Is that, like, a satire of what Democrats do?
Here's how he put it: "I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000, very much like a successful company will do a cash distribution to its shareholders or like last year when I gave our great members of the military $1,776."
I remember getting thousands of dollars during the pandemic....

79 కామెంట్లు:
I'm getting tired of the trolling. More winning, please.
Yuck.
The successful company is the Republicans, so maybe they will be the ones issuing the checks and not the government?
(Also, dividends are issued from profits; governments, most especially our government, have no profits).
I don't see any chance these checks will actually be issued.
Echoes of "Read my lips..."
Is affirmative action also a bribe? Many women and Blacks have used quotas and set-asides to secure lucrative employment and to climb into genuine positions of power they were not qualified for.
The socialists will give me more.
He’s stolen the Democrat playbook and he’s running down the sideline, stepping out of bounds 19 times, until the refs blow the whistle.
The voters expecting a big paycheck will be upset (I hope), and will take it out on JD.
Wealth redistribution. MAGA hates socialism but they LOVE other people's money!
Take my share and pay down the debt. I don't need or want a government handout.
There's always an income cutoff so you never get any cash. On the other hand you don't have the hassle of reporting the income at year end either.
Think about the mind that would think it was good to say this, or think it was a good idea, or legal.
Think about the minds of the people who vote again and again for tax cuts for themselves, are worked up about a $40T debt, and cheered.
Not that anyone took him seriously, obviously.
It is a horrible idea. Printing money is the cause of inflation. Pretty much all of the inflation we are seeing is caused by the Covid dollars pumped into the economy while fewer goods and services were being produced.
I don't see it as satire, just stupid, which is why I also think if pollsters asked if voters support giving all adult citizens $5,000, a majority would probably say yes.
But does anyone consider a federal budget that already spends 33% more than it has in revenues "successful," particularly when we have full employment, no pandemic, or world war.
By the way, that's approximately 1.2 trillion dollars if the money is given to to the 235-240 million adult US citizens. I think Trump has done a lot of good things (securing the border, deporting illegals, bringing manufacturing back to the US, energy independence, etc) but not every idea he comes up with is gold.
Blatant balderdash, disgusting and disgraceful.
No, just No. A dumb idea. On the other hand, my grandkids have Trump accounts, which I think is a terrific idea. And Michael Dell has already kicked in $250, automatically. My hats always off to people that commit to a kid's future. But $5000 handouts is just stupid. Tell us how you're balancing the budget, like WE HAVE TO DO.
Buying votes is abhorrent no matter the party involved.
I was playing around with ChatGPT about this. If Trump had access to 1.2 trillion dollars that weren't printed just for the occasion, and it was applied to the national debt, and no additional debt was added then it would only take about a century to eliminate the $32.1 trillions of debt.
"If we keep your earlier $1.2 trillion initial payoff, leaving about $30.9 trillion, and assume the effective interest rate stays at 3.4%, then the $41 billion of first-year interest savings is applied to principal, which creates still more savings the next year, and so on.
Under that simplified compounding model:
Debt reduction after n years = $1.2T × (1.034)^n
To eliminate the full $32.1 trillion:
1.2 × (1.034)^n = 32.1
That works out to roughly 98 years.
So the rough answer is:
About a century to eliminate the entire $32.1 trillion, if the only ongoing principal payments come from reinvesting the interest savings created by that original $1.2 trillion payoff.
The progression would be approximately:
Time Total debt eliminated
Initially $1.2T
20 years $2.34T
40 years $4.57T
60 years $8.91T
80 years $17.4T
~98 years ~$32.1T
This illustrates why a primary budget surplus matters so much. If the government contributed even another $200–500 billion per year toward principal in addition to the interest savings, the payoff time would fall dramatically."
We are so screwed. On the other hand in 10 years AI will either kill us all or make us richer than dreams of avarice.
Think about the mind that would think it was good to say this, or think it was a good idea, or legal.
