DANGEROUS TIMES
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Day 1312

8/24/2020

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THE ELECTION:
IT’S NOT ABOUT TRUMP;
IT’S ABOUT SURVIVAL

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“MR. O,” I SHOUTED. “Where are you? This is really important.”
   “I’m over here, behind the bush,” the tiny voice came back. “I’m finishing my supper, a rather exquisite main course of rotting mouse brain, followed by a dessert of tick that’s so fresh it ‘Still Has a Kick.”
   Eager to tell him my message, I ran toward the bush.
   “STOP! Not so fast, Big Canine,” the opossum yelled at me, as he scampered to the top of a fence post.
   “Why so skittish?”  I asked.
   “You may be a sweet lady, Phoebe,” Mr. O said. “But we haven’t known each other that long, and you being a certain size, and me being smaller, I’d rather be safe than sorry, if you catch my drift.”
   “I thought we were friends,” I said, a little taken aback.
   “We are,” Mr. O said. “It’s not personal; it’s about survival—mine.”
   “That’s what I wanted to tell you,” I said. “That’s what this whole election is about: survival.”
   “I thought it was about getting rid of a psychopath, a bully, a pretender, a demagogue, a liar, a man with strange hair and a foul mouth – a dangerous, cruel man that you wouldn’t want as your kids’ role model,” Mr. O said. “Have I been wrong these past three-and-a-half years?”
   “Oh, no, Mr. O,” I said, “you’re not wrong. But replacing Trump is all about survival. It’s not the only thing we have to do – as a society, a country, a planet – to survive. It’s just the essential first step.”
   “I’m just a simple backyard opossum,” he said. “And I have a hard enough time concentrating on one thing at a time, which happens to be the election. And now you’re going all cosmic on me.”
      “Stay with me, Mr. O,” I said. “All of the Big Problems of the Universe that we’ve been worrying about lately have the same basic theme; it’s survival.”
   “For example?”
   “As an opossum, besides worrying about becoming someone’s supper, what’s the hugest, most terrifying danger that keeps you up up nights, or whenever it is that opossums are supposed to sleep?”
   “Climate change,” Mr. O said, without hesitating. “Whether you live in somebody’s backyard, like I do, or in an actual house, like certain privileged dogs, no one is going to survive if Earth turns into Mars.”
   “Precisely,” I said.
   “It’s getting harder and harder to ignore,” Mr. O said. “The wildfires in California, melting glaciers in Iceland, double hurricanes in the Gulf, rising sea levels in the Ocean State. Deadly heat, and not just in Death Valley. And if we don’t turn things around 10 years or less, we’re toast.”
   “You’d think all of us – Yellow-headed Blackbirds, South American Crab-eating foxes, Red State Republicans, Barbados Black-bellied sheep, Norwegian Forest Cats, stray dogs from Missouri, Yellow-dog Democrats, North American opossums – just wouldn’t let that happen,” I said.
   Mr. O agreed: “By what  we all know by now, you don’t need to be a Red-whiskered Bulbul to understand the urgency of reducing greenhouse gasses, becoming carbon neutral.”

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“IT’S THE SAME with the economy,” I said.
    “I’m not sure I follow you there, egghead dog,” Mr. O said.
    “You know the old saying,” I said: “‘It’s the economy, Stupid.’”
    “Whoa, no need for name-calling,” he said.
    “It’s a political  cliché left over from a the last century,” I said. “Simply speaking, Humans who vote care more about jobs than anything else, especially jobs that pay enough to support families.”
    “Why would animals care whether Humans have living-wage jobs?”
    “It’s about survival,” I said. “I live with Humans; you live in their backyard. If they have jobs, they can earn enough to paint our house, keep the refrigerator full and pay my vet bills -  you should see the size of those.”
    “I get it,” Mr. O said. “Humans are part of the complex food chain and all that. So whether you’re a naked mole rat from Massachusetts, or a South American  anteater, you want full employment.”
    “Which will be undone by artificial intelligence, robots, automation,” I said.
    “The end of work?” Mr. O asked. “How can Humans earn money if they don’t have jobs?”
    “That’s one of the Big Questions,” I said. “And nobody has an answer.”

