 2000 election, launched countless tantrums among the nutroots.
Yeah, I can see how that last one is the worst of the worst.
*--as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. infamously put it: "Three generations of imbeciles is enough."
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| parent )leaving consequences aside. Each of those decisions, fateful and destructive as they were in terms of consequences and general moral awfulness, were at least *legally* coherent decisions (Buck v. Bell was never actually overturned, just made irrelevant by legislation...in the 1980s).
Bush v. Gore, probably one of the least coherent rulings ever. Let's see:
SCOTUS grants stay to review equal protection & irreparable harm claims, determines equal protection has been violated, determines there's no time to remedy said violation because some jerk placed a stay on the recount, then leaves a note that no future rulings should be based on this one.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )The distance from reality as I perceive it necessary to characterize Gore's suits as "attempting to steal the election" is so vast that no useful discussion is possible.
I wonder how many Commies really were on that list McCarthy was waving about.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )....appear to be something on the order of "greater than 1" but not approaching 10%.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1616559/posts
Note: Source is Freeper-land, which will no doubt raise the ideological hairs on various local necks, but from my casual check the actual comparisons of the 3 listings appear to be factual and unobjectionable. Taking "Venona" as the gold standard, you're looking at a 5.6% hit rate for the Senator from Wisconsin. This wouldn't pass muster in my line of work, but it isn't zero, either.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )Everything old is new again. Always the same agenda, I guess.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )Like I said, 5.6% as a true positive rate likely wouldn't pass muster if I were handing it to my boss, so I can't exactly call it spectacular.
But it clearly isn't zero either, which I gathered was what you were implying. If I was in error regarding your intentions, please do let me know.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )The Parties were not always owned by COMINTERN, and someone who lived through Woodrow Wilson's nigh-fascist America and Jim Crow might be forgiven for viewing Lenin through rose-colored glasses for a period of time.
It's just . . . why give even the slightest hint of justification to McCarthyite vileness? The actual status of the men and women he slandered was irrelevant to him, so it should be equally irrelevant to us.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )One of the evils of McCarthyism was that it made the job of finding the real traitors next to impossible. Soviet spies were found before McCarthy started his antics, and they were found in the years after McCarthy's tortured liver finished him off all the way to the end of the Cold War--suggesting that there were somehow none during only that one brief period of postwar history doesn't pass the laugh test.
As for forgiving those American Communists, Lenin died in 1922--I see no reason to forgive the ones who stuck it out during the Stalin years, or who started making excuses for Hitler during the brief Nazi/Soviet alliance. Repentance without waiting for a subpeona would merit some slack.
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| parent )McCarthy was not responsible for seeking out Communist spies. This was and is the work of the FBI and the secret services. McCarthy was mostly involved in blacklisting Leftists in the entertainment business, wasn't he? Chaplin, Robeson, Brecht etc.
--Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just
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| parent )And yes, men like (in a more modern time) Aldrich Ames certainly did exist. But you're right, the use of national security as a political tool did, in fact, make us less safe.
I suppose there could be a lesson there, but I'll leave it to conservatives 50 years from now to pretend that what they're doing then is somehow different from what they're doing now.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )I'll bet GWB will become an icon of hubris within his lifetime. Students will write Comp and Contrast papers on Bush and every literary villain from now until the sun burns down to a cinder. His name will become a curse and a byword, an eponym for Vindictive Dimwittery in High Places and the beady-eyed zealots who followed him.
GWB was your man, all right. If only for leading you to war and not to victory, you Republicans should put him up against the 'dobe wall, blindfold him and give him a last cigarette. Then make a martyr of him, at your own hand. You'll need a martyr in years to come, as John Kennedy's troubled legacy of Vietnam and Cold War gone hideously awry was covered over by the legend of Camelot on the Potomac.
Those whom the gods would destroy, to them do they grant wishes. Betcha wish Bush v Gore had gone the other way, doncha?
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| parent )is 'stealing' an election how would you characterize the successful GOP effort to disenfranchise FL voters by means of fraudulent purge lists?
The SC decision in Bush v Gore was an overt political act in support of GW Bush, an act that should have been left to the Florida Legislature to make.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )Twenty year old pitching phenom Clayton Kershaw makes his debut for the Dodgers today against the Cardinals.
For anyone wondering what the fuss is about, watch the short video at this link. Keep in mind, Vin Scully has been broadcasting major league baseball games for fifty-nine years now and covered Sandy Koufax in his prime--it takes a lot to reduce him to "wow" mode.
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)Kid looks very very good. He's got a plus fastball (93-96), a wicked curve, and I think he just threw a change-up to Pujols.
And he throws from the left side.
(He's what I thought Phil Hughes would be from the right side. And wasn't.)
One drawback? He just threw a 2-2 curve to Pujols that fooled the umpire. It was that good.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20080521/google-health/
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)If?
(H/T the Guys from Area 51)
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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)I just paid $3.99 9/10 per gallon for regular - 92 octane was $4.09. Good thing I live in a place where a forty-five mile drive brings you back to where you started.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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). . .to SoCal for tomorrow--$200 even for the round trip--and smiles*
I'll be able to do a lot of reading on those trips. I could have gone Greyhound for about $160, but my momma didn't raise me to be a sardine.
