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Obama Evokes His Dying Mother in Health Care Reform Push
CNS News ^ | March 17, 2010 | Melanie Hunter-Omar

Posted on 03/18/2010 3:31:23 PM PDT by Sopater

In an email message to supporters, President Barack Obama used his dying mother’s experience with insurance companies as an example of why lawmakers should pass the health care reform plan in Congress.

“She died of cancer, and in the last six months of her life, I saw her on the phone in her hospital room arguing with insurance companies instead of focusing on getting well and spending time with her family,” Obama wrote in the email.

(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...


TOPICS: Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: healthcare
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Yeah, the gov't healthcare takeover will put an end to all that arguing on the phone. It's hard to argue when you're on hold... or dead.
1 posted on 03/18/2010 3:31:23 PM PDT by Sopater
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To: Sopater

He would have rather have had her on the phone arguing with the government?

Oh yeah, that’d be an improvement.


2 posted on 03/18/2010 3:32:53 PM PDT by JennysCool (My hypocrisy goes only so far)
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To: Sopater

And I’ve never argued with a government bureaucrat— uh huh.


3 posted on 03/18/2010 3:32:53 PM PDT by agooga (Struggling every day to be worthy of their sacrifice.)
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To: Sopater

at the gubmint will know where you are when you kick it- pg 1004 of the bill talks about an “implantable device” i’m sure this has been a topic here before,tho.


4 posted on 03/18/2010 3:33:24 PM PDT by MissDairyGoodnessVT (Free Nobel Peace Prize with oil change =^..^=)
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To: Sopater

STFU ZERO. FALLING ON DEAF EARS.


5 posted on 03/18/2010 3:33:40 PM PDT by Marty62 ( Marty62)
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To: Sopater

Under Obamacare his mom would have likely gotten far worse care than she actually received. I sure the hell know his grandma got a lot better care than if she would have been on Obamacare.

I mean, let’s take the gloves off here. If he’s going to whore out the memories of his dead family members, let’s give him the real truth.


6 posted on 03/18/2010 3:33:52 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man (I'd like to tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.)
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To: Sopater

While her son was living large in a mansion in Chicago? Cry me a river.


7 posted on 03/18/2010 3:34:27 PM PDT by linn37 ( "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples money.)
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To: Sopater

Funny how he JUST remembered, isn’t it? What are the chances that never happened?


8 posted on 03/18/2010 3:35:14 PM PDT by marstegreg
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To: MissDairyGoodnessVT

pg. 1004 of which bill? The Senate bill?


9 posted on 03/18/2010 3:35:59 PM PDT by Sopater (...where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. - 2 COR 3:17b)
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To: Sopater; All

I’m sure the govt bureaucrats will address any concerns of any elderly people who are very ill!

(do I really need a sarcasm tag?)


10 posted on 03/18/2010 3:37:17 PM PDT by Red in Blue PA (Thinking of using 911 for protection? Google "Brittany Zimmerman")
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To: Sopater

This is a lie.

Patiet are not on the phone with insurers when they are in the hospital. There are social workers and insurance people who recertify need and care issues.

This man is too stupid for words.


11 posted on 03/18/2010 3:37:22 PM PDT by Chickensoup (We have the government we deserve. Is our government our traitor?)
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To: Sopater
He is a freaking liar.
If his grandmother (mother really) was arguing with insurance companies why the hell didn't he take the phone and set them straight. Good lord, he just stood there like a douche.
12 posted on 03/18/2010 3:37:32 PM PDT by svcw (Jesus comforts the uncomfortable and makes uncomfortable the comfortable.)
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To: Secret Agent Man
Under Obamacare his mom would have likely gotten far worse care than she actually received.

It's not about the care, it's about the money. It's not about what's best for America, it's about Obama.
13 posted on 03/18/2010 3:37:34 PM PDT by Sopater (...where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. - 2 COR 3:17b)
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To: Sopater
I saw her on the phone in her hospital room arguing with insurance companies instead of focusing on getting well and spending time with her family,”

Well Barry why didn't you man up and take care of the phone business for her?! You just sat and WATCHED her spend her last days doing that?! Your a poor excuse of a man and a LIAR!