 SPEAKING OF HUMANS,” Mr. O said, “The poor things, they’re dropping like flies all over the world because of the coronavirus pandemic. You’d think that if they want to continue as the ‘dominant species’ they’d do something about Covid 19.”
   “Like I said, it’s all about survival,” I said. “Trump’s screwed up the pandemic like he has everything else. He didn’t listen to medical experts, so the country got off to a fatally slow start in dealing with it. There’s still no national policy to control it; Trump promotes unproven remedies, discourages facemasks, pushes for fast development of a vaccine, by which he means, in time for him to boast about before the election, which might mean it won’t be safe.”
    “So, we’re back to the election,” Mr. O said.
    “Whether you are talking about getting control of a pandemic,” I said, “keeping the Post Office going, making sure someone doesn’t hit the nuclear launch button, making college affordable, welcoming asylum seekers, repairing Interstate bridges, reforming police, promoting better race relations, telling the truth, Trump has made everything worse.”
   “But what’s the election have to do with survival?” Mr. O asked.
   “Everything,” I said.  “This election is all about survival. If Trump is reelected, he’ll keep on what he’s been doing for what seems like the last three-and-a-half centuries, which is tearing the country apart, which is why so many people are worried that democracy may not survive.”
    “What’s different this time?” Mr. O said.

"TRUMP HAS DONE TERRIBLE things to government,” I said. “He appoints cabinet members who are the proverbial foxes in the chicken coops: an education secretary who despises public schools, a housing chief who doesn’t care about the poor, an attorney general who protects the president’s buddies and goes after his enemies.”
    “Playing the devil’s opossum here,” Mr. O said. “You have  to admit there’s been a lot of push-back. Trump’s been impeached by the House; judges have blocked his orders; the media has been all over him, cataloged his lies, tracked his tweets. His own sister is on tape calling him a liar who ‘has no principles. None.’ And Republicans are creating hilarious attack ads.”
   “The big threat,” I said, “is that Trump has exposed the weakness of the Constitution and brought the country as close as it’s ever come to one-man rule. Our democracy  was designed as a system of checks and balances – the Congress, the Courts and the presidency keeping each other from having too much power.
   “But Trump has cowed the Republican Senate into doing whatever he wants, including appointing hard-hearted judges – so that he is coming close to controlling all three branches. And with the Senate exonerating him after he was impeached, there’s nothing to hold him back if he and his Senate sycophants are reelected.”
   “Which is why you say the election is about the survival of democracy?” Mr. O asked.
   “I’m hardly the only one who thinks that,” I said. “A second term for Trump is curtains for the climate, curtains for the economy, curtains for public schools. If Trump wins and Biden loses,  kiss the postman goodbye, say so long to peace, justice, science, well-being and democracy.”
   “Really, Phoebe?” Mr. O said, incredulously. “Solving all the Big Problems of the Universe depends on whether one guy or the other one wins one election?”
   “It’s a terrible coincidence,” I said. “A lot of the Big Problems are reaching the critical point all at once. The United State is still big enough, still important enough to make the difference about whether we go forward or backward.”
  “And you’re telling me that if Trump is defeated, that Biden can save the world?” Mr. O said, laughing at the absurdity of the idea that it’s all come to either one old guy named Don, or a slightly older one named Joe, is elected president.”
   “I don’t run the world,” I said. “I just think about it.”


