Thursday Open Thread
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62 responses to “Thursday Open Thread”
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Amen to that.
Mornin’ Gang -
The First Dodge Ram?
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It’s a nice, cool, dry 55 here this morning. Compare that with the 58 and rainy awhile back that would chill you to the bone. Humidity is just amazing.
I’ve mentioned it before, but I used to keep my old, 10 SEER A/C on 70 to keep the house cool, now with my Gumby Dammit, 23 SEER A/C pumping all the humidity out, 72 can be chilly.
In other news, I saw both sets of twin Bambi’s this morning and several does. They were beside the building and I walked past one little guy that couldn’t have been 10 feet from the sidewalk, he just stood there and stared. They’re almost grown and in a couple of months, it will be hard to spot them in a crowd. -
Texpat, from yesterday, your #80, what a neat old house, do you still have it? Oh, and I thought y’all lived over on the west side of Houston.
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For those that missed my point about the energized Democrat showing here in Texas, Conservative Review puts it nicely:
But here’s the key thing: That Democrats may not win in Texas does not mean they can’t win in purple states. What we saw Tuesday is a record level of Democratic energy in a state where there are not very many Democrats. If this energy is consistent in purples states like Pennsylvania, we could see many milquetoast Republican candidates overwhelmed by enthusiastic progressives looking to #Resist President Trump. Watch next week’s special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District very closely. We may see a combination of a lackluster GOP candidate and Democrat voter enthusiasm turning what should be a safe GOP seat blue.
Democrats need to win 33 seats to flip the House of Representatives and make Nancy Pelosi the speaker of the House again. There are lots of purple states. Tuesday’s primary in deep-red Texas did not definitively prove they can’t do it. If Republicans are willing to gamble control of Congress on an impotent agenda for the remainder of the year, their odds of winning contested territory are very slim.
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After our mother died, Shannon and I reluctantly sold the place. She bought it around 1972. It was a busy, well lived in place. Too many family memories to count. There were kids across the road and my daughter would have the yard and house full of them. Shannon and I always kept the place beautifully landscaped. It looks so barren compared to the way it used to be.
We were raised until our teens on Britt Moore Road south of I-10. Our mother’s family was from Bellville in Austin County. Shannon finished high school there.
The house in the photo was one of two built by the Bell brothers of North Carolina who founded the town around 1830 when it was still part of Mexico. They bought the land for Bellville from an owner who had the original Spanish land grant. It has to be one of the oldest homes in Texas.
We never pursued the historical marker. Our mother didn’t want to draw the attention and have strangers knocking on the door wanting a tour. It happened to other people we knew who did get the registry.
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I am all for breast feeding and eliminating toxic chemicals that make it into the food supply, but this is simply not appropriate.
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Good morning Hamsters. High overcast kept us from dipping to 39 or lower last night as predicted, stopped at 46. That’s nicely cool enough. But another sunny day would be very enjoyable.
The leftist Dems at the Chron tempered yesterday’s enthusiasm over the Texas primaries with a reality check, admitting the Pubbies cast more ballots than the Dems even with their increase, as the Pubbies also had an increase. This and commentaries from other Dem positions seems to be halfway between their ice cream cone scoops fell out of the cone onto the sidewalk and a funeral dirge. Take your pick. 🙂
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5 Sarge
I agree with the CR article. However, I think a lot of people across the country think Texas is more heavily Republican than it is. There’s always been more Democrats in the state than people think.
The other thing about the Democratic surge no one mentions is although there was a big increase over 2014, the difference between 2016 and 2018 was not such a big deal. CR mentions the significant differences in 2014 and 2018, but including 2016 changes the mix. One thing for sure, Texas Democrats are amazingly fickle when it comes to going to the polls.
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#7 Bonecrusher
Yup, agree. However since the Dem field of primary candidates is large, I guess she had to do something memorable so folks would know her name. Scott Walker is still very popular as governor and has lots of out of state support as well as in state. Me being one of the out of staters. IMHO if’n she had joined that with a pro-life comment, she sure would stand out. But a pro-life Dem is hard as hen’s teeth to find outlasting the abortion pushers these days.