14 posted on 03/18/2010 3:38:23 PM PDT by ladyvet (WOLVERINES!!!!!)
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To: Sopater
Stanley Ann Dunham alive?

Obamaunism 101: The Stanley Ann Dumham factor

15 posted on 03/18/2010 3:39:44 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist (Islam is incompatible with American traditions and values)
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To: Sopater

Given her anti-American history, I wouldn’t feel sorry for her if B. Hussein’s story were true. Frankly, she should have lost pretty much any rights the day she left the U.S. to hang out with Muslims who hate our country.


16 posted on 03/18/2010 3:40:31 PM PDT by peyton randolph (Obama Luti)
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To: Sopater
So Obambi was in his 30's when she died. Why was he not the ONE on the phone doing the arguing?

He had a campaign ad where he brought this up also.

17 posted on 03/18/2010 3:45:50 PM PDT by Red_Devil 232 (VietVet - USMC All Ready On The Right? All Ready On The Left? All Ready On The Firing Line!)
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To: Sopater
...I saw her on the phone in her hospital room arguing with insurance companies instead of focusing on getting well and spending time with her family,” Obama wrote in the email.

So he saw her arguing with and having problems with insurance companies and he, a very wealthy person (he was already a practicing attorney in 95 when she died) and had influence as an attorney, yet he did nothing? Did he think of taking the phone from her and making the calls himself or heck, helping pay himself so they didn't have to use insurance? What an SOB of a son.

18 posted on 03/18/2010 3:47:37 PM PDT by mnehring
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To: Sopater

yup...and this bill wouldnt help his mother if she were here today...


19 posted on 03/18/2010 3:48:41 PM PDT by dalebert
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To: All

This has been said by Obama before and been debunked by Obama before as well.

http://spectator.org/blog/2008/10/22/obama-lies-on-dying

But, in light of the fact that Obama was not around, indeed was not even close, to his mother (geographically) as she lay dying, how then could he possible make this claim that he made in his convention speech?: “As someone who watched my mother argue with insurance companies while she lay in bed dying of cancer, I will make sure....”

He used the line about his dying mother as a way to humanize, but also to create political sympathy for, his call for more government involvement in the health care system and for his habit of demonizing the insurance companies. Unfortunately, it begins to look like nothing so much as Al Gore’s utterly false claim that he promised his dying sister to fight the tobacco companies forever. (Remember that Gore was NOT anywhere near his sister when she died, and he CAMPAIGNED, AFTER she died, by bragging about having harvested tobacco himself, and he had a fairly pro-tobacco legislative record until several years after his sister’s death. In other words, he made up the sob story for political effect, and used his dead sister as a prop. It was despicable.)

Let’s review the Obama thing. He himself acknowledges that he was not with his mother before she died. So he did not “watch” her “while she lay in bed dying.”

Okay, fine. Maybe he was with her as she argued with insurance companies in the months before she died. Maybe he just sort of telescoped the time frame for ease of telling the story — hardly a terrible sin. If the story is true that she argued with insurance companies as she lay dying and that he watched her as she did, it would hardly matter if it was two days before or five months before: The point of insurance company perfidy would be the same and the story would be in most essentials true.

But here’s what the Washington Post reported about it in the weekend BEFORE the Demo convention: He was into his Chicago phase, reshaping himself for his political future, but now was drawn back to Hawaii to say goodbye to his mother. Too late, as it turned out. She died on Nov. 7, 1995, before he could get there.

Ann had returned to Honolulu early that year, a few months before “Dreams From My Father” was published. She was weakened from a cancer that had been misdiagnosed in Indonesia as indigestion. American doctors first thought it was ovarian cancer, but an examination at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York determined that it was uterine cancer that had spread to her ovaries....

