Independent Concerns

Obama Economy Boosts Wall Street, Not Main Street

2014-10-16T20:45:00.000-07:00

Fact Sheet: Obama Economy Boosts Wall Street, Not Main Street

Middle-Class Americans Continue to Struggle Under President’s Misguided Economic Policies

Since the President took office in January 2009, middle-class Americans have been saddled with slow economic growth, weak job markets, and smaller paychecks.

Following is an analysis, prepared by the Senate Finance Committee Minority Staff, on the Obama economy:

WEAK JOB MARKETS:When President Obama came into office, the national unemployment rate was 7.8 percent and rose to as high as 10 percent in October 2009. Today it is 5.9 percent, however:

The number of people who are not in the labor force has grown, despite a growing working-age population, by 12.1 million.
The number of people who are not in the labor force who want a job has grown by more than 640,000 during the Obama Administration. Many simply gave up on trying to find a job in the Obama economy.
The employment-to-population ratio has remained consistently below 60 percent during Obama’s tenure and has barely budged and has been at 59.0 percent since June of 2014; in contrast, the ratio averaged 62.9 percent between the beginning of the year 2000 through when Obama assumed office.
The labor force participation rate has continued to trend downward during Obama’s tenure, from 65.7 percent when he took office to its current low of 62.7 percent.
Payroll job growth has been tepid over Obama’s tenure: it has averaged only 135,000 per month since the end of the recession.
While over 7.4 million payroll jobs were lost during the recession, there has only been a net 4.7 million jobs created over Obama’s tenure.

SMALLER PAYCHECKS:Middle-class Americans’ take home pay has shrunk under the Obama Administration’s economic agenda:

Earnings have barely budged during President Obama’s tenure. Average hourly earnings, adjusted for inflation, were $10.38 when the president took office; nearly six years later and a full five years and two months after the National Bureau of Economic Research declared that the recession ended (June 2009), average hourly earnings are now (August, 2014) down to $10.34.
Inflation-adjusted median household income has fallen during President Obama’s tenurefrom $54,423 in 2008, the year before the president took office, to only $51,939 in 2013 (the last year of data availability), putting a squeeze on middle-class American families.
Inflation-adjusted per capita income has fallen from $29,173 in 2008 to $28,829 in 2013.
The number of people in poverty has risen over President Obama’s tenure. As a percent of the total population, 13.2 percent of Americans were in poverty in 2008, before the President took office. In 2013, 14.5 percent of Americans were in poverty.

SLUGGISH ECONOMIC GROWTH:The tax-and-spend agenda of the Obama Administration has led to record high debt and anemic economic growth:

Annualized growth in the inflation-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) has averaged a meager 1.7 percent over President Obama’s tenure (and averaged a tepid 2.2 percent since the end of the recession), in contrast to the long-run (1948 Q1-2014 Q2) average of 3.3 percent.
The Obama-era deficits have been as high as 10.2 percent of the size of the entire economy—deficit levels not seen since the years surrounding World War II.The federal budget deficit ballooned to $1.47 trillion in fiscal year (FY) 2009, fueled by the failed $800 billion-plus stimulus law that ended up costing American taxpayers close to $1 trillion, without any meaningful return to Americans in terms of improved economic outcomes.
Despite claims that budget austerity and the slashing of spending were the drivers of deficit reduction,the deficit reduction that has occurred since the outsized deficit in 2009 is entirely accounted for by higher federal revenues; not by spending reductions.
- Since the high-water mark of deficits in FY 2009, deficits have fallen. In August of FY 2014 the fiscal-year-to-date deficit was $590 billion, a $670 billion decline in the deficit of $1,260 deficit at the same time in FY 2010. Yet the deficit reduction was more than accounted for by higher federal revenue—up $747 billion for the fiscal-year-to-date in 2014 through August relative to the same period in 2010. Despite continuous claims of budget austerity and spending cuts, federal outlays were also up—by $76 billion for the fiscal year-to-date in 2014 through August relative to the same period in 2010.
- For the fiscal-year-to-date in August of 2014 relative to the same period in 2010, increased federal receipts more than account for (111 percent) of the deficit reduction of $670 billion that occurred; increased federal outlays account added nothing and, in fact, detracted from deficit reduction.
- Gross federal debt outstanding has risen by an unprecedented $7.2 trillion since President Obama took office, and currently stands at $17.9 trillion, which is over 111 percent of the size of the entire United States economy.

