Operation Chaos

Question: How many more votes will the Democratic 2nd place finisher in Indiana get than Johnny "Free Ride" McCain?

Bonus Round: Will that number beat the Clinton/Obama spread?

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Shenanigans in Washington State

McCain       3,468 26% 87% reporting
Huckabee   3,226 24%

Did Huckabee win in Washington State? Yesterday, after Huckabee leading all day in Washington, at the last minute the Washington State republican party issued a press release showing John McCain pulling ahead by 1 or 2 percentage points and calling the race for McCain. They never updated the voter totals or turnout after the 87%. Huckabee, after winning the 2 other states that held elections for the Republicans yesterday, got very suspicious about the results.

The Huckabee campaign is deeply disturbed by the obvious irregularities in the Washington State Republican precinct caucuses. It is very unfortunate that the Washington State Party Chairman, Luke Esser, chose to call the race for John McCain after only 87 percent of the vote was counted. According to CNN, the difference between Senator McCain and Governor Huckabee is a mere 242 votes, out of more than 12,000 votes counted-with another 1500 or so votes, apparently, not counted. That is an outrage.

Huckabee has now sent lawyers to Washington state, presumably to audit the votes. This race is not over.

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McCain Wins South Carolina

McCain was able to pickup 33% of the vote in South Carolina's primary today. Beating Huckleberry by 3 points. "Mostly Dead" Fred loped in a distant 3rd. So, to recap

Iowa, Huckleberry
New Hampshire, McCain
Michigan, Mittens
Nevada, Mittens
South Carolina, McCain

Which makes that side as clear as mud. The important thing to remember is that Paul beat the crap out of McCain in Nevada coming in 2nd.

Please note that Mr 9/11 came in 6th in Nevada and 5th in South Caroline with around 8,500 votes. I can smell the excra-citement from here!

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Pat Oliphant, Conservative Right Wing Sexist Asshole

Don't you just love this cartoon? What's funny is that Oliphant thinks that he is taking a shot at Hillary with his silly assed scribble. This will only help turn out the vote for her. I am always astounded at the massive stupidity of these people.

The Washington Post is really finished as a paper of note. This is not that surprising from Pat Oliphant he too worked at the now defunct conservative D.C. newspaper Washington Star with Howie Kurtz, Michael Isikoff, Fred Hiatt, and Fred Barnes and many other knuckle-draggers. Thats quite the alma mater over there.

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Holiday Open Thread

Lots and Lots Going On

In no particular order, not necessarily related, or even important...

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan. (Includes video.)

Midnight tonight is the last time to get the "Early Bird" discount for Netroots Nation sign up. Come meet the GNB writers!

We're not posting much right now:

• Hubris Sonic is on vacation.
• Lower Manhattanite has something going on at home.
• I've got something going on at home.
• Sara's posting, but not a lot.
• Posting should pick up again after the New Year.

A tiger killed a teenager and mauled two more at the San Francisco Zoo.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Wednesday that employers could reduce or eliminate health benefits for retirees when they turn 65 and become eligible for Medicare.

Mischa Barton was arrested early Thursday morning (December 27) in West Hollywood, California, for DUI, drug possession, and driving without a license.

Giuliani ad "Freedom" links World War II, 9/11, Islamic terrorists.


It's an open thread folks. Have fun.

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Judge Allows Arizona Anti-Immigant Law To Go Active

Staunch Republican Judge throws out Temporary Injunctions

U.S. District Court Judge Neil Vincent Wake just ruled against both requests for temporary injunctions in the Arizona Contractors Association, Inc., et al. v lawsuits. (US District Court, Arizona. Decision #1. Decision #2.)

The New York Times

A new Arizona law considered among the nation’s toughest against employers who hire illegal immigrants will go into effect on Jan. 1 after federal judges on Friday refused to block it.

Both a United States district judge in Phoenix and a federal appeals court in San Francisco, ruling on separate lawsuits by business and civil rights groups, declined to stand in the way.

The law calls for suspending the license of an employer found to have knowingly hired an illegal worker, and revocation for a second offense.