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| parent )So it's been $4 plus per gallon for a while here.
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| parent )Los Angeles, or thereabouts, to XXXXX (far away) in very fowl weather...where maybe I lost a little being home-towned...I don't know how I feel about this...a Jim Beam Decater set let to a 7 yr old godson...perjury most terrible...but do I care? Does my client care? Train plates...as fixtures...to the wife who didn't even show...
She's a cancer survivor...who cares, I say, sent the Bailiff out to pick her up, 2nd no show....opposing counsel is outraged...as am I for being in XXXX(far away)....I can't do a continuance because why I am really there is to get on the quick trial calendar...
So I got most stuff, but she'll deny having his tux and then she'll burn it...I know she will...but I got a quick and early trial date.
It just galls me....I should have filed a contempt on her and her attorney...but I let it go.
Yet you can see that I'm still bitter.
Then out to Banning and back to Redlands for some business, back to LA, from LA to Hollywood and home.
Exactly 252.1 angry miles.
Ahem....Chill, laddie, chill...but I hate losing anything, even crap.
I should have continued it...but then trial would have been sometime next year...and we, my client and I, want to be done with this woman.
So I lost today...total value less than $500.00 but she got away with it....I don't care about the money, I wanted her to commit perjury...I wanted to cross-examine her at length.
Well...Damn.
I failed.
Geeze, it's 3am and I'm still steamed at myself...
Traveller
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| parent )Los Angeles, or thereabouts, to Victorville in very fowl weather...where maybe I lost a little being home-towned...I don't know how I feel about this...a Jim Beam Decater set left to a 7 yr old godson...perjury most terrible...but do I care? Does my client care? Train plates...as fixtures...to the wife who didn't even show...
She's a cancer survivor...who cares, I say, sent the Bailiff out to pick her up, 2nd no show....opposing counsel is outraged...as am I for being in Victorville....I can't do a continuance because why I am really there is to get on the quick trial calendar...
So I got most stuff, but she'll deny having his tux and then she'll burn it...I know she will...but I got a quick and early trial date.
It just galls me....I should have filed a contempt on her and her attorney...but I let it go.
Yet you can see that I'm still bitter.
Then out to Banning and back to Redlands for some business, back to LA, from LA to Hollywood and home.
Exactly 252.1 angry miles.
Ahem....Chill, laddie, chill...but I hate losing anything, even crap.
I should have continued it...but then trial would have been sometime next year...and we, my client and I, want to be done with this woman.
So I lost today...total value less than $500.00 but she got away with it....I don't care about the money, I wanted her to commit perjury...I wanted to cross-examine her at length.
Well...Damn.
I failed.
Traveller
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| parent )http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vyFqmp4wzI
The obvious question is, what possible reason could she have for mentioning the RFK assassination as a reason to stay in the race? Hey, anything can happen! I really would like to give her the benefit of the doubt here: a Freudian slip, an attempt at gravitas by invoking a beloved Kennedy, a pure banana peel moment, anything other than the possibility that she wants people thinking Obama might get it before or after the election. But I just can't get my head around the total BS she's shoveling with her followup apology.
First point: Bill had the 1992 nomination wrapped up by March 20, so there goes that flimsy excuse. Bill was the comeback kid, but it wasn't that long a primary season. Not in any way analogous to the current battle or the RFK nomination fight with its...unusual denouement.
Second point: If she was "thinking about the Kennedys" because of Teddy's diagnosis this week, as she says in her nonpology, then why didn't she mention the fierce Teddy-Carter nomination battle in 1980? That would seem more to the point, no? If I were thinking of Ted Kennedy and late Democratic primaries, I might think about the time Ted Kennedy took the primary battle all the way to the convention floor. I dunno, it just seems to spring to mind. Or how about the Mondale-Hart nomination fight in 1984? It was more recent, and the late California primary was actually a factor (CA voted in February this time around, of course.) Why mention RFK? Why mention California? Neither is relevant to the current sitchyation.
Third point: It turns out this isn't the first time Hillary has dropped mention of the RFK assassination as a good reason for her to stay in the race. As Karen Tumulty over at time-blog reports, Hillary made the same eyebrow-raising comparison back on March 6:
Now unless she knew something Ted Kennedy's doctors don't, she had no reason to have "Kennedys on the mind" back in March. Since that time, of course we had Mike Huckabee's little slip speaking in front of the NRA, and suddenly Chris Rock's old joke about the first black President doesn't seem so funny anymore. What passed with little notice on March 6 has a lot more eyebrow-raising power today.
Anyhow, call it a gaffe if you want. I say it smells. And I'm officially done with her. I've been a "lean either way" Democrat up to this point, in spite of all the Clinton mistakes & nastiness, but it's gotten so I'd have a really hard time pulling a lever for this person.
