by ChrisSick

In which we provide a brief update on the ongoing self-destruction of one Willard Mitt Romney.

Let me take you a bit behind the curtain, dear reader. We have a bit of a turnaround time here at the ol’ SG Blog, so on Sunday night I wrote:

“….as the Obama convention bounce has transitioned, gradually, to the Obama lead, it becomes more and more clear that Mitt Romney, as Joan Walsh said, will never, ever be your President. As this reality sinks in at the headquarters of Team Mittens, we will see ever more bizarre, surprising, and desperate moves from the campaign.”

Writing Sunday for publication Tuesday means that I wrote that, went to bed and woke up Monday to read:

“It is a brave new day for Mitt Romney. His campaign is laying out a bold new strategy, one in which it will make a dramatic new turn toward…something!

The something will not actually be new, but it will feel new to lots of people, Romney campaign adviser Ed Gillespie told reporters Monday morning. But that’s the problem with the current, much-hyped Romney campaign strategy reboot: It’s not a new strategy at all.

‘This is reinforcing,’ Gillespie said on the Monday conference call, adding, ‘We’re not rolling out new policies so much as making people understand when we say things, here’s how we’re going to get them done. Here are the specifics. We think there’s a demand out there for that.’”

— Molly Ball, The Atlantic, “Romney’s ‘New’ Campaign Strategy isn’t Actually New,” September 17, 2012

So the Romney campaign has a great new strategy, they’re finally going to tell us how they plan to slash taxes for the wealthy, increase military spending, and somehow pay down the debt despite reduced revenues and increased spending. I don’t know about you, but I’m excited to hear this. Mostly because whenever Ed Gillespie speaks, my Intrade shares for President Obama’s win become that much more valuable.

It’s an exciting turn for the Romney campaign, and — to the rest of us — a patently obvious attempt to change the conversation from, among other failures, a long Politico article that describes the Romney Campaign as, more or less, a complete fucking shambles:

“As mishaps have piled up, [top Romney advisor Stuart] Stevens has taken the brunt of the blame for an unwieldy campaign structure that, as the joke goes among frustrated Republicans, badly needs a consultant from Bain & Co. to straighten it out.”

These sort of articles — rampant with finger-pointing, blame-gaming, and the like — are, naturally, pretty common affairs. Typically, though, they wait until after the goddamn election is over before they start the mad scramble to blame one another for their collective failure to get their candidate elected.

I knew, when I wrote Sunday that we were seeing the death throes of the Romney campaign, and that things were going to start getting weird. By which, I mean, more weird than “Lemon. Wet. Good.”

But, the icing on top of the shit-cake of sadness for the Romney campaign began to break yesterday, when video surfaced via Mother Jones of Romney speaking at a private fundraiser earlier this year.

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.”

This is Mitt Romney telling you how he really feels and you can add this to what is now a long and growing list of The Moment(s) Mitt Romney Lost the Election. November is coming like a bad hangover, there’s 48 days until election day as of this writing, and in 49 days we’ll be severely spoilt for choice about when, exactly, Mitt Romney Lost the Election.

But this week will surely be in the top contenders, and in closing, I’ll let a much more talented writer than myself, but just as much at a loss for words as I am, sum it up:

“I don’t really know what to say about a man who believes that one in two Americans believe that ‘the government has a responsibility to care for them.’ Romney is right. Obama does start off with a big lead, but that is because he would never enter the race conceding that fully half the country was beyond his reach. A politician conceding that sort of field position is an embarrassment to himself, and his political party.”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, “The Contemptuous Elitism of Mitt Romney”, September 18, 2012

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by Lee Camp

We’re in the midst of an all-out information battle royale. Propaganda and mistruths are thrown around like hamburger helper at a food fight or lube at an orgy. The only way to fight the steady stream of bullshit and semi-automatic fluff pieces is to know the truth, to have the facts, to grasp the reality. But where do you go to do that?

[..]

by Moby

Ok, I think I figured it out.

Mitt Romney is disdainful of anyone receiving government assistance because:

1. He comes from a rich and privileged background, so he’s never needed or received government assistance.

And…

2. He comes from a rich and privileged background, so he’s never known anyone who’s needed or received government assistance.