WALL STREET GAINS; MAIN STREET LOSES: The low interest rate environment engineered by the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration were designed partly to boost stock markets, rewarding Wall Street while punishing savers on Main Street and nest eggs of retired Americans:

Stock have soared, rewarding Wall Street—between the time President Obama took office and September of this year: the NASDAQ stock index is up by more than 198 percent; the Standard & Poor’s 500 composite is up by more than 127 percent; and the Dow is up by 99 percent.
Rates on Main Street savings accounts have plummeted to near-zero—for example, the average deposit rate on a 12-month, $10,000 minimum Certificate of Deposit has fallen more than 90 percent, from an average of 2.1 percent in December of 2008 to 0.2 percent in September of 2014, which is not even enough to keep up with inflation.
Social Security Trust Funds have also received lower returns—the average interest rates paid by the U.S. Treasury to the Social Security Trust Funds on special-interest Treasury securities held by the funds has fallen by more than 36 percent during President Obama’s tenure in office: The rate was: 3.635 percent in 2008, prior to President Obama taking office, but has fallen: to 2.917 percent in 2009; 2.760 percent in 2010; 2.417 percent in 2011; 1.458 percent in 2012; 1.875 percent in 2013; and 2.313 percent in 2014 through October.
Big Banks Have Gotten Bigger— total assets of the 10 largest banks in the U.S. have grown since President Obama took office, to more than $11 trillion, more than the $9.5 trillion of assets held by American households and nonprofit organizations as of the second quarter of this year.

Dear Mr. Obama (The Absurdity of the Border Crisis)

2014-08-01T20:33:00.002-07:00

(Found it on the internet)

Dear Mr. Obama
I'm planning to move my family and extended family into Mexico for my health, and I would like to ask you to assist me. We're planning to simply walk across the border from the U.S. into Mexico, and we'll need your help to make a few arrangements. We plan to skip all the legal stuff like visas, passports, immigration quotas and laws.

I'm sure they handle those things the same way you do here. So, would you mind telling your buddy, the President of Mexico, that I'm on my way over? Please let him know that I will be expecting the following:

1. Free medical care for my entire family.
2. English-speaking Government bureaucrats for all services I might need, whether I use them or not.
3. Please print all Mexican Government forms in English.
4. I want my grand-kids to be taught Spanish by English-speaking (bi-lingual) teachers.
5. Tell their schools they need to include classes on American culture and history.
6. I want my grandkids to see the American flag on one of the flag poles at their school.
7. Please plan to feed my grandkids at school for both breakfast and lunch.
8. I will need a local Mexican driver's license so I can get easy access to government services.

9. I do plan to get a car and drive in Mexico, but I don't plan to purchase car insurance, and I probably won't make any special effort to learn local traffic laws.
10. In case one of the Mexican police officers does not get the memo from their president to leave me alone, please be sure that every patrol car has at least one English-speaking officer.
11. I plan to fly the U.S. flag from my housetop, put U.S. flag decals on my car, and have a gigantic celebration on July 4th. I do not want any complaints or negative comments from the locals.
12. I would also like to have a nice job without paying any taxes, or have any labor or tax laws enforced on any business I may start.
13. Please have the president tell all the Mexican people to be extremely nice and never say critical things about me or my family, or about the strain we might place on their economy.
14. I want to receive free food stamps.
15. Naturally, I'll expect free rent subsidies.
16. I'll need income tax credits so that although I don't pay Mexican taxes, I'll receive money from the government.
17. Please arrange it so that the Mexican Government pays $4,500.00 to help me buy a new car.
18. Oh yes, I almost forgot, please enroll me free into the Mexican Social Security program so that I'll get a monthly income in retirement.

I know this is an easy request because you already do all these things for all of his people who walk over to the U.S. from Mexico. I am sure that the President of Mexico won't mind returning the favor if you ask him nicely.

Do you see how stupid this looks when you put it in writing? Logic is dead. Excellence is punished. Mediocrity is rewarded. And dependency is to be revered. This is present day America. When people rob banks they go to prison. When they rob the taxpayer they get re-elected.

Trey Gowdy Rips IRS on the House Floor

2014-07-25T09:13:00.001-07:00

Here, Here! The IRS needs a Top to Bottom Overhaul, They must SERVE all of us.