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The American Institure for Steel Construction has issued two documents regarding the proposed tariff increases. One to its members regarding impacts, the other to the President urging him to include finished steel in the tariff restrictions should they come to pass.
That last part is key, and may avoid disaster. If finished steel is not included, foreign fabricators can use tariff free steel to fabricate building components and ship them into the US, beating the Hell out of the prices domestic fabricators would have to charge.
But for some domestic fabricators, the issue is a bit complicated. NCI, the principal client for whom my company does business, has a large fabrication shop in Mexico (as does the other Pre-engineered and traditional steel building manufacturers in Texas). The components built there are “built up” frames, consisting of rafters and columns fabricated by welding three plates of steel together to form building Main Frames. There isn’t much labor involved in these as they are fabricated on a machine that welds the plates together automatically, and the plates are cut on a plasma cutter. The decision to fabricate these frames in Mexico was made by considering a combination of labor cost, transporation cost, and limited manufacturing space here in the states.
So, what would happen is that these Texas manufacturers would end up paying a tariff on finished steel coming from their own plants, making manufacturers in other States more competitive.
Its my understanding that the Administration is considering excusing Mexico and Canada from the tariff restrictions which would help. That would be a good thing if it does not result in an explosion of Chinese, Japanese, and Arab competitors (our principal overseas competitors, who will be beating the Hell out of us for overseas construction) building or buying manufacturing plants in Canada and Mexico to get around the restrictions.
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Democrats really haven’t changed all that much.
PRESIDENT LIKENS DEWEY TO HITLER AS FASCISTS’ TOOL; Says When Bigots, Profiteers Get Control of Country They Select ‘Front Man’ to Rule DICTATORSHIP STRESSED Truman Tells Chicago Audience a Republican Victory Will Threaten U.S. Liberty TRUMAN SAYS GOP PERILS U.S. LIBERTY
CHICAGO, Oct. 25 — A Republican victory on election day will bring a Fascistic threat to American freedom that is even more dangerous than the perils from communism and extreme right “crackpots,” President Truman asserted here tonight.
HT: Ed Driscoll
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Roofers returned this morning to finish up the job here. Overall I’ve been pleased with the workmanship. The guys are polite and hard working. Cool morning today with overcast. I think the cool weather is good for roofers too. There probably aren’t many jobs hotter than roofing in the summer heat. If you put that radiant barrier stuff on your roof or in your attic, do you still need to wear your tin foil hats indoors? OK, I’m turning it over to the roof stompers and going out for coffee with the old pharts.
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11 Sarge
That would be a good thing if it does not result in an explosion of Chinese, Japanese, and Arab competitors (our principal overseas competitors, who will be beating the Hell out of us for overseas construction) building or buying manufacturing plants in Canada and Mexico to get around the restrictions.
The rampant cheating going on in Canada and Mexico is the basic problem. Those two neighbors had allowed other countries like China to use their NAFTA privileges to dump imports into the US. The Chinese and others throw around a lot of money in these countries and the governments aren’t really interested in telling them to leave.
There is supposedly a Chinese company with a shell front in Mexico that has stored almost 10% of the world’s aluminum there in order to dump it into the US.
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I think the Chinese control both sides of the Panama Canal. Real US leadership would have never let that happen, unless they were America hating, globalist anii.
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The rampant cheating going on in Canada and Mexico is the basic problem. Those two neighbors had allowed other countries like China to use their NAFTA privileges to dump imports into the US. The Chinese and others throw around a lot of money in these countries and the governments aren’t really interested in telling them to leave.
Yep. There’s no “one size fits all” solution that does’t hurt somebody it shouldn’t.
Some Republican Congresscritters are urging that Trump use a scalpel rather than a meat axe.
“We support your resolve to address distortions caused by China’s unfair practices, and we are committed to acting with you and our trading partners on meaningful and effective action. But we urge you to reconsider the idea of broad tariffs to avoid unintended negative consequences to the U.S. economy and its workers. We are eager to work with you in pursuing a workable, targeted approach that achieves our shared goal.”
My hope is that this means there may be some sanity penetrating.