Almost everyone I know has received some sort of government assistance, whether it’s student loans or small business loans or Medicare or Medicaid, and almost everyone I know now pays taxes and contributes to society.

I’ll use myself as an example.

I was the only child of a single working mom. We struggled a lot economically, and there were times when we lived off of food stamps and social security and government assistance. And then when I went to the University of Connecticut and SUNY Purchase I received Pell Grants and student loans.

So, according to Mitt Romney, I was part of the 47% “who are dependent upon government…who pay no income tax.” [As heard in a video obtained by Mother Jones] Mitt Romney then went on to say: “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

In the last 20 years I have either personally or professionally paid millions of dollars in income taxes to the state, local, and federal government. I have employed hundreds of people, who have in turn paid income taxes and in many cases have gone on to start their own businesses.

So I think it’s safe to say that the government assistance my mother and I received was money well spent. I was able to go to decent schools and get a decent education, all thanks to ‘government assistance.’ My mother and I were able to eat, all thanks to ‘government assistance.’ I was able to see doctors, all thanks to ‘government assistance.’ We were able to pay our rent at times thanks to ‘government assistance.’

Not to mention the roads, clean water, streetlights, police departments, fire departments, clean air, libraries, public transit, electricity, etc., that all came from the government and enabled my mother and I to stay alive and live good, educated, safe, and healthy lives.

Mitt Romney comes from extreme wealth. He has never once needed financial assistance from the government, as his family had millions and millions of dollars. But there are millions and millions and millions of Americans like me who didn’t come from extreme wealth and who needed help with education and food and healthcare and shelter, but who have gone on to start businesses and pay taxes.

We are not an ‘entitled’ class, we are not ‘dependent upon the federal government’ and we do not consider ourselves ‘victims.’ We are the hundreds of millions of Americans who had the misfortune of not being born to millionaire parents.

So I understand why Mitt Romney is disdainful of government assistance, as his parents paid for everything and he never needed help being fed or educated or looked after by doctors. I understand that in Mitt Romney’s entire life he’s never known anyone who’s needed student loans. He’s never known anyone who needed food stamps to keep their family fed. He’s never known anyone who’s had to spend hours in a health clinic just to get basic medical care. He’s never known anyone who couldn’t pay the rent.

I understand that Mitt Romney grew up with phenomenal wealth and privilege
but I don’t understand why that leads him to contemptuously dismiss anyone (like my mother and I) who have, at times, needed government help with food and education and shelter and health care.

Mitt Romney is a product of wealth and privilege. That does not give him the right to loathe and dismiss the rest of us who are not the product of wealth and privilege.

Oh, for some reason I was thinking of ‘Common People’ by Pulp when I heard Romney’s quotes.

– Moby, September 19, 2012

“But still you’ll never get it right,
Cos when you’re laid in bed at night,
Watching roaches climb the wall,
If you call your Dad he could stop it all.

You’ll never live like common people,
You’ll never do what common people do,
You’ll never fail like common people,
You’ll never watch your life slide out of view.”

– “Common People” by Pulp

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by Steven Whitney

When traveling throughout the world, one learns a lot about the Dream of America by talking with whomever one meets along the way – taxi drivers, shopkeepers, writers and artists, students, and ordinary men and women with or without agendas of their own…almost anyone except the country’s elite and politicians.

Berlin, 1996

In the mid-80s, Berlin was a shadowed city within a divided nation, split into East and West by a concrete barricade that cut off all unauthorized passage between the two sectors. Actually two barriers about 50 yards apart, with manned guard towers overlooking what became known as “the death strip” in-between, the Berlin Wall put a punishing halt to the mass defections from the Eastern Bloc and became a global symbol of entrapment and oppression.

Standing at Checkpoint Charlie, looking from the American zone to the Soviet sector, drab residential buildings and factories filled the bleak landscape. Soviet tanks and the Stasi – arguably the most intrusive and repressive secret police of its time – prowled the streets under dark clouds spewed forth by gigantic industrial smokestacks, adding to an almost palpable sense of imprisonment.