Fahrenheit 451 and the Flame of Liberty

2014-07-09T08:16:00.000-07:00

Interesting Followup Reading From Wikipedia:

Themes

Discussions about Fahrenheit 451 often center on its story foremost as a warning against state-based censorship. Indeed, when Bradbury wrote the novel during the McCarthy era, he was concerned about censorship in the United States. During a radio interview in 1956,^[68]^[69] Bradbury said:

I wrote this book at a time when I was worried about the way things were going in this country four years ago. Too many people were afraid of their shadows; there was a threat of book burning. Many of the books were being taken off the shelves at that time. And of course, things have changed a lot in four years. Things are going back in a very healthy direction. But at the time I wanted to do some sort of story where I could comment on what would happen to a country if we let ourselves go too far in this direction, where then all thinking stops, and the dragon swallows his tail, and we sort of vanish into a limbo and we destroy ourselves by this sort of action.

As time went by, Bradbury tended to dismiss censorship as a chief motivating factor for writing the story. Instead he usually claimed that the real messages of Fahrenheit 451 were about the dangers of an illiterate society infatuated with mass media and the threat of minority and special interest groups to books. In the late 1950s, Bradbury recounted:

In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.^[70]

This story echoes Mildred's "Seashell ear-thimbles" (i.e., a brand of in-ear headphones) that act as an emotional barrier between her and Montag. In a 2007 interview, Bradbury maintained that people misinterpret his book and that Fahrenheit 451 is really a statement on how mass media like television marginalizes the reading of literature.^[71] Regarding minorities, he wrote in his 1979 Coda:

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist / Zionist / Seventh-day Adventist / Women's Lib / Republican / Mattachine / FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse ... Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by the minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the library closed forever. Only six weeks ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with the censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. Judy-Lynn del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back in place.^[72]

Book-burning censorship, Bradbury would argue, was a side-effect of the these two primary factors; this is consistent with Captain Beatty's speech to Montag about the history of the firemen. According to Bradbury, it is the people, not the state, who are the culprit in Fahrenheit 451.^[71] Nevertheless, the role on censorship, state-based or otherwise, is still perhaps the most frequent theme explored in the work.^[73]^{[better source needed]}

A variety of other themes in the novel besides censorship have been suggested. Two major themes are resistance to conformity and control of individuals via technology and mass media. Bradbury explores how the government is able to use mass media to influence society and suppress individualism through book burning. The characters Beatty and Faber point out the American population is to blame. Due to their constant desire for a simplistic, positive image, books must be suppressed. Beatty blames the minority groups, who would take offense to published works that displayed them in an unfavorable light. Faber went further to state that the American population simply stopped reading on their own. He notes that the book burnings themselves became a form of entertainment to the general public.^[74]

Currently Applicable Political Quotes

2014-07-01T12:16:00.003-07:00

Tyranny Lives, we have seen it before......

From: Goodreads.com:

“When one with honeyed words but evil mind Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.” ― Euripides, Orestes

“Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.” ― Bruce Coville

“This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.” ― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.” ― Lysander Spooner

“When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.”
― John Basil Barnhill

The Politics of Global Warming

2014-06-30T07:06:00.000-07:00

This presentation and analysis by John Coleman rings true for me. "Climate Change" is born of Politics not Science. Follow the Money and you too can grow rich through the politics of "Global Warming."

A great scientist named Roger Revelle had Al Gore in his class at Harvard and the Global Warming campaign was born. Revelle tried to calm things down years later, but Gore said Revelle was Senile and refused to debate. John Coleman documents the entire story and shows how our tax dollars are perpetuating the Global Warming alarmist campaign even though temperatures have not risen in years and years.

Mobilize for Key 2014 Senate Races

2014-06-26T19:47:00.003-07:00

The 2014 Election Senate races are critical to STOP Obama's Agenda for good and begin to restore our Country. Fortunately A new pole by Resurgent Republic and Democracy Corps shows democrats hopes to maintain control of the Senate fading:

A new survey of likely voters in 12 key Senate races shows the electorate continues to skew Republican

The poll by Resurgent Republic and Democracy Corps, Republican and Democratic research firms, respectively, found that President Barack Obama’s approval rating in 12 states with the most competitive Senate races is only 38%—3 points lower than his national approval number.A new survey has more bad news for Democrats running in key battleground states this November.

Direct #Obama Quotes You Should Know

2014-06-25T09:31:00.002-07:00

With the Corporate Media's Blackout of anything reflecting poorly on President Obama, these are some positions and past direct quotes that everyone should know about:

“The thing you need to know about the Constitution is that most Americans don’t know much about it, and it’s easy to tell them whatever you want. If you throw enough `legalese’ at them, they’ll just say `yup, that sounds about right.’” - Obama in 1995, as a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago

“Getting rid of guns is paramount to the future success of this nation. And the sooner we can get rid of them, the better. I would personally take the guns out of every home in America and throw them into a lava pit if I could.” Obama during a State Senate debate in April 1996

“I think that if most Americans realized what Sharia law really was, if they got to experience it first hand, they wouldn’t be all that opposed to it. In fact, they’d embrace it.” – Obama in 2002, in an interview with MSNBC which was later scrubbed by the network.

