Rand Paul shames media for ignoring ‘worldwide war on Christianity’

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul spent Friday morning telling stories to conservatives about the persecution of Christians across the world.

“Today I want to tell you about a war the mainstream media is ignoring,” the Republican lawmaker said Friday during the Values Voter Summit in Washington. “From Boston to Zanzibar, there is a worldwide war on Christianity.”

“You won’t hear much about it on the evening news because the answer is not convenient and does not fit the narrative we have been told about radical Islam,” Paul added.

Paul also said President Obama”tries to gloss over who is attacking and killing Christians.”

“But the truth is, there is a worldwide war on Christians by a fanatical element of Islam,” Paul said.

“Ever since 9/11, commentators have tried to avoid pointing fingers at Islam,” he said. “While it is fair to point out that most Muslims are not committed to violence against Christians, this is not the whole truth and we should not let political correctness stand in the way of the truth.”

Examples referenced by Paul:

• Referencing an incident in Syria, Paul spoke of Islamic rebels storming into town and demanding everyone convert to Islam or die. “Sarkis el Zakhm stood up and answered them, ‘I am a Christian and if you want to kill me because I am a Christian, do it.’ Those were Sarkis last words.”
• “Elsewhere in Syria, Islamic rebels have filmed beheadings of their captives and celebrated by eating the heart of an enemy soldier,” Paul said. “Two Christian bishops have been kidnapped and one priest recently killed.”
• “In Zanzibar, a priest was shot in the head on his way to church by two Muslim youths,” Paul said. :A message by the Muslim Renewal said, ‘We thank our young men, trained in Somalia, for killing an infidel. Many more will die. We will burn homes and churches. We have not finished: at Easter, be prepared for disaster.’”
• Said Paul: “In Kenya, motorcycle assailants hurled bombs into a Christian church injuring 15 people including the pastor who had both of his legs broken.”
• “In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, three girls were beheaded on their way to their Christian school,” Paul said.

Via: Daily Caller

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D.C. moving toward fiscal deal despite bumps

At the end of the 11th day of a government shutdown, Republicans and Democrats are trying to figure out a way to filling federal coffers and lifting the debt ceiling.

They’re hitting a few bumps along the way.

President Barack Obama told Speaker John Boehner he wasn’t prepared to accept the House Republican fiscal plan but said they should continue talks about a framework to reopen government, increase the nation’s borrowing limit for six months and start budget talks.

At the same time, Obama signaled openness to a Senate Republican plan penned by Maine Sen. Susan Collins to reopen the government, delay Obamacare’s tax on medical devices and raise the debt ceiling. Obama told GOP senators at a White House meeting Friday that the tax was not core to the health care law. It’s not clear if changing the tax would be enough to satiate House Republicans’ appetite to cut away at the Affordable Care Act.

(PHOTOS: 25 great shutdown quotes)

“We’re on our way now to dealing with this issue,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said after the White House meeting. “The actual legislative piece, I don’t think anybody actually knows that at present.”

Via: Politico

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SOURCES: RYAN COMPROMISE WILL KEEP OBAMACARE 'FOREVER'

Breitbart News reported that House Republicans have offered a new deal to the White House to end the fiscal stalemate. The GOP plan, authored primarily by House Budget Chair Rep. Paul Ryan according to Hill sources, would meet Obama's demands in exchange for negotiations on a longer-term budget agreement.

At least two high-ranking Capitol Hill sources have told Breitbart News that Ryan’s plan would also help protect Obamacare as it is currently implemented.

Ryan's office deny the claims. “What your sources are attempting to attribute to Congressman Ryan is not accurate,” Kevin Seifert, Ryan’s spokesman, said in an email.

But the Capitol Hill conservative sources are adamant Ryan offered at least two things that they say would mitigate some of Obamacare's hardest-hitting effects on certain communities that are needed for the GOP to take the law down in the end.

The high-ranking conservative source said that this deal will ensure America has "Obamacare forever" and that Ryan's "pro union votes are really coming to light now."