First, Judge Neil Vincent Wake of Federal District Court in Phoenix issued a sharp defense of the rights of lawful workers and said the law would not burden businesses in the short run.

Then on Friday night, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit deferred a decision on an injunction until after a hearing by Judge Wake on Jan. 16, provided a “decision is reached with reasonable promptness.”

Judge Neil Vincent Wake was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush.

While certainly not every Judge is a right-wing ideologue, in the years immediately after 9/11 the Democratic minority was not positioned -- nor frankly, did it even try -- to prevent the Bush administration with stacking the courts. And we know from experience, the kind of horror judges who rule based on politics instead of law give us. Don't we Judge Bates, you fucking tool?

Judge Wake before he was on the bench, was a right-wing tool of the highest order. The first case of his I pulled up had him representing Paula and Alan Sears against the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community on the grounds that:

Las-Vegas Review Journal

...their children, who go to school in Scottsdale, would be exposed to bad influences if casino gambling is permitted nearby.

Seriously.

He won, too. (At least as of that moment. Don't know how it ultimately turned out.)

The moralistic anti-gambling forces say, I should be able to force my world-view on you such that because my sweet little innocent children go to school within miles of your den of iniquity, Jesus must throw out the money-changes from the temple.

Worse -- it might lead to dancing.

Since Judge Wake has become a judge, he has suggested that gays have no constitutional right to equal protection under the law, even in prison where the State obviously has a legal obligation to make certain homophobia doesn't lead to attacks.

Not our Judge Wake, the right-wing homophobe:

Lesbian Gay Law Notes (Page 9)

Ruling on an apparently routine summary judgment motion in a pro se ex-prisoner case, U.S. District Judge Neil Vincent Wake made the startling assertion that for purposes of an Equal Protection claim, “Homosexuals are not a protected class in the Ninth Circuit.” Sotelo v. Stewart, 2005 WL 2571606 (D. Ariz., Oct. 11, 2005) (unpublished disposition). What he should have said, of course, is that “sexual orientation” has not yet been recognized as a suspect classification, but that would not, of course, deprive the court of jurisdiction under 42 U.S.C. sec. 1983 to consider whether prison officials had a rational basis to treat a gay prisoner less well than a non-gay prisoner, an inquiry supported by Supreme Court precedent in Romer v. Evans.

Wake’s brief dismissal misses the point and is clearly erroneous in light of Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), which held at least that a state violates the 14th Amendment if it discriminates against gay people without a rational justification. In the context of a prison, had Sotelo alleged with sufficient specificity that he suffered discriminatory treatment because he was gay, the prison would have to show a penological reason for treating gay prisoners differently from others. More fundamentally, the Equal Protection Clause protects individuals, not classes.

In Romer, of course, section 1983, a jurisdictional statute, was irrelevant because the case was brought in state court and went to the U.S. Supreme Court directly from the Colorado Supreme Court on the federal constitutional question, but Romer clearly establishes the principle, binding on the 9th Circuit and its district courts, that sexual orientation discrimination is actionable under the 14th Amendment.

That's fancy legal talk for, "God Hates Fags."

Against gambling and fags.

Want to bet he's against teh sex and the abortions, the wine, women and song? And in favor of big corps?

Every case of his I found was moralistically based, or on behalf of a big corporation, white boy style. (Anti-women, anti-poor, anti-labor, anti-Indian, "Fuck you; I've got mine.")

You can see why the Bushies wanted his ass on the bench.

Part of the major damage of the Bush administration is they've corrupted much of our legal system. Even the judges who don't rule overtly politically like this asshole, aren't favorable. And then you have entire government entities attacking and ripping apart or turning over to corporate pirates the very institutions they should be protecting: the FCC, NLRB, FDA, SEC, USDA, and more.

Our legal system assumes good intent. It is not set up to protect itself against an insider attack from people in power. This is something we progressives need to fix once we take over.

Th Arizona law has undocumented workers fleeing the state in fear, and employers checking the documentation status of current workers, even though the black letter law makes clear people only have to use the system when hiring people.