[Sister] Maya was in New York, about to start graduate school at New York University, when her mother got sick. She and her brother were equally slow to realize that the disease was advancing so rapidly. Maya had seen Ann during that visit to Sloan-Kettering, and “she didn’t look well. She was in a wheelchair . . ..... by November her condition had worsened. She was put on morphine to ease the pain and moved from her apartment to the Straub Clinic. One night she called Maya and said she was scared. “And my last words to her, where she was able to respond, were that I was coming. I arrived on the seventh. My grandmother was there and had been there for some time, so I sent her home and talked to Mom and touched her and hugged her, and she was not able to respond. I read her a story — a book of Creole folk tales that I had with me about renewal and rebirth — and I said it was okay with me if she decided to go ahead, that I couldn’t really bear to see her like that. And she died. It was about 11 that night.”

Barack came the next day. ....

Look at that again. Obama was in Chicago. His mother went to New York. He did not appear to visit her there. Then she went to Hawaii. He DEFINITELY did not visit her there. So how, pray tell, did he “watched my mother argue with insurance companies while she lay in bed dying of cancer”?

Poor man, he never saw her as she lay dying — or so it appears. It must have been a terrible trauma. I say this in all seriousness. He cared enough to fly to Hawaii when it became clear just how badly sick she was, and he got there just too late. That’s a nightmare. The regret would certainly be lasting. Nobody should ever question his real, human feelings about that loss or about his inability to properly “say goodbye.” That is NOT what this is about.

But when was it that she argued with insurance companies? Why use that example in his speech? If it wasn’t true, then it was a cheap trick to play on people’s emotions by using his mother as a prop. And THAT is worth having somebody in the establishment media bring up.

All of this can be cleared up. Maybe Obama made a quick visit to New York from Chicago, and maybe his mother was arguing with insurance companies even then. But the Post story makes a point of noting that MAYA had seen her mother at Sloan-Kettering, as if Obama didn’t. But maybe he did. It is clear that it was JUST a short stay at Sloan Kettering, though — that she wasn’t there long at all, and that Obama was based in Chicago then. She spent most of her time with cancer back in Hawaii.

This was a human tragedy, like the ones millions of families suffer through each year. It breaks my heart. But why did Obama feel a need to use it for political effect — unless, somehow, it was actually true?

If, and I repeat “if and only if” there is no good explanation, then it is a mark, another mark, of a character deficiency, just as it was with Al Gore, for Obama to have made up the story about his mother just to score a cheap political point. Handled sensitively, it is a legitimate question to ask.


20 posted on 03/18/2010 3:50:21 PM PDT by autumnraine (You can't fix stupid, but you can vote it out!)
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To: Sopater

What strikes me as odd, is that barry’s mom, Grandad and “mentor” Frank Davis were all big supporters of Soviet based communism. ... so, it appears just a *tad* hypocritical that they didn’t rush her to Moscow for her medical treatments.


21 posted on 03/18/2010 3:51:12 PM PDT by DDLL
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To: mnehring
So he saw her arguing with and having problems with insurance companies and he, a very wealthy person (he was already a practicing attorney in 95 when she died) and had influence as an attorney, yet he did nothing?

The way he sees it, its not his job but the government's job to help his own mom. He probably gave her some good advice between phone calls and said "here's a dime, call your senator".
22 posted on 03/18/2010 3:51:41 PM PDT by Sopater (...where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. - 2 COR 3:17b)
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To: Sopater
From Wikipedia:

Dunham then pursued a career in rural development championing women’s work and microcredit for the world’s poor, with Indonesia’s oldest bank, the United States Agency for International Development, the Ford Foundation, Women's World Banking, and as a consultant in Lahore, Pakistan. While at the Ford Foundation she developed a model of microfinance which is now the standard in Indonesia, a country that is a world leader in micro-credit systems.[38] Peter Geithner, father of Tim Geithner (who later became United States Secretary of the Treasury in her son's administration), was head of the foundation's Asia grant-making at that time.[39]Dunham also worked with leaders from organizations supporting Indonesian human rights, women's rights, and grass-roots development.[29]

So help me out here, Mr. President. Your mom was working for a US government agency and a left wing charity, yet she did not have good insurance. She developed cancer while living in Indonesia, flew to New York where she was diagnosed and then chose to have treatment in Hawaii. Assuming you are not lying, which is dubious at best, she was still receiving the best treatment possible.