At a meeting on Friday morning, the sources said Ryan’s plan was presented to a group of members. Ryan's plan would grant President Barack Obama a no-strings-attached “clean” debt ceiling increase for six weeks and acquiesce to Obama’s latest demand that Republicans also pass a Continuing Resolution to end the partial government shutdown. 

The plan was pitched to a room full of members of the House GOP caucus. Not only would Ryan’s plan amount to a GOP capitulation on the debt ceiling and budget, it would mitigate certain effects of Obamacare to help labor unions and members of the business community.

The grand bargain Ryan is attempting to negotiate would include a repeal of the medical device sales tax, a part of Obamacare even liberal Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) supports removing.

Via: Breitbart

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New Senate GOP demand: Force Obama and HHS to carry out ObamaCare’s anti-fraud provisions

Just in case you missed it in July and are coming late to the news: HHS announced three months ago that, for the next year, ObamaCare enrollees will be more or less on the honor system in reporting their income for subsidies purposes. If you make $50,000 and aren’t happy with the amount of subsidies you’re getting for your new insurance, good news — no one’s going to check too closely if you decide to pencil in $25,000 as your annual income instead. In other words, they’re trusting the public not to steal. The Healthcare.gov trainwreck and the one-year delay of the employer mandate have gotten plenty of ink but the fact that Obama’s basically inviting people to cheat for the next 12 months because his new health-care bureaucracy doesn’t have its act together well enough to police fraud is more revealing of the administration’s incompetence and corruption than either of those. And now, as an eleventh-hour negotiation demand, Senate Republicans are going to try tomake him pay for it.

America 2013: Where the president’s willingness not to let people massively defraud his new health-care program is something to be bargained over. May the glorious Hopenchange legacy last a thousand years.

Now, Senate Republicans are putting another Obamacare measure on the table as part of negotiations to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling: Requiring the government to verify the eligibility of Obamacare applicants before they receive subsidies…

The No Subsidies Without Verification Act was passed by the House in September, but it has not been part of the shutdown showdown until now.

“Medicare and Medicaid are already fraught with fraud. I don’t think we want to start Obamacare even worse by not even attempting to verify incomes,” Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Johnson says he would like to see an end to Congress’s special treatment or the anti-fraud measure “attached to any increase to the debt ceiling or any continuing resolution agreement.”

Jay Cost writes in the Standard today that it’s time for the GOP to either fight or quit this whole shutdown business, as there’s simply no middle ground. I don’t know; this particular proposal feels like middle ground. Unlike the nascent House plan, it does demand that Obama concede something on ObamaCare that’s valuable to him — not a defunding or a delay but a provision which his Keystone Kops Healthcare.gov team might simply not yet have the manpower or sophistication to enforce. And yet how could he say no, especially if the anti-fraud demand becomes key to negotiations and reporters start paying attention to it? It’s politically radioactive for the president to insist on blocking anti-fraud measures when the whole country’s watching; and yet, if he agrees to it, the logistical load on an HHS bureaucracy that’s already struggling to keep the websites running might further bog the program down in delays and turn people against it. The messaging for the GOP couldn’t be easier. As John McCormack says, “A top concern Senator Ted Cruz is that too many people will become ‘addicted’ to Obamacare’s subsidies after January 1. Ensuring the subsides aren’t going to people who aren’t eligible is in the interest of those who hope to repeal Obamacare.” And in the interest of people who don’t care much about O-Care one way or another but do care lots about good government! If Obama’s dead set on letting people rip his program off, let him defend that at the White House podium.

Via: Hot Air

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Skewed! MSNBC President Wants ‘Investigation’ into Fox’s ‘Impossible’ Ratings

Maybe conservatives aren’t entirely alone in being unable to accept inconvenient realities reelected in surveys. According to a report in Media Bistro on Friday, MSNBC President Phil Griffin demanded an “investigation” be conducted into Fox News Channel’s “impossible” ratings increase over the last week. He did not specify which agency would conduct this investigation, but might we suggest the Federal Bureau of Embarrassing Statements?

