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 Welcome to the Texas Politics Thread! Texas is a big, beautiful state with 11 different topographic regions including mountains, hills, forests, woods, plains, deserts, streams, and only one natural lake. Caddo Lake Over the years, Texas was ruled by three nations, became an independent republic for 9 years, then joined the United States as the 28th state. In addition to its past oil-based economy, Texas has invested strongly in its universities and as a result, today it has a very diverse economy with various high tech industries including energy, computers, aerospace and biomedical sciences. Because the Texas economy is “thriving” relative to many states that were hit harder in the recession, Texas is currently a magnet for jobs and new Texans are moving to the state every day. If you believe the previous-Governor Good Hair, 1,000 people per day are moving to Texas, a fair portion of them from blue states like California. This fact, along with the magic of latino sex, has made astute political observers note that Texas may become a full-fledged battleground state within the next X-number of years. Just what exactly that number is seems to depend on political ideology and hopefulness but the general consensus seems to between 6 and 15 years. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Feel free to talk about anything related to Texas politics, news items, elections, etc. I'll update this rules section if anything becomes apparent.  I KNOW GUNS ARE A HOT TOPIC IN TEXAS BUT PLEASE KEEP ALL GUN CHAT (RULES/LAWS/REGISTRATION/REPEAL/ETHICS/ETC) IN THE D&D GUN THREAD AND NOT HERE.
Xarthor fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Jun 1, 2015 |
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Jun 17, 2014 22:28
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 07:06 |
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 RESOURCES AND OTHER MISC INFORMATION POST:Websites Texas Tribune -- For state news and quality political coverage Burnt Orange Report -- Texas Democratic politics blog Lone Star Q -- For statewide LGBT news Reading Texas on the Brink -- Report about the current state of Texas. 2014 Texas Republican Party Platform 2014 Texas Democratic Party Platform Xarthor fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Jul 17, 2014 |
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Jun 17, 2014 22:28
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zoux posted:She's 12 points down. She has zero chance. Election season hasn't even started fully. No TV/radio ads have even aired! Not to mention debates, etc. Let's not put the cart before the horse. SirKibbles posted:Nothing about the Castro brothers? Ah! I knew I forgot something important. Apologies. I'll put them in the OP tomorrow.
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Jun 17, 2014 22:51
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 Updated the OP and the second resources post with some stuff. Anyone who has any other suggestions for either the OP or resources post please feel free to suggest!RE: Wendy Davis and her campaign strategy I've been involved with Battleground/the Wendy campaign since February and have met Wendy ~5 times now. I also talked with a few "upper level" staffers and although I would never claim to know the exact battle plan for the campaign, I do know a few things for sure: (1) Wendy has not yet begun to fight. The campaign is saving it's money and doing cheap advertising and marketing like online ads while focusing on ground game. Expect the campaign to start blitzing the airwaves with TV and other more mass-media promotion sometime in the next month or so. Especially since Abbott just released his first official campaign commercial during the soccer match yesterday. (2) Wendy is not a wilting lilly. Yes, Texas Democratic candidates get a bad wrap for being weak-willed babies who curl into a ball at the first sign of trouble and given the history of some Democratic candidates from Texas, I'm inclined to agree. But Wendy isn't that way. She's fierce and she's going to take to Abbott. Cast my opinion aside as a true believer if you'd like. Whatever. She's still our best chance to win since Ann Richards. Doing the whole "well she probably won't win and she's down in the polls even though it's only June so why even bother doing anything ever?" isn't going to help. Even if you don't think she's perfect, which she may not be, she's still a gently caress ton better than Abbott!