Why is everyone running? Because the sheriff in Phoenix has a history of using immigration laws illegally to come after anyone he wants. A culture of lawlessness and distrust prevails against a background Republican/libertarianism "I've got mine so fuck everyone else" which pervades much of the fundamentalist (and to a lessor extent, the Mormon) portions of the West.

I can't say I blame the Ninth Circuit for failing to override Judge Wake. Had they, I have little doubt the Supreme Court would have overturned, 5-4. And again we're back to the long-term damage done to our country by the stacking of the courts.

There'll be a hearing on the case in January, where I have no doubt Judge Wake will, yet again, rule against undocumented workers and for this horrid cruel law. His current rulings make his January hearing pretty damn clear.

Arizona is cutting its own throat, economically, socially, culturally, genetically.

Stupid, stupid Republican legislators.

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“My Eyes, My Ears!”

Twelve Days of Christmas
National Republican Senatorial Committee

Yes Virgina, the Republican's really do live in a fantasy world.

Not only do they genuinely believe history will vindicate them, they also believe they can sing. They are untethered from reality. And um, can't sing.

Posted (h/t Wonkette) to show how bonkers these people truly are.

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Wendy's Doesn't Say “Thank You”

Rude Food At The Drive-Through -- Wendy's

McDonalds, Jack-in-the-Box, A & W, Dairy Queen, Taco Bell, and Wendy's.

I try and avoid McDonalds. Dairy Queen is an occasional indulgence. I love A & W root beer floats oh yes I do. Taco Bell used to be two-three times a week till they turned it into a jewelry store. Now it's two miles away, but that leaves Burger King which I never ever go to. Eww. Which leaves Jack-in-the-Box (open all night) and Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers.

Often I blow all of them off, grab Mexican, Thai, Chinese, a hot dog from CostCo (mustard and onions), a whole chicken from Top Foods, or eat leftovers. But sometimes it's 11:30 at night and it's either the Mexican place for the second night in the row, or fast food.

At some point it became clear to me, Wendy's doesn't say “Thank You.”

I let it go.

But it kept bugging me.

It's such a simple thing, “Thank You.” And Wendy's simply doesn't say it, not when you actually pick up your food. Oh, they might say it when they take your order, maybe. But when they hand you your food, they just shove the drinks out the window into your lap, throw the food after, close the window and... well, that's it.

Buh-bye.

This called for the scientific method.

In a study I kept totally in my head, no control group, and "double-blind" means the people who keep not putting the extra onions on my sandwich, I've spent the last three months rigorously investigating my hypothesis -- that Wendy's is the only fast food restaurant I routinely frequent which consistently fails to thank people when they hand out food at the drive through.

Conclusion? It isn't just my local Wendy's. It's Wendy's from Olympia to Wendy's in North Seattle, to Wendy's in Kirkland and Wendy's in Bellevue. Even Wendy's in Tucson totally sucks at saying “Thank You.” Every other fast food restaurant has no problem saying thanks. But you only get “Thank You” at Wendy's 1 out of 10 times, two if you're lucky. (No doubt these thanks are coming from kids who were well raised.)

Far be it from me to suggest that the Republicans (90%) who own Wendy's, having got your money, simply no longer give a shit about you, and that their attitude has conveyed itself to the employees. But duh! That's precisely what I think has happened.

All you need is a simple training program -- "Say 'Thank You' when you hand people their food," and these selfish Republican punks can't even be bothered. How rude! Didn't their parents teach them anything?

May I suggest a contest for a new, more honest slogan?

• Wendy's: We don't give a damn.
• No, you can't have more ketchup.
• We've got your money. Now shove off. And...
• Stop checking if we got your order right and get the hell out of here!

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Breaking: Staffers Taken Hostage in Clinton NH Office

ARMED MAN HOLDING HOSTAGES
INSIDE CLINTON NH OFFICE

WMUR Live Video streaming coverage of hostage situation at Hillary Clinton Campaign Office in Rochester, NH.