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 “JOE SEEMS DECENT enough,” Mr. O conceded. “But he’s just one guy, who knows quite a lot about how government works and sometimes says dopey things. And our survival is all down to him?”
   “Electing Biden gives us a fighting chance to reverse all the things that threaten our way of life, and ultimately, our existence,” I said. “But our survival doesn’t depend on Joe Biden; it’s actually about everyone else.”
   “I thought you said the election is about survival,” Mr. O said.
   “It’s about the will to live," I said. "Will we allow our planet simultaneously fry and drown without trying to stop climate change? Will we sit still for a no-jobs economy that gives us no way to earn a living?  Will we use democracy’s basic power – our votes – to destroy democracy?”
   “Do you think enough voters really agree that this election is about survival?” Mr. O asked.
   For a while, I didn't say anything.
   "Well?" he said.
   “Maybe.”


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Day 1305

8/17/2020

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TRUMP’S APPROVAL AT 42 % ;
IS IT TIME TO … FREAK OUT?

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WHAT’S THE MOST  important thing you can do today?
  1. Guard the Post Office?
  2. From your living room, cheer the opening day of the Democratic National Convention?
  3. Freak out?
   The correct answer is:  Number 3.
  That’s because the Gallup poll today announced it’s latest figures, which show that Trump’s numbers are going up.
   You heard me.
   UP!
   As in rising. Increasing. Going higher. Improving. Better than the last time. And the time before that.
   “Phoebe, can you be more specific?” said a small voice coming our backyard.
   “It’s 42,” I replied.
   “Forty-two what?” said Mr. O, the politically attuned opossum, who moved into our backyard earlier this summer.
   “Forty-two percent of our neighbors, our relatives,  friends, complete strangers, fellow citizens, other Americans, voters, people with telephones who actually talk into them when pollsters randomly ring their numbers,” I said. “ Forty- two percent of beachgoers, football fans, candlestick makers, grouchy old men, young whippersnappers who stray onto grouchy old men’s lawns;  42 percent of people polled by Gallop between July 30 and Aug. 12.”
   Mr. O seemed to be getting cross: “What were the 42 percent asked?”
   “Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president?” I said.
   “Then why the long face, Phoebe?” Mr. O said, ever the opossomist. “It means that 58 percent 'disapprove.'”
   “Actually, no,” I said. “Fifty-five percent said they ‘disapprove.’”
   “What about the other 3 percent?”
   “Actually,  Gallup said that 4 percent accounts for people who answered ‘No opinion,’” I said.
   “But 42 + 55 + 4 - that doesn’t add up,” Mr. O said.
   “Welcome to the election of 2020,” I said.

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“DON’T BE such a dog-days-of-summer cynic,” Mr. O said.
   “What’s not important is whether it's 3 percent or 4 percent, or whether pollsters round up or down,” I said, “What’s totally crucial is that there’s anyone on the planet who answers their telephone and then tells the person on the other end that they have ‘no opinion’ about Trump.”
   “Well, I suppose anything is possible, because there really are a lot of strange creatures in our collapsing ecosystem,” said Mr. O, perhaps not realizing that when he first appeared on a fence post in our back yard, there were a fair number of those of us in our three-member household who considered him, at least initially, strange.
   We just stared at each other in silence, he of the teddy-bear face and ratlike tail, me of the long eyelashes and the curly hairy tail.
   And then, unison, we both screamed: FREAK OUT.

"IS IT POSSIBLE that a man who admits on network television that he’s deliberately messing with the United State Postal Service so that it won’t be able to handle mail ballots, meaning some votes might not get counted, and as a result, that 42 percent of people say they ‘approve’ of how he does his ‘job?’” Mr. O asked.
   “To be fair,” I said, “I don’t think Gallup asked about the Post Office, although in another poll, 91 percent of Americans say they ‘approve’ of how the Post Office does its job.”
   “At the same time,” I said, “only 36 percent of people Gallup polled ‘approve’ of Trump’s 'response' to the coronavirus, and 63 percent ‘disapprove.’”
   “Yet, 42 percent ‘approves’ of how he’s doing his job, overall,” Mr. O said.