“Having been born in Kenya, I understand the American dream better than anyone who was born here. I understand what it means to strive for change, to hope for a better future. And like millions of other legal immigrants, it’s something I aspire toward every single day.” – A quote from the first edition of Obama’s 1995 book “Dreams From My Father.” The quote was scrubbed from subsequent editions

“Look, did I say that? Yes. Yes I did. But that doesn’t change the fact that they are exactly how I described them.” – Obama in a Chicago Tribune interview in 1999, when he was asked to clarify whether he told students in his class that he believed Americans were the “dumbest people on Earth.”

“Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.” – Obama in 2011, when asked about the high cost of Obamacare

“I’m not going to win. I won’t win. But if I do, free cell phones for everybody.” – Obama “joking” with reporters on the campaign trail in March 2007

“I’m not going to answer that, and let me be clear about this. I don’t think you deserve to know every single thing about me.” – Obama in an interview in August 2007, when asked if he had any ties to ACORN

“They can live in our new world, or they can die in their old one.” – Obama in March 2012, when asked by a small group of college students what he thought about those Americans who disagreed with him over Obamacare

“America would be a lot better off if Florida sank into the sea, or got hit with more hurricanes.” – Obama making an off-the-record joke in 2013, shortly before an interview with CNN.

“There’s nothing `American’ about what Cliven Bundy is doing. Quite frankly, the only thing keeping me from sending in some drones is the bad press we’d get out of it.” – Another off-the-record statement made by Obama in April 2014

“America isn’t a democracy. It’s a constitutional republic. The President isn’t beholden to the whims of the voters. It’s his job to say `look, it’s my way or the highway. If you don’t like it, move.’” – Obama in 1998, as a professor at the University of Chicago

As collected and further expounded on in the National Report

Is the #USA Federal Government preparing to Fight the American People?

2014-06-24T17:55:00.002-07:00

Why is The Federal Government increasingly Arming the DHS, Local Police and Federal Agencies?

“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.”—James Madison

“Here [in New Mexico], we are moving more toward a national police force. Homeland Security is involved with a lot of little things around town. Somebody in Washington needs to call a timeout.”—Dan Klein, retired Albuquerque Police Department sergeant

Has the Dept. of Homeland Security Become America’s Standing Army?

If the United States is a police state, then the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is its national police force, with all the brutality, ineptitude and corruption such a role implies. In fact, although the DHS’ governmental bureaucracy may at times appear to be inept and bungling, it is ruthlessly efficient when it comes to building what the Founders feared most—a standing army on American soil.

Check Out this detailed article By John W. Whitehead at the Rutherford Institute which includes info on:

Militarizing police and SWAT team

Spying on activists, dissidents and veterans

Stockpiling ammunitionDistributing license plate readers

Contracting to build detention camps

Tracking cell-phones with Stingray devices

Carrying out military drills and lockdowns in American cities

Using the TSA as an advance guard

Conducting virtual strip searches with full-body scanners

Carrying out soft target checkpoints

Directing government workers to spy on Americans

Conducting widespread spying networks using fusion centers

Carrying out Constitution-free border control searches

Funding city-wide surveillance camerasUtilizing drones and other spybots

15 Internet Outposts for Liberty

2014-06-21T12:41:00.003-07:00

Trey Gowdy Takes Press to the Woodshed On Benghazi

2014-06-14T19:45:00.001-07:00

Trey Gowdy Takes Press to the Woodshed On Benghazi. Surprised how many of them buy the Obama administrations constance stream of Crap on Benghazi.

America 3.0 - a way forward.

2013-12-22T06:10:00.001-08:00

America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st CenturyWhy America's Greatest Days Are Yet to Come

Rand Paul on the abuses to the 4th Amendment

2013-11-20T20:14:00.003-08:00

"We were once outraged and dismayed and spurred to resist when British soldiers came knocking at our door with illegitimate warrants seeking taxes on our papers. Today, your government responds that there is no expectation of privacy once you consign your records to a third party. Your government applies that the Fourth Amendment applies not at all to your bank records, your Visa bill, your internet searches or purchases or emails. If not resistance, shouldn't there at least be outrage?"