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Jun 18, 2014 21:08
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Cheekio posted:As someone who works in Battleground Texas I imagine you spend plenty of time talking tactics, so is there any good advice for dealing with the surprisingly popular "I agree with you, but gently caress you for trying!" attitude? Three main arguments: (1) Not to get all  about the whole thing, but I remind apathetic voters (or discouraged Democratic voters) that people in this country have literally died over the right to vote and not just once. Hell, people are getting their fingers chopped off in Afghanistan right now because they voted in the presidential election. Don't whine to me about how voting isn't important.(2) Then of course there's the whole leaves from a bush argument. If you and I take one leaf each from a bush nobody would notice. But if everyone starts deciding to take one leaf from a bush that's going to be one bare bush pretty quick. Any freshman liberal arts major can make a stoner argument about why your vote doesn't even matter maaaaaan, but that's why we don't decide elections based one random person. (3) How the gently caress are you going to let Republicans tell you what to do? Most (at least Democratic leaning) people I talk to are happy to talk about how Perry and his cronies have been loving up the state for 10+ years now, but they don't want to volunteer or vote because their vote doesn't matter because it's a red state? Guess who wants you to believe and accept that it's a red state and would prefer if you stay home on election day? Those same idiots who are loving everything up! Complaining doesn't do poo poo. Volunteering and voting does. Every statistical analysis/report of voting records and patterns I have ever seen has Texas at in the bottom five states when it comes to overall voter turnout. At the very core, Texas is not a red state, it's a non-voting state. Period. One of the main thing Battleground focuses so hard on is voter registration not because we want to register exclusively Democrats (although that's certainly good too) we just want people to be registered so they can at least have an option to vote and then by November make the decision to vote Democratic. Merrill Grinch posted:I got a question for the people in Battleground Texas from someone who has never worked in a political thing before: Completely. You could help with data entry, help make copies, greet people who walk into a field office, making some calls, or any number of other things. I'd fill out this form and someone will contact you. Explain your situation and tell them you're interested in helping out at the field office during the day, or helping out with any Wendy events during the work day, which happen from time to time. I can't speak for every field organizer, but most of the organizers I know would be totally accommodating. Any help is good help.
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Jun 19, 2014 15:43
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James The 1st posted:I grew up in Collin County, which is die-hard GOP. The county is so fiscally conservative that towns like Allen and McKinney won't join DART even though they've started their own sucky bus services to get to DART light rail stations in Plano! They also won't spend money to build new water reservoirs despite the explosive suburban growth. But despite all this fiscal conservationism, towns like Allen manage to spend 60 million dollars to build fancy football stadiums. A 60 million dollar stadium that is currently unusable because of giant cracks in the concrete that are rendering the stadium unsafe. The district say it'll be fixed by graduation but I'm skeptical.
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Jun 21, 2014 15:59
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Speaking of platforms, the Texas Democratic State Convention is this Thurs/Fri/Sat here in Dallas.
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Jun 26, 2014 16:06
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ReidRansom posted:Not just college age though. If it was just 18-25 or so that was lacking I could understand. But in the hour and a half I was there I didn't come across a single name under age 47. No late 20s, no 30s, no early 40s. None. YMMV, could have been weird luck or some poo poo, but still, it has me scratching my head. Without getting too inside baseball, it depends on which call list your organizer was using. There are lists for known Wendy supporters (people who have signed up on the Wendy website, BGTX website, etc) and that list tends to skew a bit younger and then there's a general "democratic supporter" list that can be used that is culled data going back to Obama 2008 and even before. That list tends to skew a little older. As we've discussed in this thread before, Texas is a very low voting state and sadly young people are some of the worst about voting. Older people (especially older people of color) may have been around and seen their friends or family (or themselves) have to fight for the right to vote. Young people just see it as this annoying thing that doesn't matter. 
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Jun 27, 2014 17:34
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Sardonik posted:My grades were so bad coming out of High School I didn't even bother applying to UT, St. Edward's across the river accepted me though, and it was pretty great all things considered. High five St. Ed's goon. I went there two years, then got tired of Austin, so I came back to the Dallas area and finished at UNT. Also, while not a campaign-ending misstep it appears Abbott has certainly ruffled some feathers with his "just drive around and ask" proposition to keeping toxic/explosive chemicals secret policy. Even heavily Republican sympathizer papers like The Dallas Morning News (amongst many others) have criticized Abbott for the policy. For her part, I think Wendy and Battleground have done a decent job of pouncing on his stupidity but we'll see what, if anything, this means for her overall poll numbers and turn out for the fall. Xarthor fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Jul 17, 2014 |
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Jul 17, 2014 17:43
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Between the recent Perry news and a recent Reuters poll showing Wendy 8 points behind Abbott any of you starting to think her win is completely out of the realm of possibility? EDIT -- I mean NOT out of the realm of possibility. Xarthor fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Aug 16, 2014 |
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Aug 16, 2014 02:10
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So great, we have one debate left, in McAllen. I bet Abbott finds a reason to pull out of that one too. Coward.
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Aug 29, 2014 18:15
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Wendy was on Rachel Maddow last night: http://on.msnbc.com/1qKnKVW and Morning Joe today: http://on.msnbc.com/1lT2Rsy
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Sep 10, 2014 17:37
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The next (final) debate is in Dallas on Sept 30th. It's hosted by KERA so it won't look 1990. The Lt. Governor Debate (Dan Patrick vs. Leticia Van De Putte) is on the 29th. 