If she was arguing with insurance companies on the phone what was her well paid lawyer son doing to help her? Oh, and please tell me in what country with a government run health care system would she have even been in the hospital, much less have her choice of hospitals? How long would she have waited to even get a doctors appointment in Canada, England and France?

23 posted on 03/18/2010 3:52:41 PM PDT by Pan_Yan
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To: Sopater
Anyone watch the House on CSpan today? All the Demwit women got up and spoke on what else? WOMEN, we are not Pre Existing conditions.

Now we know what Pelosie called her Ho's in for a private meeting for. Invoke the women cause, that will get the public every time, right?

Nearly everyone one of them had their talking points down pat. We are not Pre Existing Conditions.

I don't even know what that means.

24 posted on 03/18/2010 3:54:39 PM PDT by annieokie
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To: Sopater

More worried about her phone calls than making it to her death bed.

Boys with Mommy issues should never be President.


25 posted on 03/18/2010 3:58:21 PM PDT by Protect the Bill of Rights
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To: Sopater

Just think, under Obama’s plan she could have been told she’s too old for all that expensive treatment, and to just go home and take some aspirin. Then she’d have plenty of quality time with the family.


26 posted on 03/18/2010 3:59:19 PM PDT by Argus
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To: Sopater

Wow.

There is nothing sacred to this man. Nothing.


27 posted on 03/18/2010 3:59:35 PM PDT by SE Mom (Proud mom of an Iraq war combat veteran)
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To: Extremely Extreme Extremist

Interesting. Bunch of their cousins were members of a Communist Commune that operated from about 1880 to 1900 in and around Port Angeles, Washington. Hard to believe there were Commie Communes then but there were.http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20010410&slug=portangeles10m0


28 posted on 03/18/2010 3:59:46 PM PDT by muawiyah ("Git Out The Way")
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To: Chickensoup
Patiet are not on the phone with insurers when they are in the hospital. There are social workers and insurance people who recertify need and care issues.

I have never known a cancer patient who encountered the problems he describes. Not to mention that the patient in Ohio that he claims motivated him to be out there the other day couldn't attend the rally because she was at the (five-star) Cleveland Clinic getting treatment.

He claimed she was at risk of losing her home but the Clinic put out a statement saying they would never put a lien on her home. Apparently they do 100 million in charity care every year. Charity seems to be a concept foreign to him ... unless it comes from the govt, in which case it is not charity, it is coercion.

29 posted on 03/18/2010 4:00:37 PM PDT by freespirited (We're not the Party of No. We're the Party of HELL NO!!!)
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To: Sopater
Nasty.

Desperate.

Evil.

Dictatorial.

Lowlife.

30 posted on 03/18/2010 4:00:45 PM PDT by Allegra (It doesn't matter what this tagline says...the liberals are going to call it "racist.")
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To: svcw

He would have made the calls if the phone had a teleprompter attached.


31 posted on 03/18/2010 4:00:55 PM PDT by certrtwngnut (go to you tube @see screw the state of n.j.)
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To: Sopater

Shouldn’t he or his sister have helped her and been the ones on the phone if calls needed to be be made?
My mother died in Jan, the last months of her life I handled her affairs, medical and financial, as her POA.


32 posted on 03/18/2010 4:01:27 PM PDT by kalee (The offences we give, we write in the dust; Those we take, we engrave in marble. J Huett 1658)
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To: freespirited

He is a liar

Liar.

I would love to see a graphic of him as a liar.

Trying to tie us up with his lies.


33 posted on 03/18/2010 4:03:19 PM PDT by Chickensoup (We have the government we deserve. Is our government our traitor?)
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To: Sopater

Hip boots are useless against the B.S. coming from this guy -
you need a full immersion suit and a scuba tank.


34 posted on 03/18/2010 4:05:32 PM PDT by dainbramaged (If you want a friend, get a dog.)
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To: annieokie

I cannot think of a more Pre-Existing Condition than a leftist Dim woman.