“AFTER ALL the terrible things he’s done, it’s 42 percent,” I said. “Pardoning war criminals and letting loose convicted public officials. Condemning to death hundreds, thousands of asylum seekers and desperate immigrants. Lying every day. Sending 'agents' to Portland, hoping to provoke violence. Wreaking the economy. Holding up a Bible he hasn't read. Increasing America's planet-killing pollution. Assaulting women. Insulting Black people. Allowing, encouraging Russia’s assault on U.S. elections. Undermining health care. And it’s 42 percent ‘approve.’”
   “By the way,” said Mr. O. “You said that Trump’s ‘approval’ is going up.”
   “The last time Gallup asked was between July 1 and July 23,” I said, and “41 percent ‘approved,’ and 56 percent ‘disapproved. And the time before that, 38 percent ‘approved,’ and 57 ‘disapproved.’ You see what I mean? Even with 170,492 people dead of Covid-19, the economy going over the cliff, the Post Office under attack,  the race-baiting, and so on, things are looking up for Trump.”
   “At least he’s behind Joe Biden in the  head-to-head election polls,” Mr. O said. “All the commentators make a big deal about Biden’s ‘lead.’”
   “Listen,” I said, “when somebody’s got 42 percent of people ‘approving’ his overall performance, and gaining  with every new poll, it doesn’t take much to win an election.”
   “But the commentators sound so confident,” Mr. O said.
   “You want to know what one recent poll by CNN said about the Biden ‘lead?’” I said.
   “Not really,” Mr. O admitted.
   “Four points,” I said. “Biden’s lead is 4 points – 50 percent for Biden, 46 percent for Trump.”
   “FREAK OUT!” we screamed
   “Now what?” Mr. O said when we’d both calmed down. “Now, besides FREAKING OUT, how are we going to help Biden?”
   “From now on,” I declared, “I’m going to stop barking at the Post Office lady when she’s delivering the mail.”
   “That’s a start!” said Mr. O.
   I found my friend’s encouragement refreshing. But then I remembered that he is, by nature, an opossomist. So maybe not barking at the mail lady isn’t enough.
   But what can one dog do?


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Day 1290

8/3/2020

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BRIEFLY, OBAMA IS BACK.
AND THE CONTRAST WITH
TRUMP IS BLACK & WHITE

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EVEN IN COMPLEX TIMES, some things are clear.
    They’re either black. Or they are white.
    Not “sort of.” Not “mostly.” Not “maybe,”  “almost” or “pretty much.”
   And last Thursday was one of those black-and-white days when good and evil were on display, nothing in between.
   That’s because Barack Obama was back, if briefly. Not in the White House, of course, which was still home to Donald Trump 1,290 days after Obama had moved out, which was a lot longer than many people thought Trump would last.
    Which is just another example of how we've underestimated Donald Trump, beginning with how we thought he'd never get the Republican nomination, be elected President and never be as incompetent, heartless, dangerous and just plain evil as he's turned out to be.
    Obama, who had turned out to be a better president than some people expected, although not as great as many hoped, was back in the spotlight July 30, and, as it happened, back in our living room, on the big flat-screen, live from Atlanta, giving the eulogy at the funeral for John Lewis, the congressman and civil rights champion.
   Obama looked older – his hair almost completely gray, and his face slightly grimmer. But at 58, he’s basically the same as when he was president for those eight years: lanky, smart, confident, fluent,  easy going, bright, and cool, so goddamn cool.
   Later, as I was explaining all of this to Mr. O, seeing and hearing Barack Obama is not an easy thing for me these days.
   At our house, for example, the Humans I live with have that book by Peter Souza, the former White House photographer, Obama, An Intimate Portrait, which you probably have seen and maybe own. It weighs at least a half a ton, which makes it particularly difficult for a dog to handle, which was not the reason that it took me six months before I could bring myself to look through it.