Ten years later, with both the Wall and the USSR antiquities of a vanquished era, the united Berlin was a bustling metropolis determined to become one of the greatest and most sophisticated cities in the world. No expense was spared, no architectural or cultural plan was too extravagant. Giant cranes dotted the landscape like oil rigs on the west Texas plain. Berlin had become a modern “boom town.”

Yet several hundred miles south, the Bosnian conflict had become a sordid battleground of “ethnic cleansing.” Refugees from both sides fled north, and the Germans – a people imprisoned within their own walls for decades – took them in.

I was in Berlin to write a television film involving the journey of two families – one Christian, one Muslim – from the corpse-littered streets of Sarajevo to the German border. These were people who had left everything behind, families that had lost brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, and even children to the hatred of racial and religious persecution. They arrived in Germany without money, water, and food, possessing only the clothes they wore.

For research, I spent two days at one of the largest camps. Fenced in on multiple acres of flat, dry farmland, the refugees lived in tents erected by the government and guarded by UN forces. They were provided with basic medical care, immigration assistance, language classes, and small daily rations of food, water, and wine. And each day, more and more refugees arrived – hungry, sick, and weak from their desperate flights – until the camp resembled an overcrowded ghetto.

By the time I visited, literally tens of thousands or people were cramped into this makeshift Tent City. Yet I heard few complaints. Even fewer fights broke out. Bitterness and recrimination had for the most part evaporated in this netherworld of safe harbor. They were no longer Muslims and Christians torn apart by separate and warring ideologies, but survivors entwined by the brutal migration north.

I went from tent to tent, accompanied by translators. At each, I was invited inside and offered food and drink so I could more comfortably listen to the stories they wanted the world to hear. Their last portion of meat or wine, whatever they had left, was tendered. A few families had been in residence long enough to make Bosnian moonshine…and that was offered as well.

It struck me that in the aftermath of unimaginable horror, these people offered me everything they had left in the world. I was their guest and all their hardships would not deter them from being gracious hosts. Never before nor since has anyone ever offered me everything he or she had. It speaks to the overwhelming generosity of the impoverished and their inherent goodness.

We talked about their journeys, their hopes, and their imagined futures. When I asked each of them the key to their ongoing survival in the face of such devastating loss, they all replied with the same sentiment: “You must let go of hatred and forgive your enemies.”

They had many different questions about my own homeland, but the one thing they all wanted to know was this: did we truly practice religious freedom here?

I recited to them our First Amendment and it perfectly fulfilled their dream of America – a land where people of all religions are free to practice their beliefs without fear of bloodshed and discrimination…a nation where they could worship whatever they held sacred both in peace and in harmony with others.

I did not tell them that many people wanted to officially sanction the United States as a Christian Nation, just like the warlords in Bosnia sought to make that country either a Christian or Muslim nation. Some things are better left unsaid for dreams to soar undisturbed.

South Africa, 2001

I was reminded of the Bosnian camp when I flew to a country that for most of my life had been held in the strangling grip of apartheid, a rogue nation in which the majority was brutally held under the cruel thumb of a racist minority.

When the changeover finally occurred, most people throughout the world expected rivers of blood to flow in the streets – payback for a pitiless regime of torture, murder, and almost unimaginable repression. But for the country to succeed, national and racial unity was mandatory, so outside of a few isolated incidents, calmer heads prevailed and violence never went viral.

In the new South Africa, Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu led their people – black and white – to a peaceful aftermath of a startling and long overdue revolution by putting into play the transformative power of forgiveness. They even convened “Forgiveness Trials” under the newly created Truth and Reconciliation Commission in which victims and perpetrators alike bore witness to gross violations of human rights and amnesty was granted in cases of true repentance.

Was justice done?

Justice is always somewhat immeasurable. But a just country was born and sustained that otherwise would have faltered – old resentments and hatreds were put to the side and the awful cloak of “victimization” was avoided. Once again, harmony was achieved through simple and multiple acts of forgiveness.

And, too, wherever I went – from Johannesburg to Cape Town – both white and black South Africans talked openly about the benefits accrued by the national policy of forgiveness.

In times like ours, when senseless and widespread violence can be sparked at a moment’s notice over what seems to many the most trivial of slights, as happened last week, it’s important for those of all religions, cultures, and nationalities to appreciate the potential of forgiveness in bridging an oft times considerable communication gap to saner and more human understanding.