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The Bush, Obama and Trump administrations have all tried to get Canada and Mexico to cooperate on stopping these abuses, but they haven’t cooperated after all this time. I think Trump’s tariff deal is a tactic to try and shock them into doing something.
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The Bush, Obama and Trump administrations have all tried to get Canada and Mexico to cooperate on stopping these abuses, but they haven’t cooperated after all this time. I think Trump’s tariff deal is a tactic to try and shock them into doing something.
Its actually a tactic to keep the Rust Belt states that voted for him to stay in that column. While it may work for 2020, its too late for 2018—which might mean it won’t make much difference in 2020, and the long term economic impact on the rest of the nation will be a net negative.
But Nixon, who knew little and cared less about economics, had his eye fixed on one concern only: the 1972 election. His emergency economic measures—joined to a loosening of monetary policy and a big increase in Social Security payouts the next year—were selected with an eye to one concern only. In the words of Allen Matusow, the shrewdest student of Nixon’s economic policy, “Somehow he had to make the economy hum by 1972 or face likely defeat in his quest for reelection.” What that meant in practice, Matsuow wrote, was that Nixon governed not according to what would work in the long term, but according to “the prevailing mood of the two-thirds of the country he called the ‘constituency of uneducated people.’”
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#15 Bonecrusher
The Chinese have the contract to manage the Panama Canal. That contract has an expiration. They do not own it. Panama owns the canal and runs its business. So sayeth our excursion tour guide, an American of Panamanian ancestry, in answer to the question of ownership on our first transit of the canal a couple of years ago.
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Today’s Chron article about the shockingly abrupt departure of Richard Carranza as HISD’s Superintendent paints more vividly a picture of an opportunist and a jerk in his dealings with HISD. Noo Yawk perhaps gets what it deserves in this deal.
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Would this treatment be expected or even allowed were the perp a white, US native born, citizen?
HEADLINE: Mexican Illegal Alien Arrested for Deadly Hit-and-Run Free to Leave Prison in Sanctuary City Denver
It is my understanding that bail is routinely denied if the perp/suspect is a flight risk, can anyone reasonably state that this terd-nozzle is not a flight risk?
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Panama owns the canal and runs its business.
It was sovereign US territory, owned by We The People, up to the point where the drooling jackass Jimmah Cawtah gave it away. What an idiotic strategic blunder. Kind of like test firing your pistol in your ear to check if it is loaded or not.
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Morning, y’all. Chez Harp shelters SIX cats this morning. The foster kitten K2/Kato, later named Matsuo, was fetched back last night to stay with us for a period of months. His Mom has some debilitating illness that caused her to lose her job. She had no choice but to return to Iowa and stay with her parents while she tries to recuperate. She is now on a 20-some-odd hour train ride to Iowa. She had hoped to take Matsuo with her, but apparently you can’t book a pet for a trip exceeding 8 hrs.
Although the boy is isolated in the room he was born in 2 years ago, he doesn’t remember any of that, so he is very unhappy. I won’t speculate on how long it may take for him to adjust, we’ll just do the best we can.
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There was nothing extraordinary about Tuesday’s election. Historically, it looks like any other Texas primary, where around 10% of registered voters bother to show up. The extraordinary election occurred in 2014 when less than 500,000 voted in the Democrat primary. That is 4% of registered voters. This year they got to 10%.
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The Panama Canal was never Sovereign US territory. The 1903 treaty with the new government of Panama gave rights to operations and oversight of the canal to the U.S. in perpetuity. Renegotiation of that treaty in 1977 transferred the canal to local control.
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What sovereign territory existed in the Canal Zone was limited to US military installations.
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gotta love this video
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Google says it’s International Women’s Day and has celebrated it with a medley of sappy little cartoon stories. All about how hard it is to be a woman. I’ve been a woman for 74 years, and I never found it hard. Certainly not in the USA, and not in Texas. One of the cartoon stories is named Minutes, and it ends with this image depicting a gigantic angry girl stomping and kicking over a neighborhood. I really don’t ‘get’ the notion of being prevented from doing what you wanted to do, or be.