It's a New York mind. It's Rodney Dangerfield in the Economics 101 class, teaching the students about bribery in order to get things done.
Democrats have been bribing voters for decades. All of my life and more. Free stuff, free stuff, free stuff, and more free stuff.
Any Democrat who criticizes this ought to explain why Socialism is bad, inflation is bad, debts are bad, all of it. You do not get to pretend to be the fiscally sane party.
He's doing it out in the open, so that makes him immune to a bribery charge. I think.
It might violate 18 USC 597
Wouldn't surprise me if the Democrats tried to prosecute him for this.
"Think about the mind that would think it was good to say this, or think it was a good idea, or legal."
It's every bit as foolish as Biden's student loan forgiveness or Obama's "shovel ready" stimulus.
Ron W. said ..." I think Trump has done a lot of good things (securing the border, deporting illegals, bringing manufacturing back to the US, energy independence, etc) but not every idea he comes up with is gold."
Remember Trump is basically an old-school Democrat who ran as a Republican for President. I agree he has done a lot of good but he has some ideas that I disagree with like low interest rates and wacky refunds like this one.
He has also made the GOP a big tent party.
"By the way, that's approximately 1.2 trillion dollars if the money is given to to the 235-240 million adult US citizens. I think Trump has done a lot of good things (securing the border, deporting illegals, bringing manufacturing back to the US, energy independence, etc) but not every idea he comes up with is gold."
I don't think this is in any way a good idea, but if the money was actually paid directly to US citizens it would be far more productive than the $6 Trillion in government spending that's been pushed out since 2019.
And those who talk about raising taxes to cut the deficit need to point to one time that has actually happened, rather than increased revenues used to justify exponentially increased spending.
Here's the clip.
From a criminal perspective, I think what he's saying is that if the Republicans win the House and the Senate, it will be so good economically that we can afford to give all Americans (including the people who didn't vote Republican) a nice dividend pay out. But if we elect Democrats it will wreck the economy.
An aggressive prosecutor could make a case that this is a criminal act. He's certainly skirting right up to it. But you'd also be literally arguing that every single American who received money (Trump voter or not) is an unindicted co-conspirator.
Trump is a performance artist whose medium is politics. What better response to Democrat's constant wealth redistribution rhetoric than a plain and simple check if GOP wins. Everyone knows it will never happen - that's part of the point.
Anyone here wondering where IEE is? I'm not.
Twitterites have pointed out that the rebates would be equal to 3 years tariffs. IEE has been whining for months about the burden of tariffs on the average citizen. So this is a good thing, right? But IEE is incapable of saying anything positive about Trump, so it must be a bad thing. What can he say? He doesn't know!
That solves the problem of where IEE is: he's waiting for his pre-written talking points, and his paymasters are having trouble coming up with a plausible text for him to cut-and-paste.
Pretend I'm On the Ballot
Hasan Piker in his underwear
What a stupid fuck. He should have promised everybody a hundred grand. Nobody's going to vote for the globalist crypto grifters who are busy getting bitched slapped by the mad mullahs for a measly 5K.
I think Trump has decided that there are a small number of high priority items on his agenda, and he is willing to make deals without regard to philosophy or ideology to achieve those high priority items.
That means that even if you agree with his choice of high priority agenda items, Trump may break your heart and possibly do real damage to the country to get them done.
Personally, I hate the idea of simply giving $5k to everyone, but if it elects representatives who will keep nukes out of Iranian hands, pass the SAVE act, and maintain immigration limits, I can live with that.
I just hope that Trump's successor starts working in earnest on debt and the deficit.
For anyone who seriously thinks we are "getting bitch slapped by the mad mullahs", here's Trent Telenko on Twitter (link):
"Iranian inflation is now at 2% a day? Hyper inflation has officially arrived in Iran.
"The Mullah Regime just lost the ability not only to pay the Basij, IRGC and other regime security forces. It can't pay it's OIL WORKERS!!!