Sometimes, it is true – what is invisible to the eye is essential to the heart…and to a better life for the global community.

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Gotcha!

by Lee Camp

Conventional thinking is getting us nowhere. Right now we’ve got a lot of shit to deal with in this little world of ours, and the standard solutions are part of the problem. But who can we get to help us think outside the box? I know just the guy…

[..]

by ChrisSick

In which we discuss hate – and the limitations of dick jokes to thoroughly explore policy in a meaningful and informative manner.

“I hate … not, though, I trust, with the hate that sins, but a righteous hate.” — Herman Melville, The Confidence Man (1857)

It is a righteous hate, that brings me here. I’m hopeful that by now we’ve established the ground rules of this column. That you understand that my job, basically, is to be your amusing little political monkey. Both by the standards I established for myself and the limitations dictated by the resources available to me, my task each week is to retype the salient points of the weekly political news with the addition of strategically placed cuss words and blowjob jokes.

It isn’t terribly challenging, but it has its uses, if only for entertainment. Of course, we should all pause momentarily and ruminate on the type of society that produces political entertainment, rather than deeply intelligent and informative news coverage as an essential requirement of an educated electorate, who then act in their own enlightened self-interest. This is a topic I could, and would, greatly like to explore at considerable length.

Although, at times, it can be quite enjoyable to be the Tactical Animal – to give voice to my purest inner Werewolf – it is naturally limiting. While it amuses me — and hopefully you — to write about wanting to blow Bill Clinton, it should be noted that no matter how lovingly he speaks of liberal policies, it was his deregulation, coupled with W’s that helped create the conditions for the 2008 economic meltdown.

As much as I want Barack Obama to win the election and remain in the Oval Office, it’s hard to cheerlead so relentlessly for a President who thinks its more important to prosecute the people who grow weed for cancer patients than it is to call to account the people on Wall Street who burned down the global economy.

And I’ve always assumed that, at some point, I could and would expand the horizons on this column beyond my basic remit of summarizing, weekly, the ongoing political knife fight while making snide dick jokes.

But I cannot.

Because week in and week out, Mitt Romney and his campaign just insists on being a gang of complete fucking assholes.

For the next 50 days, 17 hours and 11 minutes, Mitt Romney will find a way — sure as the sun shines — to displace whatever topic I had intended to write about and force me to comment on his utter dishonesty, his complete incompetence, and his cruel naivete.

“Mitt Romney will never be president

“His disgraceful dishonesty in using the murder of a U.S. ambassador to attack Obama will haunt him”

— Headline and sub-head from September 12, 2012 article by Joan Walsh, Salon.com

I agree with Ms. Walsh here, in substance, though not analysis. Mitt Romney will never be President. Not because of this, or really, any particular news story. Not because of any gaffe or any poll. Not even because of any stated policy that is widely unpopular with the general electorate.

But due to all of those things, and more. Mitt Romney has now been running for President for most of the past decade. His private and public careers seem to have been designed by campaign managers to be placed into thirty-second TV spots to convince you of his worthiness and capability for high office. Indeed, everything about Mitt Romney — with the exception of the tax returns he refuses to release — seems to be designed to make him President, down to his flawless hair, which now has its own Facebook account.

His desire to be your President is so thinly veiled, so achingly transparent, that it’s impossible to assume he stands for anything, other than that he, Willard Mitt Romney, should be President. And with that as his only true, core position, all others, necessarily, become subverted to it.

If you need another list of high-profile Romney position changes, my continued suggestion is that you crawl out from under your rock and pay some goddamn attention to the people who want to run the world’s leading superpower. But, just so you have a point of reference, you can look at this list of fourteen position changes that McCain’s op-research team came up with in 2008, or this list compiled by the editors of Rolling Stone, or WaPo’s Fact-Checker blog for an in-depth look at many of the accused flip-flops.