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Sep 20, 2014 03:54
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Nick Soapdish posted:
I work with BGTX here in Dallas. The first post of this thread is still valid. Or you can PM me and I can help point you in the right direction.
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Oct 1, 2014 06:07
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Abbott unsure if he would have defended bans on interacial marriage back in the late 1960'squote:“Right now, if there was a ban on interracial marriage, that’s already been ruled unconstitutional,” Abbott told the San Antonio Express-News editorial board. “And all I can do is deal with the issues that are before me … The job of an attorney general is to represent and defend in court the laws of their client, which is the state Legislature, unless and until a court strikes it down.” More from the Express-News’ Peggy Fikac: quote:When I said I wasn’t clear if he [Abbott] was saying he would have defended a ban on interracial marriage, he said, “Actually, the reason why you’re uncertain about it is because I didn’t answer the question. And I can’t go back and answer some hypothetical question like that.” While I understand Abbott's point about his strict adherence to what he feels are the rules of laws no matter what his personal views may be, it's still really stupid. It reminds me of Rand Paul's now semi-famous interview on the Rachel Maddow show back in the day where he squirmed uncomfortably and couldn't quite answer whether not denying black people eating at a restaurant was a good rule of law or bad rule of law.
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Oct 20, 2014 18:20
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Also early voting runs from today through the 31st. GET OUT AND VOTE, Y'ALL
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Oct 20, 2014 18:22
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Louie Gohmert, ladies and gentlemen:quote:I’ve had people say, “Hey, you know, there’s nothing wrong with gays in the military. Look at the Greeks.” Well, you know, they did have people come along who they loved that was the same sex and would give them massages before they went into battle. But you know what, it’s a different kind of fighting, it’s a different kind of war and if you’re sitting around getting massages all day ready to go into a big, planned battle, then you’re not going to last very long. It’s guerrilla fighting. You are going to be ultimately vulnerable to terrorism and if that’s what you start doing in the military like the Greeks did … as people have said, “Louie, you have got to understand, you don’t even know your history.’ Oh yes I do. I know exactly. It’s not a good idea.” 
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Oct 24, 2014 20:42
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In the Arlington area state senate race (Libby Wilis-D vs Konni Burton-R) some anti-Willis PAC sent out this hilarious GAY PANIC!!! flier.
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Oct 29, 2014 02:45
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Here's my song for the morning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCEUOfiZsnA Time to update the OP, I guess. 
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Nov 5, 2014 16:15
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Thermos H Christ posted:Now watch as Paxton embarrasses himself in the tradition of Karl Rove on election night Can't wait. 
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Jun 26, 2015 15:53
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Paxton Advises Counties Not To Rush Same Sex Marriage Licenses: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/state/headlines/20150625-paxton-advises-counties-not-to-rush-same-sex-marriage-licenses.ece quote:AUSTIN — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is warning county clerks in Texas not to be too quick in handing out marriage licenses to same-sex couples if the U.S. Supreme Court declares a 50-state constitutional right for gays and lesbians to marry.
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Jun 26, 2015 16:06
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+1 for Abuela in Dallas county today!
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Oct 25, 2016 22:55
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+2 for Beto. It was pouring down rain when my wife and I went to vote last night so no dramatic stories of long lines out the door at the polling location.
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Oct 25, 2018 16:28
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In other news Prarie View A&M won their lawsuit against scumbag Waller County so they are opening up polling times in the city...although it still looks like no location on campus. =/ https://www.texastribune.org/2018/10/25/waller-county-expands-early-voting-prairie-view-m-students/ quote:Two days after students at Prairie View A&M University sued Waller County over allegations that the county is suppressing the voting rights of black residents, the rural county said it is expanding early voting opportunities for students at the historically black university. If you want to know more about the history of Waller County and how their ongoing campaign to disenfranchise black Prairie View students, Maddow had a good recap the other night.