"The Shah's regime fell days after the oil workers went on strike in 1979."
The Tweet he's replying to has the chart and begins "Probably best to just assume Trump is gonna see the Iran thing through now and not wait until post Eday."
270mn adults x $5k = $1.35tn.. I’m going to need double digit yields on the 10yr Scott.. the house seems a little wobbly.
I would immediately use it to buy more gold and gold mining ETFs. The dollars wouldn't be worth the check they're printed on.
Just illustrates what we already have. As HL Mencken [was said to have] said: "Every election is a sort of advance auction of stolen goods."
It is human nature that Sovereigns abuse sovereign power. I maintain the best guard is to simply limit the sovereign's power. If you do not give them the cash, they cannot misspend the cash.
Trump did go bankrupt multiple times. Now he has run up the debt, is at the helm as the military budget increases to multiple times what any prior country's military has been, and is spiking the cost of living.
I remember when the GOP was considered conservative. Now it is deficit spending, taking a chainsaw to scientific research, and record deficit spending.
No matter how much you guys scream about socialism, your hero is a financial basket case
1.3 trillion dollars you think Congress will approve or using his own money (like the ballroom etc) to go along with your Doge, tariff and other checks from him. Wait you didn't get that yet.. ONE BORN EVERY MINUTE. Followers of a delusional, frantic old man. .good luck
…oh that’s cute the lefties here are sudden advocates of fiscal constraint, just like when Trump flies somewhere or builds things with private funding…
I’m okay the entitlement fraud money back to Americans. First you gotta cut em off…
President Trump gave a one-time, tax-free $1776 payment called the "Warrior Dividend" to approximately 1.45 million active duty and reserve military service members O-6 and below ahead of Christmas 2025. No quid pro quo (quid pro quo means giving something in exchange for something.)
If you want examples of quid pro quo illegalities, check out the Brenda Lee Armstrong case (2026) in Los Angeles's Skid Row where cash was given to homeless in exchange for votes, or the James Brass case (2026) where money was given to homeless for signing petitions using stolen identities of registered voters.
https://www.macrotrends.net/2496/national-debt-growth-by-year
But it's all Donald Trump's fault, right Mark and Dinky?
This is probably the final nail in the coffin on the Mid-term elections. Regardless of the legal realities, it will come off as a crass way to buy votes. Trump has become tone deaf. I know he has to do whatever he can to stop people thinking about his War with Iran, high inflation, high gas prices, high diesel prices, high grocery prices, high beef prices, high health insurance premiums, high property taxes, etc. So he has to distract people with ridiculous claims like this, which he knows will never happen, just like renaming Lake Ontario, New Mexico, the Gulf of Mexico, and everything else. He is just whistling by the graveyard.
^^ There’s desperation and then there’s this….
RR,
dividends are usually issued from profits but dont need to be. Plenty of companies have profits but pay no dividend. Amazon and B-H are 2 famous examples.
Other companies have losses but pay dividends even in a bad year because shareholders rely on the income from divodends
Lots of strategies.
I agree with your point, though. If I understand correctly
Govt can't pay out "dividend" in any normal sense of the word
John Henry
Lefties Lonejustice and IEE finally show up. But high inflation, high gas prices, high diesel prices and high grocery prices are from Biden when rates of inflation were also the highest.
And high property taxes? No property taxes in Florida, Texas and Tennessee. Highest property taxes in California, New York and Illinois. And note: The first thing the new mayor of Buffalo New York did was to raise property taxes 20%. That was his first act after election. And he wanted to raise taxes 25% but the totally Democrat Buffalo Common Council dropped the raise to 20%. What do you think Hochul will do immediately after election if she wins?
Vote for Democrats who will then raise your property taxes!
I also think it is a terrible idea.
So terrible that I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt until I can understand what he actesaix and means. As opposed to what is reportef
John Henry
Sounds good to me. Worrywarts have been handwringing about “The Debt! The Debt!” since forever. Yawn.