Because, at the risk of repeating myself — there is no core, animating principle to Mitt Romney beyond the burning conviction that he should be President. Which, besides the mountainous evidence that he will take any position likely to service that end goal, leads him to make ridiculous and factually untrue statements almost constantly. Case in point:

“I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

— Romney Campaign statement, one minute into September 12, 2012

For the curious, Kevin Drum at Mother Jones has a nice explanation of why this is, basically, complete and utter horseshit regardless of the day it was released.

“There are two big problems with this:

It’s a lie. The embassy statement Romney is referring to was issued several hours before the attack. It was not a response to the attacks.

It’s scurrilous to suggest that Obama ‘sympathized’ with the attackers.
There was nothing in the embassy statement that suggested any kind
of sympathy, and the actual first response from the Obama
administration very clearly condemned the attacks.”

— Kevin Drum, Mother Jones, September 12, 2012

This is your Republican candidate for President. This is a man who will say anything — true or not — to anyone, at any time, if he thinks it will help him become President. A man who’s still struggling to win over his own party. Who is trying — haltingly and with much attention paid to his attempts — to speak their language without alienating “mainstream” voters, otherwise known as those who haven’t completely lost their shit at the election of a black man.

Which, by no means, should be read as an indication that Obama is perfect and scrupulously honest. And, believe it or not, I would love nothing more than to have just one motherfucking week of Republicans not being complete assholes so that I could more fully explore my many, many issues with the presidency of Barack Obama.

But that will, most likely, never happen. There will be even more outrageous acts, similar to these comments. Outrage will pile upon outrage. Outrage at outrage. Meta-outrage. And, yes, even I am outraged.

Not at Romney’s cheap opportunism, not at his deeply craven political instincts, not as his attempts to appease his openly racist base. No, I’m outraged that anyone would willingly allow this man to lead their party. I’m outraged by the banality of it.

Mitt Romney isn’t offensive or shocking, really. He’s just another overly-entitled rich kid who can’t understand why he can’t have something he wants. Given everything he could want his whole life, he seems incapable of understanding why he can’t have anything he wants.

And as the Obama convention bounce has transitioned, gradually, to the Obama lead, it becomes more and more clear that Mitt Romney, as Joan Walsh said, will never, ever be your President. As this reality sinks in at the headquarters of Team Mittens, we will see ever more bizarre, surprising, and desperate moves from the campaign.

In much the way that the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate proved, in retrospect, to be a desperate move by a struggling campaign, so too will the selection of Paul Ryan prove to be the beginning of the end of the Romney campaign. Things will get worse before they get better, I assure you.

And I will be here, every week for the next 50 days, conducting the brutal autopsy of his stillborn campaign.

Instead of talking about anything that actually matters and worth a damn.

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by Sandor Stern

Dear Republican Friends,

Regarding Healthcare: A Tale Of Two Countries…

In my previous letter I outlined the facts that spurred my questioning of your stance on healthcare, I thought I might offer two stories that personalize the issue and portray a sharp contrast in style and substance.

In 2008, my niece, J, living in Los Angeles was diagnosed with an ovarian tumor that was possibly malignant. She required hospitalization and surgery. At the time she was an employee at a firm that did not offer health insurance. As a single mother of a 14 years-old athletic boy subjected to sports injuries, she had purchased private insurance at what was an affordable rate for her circumstances – $275/month. The plan offered her one doctor’s visit per quarter and two visits for her son per quarter. Her co-pay for those 12 visits was 20% of the bill. Any visits beyond that would be paid out of her own pocket. Her annual cap on medical bills was $30,000. Her deductable for hospitalization was $5000.

My wife took her to the hospital where she was informed she would not be admitted without paying the $5000 deductable first. After a heated argument, the hospital allowed J in for a $1000 payment on my credit card. Surgery revealed a malignant tumor that had spread to the other ovary. Both ovaries were excised. The day following surgery while in intensive care she was informed that she must pay the remaining $4000 immediately. A panic call later and J’s father paid the money. Fortunately she had family to help her out and fortunately, the tumor had not metastasized to other organs and she required no radiation or chemo. She was discharged after eight days. Her hospital bill totaled $85,780.11. With the PPO reduction and the $30,000 annual cap, the final payment she personally owed was $24,557.07. Her surgeon’s bill was $3600 of which she paid $1200 out of pocket. Her oncologist, as an act of kindness, waved his fee. She could not afford to pay off the hospital bill and arranged for monthly payments. Her debt was sold off by the hospital to a collection agency. She has continued to pay $50.00 a month for the past 4 years. That has barely paid the monthly interest. She presently owes $22,000. She maintains her insurance policy, fearing to seek another insurer because of her pre-existing condition. Her monthly payments are now $325.