“Monday we had a really good day in the key demographic, on the night that Fox News debuted their three shows, we either tied or beat them in those hours,” Griffin told a group of MSNBC employees at a briefing to preview the launch of a redesigned MSNBC.com.

“Tuesday – you guys should be doing some investigations – I have never seen it in all my years of cable, same overnight, same everything, and they doubled their ratings in a day? It is impossible,” Griffin continued inadvisably. “I have never seen it. They did election night numbers in the demo Tuesday.”

RELATED: Fox News Ratings Up Big in Second Night of New Primetime Lineup

Griffin is correct. After a lackluster debut on Monday night for Megyn Kelly’s The Kelly File, her ratings increased in the key demographic by %116 percent to 635,000. “Kelly also saw a 34% increase in total viewers, rising to 2.768M,” Mediaite reported. “Fox News soundly beat its competition on CNN and MSNBC in both the 25-54 demo and total viewers.”

Impressive, yes. No one has yet, however, suggested that this ratings increase was… suspicious.

The Hollywood Reporter reached out to Nielsen for comment, but as of print time they had “not yet responded to Griffin’s remarks.”

Via: Mediaite.com

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National Guard Feels Shutdown Pain

Nearly 50,000 full-time National Guard employees have been furloughed as a result of the federal government shutdown. The standoff in Washington also has resulted in the cancellation of most of this weekend’s training exercises, depriving even non-furloughed guardsmen of the salaries they receive for drilling. 

The furloughed guardsmen are paid by the federal government, even though they are under the command of their states’ adjutant generals and governors. The guardsmen who have been affected generally work as full-time computer programmers, or are engaged in cybersecurity or administrative work. Guardsmen whose salaries come from state funds will not be furloughed.  In some states, that is about half of the total.

Most National Guard members are part-time, and hold regular civilian jobs. However, they are paid to train one weekend each month and two weeks each year, in case they are ever called for domestic emergencies or active duty military service.  Those whose training exercises have been canceled will not get paid, even though they have not been furloughed.

Many of the troops who have received furlough notices because of the shutdown were already taking furlough days because ofsequestration, the across-the-board federal budget cuts which took effect in March 2013.

Overall, there are 385,000 members of the Army National Guard and 114,000 members of the Air National Guard, according to the National Guard Bureau.

Several governors were furious about having to issue furlough notices to guardsmen in their states. “Some of these men and women have been deployed multiple times,” Maine Republican Gov. Paul LePage said in a statement. “This is a shameful tactic to use against Mainers who have put their life on the line to protect our freedoms.”

Via: Pew States

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Kick Them All Out! Distaste for DC Politicians at All-Time High

The public's displeasure with Washington politics reached a new high Friday with separate polls calling for all members of Congress to be fired and for a strong third party to challenge the 150-year-old dominance of Republicans and Democrats.

One survey also gave the lowest-ever favorability to the GOP, with more than twice as many people having a negative view as a positive.

The government shutdown and the continued failure of politicians to seek compromise was being blamed for the low opinion of the country's current leaders.

Urgent: Should GOP Stick to Its Guns on Obamacare? Vote Here. 

One poll, conducted for NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, showed that given the chance, 60 percent of Americans would vote out every single member of Congress — including their own representatives.

It is the highest-ever figure recorded since the pollsters asked the question. "We continue to use this number as a way to sort of understand how much revulsion there is. We now have a new high-water mark," said Peter Hart, one of those who conducted the poll.

A separate Gallup poll gave the same 60 percent number for those who believe the country needs a strong third party — again a record high. At the same time, a new low of 26 percent believe the two major parties adequately represent Americans.

"Given the inability of the Republican and Democratic parties to agree on the most basic of government functions — passing an annual budget to pay for federal programs — it is perhaps not surprising that the percentage of Americans who believe a third party is needed has never been higher," Gallup managing editor Jeffrey Jones said.