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Oct 25, 2018 21:51
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https://www.texastribune.org/2018/10/31/ted-cruz-beto-orourke-poll-uttyler-texas Ted Cruz’s lead over Beto O’Rourke narrows to 3.6, UT-Tyler poll says quote:Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz leads challenger U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso, by 3.6 percentage points among likely voters in a new University of Texas at Tyler poll released Wednesday. Good news for Beto but holy gently caress Abbott leads Lupe Valdez by +20 
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Oct 31, 2018 19:46
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Marxalot posted:
She's a openly lesbian latina, which puts her behind the 8-ball in Texas to start with (sadly.) In addition to that she made some pretty rookie unforced errors in the early stages of her campaign that made her look like she might not have the best grasp on issues. It's a shame because I've met her a few times and she's a nice person and has done a competent enough job in her current role as Dallas Sheriff, but yeah...not a great campaigner.
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Oct 31, 2018 20:05
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FBS posted:Collin County joining the Shelter In Place club Except they’re not. Ughhh. Basically the county commissioner said “shelter in place, unless you’re a business that doesn’t want to, or unless you’re a person that doesn’t want to” Someone asked him at the press conference about doing something non-essential like shopping for clothes and he made some glib joke about the spring fashions.
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Mar 24, 2020 20:12
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ReindeerF posted:Without googling, is Collin County where Plano is? That just sounds like a very Plano-area thing to do. Story time: My local small business, Great Cartridge (oh god please order something I'm so poor right now) is in Plano (Collin County) and my storefront was open last week all the way up through Friday the 20th. That whole week 99% of my customers were 60-80 years old. And allllll of them wanted to tell me how silly I was for wearing gloves and making them stand farther away from the counter than usual. With the lockdown of Dallas County on Monday and (I presumed) the lockdown of Collin coming shortly thereafter I started working from home taking orders on the phone and online and now I have the same goddamn boomers calling me asking why I'm not open because technicallyyyyy as an ink and toner supplier we're considered an "essential business." Collin County's order that "all businesses are essential" is not making it any easier for me, and it's not making me want to go back to the store anytime soon because Collin County is likely going to be a hotbed of Coronavirus because of their shortsightedness.
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Mar 27, 2020 17:46
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enraged_camel posted:our governor is a stupid piece of poo poo! Ughhh my CHUD boss is going to use this to try and get me back to work (where I frequently interact with the public) even though he’s immunocompromised and I have asthma.
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Apr 11, 2020 02:59
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Texas Politics: I don’t think you grasp how dead this state is yet. And/or Texas Politics: I don’t think you grasp how dumb Greg Abbott is yet.
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Apr 18, 2020 01:57
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Abbott is live now. Here's a link: https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/coronavirus/governor-abbott-to-address-reopening-of-texas-economy-monday/2358748/
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Apr 27, 2020 20:39
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saintonan posted:Summer camps may be allowed with increased precautions, guidance to come later I think it was funny Abbott spent like 2-3 minutes on this, talking about how vital summer camps are for kids and how they're so critical to their development because he's probably heard nothing but screaming voicemails from constituents saying how they can't handle another second at home with their lovely loving kids. 
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Apr 27, 2020 21:07
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I want to know how retail businesses are going to regulate what 25% capacity is. Are they going to have a bouncer at the door with one of those clickers letting people have a 1-in-1-out policy? Because I think most angry boomers I've seen are just going to storm the doors and not give a gently caress if anyone tries to stop them. Same thing for churches. I'd bet practically anything that the pews are going to be full up this Sunday.
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Apr 27, 2020 21:21
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Il Federale posted:The Great State of...Chile? The Texas legislature wants you to stop using the Chilean flag emoji
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May 17, 2020 21:13
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This is a tinfoil hat post, but my wife says she heard from a friend of a friend that Abbott is supposedly going to announce a full Texas shutdown either tomorrow or Friday. The friend of a friend is allegedly on the Texas COVID panel that regularly communicates with Abbott so it could be legit....or maybe it’s just a “my uncle works at Nintendo” situation. Just thought I’d pass it along.
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Jul 16, 2020 05:05
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DangerZoneDelux posted:As long the rumor is a full shutdown like at the beginning and not the same rumors before that they heard from their dad's best mans pool guy that the National Guard was going to enforce a full on Martial Law shutdown That’s the word, is full shutdown like back in late March/early April. The “safer at home” style shutdown — or whatever the slogan was. No martial law.
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Jul 16, 2020 05:28
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BALLOTS ARE IN https://twitter.com/zachdespart/status/1323360920404414466
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Nov 2, 2020 21:27
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 07:06 |
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I feel bad for a buddy of mine. He has run for Denton city council twice now and he’s gotten absolutely creamed both times by like 40 points. 
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Nov 4, 2020 07:04
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