Is it true that "Trump did go bankrupt multiple times"? If you take that in the most obvious meaning, it's a lie: he has never filed for personal bankruptcy. It is true that businesses he owned have gone through Chapter 11 bankruptcy either 4 or 6 times total, depending on how you count complex cases. However, that's out of hundreds of companies, and, more important, Chapter 11 is so-called reorganization bankruptcy, where a company gets time to reorganize its debts but still has to pay them. Mark is hoping we'll think these were Chapter 7 bankruptcies, where the company is shut down, its assets divided up, and the creditors get whatever percentage they can of what they're owed from the remaining assets.
As for whether we have "record deficit spending", someone on Twitter today was saying that this year's deficit spending is actually a smaller percentage than last year's and the year before's. Is that true? Mark doesn't know, and doesn't care. Just as he doesn't care that the increased military spending is urgently needed to head off World War III, deterring Russia from invading the Baltics or Finland and China from invading Taiwan.
I’m thinking Pres.Trump will ask for proof of citizenship and the Dem controlled states will refuse. So the total.numbers will be much smaller.
@lonejustice: High property taxes? I guess you forgot Dem by by Mamdani’s pied a terre taxes.in NYC.
A ‘dividend’ of $5000 per person if the Republicans win the midterms. It sounds similar to his $5000 distribution promised from tariff collections and the $2000 per taxpayer from DOGE savings. Remind me how those promises worked out?
Maybe IEE should have read my 11:46am comment, in which I pointed out that $5,000 is three years worth of tariff receipts, so it is the "$5000 distribution promised from tariff collections" he's whining about now.
That’s true, I also got thousands of dollars, I used them to pay my club dues.
I am sure that this won’t be inflationary and the money won’t just be reconfiscated through higher prices.
Bessent buys back $6 billion and Trump spends another $1.3 trillion Circular firing squad.
I actually support carefully thought out tariffs designed to bring back industry to the US. What Trump has done is just utterly capricious and reckless.
Remember the peace dividend? I lived then in the weapons belt north of Boston, did not know that my prosperity depended on building machines to kill Rooskies, but it did. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
I love Trump -- before my car could only hold $50 of gas he made it hold $70!
GasBuddy statement on Diesel Reaching $6 Per Gallon for the First Time in History: https://x.com/GasBuddyGuy/status/2098144431777976373?s=20
Are Gasbuddy's prices adjusted for inflation? If not, they're deeply dishonest, as is anyone who quotes them without that proviso. Others on Twitter have noted that real (not nominal) diesel prices have been higher in the past.
And that's leaving out the question of how much of the high average price of diesel is due to state taxes. Have any states raised their diesel taxes lately?
*Think about the minds of the people who vote again and again for tax cuts for themselves*
You mean voting to keep more of MY money?
The horror!!!
*This is probably the final nail in the coffin on the Mid-term elections.*
Is that what The Des Moines Register's polling is telling you?
'...No property taxes in Florida, Texas and Tennessee....'
I hate to break the news, but we have plenty of property taxes in Texas. Good breaks for agricultural exemptions, substantial ones for declared homesteads, some considerations by county for seniors. But we sure got'em. We don't have an income tax, that's the good news. But our property taxes are bad enough to where politicians campaign on them.
𝘈𝘳𝘦 𝘎𝘢𝘴𝘣𝘶𝘥𝘥𝘺'𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘥𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯?
Do American consumers pay an “inflation-adjusted” price at the pump, or the price on the sign? Does a trucking company calculate its fuel bill in 2026 dollars or imaginary 2008 dollars?
Yes, historical comparisons should be inflation-adjusted. But that doesn’t make today’s $6 diesel less expensive to a trucker or less inflationary. State taxes are worth examining too, but they average only about 36¢/gal on diesel. The current surge is overwhelmingly a fuel-market problem, not a tax story.