My wife, a hardcore Clintonista, feels the same way. Hillary's done.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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)I just can't believe that this was a deliberate attempt to suggest the possibility of assassination is a reason for her to stick around. And while I understand there are more recent historical examples, for a lot of people her age (and mine), that tragedy seems far more vivid than many other more recent ones. Basically, she reached back for a couple examples of June primary action and came up with a lie (her husband's race) and a gaffe. Now as to the subconscious stew this came out of? Anything is possible, of course. And let's face it, if you base your campaign on Something Bad MIght Happen To My Opponent -- it's a fairly open secret that they've been waiting for another Jeremiah Wright incident or a, ahem, huge gaffe of some kind -- you can't exactly pretend that the more horrific subtext doesn't exist. Which brings us back to the subconscious part.
There is no excuse for her tepid apology, however. And yes, she's done. And even better? I suspect this means we don't have to worry about her forcing her way onto the ticket any more.
The weird thing about gaffes is that the ones that stick usually seem to reveal some inner truth about the person who misspoke. And that, more than anything else, is what seems to be sinking her now.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )Why mention the assassination in the first place, is what I'm thinking. She could note that RFK was still campaigning in June and move on (although that would be taken as a coy allusion -- is it better to be coy or craven?).
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )Link on Yahoo leading to story on the gaffe: "Clinton Regrets Citing RFK Assassination On Campaign's Length."
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| parent )Fence post turtles -- They don't get up there by themselves, some moron had to put 'em there.
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| parent )to ensure that people treat her as a bomb rather than a moral agent. It's a standard last-ditch tactic: make the enemy think you're psychotic and cannot be bargained with. Those who consider Hillary a sociopath might do well to reflect that this is an image she has, to some extent, deliberately cultivated.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )I used to think that Bill Clinton was a guy who would do anything to gain and keep the Presidency; Hillary makes him look like a tyro. Bill had himself remanufactured as needed, like a mime trying on a series of expressions in the mirror, but this is something else, something unpredictable. Scary but fascinating in a way, like a multi-car crash or a big forest fire.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )The converted are always the greatest zealots.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )-
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent ). . .it would appear to be a subtle* way of blaming Republicans for the fact that liberals have finally noticed that the Clintons are exactly the scum that Republicans have always been saying they were, while pretending that it is a recent development.
* Well, subtle in comparison to this, anyway.
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| parent )Plenty of liberals have disliked the Clintons, for this very reason, for a good long time. In 2000, they voted for Nader.
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| parent )The disaffection in 2000 was generally on policy grounds -- environmental failures, DADT, DOMA, and the capital gains tax cuts.
The only personal thing I heard was about Monica, and that was irrelevant for Al Gore.
The folks I know who voted for Nader (and weren't off the political spectrum) are now pretty clear on the difference between the Parties and the intense pressure from the Right for extremely bad policy. Clinton got blamed for a lot of what Gingrich did.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )"For this very reason" wasn't high on the list of reasons for the Nader defections.
I was thinking Clinton's "scum" politics (Sister Souljah; the Return to Little Rock to oversee an execution; "Triangulation"; policy differences) rather than Clinton's scumminess in personal relations.
Still, the Gore team brought Holy Joe Lieberman on -- at least in part -- to deflect the patina of Clinton's personal scumminess away from the campaign, which contributed to the overall perception of Gore as more of the same tweedledee centrism.
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| parent ). . .and exited stage left, I was amused at all of the far left pundit types who leapt up to denounce him--you'd almost think that they'd been holding their breath and biting their tongues for eight years with similar sentiments that they were free to express now that he was no longer able to help them. Go figure.
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| parent )throughout the Clinton Presidency. There was no shortage of far left pundit types waiting to exhale. At least in those pages.
An oldie but a goodie.
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| parent )I can tell you that the general response was total bafflement, not release.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )One awful decision after another.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )Senator Clinton has finally become the person that Republicans have been saying she is all along -- someone who is willing to actually borrow heavily from Rove's playbook.
I mean, there's still nothing here compared to McCain's illegitimate black baby (or Don Siegelman), but Clinton is within an order of magnitude of Rovian SOP these days. This is, obviously, unacceptable, and it's deeply satisfying to see it repudiated.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )Are there any female Democrats of national stature who aren't tied to HRC and who won't provoke instant mockery* if proposed as a running mate for Obama? If Obama made a phone call to HRC suggesting that any further shenanigans on her part would result in that woman being made Obama's designated running mate might stop HRC in her tracks, at least as far as overt sabotage is concerned. If it doesn't work, he could go ahead with his threat and thereby mitigate the damage that HRC has been inflicting on Obama among female Democrats and independents.
*--Yes, I'm looking at you, Senator Murray.
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| parent )I don't think the phone call is even necessary now. Tho' I suspect Clinton, or more importantly her supporters, will be a factor in the veepstakes. We'll either get a woman (Sebelius) or a Clintonite (Rendell or Strickland)...
But as for the bomb? No need to defuse it. It just blew up.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )are both distinct possibilities. And I think your idea is an excellent one.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )here
--Over here on E Street, we're proud to support Obama for President. - Bruce Springsteen
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| parent )nt
--Fence post turtles -- They don't get up there by themselves, some moron had to put 'em there.
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| parent )