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Maybe you are excepted from International Women’s Day mh. They will have a special set aside day for International Cat Women’s Day. I’m keeping my mouth pretty shut on the new addition to your cat family except to say something along the lines of “I told you so.”
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Adee, thank you for the referral. I will definitely call them in the near future.
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I wunner how many courics that poo will be?
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#29 EG
I don’t remember you telling me 1 1/2 yrs ago that the lovely young woman who adopted Kato would get seriously ill. So what sort of “warning” did you issue? -
#31 Pyro
Translation, please. -
My warning was merely along the lines of keeping the cats. Gypsy is still gone I guess. Just messing with you. And no, I had no idea someone would become seriously ill. Good luck with him readapting.
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I don’t remember you telling me 1 1/2 yrs ago that the lovely young woman who adopted Kato would get seriously ill. So what sort of “warning” did you issue?
Technically, he was wrong, sort of. He said they weren’t going anywhere. One of them did go somewhere for a while.
Those cats aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. I think the Kitty Angel has gotten too attached – but I said that back on the day she took Gypsy in I think.
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Where will the tumor find a new host?
HEADLINE: Senate Officials Confirm John McCain Expected to Step Down from U.S. Senate
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This could turn out to be very darned amusing, if and only if, ALL THE FACTS are allowed to be presented.
HEADLINE: Federal court will hold first-ever hearing on climate change science
It will be really interesting to see how the most reversed court in the nation responds when confronted with the real evidence that the whole gorebullwarmongering thing is a crock of precomposted fertilizer.
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Translation, please.
The couric is a unit of measure for the mass of a poo/turd/stool sample/bowel movement. It is approximately equivalent to 2 1/2 lb or 1.2kg.
It was named in honor of noted journalist Katie Couric.
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Under the “Dude” post at Hot Air:
A Hartford man due in court to answer a charge of stealing a car apparently stole a car to get to court, police said.
Jonathan Rivera, 25, was at Superior Court in Hartford on Wednesday to answer a charge of first-degree larceny and tampering with a motor vehicle involving the theft of a car in Hartford on Feb. 17.
As he waited to appear before a judge, Hartford Parking Authority agents scanning license plates for parking violators got a hit on a white 2014 Subaru Legacy parked near the courthouse. The license plates had been reported stolen and the car itself had been stolen from Newington because a key fob was left in it, police said.
Well on his way to being reformed.
http://www.courant.com/breaking-news/hc-br-hartford-stolen-car-to-court-0308-story.html
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Matsuo made a breakthough today. He spent most of the day sitting on the windowsill in my room. Just an hour ago, I checked on him there and he stepped down onto a chest of drawers below the window, started rubbing his head and neck on my arm, and let me give him some rubs and pats. He’s nowhere near ready to socialize with other cats, but at least he will be friendly with us peoples.
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I heard that Trump has signed a trade tariffs order. What happened? The sun is still shining, the market did not close early, automobiles are still traveling the streets. Nobody has nuked us. Looks like we might survive in spite or Trump’s efforts to kill us all. Guess I’ll have to stop believing everything I hear on TV or read on the innanets.
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Micheal Barry gave a scholarly, 30+ minute lecture on Trade and Tarriffs today.
Quite extraordinarily well spoken. -
EG
Good luck with him readapting.
We don’t think this is going to be a permanent return, but if it turns out that it is, I think Matsuo will always find a home with us, providing at least one of us outlives him.
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#41
You didn’t really think that the negative effects would happen instantaneously, did you? I don’t think you answered over the weekend so I’ll take this as an indication that you think these tariffs will be good for America.
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Matsuo? Let me guess. Millennial?
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#44 – What I really think is that they were thrown down as markers for negotiation. Canada and Mexico were immediately exempted, and others are open for exemption based on negotiation. I’m a free trader, but there are 2 or more parties to a trade deal, and our deals have always favored the other side. I expect this to be a nothing burger in a fairly short period of time. If the deals are renegotiated to become more fair, then yes, in the long run they will be good for America – not as a revenue source, but as a negotiating tool. There are many tools for trade deals of which tariffs are only one. A weak dollar also increases exports and might cause others to impose tariffs – so, foreign exchange rates are actually more important than anything else. The Chinese have long kept their currency valuation artificially low, so the tariff is an offset. They allow their yuan to float at fair value, we get rid of the tariff. Like all other things, there are many ways to do the deal. So long as the objectives are clear, which they seldom are, both sides use the tools at their disposal.