WMUR Chanel 9

Officials with the campaign confirmed that there were two workers taken hostage in the office on 28 North Main St., and NBC News reported that the man demanded to speak to Clinton.

Clinton, who is not in New Hampshire, canceled a National Democratic Committee meeting in Virginia.

A woman and her baby told workers at a neighboring business that she was released by the hostage-taker.

"A young woman with a 6-month or 8-month-old infant came rushing into the store just in tears, and she said, 'You need to call 911. A man has just walked into the Clinton office, opened his coat and showed us a bomb strapped to his chest with duct tape,'" witness Lettie Tzizik said.

"There are sharp shooters on the roof, and police are negotiating with someone in the building," said another witness, who did not want to be identified. "The police are notifying all the business owners on the street to evacuate. There are fire trucks behind the Hillary Clinton office."

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I won't link to the freepers, but it took less than two minutes before someone wondered if Hillary was staging this herself.

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Anti-Gay Anti-Muslim Campaign Mailers in Virginia

Jill Vogel -- Anti-Gay Anti-Muslim Hypocrite

She's unleashed a massive mailer racist homophobic hit piece on her opponent just days before the primary, with no opportunity for a rebuttal.

What she's not telling you is, her husband Alex Vogel makes huge sums as a lobbyist for gay-friendly, hell, gay-open, gay-bashing down the doors of America, gay-programing-central Viacom.

Viacom which airs Queer as Folk, The L Word, TransGeneration, and the cartoon Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple In All The World.

Oh yeah baby, do it to me. Do it to me hard. Wouldn't she make a perfect Bottom? You just know she likes it rough.

These two are massive hypocrites, up to their tainted asses in lies, greed, corruption, diverted charity money, and quite possibly, election tampering. Allegedly. *smiles sweetly*

Let's get down to it...

Jill Holzman Vogel is a nationally recognized lawyer in Republican political circles. She has held senior posts in the Republican Party and in the Bush administration, including Chief Counsel to the Republican National Committee and Deputy Counsel at the Department of Energy. Call it a payoff for her work during November and December of 2000, when Jill served as counsel in the Florida Presidential Recount, acting on behalf of the Bush-Cheney campaign in West Palm Beach and in Osceola County.

In addition, Jill's law firm has been working hard in the laundering -- oops, in the snow-job where Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist is shoveling buckets of cash, around half a mil, through an AIDS charity he controls using his political people being paid through the charity in order to keep them handy for his presidential campaign, using money donated by big corporations with business before the Senate, and using Jill's firm being paid big bucks to try and convince the IRS that everyone gets to write all of it off as a Tax Deduction, instead of going to jail for bribery, tax fraud, and election tampering.

I mentioned alleged election tampering before, and we'll get back there, but not yet.

Oh hell, let's get to it now.

From Florida, where Jill helped cheat GWB into the Presidency by shutting down the counting of the election, to Ohio where Alex Vogel helped in the "fraud of the fake voting rights groups" which "pursued racist disinformation campaigns, intended to divert attention from Ohio's election theft."

Vogel's lobbying firm was paid to go in and clean up the mess, once everyone started catching on to how the White House had stolen the election, from loading the Ohio Supreme Court to filing RICO suits just for political effect, to front organizations and carpet-bombing minorities with letters allowing their voter registrations to be challenged, and thus their votes to be declared invalid.

Not to mention making damn certain the white folks got the good machines and plenty of them, and the dirty rotten brown people got very few machines and they were the busted ones. People just left without voting instead of waiting five hours in line. Why? Because they didn't want to be fired from their job. Because they couldn't give up a day's pay. Because they were disabled and simply couldn't stand up for five hours (or even 30 minutes) waiting on a machine which might not be working when it was their turn.

Alex Vogel's firm came in to clean up the mess. Jill Vogel's firm created the legal strategy which caused the mess. Part of that mess was targeting GLBT people with hateful words (which often escalated to violence) in order to drive public letter writing campaigns, big press, and state constitutional amendments to drive single-issue Republicans to the polls to ban Gay Marriage.