Partial List of Obama "Firsts"

2013-11-15T08:28:00.001-08:00

File under useful info found on #Facebook.

First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner.

First President to have a social security number belonging to another man, from a state he has never lived in.

First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States.

First President to violate the War Powers Act.

First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party.

First President to spend a trillion dollars on "shovel-ready" jobs when there was no such thing as "shovel-ready" jobs.* * *

First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.

First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.

First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S. including those with criminal convictions.

First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.

First President to tell a CEO of a major corporation (Chrysler) to resign.

First President to terminate America’s ability to put a man in space.

First President to cancel the National Day of Prayer and to say that America is no longer a Christian nation.

First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.

First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.

First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke out on the reasons for their rate increases.

First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state it is allowed to locate a factory.

First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).

First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.

First President to actively try to bankrupt an American industry (coal).

First President to fire an inspector general of AmeriCorps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.

First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in his office.

First President to surround himself with radical left wing anarchists.

First President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half years in office, 102 to date.

First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.

First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.

First President to go on multiple "global apology tours" and concurrent "insult our friends" tours.

First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends paid for by the taxpayers.

First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.

First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense.* * * *

First President to fly in a personal trainer from Chicago at least once a week at taxpayer expense.* * * *

First President to repeat the Holy Quran & tell us the early morning call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound on earth.

First President to tell the military men and women that they should pay for their own private insurance because they "volunteered to go to war and knew the consequences."

Then he was the First President to tell the members of the military that THEY were UNPATRIOTIC for balking at the last suggestion.* * * *

First President to side with a foreign nation over one of the American 50 states (Mexico vs. Arizona).

How is Obama’s "Hope and Change" working out for you?"

I believe Obama should be arrested and impeached for only a few of his "Great Accomplishments." For being best President in many of his Democratic followers eyes... I feel this Great Nation in being misled in an immorally direction away from what it was originally founded on. I pray for the safety and promising future for our children. I pray our children do not become as greedy, ungrateful, anti-christian and un-patriotic as I see our current leaders leading their lives.

I commend you for reading all of this. And, I hope it has empowered you with knowledge and opened your eyes more.

Thank you,
Daniel S. Hudson— feeling patriotic.

How #Obama Sold #Obamacare

2013-11-06T09:53:00.000-08:00

Plainly and simply, how Obama Sold the ACA Law to Congress and the American People. No deception here.

Political Insiders Critique Obama

2013-11-06T05:49:00.000-08:00

This is a clear, succinct critique of President #Obama's current performance

Rand Paul is early leader for 2016

2013-11-03T05:13:00.000-08:00

Rand Paul demonstrates why he is an early leader in speculation for 2016. In a no-holds-barred interview with WSJ's Simon Constable, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul explains why the U.S. should stop giving arms to Egypt, why immigration reform is needed, why the government are bullies and what's wrong with the Affordable Care Act.

Read Rand's Book:
Government Bullies: How Everyday Americans are Being Harassed, Abused, and Imprisoned by the Feds

Stop the #NSA's Spying on every American

2013-10-20T10:14:00.003-07:00

Stop #NSA spying Now!

Fisa court is a nonsensical rubber stamp for the #USA Federal Government's Illegal Spying on every American. Great short video.

ACA Obamacare Signup

2013-10-15T21:01:00.004-07:00

Egyptian anti-Obama Bellydancer

2013-08-10T17:38:00.002-07:00

Egyptian anti-Obama bellydancer

NSA: Tap It Slow Jam

2013-08-01T04:39:00.002-07:00

Assault Weapons for Syrian Rebels, Not for U.S. Citizens

2013-06-17T08:08:00.000-07:00

There is something very sinister and scary going on here.

Filed under "Found it on the Internet"

Candidate Obama Promises no more Spying

2013-06-07T08:40:00.003-07:00

Hypocritical, No?

A Clear Reading of the U.S. Constitution

2013-05-25T07:35:00.002-07:00

Young people today need to honestly introspect, asking themselves if their own education was influenced too greatly by a liberal slant and whether they missed out on a clear discourse of the Founders of the United States and how different and great our fundamental documents are. If you do not have a clear Understanding of the Declaration, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, you have some homework before you sign on to today's political discourse. Start Here.

Obama and Holder - Dos Amigos

2013-05-22T06:02:00.003-07:00

Barack Obama and Eric Holder are connected at the Hip. One cannot exist without the other. They are one and the same. Both corrupt, both paranoid. Both divisive to the core.