And since inflation was mentioned: diesel powers freight, agriculture and construction. Higher diesel costs get embedded in the cost of moving food, packages, raw materials and virtually everything else. Wholesale prices were already up 5.4% year-over-year in August, with diesel among the major contributors.
So yes, by all means adjust the historical chart for inflation. Just don’t adjust the actual bill.
If I think it sucks to drop $90 to fill up the gas tank on my truck, then it sucks! Don't tell me how wonderful I have compared to some mythical past you claim. Its not the $90 that pisses me off but the fact that Trump keeps telling me how the war is over, the straight is open and gas will be below $2 a gallon soon. Ifin' we had to fight a war then so be it - but stop talking to me like you think I am stupid. The war is not over, the cost of oil is killing our economy, the debt is up $4 trillion and the GOP congress has not passed diddley for legislation... No going to vote "D" in November but I might stay home because I am tired of all the bologna from Trump.
More crap from IEE, who couldn't be bothered to respond to my 3:17 reply to his 3:08 comment, and can't respond honestly to this one. Do Americans pay an inflation-adjusted price? Of course they do, if you think about it. If the inflation-adjusted price has been higher in the past, then we are not in fact paying the "highest ever!" prices in any real sense.
As for "State taxes average only about 36¢/gal on diesel", that looks roughly correct: it varies from 78.6c/gal in California to 8.95c in Alaska. However, when I looked up those numbers here, I found these words: "These rates do not include certain local taxes, the effects of environmental programs and regulations like cap-and-trade carbon policies or low carbon fuel standards, or certain taxes levied on gross receipts." I wonder what all those add up to.
Finally, the shortage of diesel products on the market has at least as much to do with Russia's war on Ukraine as with the U.S.' war on the Iranian junta. Ukraine has destroyed dozens of refineries, and Russia is now importing oil and diesel instead of exporting them. Not that I'm blaming Ukraine: bombing refineries seems a reasonable and restrained response to the Russian bombing and droning of apartment buildings, shopping centers, hospitals, trains full of passengers, warehouses full of drugs, food, and books, and teenagers on bicycles.
Weasel doubles down...
Inflation-adjusting prices is hardly a rebuttal to saying today’s diesel is extraordinarily expensive, it’s precisely how you determine whether it is. EIA publishes both nominal and inflation-adjusted diesel prices for that reason. And yes, state and local taxes vary, but the national average state diesel tax is about 35.5¢/gal; that doesn’t explain a roughly $5.98 national pump price.
As for Ukraine and Iran: both can affect supply, but blaming Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries for today’s U.S. price tells only half the story. EIA says the 2026 surge also reflects major disruptions to international petroleum flows through the Strait of Hormuz and the resulting pressure on crude and refined-product markets.
Apparently, when the facts won’t cooperate, the solution is to keep adding footnotes until the price of diesel becomes someone else’s fault.
Terrible proposal
It's easy to tell when someone's losing an argument with me: they start calling me 'Weevil' instead of 'Dr Weevil'. If they're losing badly, they switch to 'Weasel' like some middle-schooler who thinks he's witty.
IEE accuses me of telling "only half the story" by supposedly mentioning only Ukraine, when I specifically mentioned Iran AND Ukraine, where everyone else was only talking about Iran! Who's telling only half the story about the diesel shortage? Not I. Who's arguing honestly and intelligently? Not IEE.
"Is that, like, a satire of what Democrats do?"
What Democrats do? You mean like- "Vote for me and I'll raise the minimum wage"?
The arguments for voting for Donald Trump were always weak, and it doesn’t take hindsight to appreciate this.
There were claims that his first term had been fine and that there had been peace around the world.
He inherited a strong economy from Obama, there were plenty of geopolitical events (from the ongoing conflict in Eastern Ukraine to the Syrian Civil War to the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong), and he demanded that his Vice-President overturn a free and fair election.