Historian's remain split on how successful the GLBT issue was in driving turnout. While there is no question Republican turnout was enormous for a second election, it may be that the Republican's simply ran a massively better GOTV game via their control of church membership lists (which is illegal of course, but we're talking what happened, not what's legal.)

From Ohio where GWB beat swift-boated John Kerry by less than the margin of error (he gamed the fucking system AGAIN) we go to Virginia and meet total wackjob Laurie Letourneau (photo: the nut case at the microphone.)

This nut-case lunatic is not just Jill Vogel's babysitter -- she filed a complaint which got Mike Tate, Jill's opponent in the primaries, indicted, causing him to lose the election. The prosecutor who indicted him? Tied tightly to Jill Vogel's campaign, a visiting independent judge dropped the charges over the prosecutor's objections. And the Washington Post which reports the story mentions the prosecutor "began the investigation at the suggestion of a Holtzman Vogel campaign volunteer." That's this whack job, the fucking baby sister for Jill Vogel, and herself an accomplished and experienced political activist. a "Vogel campaign volunteer."

Assholes.

Here's a bit more on the whack job, just so you're clear how truly insane the George Bush wing of the Republicans are:

Daily Whackjob

Psycho Carpetbagging Nanny (PCN)

It seems that PCN is from Massachusetts, but left because:

"This place is a cesspool. It’s pathetic," she told the Worcester Telegram, discussing her home state, which has the third lowest divorce-rate in the nation. "We have an ineffective Church and a bunch of wimps in the legislature."

So, PCN packed up, moved to Virginia, and got herself buried in the Marshall/Newman Gays Are Icky Amendment as well as the Allen for Senate re-election campaign. From an e-mail I received a few weeks ago, it seems that PCN annoyed everyone at the Allen campaign.

Part that I assume is the most frustrating, and worst, is that this has all come at the hand of Laurie Latourneau- a right-wing friggin whack job. I couldn’t stand her while working for Allen- she used to call all the time with complaint after complaint. Christ himself would be a RHINO to this woman if he were to run for elected office today. She was never happy, never satisfied, and always preaching that social conservative shit to the utmost extreme. She was the individual you thought you wanted on your side, until she then was on your side- then she just hindered every effort, every word, everything. She would quickly become a thorn in everyone’s side.

So, the question comes down to this: Why is PCN working for Vogel, and did she file the complaint at the behest of the Vogel campaign? Is this the type of person who Republicans are using to push their message?

Remember that Jill's husband is a big-league consultant for Viacom, receiving (his firm) over half a million bucks for services.

Jill would have to parade naked through the East Village with Laurie Latourneau holding her on a leash, stroking her pert, aroused nipples with the strap, and offering free swats of her aged yet appealing buttocks to women passing by, for the Vogel family -- if we look at what they're paid for -- to be much more GLBT open.

What they say they're about, well, they're lying of course. What-the-fuck-ever. Follow the damn money. These are Republicans. They're not turned on or off by the sex. It's POWER they're horny for.

Here's what these hypocrites have slimed their opponent with, only this weekend left in the campaign.

(Click photos to make my lipstick BIG & RED -- Jill isn't subtle, is she?)


(Click photos to make me ENLARGED.)

Sara is correct. (And so is Max.) The Republican's are trying to get traction with hating Muslims. The Gay thing isn't working out too well for them any more, so now they're trying to transfer the hatred from The Gay to The Muslim.

Here we can watch the transfer attempt in action.

The Republican's need to be stopped cold. Called out, and fucking cold-cocked, left lying on the ground, unconscious.

Want to hate someone? Hate these people. They know what they're doing.

They may not hate America. But they sure as hell hate Americans. Not to mention they're stealing, literally stealing money and power from their rightful owners.

Traitors to America, both of them.

h/t PageOneQ

Updated: 11/3/07

Remember the wack-job babysitter for Jill, Laurie Letourneau, profiled above as the kind of fair-minded thoughtful caring person these assholes hang out with -- and entrust the upbringing of their children with.