The belief was evenly split, with 52 percent of Republicans and 49 percent of Democrats saying a third party is needed, marking the first time a majority of either party's supporters have said this.

The results are consistent with Gallup's finding of more negative opinions of both parties since the shutdown began Oct. 1, including Americans' widespread dissatisfaction with the way the nation is being governed.

Via: Newsmax

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Health Reform Breaks Bad - The deceptions and disasters of Obamacare

Breaking Bad is the story of a seemingly well-intended but very misguided man who turned to cooking meth in order to amass enough wealth to provide for his family once he dies of cancer. The consequences of that unfortunate decision—not to mention the lies and deceptions to keep it on track—pyramid alarmingly over the course of five seasons, culminating in mayhem and a head-spinning body count.

Obamacare isn’t a TV drama. But it will unleash its own tsunami of unintended consequences: more than a million jobs lost, an economy increasingly made up of part-time workers, higher health spending (at least a half-trillion dollars just over the next decade), a decline in medical innovation (and attendant loss of life).

While Obamacare undoubtedly will do a modest amount of good, the urgent question is whether the law’s supporters will come to see that the good pales in comparison to the damage. Obamacare may still crash and burn (see Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988), or it may endure as a monument to government ineptitude and inefficiency (see U.S. Postal Service, whose deficit last year alone was $15.9 billion, despite being exempt from taxes, regulations, and even parking tickets!).

Via: The Weekly Standard

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Tyranny of the majority

There was a time when the Left was very concerned about the “tyranny of the majority,” as everyone of all political persuasions should be.  Once in a while, you see a few sparks popping and sizzling on that old ideological circuitry, mostly when the discussion turns to same-sex marriage.

But for the most part, tyranny of the majority is liberal policy now.  A single politician winning a majority of the vote in a couple of elections is supposed to stifle all dissent.  Rarely does an individual voter agree with every single position taken by a politician he supports – which is not surprising, given the size of our government – but it’s not uncommon to hear Democrat partisans claim that President Obama’s re-election victory validates everything he wants to do, obliging our representatives in Congress to ink up their rubber stamps for the next three years.

Appeals to majority rule are highly selective, of course – the Left is not at all interested in polls that show a majority of Americans disagree with ObamaCare, or the liberal gun control agenda.  Abortion extremists who defy the majority beliefs of the American people are hailed as heroes.  Disastrous Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri was undone by a position on abortion that has roughly the same level of popular support as President Barack Obama’s.  Selectively embracing the blessing of majority support is a very old political game.  One of the big motivations for using charges of “extremism” to destroy someone is to prevent them from shifting majority opinion – something that can, by definition, only be accomplished by people who are “outside the mainstream” today.  The window of political possibility can only be moved with sustained effort.

But let’s suppose most Americans want the rights of the minority to enjoy adequate protection.  We are a culture that has long celebrated iconoclasts, eccentrics, trailblazers, and those who march to the beat of a different drummer.  ”I disagree with what you say, but I’ll defend your right to say it” is a common mantra for expressing First Amendment sentiments.  In the heat of political contests, we sometimes forget that most of us really don’t support the concept of tyranny imposed through 51, or even 90, percent majorities.

Via: Red State

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Myths about Government Shutdowns

Young people often don't realize that government shutdowns used to be common, until the middle of the Clinton administration. The George W. Bush presidency was an exception to the rule. The Miami Herald's Glenn Garvin debunks the myths promoted by the left-leaning "chattering classes" to people too young to remember earlier shutdowns, and people with bad memories.

Myth: "This kind of thing never used to happen." Reality:

"Actually, it used to happen all the time. What's unusual is the quiet stretch since the last shutdown, when Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton were facing off in 1995. Before that, there were 18 shutdowns in 19 years as various Congresses and presidents squabbled over raising the national debt limit. My personal favorite is the one in 1982, when Congress didn't feel like working late to pass a spending bill the night before the new fiscal year started. The Republicans were all going to a barbecue at the White House, while the Democrats had a $1,000-a-plate fund-raising dinner to attend."