Just consider a simple automobile purchase. The variables include the price, the interest rate on the loan, any rebates that might be offered, any trade-in that might be considered, monthly payments with balloon, etc. All these are variables even through the most commonly quoted number is simply the price.
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43 – I would expect nothing less from Matsuo’s foster grandparents, or any other one in need for that matter.
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Crickets.
Chocolate crickets.
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Is there a tariff on those too?
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Florida decided to go on permanent DST.
I was surprised to read that it’s really up to some filthy Washington bureaucrats whether they are allowed.
Subjects, simply subjects are we.
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EG has a very good handle on the situation: tarrifs are just one more tool in the box that for too damned long has been used against the USA but the USA has been loathe to pick up same. Strong negotiation requires strong skills plus a sincere love for the welfare of the Joe 6-pack kind of guy; these have been glaringly absent from our last 6+ POTUS plus our State Dept for at least 75 years.
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So let’s go ahead and get things lined out ahead of time. When the economy takes a substantial hit because of trade wars whose fault is it gonna be? It goes without saying it won’t be Trump’s.
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Just who are the tariffs going to directed at? I submit it will be those who are enslaving thier population and subsidizing the industry in order to destroy the industry of the enemy, the enemy which would be the USA. If both countries have similar environmental policies and similar tax policies and are not using slave or coercered labor, then let the best competitor win. If one has no environmental standards and are using slave labor, then those products should be subject to a tariff so that those countries who do not subscribe to such inhumane, barbaric, destructive tactics do not gain competitive price advantage.
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So let’s go ahead and get things lined out ahead of time. When the economy takes a substantial hit because of trade wars whose fault is it gonna be?
I guess we should choose from one or two of the usual suspects.
GOPe
McCain
Paul Ryan
Mitch McConnell
National Review
NYT
Sessions
Da Bushes
Barney Fife
Hillary & Deep State Friends
By God, Mueller & Steele
This week’s porn star
Etc.
Etc. -
Ted Cruz.
Gotta be Ted Cruz.
Or his Daddy.
You know his Daddy is keen on that kind of thing.
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#45 Hammy
Matsuo? Let me guess. Millennial?
She’s in her twenties. Named the kitten for the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho. I think Texpat mentioned him in some post the last year or so.
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Named the kitten for the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho.
I figured that out. I may be dumb but I ain’t stupid 😉 I even wrote haiku:
A Millenial
Named her fur child Matsuo
Isn’t she, like, hip? -
I’m off tomorrow morning to visit a therapeutic horsemanship center that recently moved to its new home a few miles down FM 359 from us. Turns out we have a mutual friend who “introduced” us via email when he recalled we had horses and support charities in which horses play an important part.
Looking forward to seeing the facility and horses. The horses who live and serve there are saints, pure and simple. They instinctively know their passengers have issues quite different from normally active and able bodied children and are most careful with them. A facility a dear friend in Austin helped become reality also has some adult clients, mostly injured military folk. Riding therapy helps all ages, and as Sir Winston Churchill opined, “There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.”
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A few things I learned tonight:
1. Fascist pigs, man, they seeded the clouds to rain on the hippies.
2. I’d rather listen to Yoko Ono screeching than listen to Joan Baez pretending she’s a good singer.
3. “Woodstock” is a really lame movie. Not as lame as Billy Jack, but lame just the same. -
He’s got that works righteousness thing going on, baby!
“I believe when you go to the Pearly Gates and our Lord says, ‘Have you been a good progressive?’ He says, ‘Show me the list of what you got done,’ Cuomo said in an interview with New York Spectrum News 1 reporter Errol Louis Wednesday.
‘And I have accomplished more progressive results in this state than have been accomplished by any administration and I believe that is factually, objectively irrefutable,’ Cuomo said.
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Thanks to NY for keeping this guy contained to their turf.
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Nitey nite, Hamsterville™
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