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NOW, OBAMA WAS BACK, right in my living room, catching me completely off guard, so I was thankful nobody was around to see me bawling my eyes out, with my face buried in the couch cushions to hide the howling.
   Mr. O, a well-read and widely traveled opossum who moved into our backyard earlier this year, was surprised to learn that dogs cry. He wondered, in my case, whether that was a good thing, particularly if word got back to the other dogs at the park we go to.
   I told him that he was right, but it wasn’t one of those instances I could control, especially with Barack practically jumping right out of the TV at me.
   It’s still shocking to think that, just in one day  - Jan. 20, 2017 -  the country went from Obama to Trump.
   How unfair. How absurd.  The injustice of it. The impossibility. The stupidity, the blasphemy. How did we ever let that happen, just in one day, go from good to evil?

STILL, THERE WAS Barack Hussein Obama leading us through yet another moment of national grieving, this time for John Robert Lewis, last of the orators at the March on Washington, survivor of the confrontation in 1965 at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where Alabama troopers, some on horseback, beat, clubbed and gassed Lewis and other civil rights pioneers, who, in retaliation, changed American history.
   DONALD JOHN TRUMP, of course, wasn’t at Ebenezer Baptist Church last week, unlike the living ex-presidents, George Walker Bush, William Jefferson Clinton and Obama.  It’s true that James Earl Carter didn’t make it either, but at 95 and physically frail, Carter had a reason.
   Trump's excuse was that he didn't need an excuse, in that as a racist, there was little reason for him to have been included in a funeral that also was celebration of civil rights.
    It's also fair to speculate that Trump was perfectly happy to leave to others the role presidents are supposed to shoulder on occasions of national significance, and that the last place he would have wanted to be was in church with Obama.
   Side-by-side, the comparisons would be so obvious:
   Obama: articulate, nimble, decent, kind, so caring.
   Trump: bombastic, stumbling, crude, cruel, so self-absorbed.
   Also, from Trump's point of view, why spend time at an event where all the talk was about someone else? What’s the point?
   That guy in the coffin - Obama himself said so - was the same John Lewis who had made it possible for a man of color, a man with an un-American name, to be elected president. Twice.
   Trump's Twitter followers would have undeerstood, that IT WOULD NOT BE SMART for Donald Trump to stand next to the coffin of Congressman Lewis, who three, almost four years ago, had boycotted Trump’s inauguration.  TERRIBLE.
   You also had to credit Trump's fantastic instincts as one of the most incredibly successful practitioners of reality TV in the world, if not the entire Miss Universe, NOBODY UNDERSTANDS TV MORE THAN ME, would have sensed the danger he would have faced in that church.
    The TV cameras would have hunted him down, and put him and Obama together on the the split-screen, virtually marrying the Black man and the Orange man; everyone would see the differences between the two men, no room for doubt, plain as black and white.


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 “WHAT DID TRUMP do instead that day?” Mr. O asked.
   “He got off to an early start with a Tweet that was the talk of the nation and much of the world, not just on that day, for a good number of days after that," I said.
   “What was the Tweet about?” Mr. O asked.
   “Another attack on the Constitution,” I said. "He was talking about postponing the election. Trump has often been on the attack - against immigrants, NATO, doctors, Democrats, Black women, protesters, Black athletes, Democrats, a few Republicans. But now he was tearing at the very foundations of democracy. Here's the screenshot, with one reader's response."
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"WHAT ABOUT OBAMA, what was he talking about?” Mr. O asked
   “Obama electrified the congregation by saying that the best way to honor John Lewis would be to continue his fight for better voting laws,” I said, “and moreover, he said people  should follow Lewis' example and do more than talk, they should get into 'good trouble,' one of Lewis' favorite phrases. Here are some excerpts.”

Bull Connor may be gone. But today we witness with our own eyes police officers kneeling on the necks of Black Americans. George Wallace may be gone. But we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators.
* * *
You want to honor John? Let’s honor him by revitalizing the law that he was willing to die for. And by the way, naming it the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, that is a fine tribute. But John wouldn’t want us to stop there, trying to get back to where we already were. Once we pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, we should keep marching to make it even better.