Myth: "it wouldn't happen if not for all these crazy ideologues who've been elected the last few years. In the old days, Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill would have just had a drink after work and settled everything." Reality:

"More likely they would have broken some bottles over one another's heads. The federal government shut down seven times while Reagan was president and O'Neill speaker of the House. No wonder, the way they talked about each other.

"O'Neill called Reagan 'an absolute and total disgrace' and added that it was 'sinful that this man is president of the United States.' Reagan, in his diary, wrote that budget negotiations with the speaker were an ordeal because 'Tip O'Neill doesn't have the facts of what was in the budget. Besides he doesn't listen.'"

Via: CNS News

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McLean Youth Lacrosse fights government shutdown in court; Langley Fork Park reopens

Fed up that the federal shutdown was keeping them off their practice fields, a group of young lacrosse players in Northern Virginia challenged the government in court. And at least for now, they won.

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the National Park Service to immediately reopen Langley Fork Park in McLean — which was closed Oct. 1 — and allow the boys and girls of the McLean Youth Lacrosse organization back onto the fields.

The judge’s order was not final. Attorneys are scheduled to return to federal court in Alexandria on Oct. 18 — provided the courthouse is still open and judges are still hearing civil cases — to hash out a more permanent resolution. But until then, Langley Fork Park will be open for the hundreds of kids in the youth lacrosse group, which sued the Park Service, and for anyone else who might want to use it.

“It’s a major relief,” said David “Bucky" Morris, McLean Youth Lacrosse’s executive director. “I’m not sure how long it goes for, but, hopefully, it’s long enough that it goes through the government shutdown.”

A spokeswoman for the Fairfax County Park Authority, which manages the park, said officials removed the temporary barriers at the park Thursday morning after receiving the Park Service’s permission.

“I can tell you this much: We’re glad it’s open for business. That’s the good news,” said Judy Pedersen, a spokeswoman for the Park Authority. She declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Via: Washington Post

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Wall Street ends up on hopes of debt solution in Washington

(Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Friday, extending gains from a major rally in the previous session, as investors were hopeful for a solution to end the partial U.S. government shutdown and raise the U.S. borrowing limit to avoid a possible default.

The S&P 500, which jumped more than 2 percent on Thursday, ended above 1,700 for the first time since late September.

Buyers on Friday were motivated by the chance an agreement could come over the weekend. The Senate is expected to vote over the weekend on extending the federal debt limit through January 2015.

President Barack Obama and congressional Republican leaders worked to end a fiscal impasse that would allow a reopening of the federal government and an increase in the U.S. debt limit.

"People don't want to be short going into a weekend, especially if a deal does get done," said Dennis Dick, proprietary trader at Bright Trading LLC in Las Vegas.

The partial shutdown is now in its eleventh day and less than a week remains before an October 17 deadline to extend the government's borrowing authority and avoid a debt default.

All S&P sectors were up except consumer staples, which fell slightly. Energy stocks .SPNY led the S&P 500, rising more than 1 percent after the Environmental Protection Agency proposed lowering the required amount of ethanol to be blended into U.S. gasoline after Thursday's market close.

The CBOE Volatility index VIX .VIX, Wall Street's so-called fear gauge, closed down 4.6 percent at 15.72, the lowest in nearly two weeks.

"This rally will provide the opportunity to modify positioning, as we expect fundamentals to matter more as the credit cycle turns," said Peter Cecchini, managing director at Cantor Fitzgerald in New York, writing in a note to clients.

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI was up 111.04 points, or 0.73 percent, at 15,237.11. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index .SPX was up 10.63 points, or 0.63 percent, at 1,703.19. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC was up 31.13 points, or 0.83 percent, at 3,791.87.

For the week, the Dow rose 1.1 percent, the S&P 500 rose 0.7 percent while the Nasdaq fell 0.4 percent as some of the strongest gainers in the tech sector sold off during week as investors were taking profits.