Here is what the Worcester Telegram said about Laurie Letourneau in the column of a popular columnist (hit the jump for more):

As found online in the Worcester Telegram Jan 18, 2005

Dianne Williamson

She asked that I withhold her name because she’s only 16 and respectful enough of her parents and school to abide by their wishes. But I wish I could identify this student, because we could use more young people like her who care about their world.

On Jan. 9 I wrote a column about Laurie Letourneau, a local anti-gay activist who said she’s moving to Virginia because Massachusetts has become a “cesspool” of immorality. I acknowledge that the column wasn’t exactly a love letter, as I consider Ms. Letourneau a hatemongering zealot who pushes intolerance to new levels, and I was relieved that someone so angry is no longer comfortable in the Bay State.

One of the e-mails I received came from the above-mentioned teen, a student at St. Peter-Marian High School. This young lady and five of her friends wrote a letter to Ms. Letourneau last year, after Ms. Letourneau and her group, Mass Voices for Traditional Marriage, organized a rally at St. Peter-Marian to ban gay marriage in Massachusetts. The students were upset that their school hosted the rally because some of their friends are gay, so they decided to put their education to good use by taking the time to articulate their views in a letter.

“How is the sanctity of marriage threatened by two people who love each other?” the students asked Ms. Letourneau in their e-mail. “Even if you disapprove of their relationships, would you also deny their innocent children of rights and protections other children would have simply because their parents are straight? How is this supporting stronger families?”

The tone of the letter was generally thoughtful and polite. At one point, the writers maintained that if Ms. Letourneau wouldn’t even compromise and support civil unions, then she must be anti-family and homophobic, but that’s as strong as it got. They ended the letter by thanking Ms. Letourneau for her time and expressing hope that she would “take these points into consideration.” They didn’t sign their names because, as the young lady later explained to me, they didn’t want trouble with their school.

“We purposely tried to be sickeningly polite,” the young lady noted in her e-mail to me. “At any rate, there was nothing wrong with that e-mail, right? Nothing too offensive or inflammatory?”

Right. But here I include, in its entirety, the response sent by Laurie Letourneau to a group of high school students who had the temerity to disagree with her:

“I shall give this to the Bishop tomorrow. Where are your guts — no name — well you poor sad creatures — don’t you know anything about your religion? Dah — sex outside marriage is a sin!! Try reading the catechism and actually learning about homosexuals — learned behavior — I am fed up with twerps who don’t have the brains to come in out of the rain. Try studying before you shoot your little ignorant mouths off. This will be given to the media and the supt. and the principal and maybe they can actually teach you something. Your (sic) are really sad people and I would be so ashamed as a parent if I had not done a better job rearing children to know that anal sex, disease, multiple partners, rimming, fisting, etc., were wrong!”

Sigh. There’s not much to add here, except to observe that it’s hard to tell from this exchange who is the grown-up and who is the child. And I suppose her mean-spirited missive served a useful purpose, by reinforcing my newfound sympathy for the state of Virginia.

The young lady, meanwhile, an honor roll student at her school, said she was stunned by the response.

“What kind of good Christian woman would list various sexual practices — some of which I had never heard of before, and I’m hardly naïve — in an e-mail to a 15-year-old?” she asked. “Though I hope she’s proud of herself — she has now converted me, my friends, most of my peer group and some of my teachers permanently to the pro-gay marriage side.”

Vicious, hateful, spiteful, horrid people.

The only good thing about them is, over the last seven years with them in charge of the United States, the unbelievers have seen with their own eyes precisely how fucking insane these total nut-jobs truly are.

Wack-jobs. Freaking Bush-Republican wing-nut lunatics.

THIS is the buddy -- the baby sitter of Jill Vogel who is running for the State Senate and previously was the RNC's lawyer. "Not playing with a full deck" was written to describe these fruit-loops.

And they want to force all of us to be just like them, under color of one law, one God, no sex they're not in charge of, and they get all the money.

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Values Voters!

Max Blumenthal cracks me up. He has, what we used to refer to as "Balls".

Oh, and Presidential Wannabee Huckabee is a Fuckabee dingbat asshole.

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