By making sure every American is automatically registered to vote, including former inmates who’ve earned their second chance. By adding polling places, and expanding early voting, and making Election Day a national holiday, so if you are someone who is working in a factory, or you are a single mom who has got to go to her job and doesn’t get time off, you can still cast your ballot.
* * *

Like John, we have got to keep getting into that good trouble. He knew that nonviolent protest is patriotic; a way to raise public awareness, put a spotlight on injustice, and make the powers that be uncomfortable.
* * *
We cannot treat voting as an errand to run if we have some time. We have to treat it as the most important action we can take on behalf of democracy. Like John, we have to give it all we have.
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“DID TRUMP SAY anything more about delaying the election?” Mr. O asked. “There’s only so much you can get into a Tweet.”
   “He did,” I said. “That afternoon, at the White House pandemic “briefing,” reporters asked him several times about it. Here’s some of what he said:”

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And I don’t want to see an election — you know, so many years, I’ve been watching elections. And they say the “projected winner” or the “winner of the election” — I don’t want to see that take place in a week after November 3rd or a month or, frankly, with litigation and everything else that can happen, years. Years. Or you never even know who won the election.

You’re sending out hundreds of millions of universal, mail-in ballots — hundreds of millions. Where are they going? Who are they being sent to? It’s common sense; you don’t have to know anything about politics. And the Democrats know this. The Democrats know this, Steve.

So, I want to see — I want an election and a result much, much more than you. I think we’re doing very well. We have the same pho- — fake polls, but we have real polls. We’re doing very well.
 
I just left Texas. And Biden came out against fracking. Well, that means Texas is going to be one of the most unemployed states in our country. That means Oklahoma, North Dakota, New Mexico are going to be a disaster. Ohio, Pennsylvania — disaster. No fracking.

I want to have the result of the election. I don’t want to be waiting around for weeks and months. And, literally, potentially — if you really did it right — years, because you’ll never know.


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 "BOY, THAT FELLOW sure does cover a lot of ground," Mr. O said, "although sometimes he's a little hard to follow."
   “You think?” I said.
   “I can see why you say that Obama and Trump are so different,” Mr. O said. “But at least they both care deeply about elections.”
   Now, the opossum was having a little fun at my expense.
   “This is serious, Mr. O," I said.  “Obama was taking about strengthening democracy; Trump is trying to drive democracy to the edge of the cliff, and there’s no guarantee he won't push it all the way over.”
    “There's something you have to get over, Phoebe," Mr. O said, "and that's is this Obama thing."
   "You're right," Mr. O continued, "that it’s too bad that the country has gone from Obama to Trump, high to low, day to night, well to sick, and all that.
   "But that’s done. Now, you’ve got Joe Biden running against Donald Trump. And if you really care about the differences between Trump and Obama, now the choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is absolutely clear."
    "It's black and white,” I said.
    "Winter and summer," he said.
    "Good and evil," I said.
    “Actually, it's life and death," Mr. O said.
* * *
EDITOR'S NOTE: This blog has been updated to reflect the unlikelihood that Trump would have been among invited guests to the Lewis funeral.  An earlier version foolishly speculated that he had passed up the opportunity. The authors wish to thank Terry Schwadron, a friend of the blog, for his insights.


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    A "sweet dog" and a smart opossum consider a nation at risk.

    The writers

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    PHOEBE, a "sweet dog" who came to Rhode Island in 2010 as a stray puppy from Missouri, was a political agnostic until Trump's catastrophic election. She tracked his presidency in a blog, which she decided to resurrect it this year  when it became obvious that Republicans are committed to Trump's destructive policies
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    MR. O, an opossum, showed up in Phoebe's backyard somewhat mysteriously. He turned out to have genuine insight into political matters, and he agreed to assume co-author duties of the blog after Phoebe's previous writing partner, Cat, a cat, died.
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    CAT

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