Via: Reuters

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1-800-T-O-T-A-L-F-A-I-L: One Man's Obamawreck Nightmare by Michelle Malkin

Behold the Hollywood bubble. This week, actress Olivia Wilde starred in an Obamacare propaganda video targeting young people. "You can sign up for health care online in 10 minutes," her co-propagandist chirped as she cheered. Cue the laugh track. Back on planet Earth, Americans nationwide are still struggling with the $634 million online health care exchange nightmare.

One reader asked me to share his story. Like me and 22 million other citizens in the private individual market for health insurance, he recently received his You Can't Keep It cancellation notice. Here's what happened when he went online to find alternatives.

"I live in New Jersey, but work for a small company based out of Massachusetts. For years, we were all insured through the company from a plan that originated in Massachusetts. However, as soon as Obamacare was passed, we were "audited" by the insurance company, and it turns out only 50 percent of our company is based in Massachusetts, and therefore we did not qualify as a company under the law. Apparently, you need 51 percent based in the state. About five days prior to our insurance policy renewal, we were told we could not (renew), and I had to scramble to purchase a much more expensive individual policy with much higher costs.

"Fast-forward two years. I now receive a new letter from my insurance company, Horizon Blue Cross, (informing me) that the plan that I have now is being discontinued and I need to pick a new plan.

Via: Townhall

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Privatize the National Park Service

No more Obama shutdowns ever again.

The behavior of the National Park Service during President Obama’s shutdown campaign has been shocking. As has been widely reported, Park Service employees have been told to make life as uncomfortable as possible for people, and have flourished in that endeavor. They have acted crudely and unprofessionally as a partisan and ideological arm of the White House and its propaganda campaign.

If you’re not familiar with what I’m talking about (that would exclude American Spectator readers), then you listen only to NPR, watch only MSNBC, and read only the New York Times. Just click Google and start searching. There are frightening first-person accounts everywhere. Among the worst examples was a case innocently covered by a small Massachusetts newspaper that reported on a group of tourists traveling to Yellowstone National Park. The tourists, by no means a bunch of Tea Partiers, described the Park Service as “Gestapo”-like in its tactics.

That, of course, is an exaggeration. But the mere fact that a group of apolitical citizens would invoke such hyperbole to describe how they were treated really says something.

The Weekly Standard, a conservative source not given to hyperbole,argues in an editorial that the Park Service’s conduct “might be the biggest scandal of the Obama administration.” That’s no small claim for an administration plagued by scandals ranging from Benghazi to the eye-opening overreach of the IRS, the NSA, and (among others) the HHS mandate. The Standard rattled off examples of abuses during the shutdown, highlighting the most egregious of them all, the shameless scene at the World War II Memorial:

People first noticed what the NPS was up to when the World War II Memorial on the National Mall was “closed.” Just to be clear, the memorial is an open plaza. There is nothing to operate. Sometimes there might be a ranger standing around. But he’s not collecting tickets or opening gates. Putting up barricades and posting guards to “close” the World War II Memorial takes more resources and manpower than “keeping it open.”

Via: American Spectator

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[VIDEO] Fox Reporter Tries and Fails to Sign Up for Obamacare

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff

October 11, 2013 11:12 am

Fox News reporter Peter Doocy tried and failed multiple times to sign up at healthcare.gov Friday night, joining a long list of frustrated Americans who have found the Obamacare site unusable.

Doocy told America’s Newsroom viewers he attempted three times to create an account, and then he entered the live chat. He was told to return at off-peak hours by the representative, and a phone operator would not create an account for him either. Doocy tried to sign up from Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey and was never successful.

He did try a private provider, United HealthCare, and said he got an insurance quote in 29 seconds.

The Obamacare website has been the source of fierce criticism for its technological problems. NBC Nightly News ripped the site as a “source of ridicule” on Thursday night’s broadcast, and one expert told CNN it doesn’t even work at the most basic levels.

Via: WFB

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