Her son is now 18 years-old and attending college. Because of the Affordable Care Act he is allowed to remain on her insurance policy – inadequate though it remains. And because of the Affordable Care Act the arbitrary annual cap on coverage has been eliminated.

My friend, D, is an American citizen who grew up in Canada. He was educated there and worked in the entertainment industry. In 2005 he arrived in Los Angeles to seek work in a playing field much larger than that in Canada. In 2007 he began having health issues that led to a diagnosis of a brain tumor. He had no health insurance. The cost of surgery and hospitalization would be more than $275,000 with an additional $200,000 if complications occurred. His neurosurgeon gave him a list of the four best surgeons in North America for his type of tumor. One of those surgeons was in Toronto. Since D had left Canada just under two years ago, his Ontario Hospital Insurance was still valid. He flew to Toronto and met with the Canadian neurosurgeon. A team of six medical specialists contributed their expertise to his diagnosis. Within six weeks he underwent successful surgery. The total out of pocket expense was a $100 co-pay that had been newly introduced by OHIP and which the hospital apologized for having to charge him.

A few months following his recovery he returned to Toronto for a follow-up MRI. He had not been feeling well but there was no indication that any of his symptoms were a result of his brain surgery. He visited an internist who recommended a cardiac stress test. Following that, D took a train to visit his mother in Cornwall, Ontario, 300 miles east of Toronto. While on the train he received a call from his internist informing him that his stress test was troubling and he should come to the office ASAP. D explained that he was on a train to visit his mother and would be back in Toronto in a few days. The internist told him that when the train reached his destination he should immediately take a cab to the ER of the nearest hospital. D balked. The doctor was adamant. He did as told. At the ER he was examined and diagnosed with a silent coronary. He was immediately sent by ambulance to a cardiac unit in Ottawa where he underwent angioplasty. He recovered from that bout. His total out of pocket expense for all that – ER treatment, ambulance ride, angioplasty and hospital stay was zero dollars.

He returned to Los Angeles in good health and good spirits. He went back to Toronto three months later for another MRI and six months after that for gamma radiation and an MRI. For the next two years he received an MRI in Toronto every six months. There have been zero medical costs to him.

Aside from the excellent treatment at no cost, D shared with me the most significant moment in his medical odyssey. When he first visited the neurosurgeon in Toronto, he was terrified. There had been much discussion in Los Angeles and in Toronto about the invasiveness of his tumor. It was wrapped around his brain stem. In removing the tumor, how much damage would be done to the healthy tissue? Would he lose his hearing? Would he be paralyzed? Would he lose some other essential function? He related those fears to the surgeon. The man’s response: “I will remove as much of the tumor as possible without damaging healthy tissue even if it means not excising all the tumor tissue. It’s a slow growing tumor and perhaps in five years I will need to operate again but maybe not. There is nothing compelling us to take it all in one bite.” That was a reassurance D needed. “Think about it.” he told me. “I was dealing with a healthcare system in which the cost factor no longer entered the equation. Can you imagine a surgeon in the USA having the freedom to work that way? He knows he has one shot at cutting out that tumor and getting every bit of it because the system here is controlled by private-for-profit insurance companies and a second surgery would not be covered. The annual cap on insurance outlay would take care of that possibility.”

As I stated previously, the Affordable Care Act has since removed the arbitrary annual cap on coverage that existed in 2007.

During the election of 2008, I told these stories to a Republican friend. He made no comment about D’s story, ignoring it completely. As for my niece, his response was: “She should have gotten better insurance.” Really? I was indignant at his dismissive attitude but this year I heard a similar remark from your candidate, Mitt Romney. When urging an audience of college students to become entrepreneurs he said: “Start your own business. If you can’t get the money borrow it from your parents.”

Really?

Your inquisitive friend,

Sandy

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