Some bought into his “free IVF” gambit as evidence that he was really quite a moderate guy. Others dismissed his debate loss to Harris as just an isolated setback, and his “concepts of a healthcare plan” remark failed to be taken as evidence that he might not have much attention to policy detail.
Some may have thought his “I hate Taylor Swift!” post and lies about Haitians were amusing sideshows and not evidence of an erratic mind.
And now diesel has hit $6 a gallon, and oil prices and bond yields are surging.
Do not forgive the Republican Party.
It’s interesting to see how many people in this thread are recognizing that this idea might not be the best one. Paying around 240 to 245 million adults $5,000 each would cost about $1.2 trillion. Just saying borrowed money is a “dividend” doesn’t magically make a government with a big deficit financially healthy.
It’s hard to say this is outright vote-buying. Candidates often promise tax cuts and public benefits, and the law usually sees these as policy promises, not paying people to vote. But Trump made it sound like vote-buying, saying, “If Republicans win, you get $5,000.” Plus, he can’t just hand out the money himself—Congress would need to approve it.
Saying that “Democrats give away money too” isn’t really a good reason. Also, calling it “performance art that everyone knows will never happen” isn’t helpful either. If the promise is made to be impossible, it just makes people more cynical, not less.
If the federal government has $1.2 trillion in surplus, why is it still dealing with trillions of dollars in debt and paying interest on a $40 trillion debt?
Dr Weevil writes: 𝘗𝘪𝘨𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘳 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘯'𝘵 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘪𝘨𝘴. 𝘐𝘧 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘯'𝘵 𝘥𝘰 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘱𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘤, 𝘸𝘦'𝘥 𝘢𝘭𝘭 (𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘦𝘱𝘵 𝘩𝘪𝘮) 𝘣𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘪𝘦𝘳.
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2026/09/sunrise_0759005272.html?showComment=1788922008462#c569650069626352397
You're just a whiney little bitch....
Whiny projectile commenter IEE might want to explain why I called him a pigfucker, as part of a comparison to an old Irish joke. The fact is that two weeks ago I proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he had copied someone else's Tweet word-for-word and passed it off as his own, with no quotation marks, no link, no hint that he hadn't come up with the words himself. See this thread, specifically the 9:15am, 10:52am, and 3:55pm comments.
His reaction (no denial, no attempt to explain, just change the subject and keep on posting) demonstrates that this was not some one-time lapse in a moment of haste, but that he does this all the time, as everyone here already suspected. His comments are too long, too numerous, too close together in time, too variable in style, and too monotonously consistent in their anti-Trump slant to be original. He's almost certainly paid to post them, and provided with pre-written talking points by his paymaster.
To anyone who cares about writing, scholarship, and truth, that's the moral equivalent of fucking pigs. In short, if he doesn't want to be called a pigfucker, he should stop fucking pigs, especially now that he's been caught in the act. (Pigs aren't known for fastidious choosiness when it comes to sex partners, but even they are disgusted by his attentions.) As previously noted, he needs to bugger off to BlueSky where that kind of behavior is welcome.
𝘐𝘵'𝘴 𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦'𝘴 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘶𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵…. 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘐𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺'𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘢𝘥𝘭𝘺, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘴𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘰 𝘗𝘪𝘨𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘳 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘥𝘥𝘭𝘦-𝘴𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘴 𝘩𝘦'𝘴 a witty-whiney little bitch.
IEE still hasn't admitted to plagiarizing that post two weeks ago - and many others before and after. Which makes him a metaphorical pigfucker, and a whiny one. I also call him a projectile commenter because he always accuses others of what he's doing himself - and because it sounds like projectile vomiting, another good metaphor for his vile modus operandi. The difference is that my insults to him are utterly deserved, where his to me are stupid and childish - rather like the man himself, if such a pathetic excuse for a man can be called that.
Enjoy your weekend 😉
Dr Weevil, repeat that louder for Achilles and Rusty.
కామెంట్ను పోస్ట్ చేయండి
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