It is like I can channel what they are going to say before their own brains can move their mouths.


35 posted on 03/18/2010 4:06:21 PM PDT by Chickensoup (We have the government we deserve. Is our government our traitor?)
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To: Chickensoup

Gee Barry its too bad she didn’t spend that much effort raising you??? That was up to PawPaw and Grandma the poor bank VP!


36 posted on 03/18/2010 4:09:06 PM PDT by JohnD9207 (REGISTERED RIGHT WING THUG!)
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To: Sopater

What a piece of filth Obama is. He will do or say anything to transform America into an ecomomy that is that of a third world nation, ruled by tyrants.

Of course he sees himself as the ruler of this transformed nation.


37 posted on 03/18/2010 4:13:58 PM PDT by SkipW
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To: Sopater

His mother NEVER EVER wanted to spend time with her family.


38 posted on 03/18/2010 4:14:39 PM PDT by Carley (Are you better off now than one year ago? HELL NO!!!!!)
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To: Chickensoup
He is a liar.

He is more than just a liar, he may even be the father of lies.
39 posted on 03/18/2010 4:15:28 PM PDT by ZX12R
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To: ZX12R

He is more than just a liar, he may even be the father of lies.

He just might be...


40 posted on 03/18/2010 4:17:40 PM PDT by Chickensoup (We have the government we deserve. Is our government our traitor?)
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To: marstegreg

I would venture to guess that this was a big fat lie.

Didnt she have Indonesian Health Care?

This man would desecrate his mother’s grave given the opportunity, he hated her because she was white , He as good as said so in his book.He let his Grandmother who raised him die alone in Hawaii, why should he believe he was distressed by his mother as she lay dying.


41 posted on 03/18/2010 4:17:57 PM PDT by Venturer
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To: Sopater

pgs 1001-1004 i heard it on Howie Carr this afternoon


42 posted on 03/18/2010 4:19:21 PM PDT by MissDairyGoodnessVT (Free Nobel Peace Prize with oil change =^..^=)
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To: Marty62

There is not ANYONE that this lying POS will not use to get what HE want, not ANYONE.


43 posted on 03/18/2010 4:24:35 PM PDT by chiefqc
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To: Marty62

There is not ANYONE that this lying POS will not use to get what HE want, not ANYONE.


44 posted on 03/18/2010 4:24:40 PM PDT by chiefqc
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To: Sopater
Well, at least she survived the Earthquake. How very few did.
45 posted on 03/18/2010 4:32:15 PM PDT by Shqipo (Manassas III... Where will it be?)
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To: Chickensoup; ZX12R
"[H]e may even be the father of lies."

Not likely. The Father of Lies is quite good at it (and you'd expect the Antichrist to be almost as skilled). But Obama's so bumblingly inept at everything including deceit, that it's becoming embarrassingly obvious even to some liberals.

46 posted on 03/18/2010 4:34:28 PM PDT by Hunton Peck (Election: The process of hiring an employee you hope will steal less from you than the others do.)
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To: Hunton Peck
Not likely. The Father of Lies is quite good at it

It's fair to say he's not good at it, but it's also fair to say he got elected president with his lies, and is close to laying the first communist plank of government healthcare with his lies. If he ain't the father, then he's the milkman. Personally, I'd like to shave his head and look for the sixes.
47 posted on 03/18/2010 4:49:15 PM PDT by ZX12R
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To: Secret Agent Man

Yeah, right, and he was conceived during that march for civil rights, and that Kennedy paid for his Dad to come to the states...they should change the title from “Cry me a River” to “Lie me a river”.


48 posted on 03/18/2010 4:55:16 PM PDT by kiltie65
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To: Chickensoup

ROFL, well at least they do not speak for all the fine Ladies on Free Republic.


49 posted on 03/18/2010 4:55:41 PM PDT by annieokie
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To: Sopater

As far as anyone knows, Obama refused to visit his dying mother in the later months of her life. It is pretty sickening for him to use her as an example for political reasons.


50 posted on 03/18/2010 6:19:52 PM PDT by castlegreyskull
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