Chat Away

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Huuuuuuuuge thanks to both LL and Zizi for their wonderful posts today, both of which got an amazing response on the Twitter machine. Add this one to your collection of today’s must-reads, in case you missed it:

How Putin “Outsmarted” Obama: By Completely Surrendering to All of His Demands http://t.co/Np6MFgJ8VJ

— Spandan @ TPV (@thepeoplesview) September 14, 2013

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He’s good, this Obama fella, he’s good.

Now, chat away.

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PS From the archives:

Rise and Shine

A year ago: “The President hugs Stephanie Davies, who helped her friend, Allie Young, left, stay alive after she was shot during the movie theater shootings in Aurora, Colo. The President visited patients and family members affected by the shootings at the University of Colorado Hospital. Photo by Pete Souza, July 22, 2012

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The Week Ahead:

Today:

3:0: The President meets with Secretary of State Kerry

7:25: Delivers remarks at an Organizing for Action event, Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Washington, DC (Open Press)

8:10: Delivers remarks and answers questions at an Organizing for Action dinner, Mandarin Oriental Hotel (Print Pool for Remarks Only)

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Tuesday: The President will welcome NCAA Champion Louisville Cardinals to the White House to honor the team and their 2013 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship

Wednesday: He will travel to Galesburg, Illinois and Warrensburg, Missouri for events on the economy

Thursday: He will welcome President Truong Tan Sang of Vietnam to the White House. In the afternoon, the President will travel to Jacksonville, Florida for an event on the economy. On Thursday evening, he will host an Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan at the White House

Friday: The President will attend meetings at the White House.

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Time: Drawing renewed attention to the economy, President Barack Obama will return this week to an Illinois college where he once spelled out a vision for an expanded and strengthened middle class as a freshman U.S. senator, long before the Great Recession would test his presidency.

The address Wednesday at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., will be the first in a new series of economic speeches that White House aides say Obama intends to deliver over the next several weeks ahead of key budget deadlines in the fall. A new fiscal year begins in October, and the government will soon hit its borrowing limit.

…. The president will also speak Wednesday at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, Mo.

More here – and more at the NYT

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You’re Going to Want to Watch This Speech: I just finished reading the draft of a speech the President plans t… http://t.co/RhLratJJHO

— White House Blog (@WhiteHouse_Blog) July 22, 2013

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AP: Survey: Brighter U.S. Economic Outlook Boosts Hiring

Companies are increasingly confident the economy will grow at a modest pace over the next year and are hiring more, according to a survey of business economists.

Nearly one-third of the economists surveyed said their companies added jobs in the April-June quarter …. That’s the highest percentage in nearly two years. And 39 percent expect their firms will hire more in the next six months. That’s near the two-year high of 40 percent reached in the January-March quarter.

…. Optimism about future economic growth increased. Nearly three-quarters of the survey respondents forecast growth of 2.1 percent or more over the next 12 months. That’s up from two-thirds in the first quarter survey, released in April, and the most in a year.

More here

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OFA

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ThinkProgress: No, Obamacare Won’t Raise Insurance Premiums In Indiana By 72 Percent

On Friday, the Indiana Department of Insurance announced that initial rates submitted by individual health plan providers for the state’s Obamacare insurance marketplace would cost 72 percent more than currently available plans …. Gov. Mike Pence’s (R) administration was quick to use the figures to criticize the health law….

The problem is, the Department of Insurance didn’t really release “data” in the plural — it released a single data point. The $570 per month figure is the average of all of the submitted rates, including cheaper plans with less benefits (so-called “Bronze” and “Silver” level plans) as well as the more generous and expensive “Gold” and “Platinum” level plans. That’s like saying the average cost of a car in an Indiana dealership is $100,000 because it sells $20,000 Fords, $60,000 BMWs, and $220,000 Lamborghinis — technically true, but highly misleading.

More here

And see Jonathan Cohn – ‘Hoosier Hustle? Another Dubious Attack on Obamacare’

Also too – ThinkProgress: Tea Party Senator Concedes Defeat: We Won’t Be Able To Fully Repeal Obamacare

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USA Today: Vice President Biden is off on a six-day trade and diplomatic trip to India and Singapore.

…. The vice president and his wife Dr Jill Biden land Monday in New Dehli; they will travel to Mumbai later this week …. they arrive Thursday in Singapore…

… The Bidens will stop in Hawaii on their way back to the United States; they return to Washington on Sunday.

More here

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Must-reads

Racism on the Left: @Salon Columnist Equates Trayvon with a Terrorist, Obama with a Vigilante http://t.co/vjqmfDDYAK pic.twitter.com/pOpauCmkDC

— The People’s View (@thepeoplesview) July 15, 2013

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Peak Sirota http://t.co/sz4OUAk4f3

— Jordan Ashby (@JM_Ashby) July 15, 2013

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Gee, here’s a surprise — David Sirota is a giant douche. http://t.co/6cD8C7h7Uc

— Chez Pazienza (@chezpazienza) July 15, 2013

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The justice system failed Trayvon Martin the night he died by considering black boys expendable: http://t.co/LVyQThXr8g

— Eugene Robinson (@Eugene_Robinson) July 15, 2013

 

This and That

A red ribbon is hung from the North Portico of the White House, Nov. 30, to mark World AIDS Day on Dec. 1. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

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Michael Grunwald (Time): It’s really amazing to see political reporters dutifully passing along Republican complaints that President Obama’s opening offer in the fiscal cliff talks is just a recycled version of his old plan, when those same reporters spent the last year dutifully passing along Republican complaints that Obama had no plan….

This isn’t just cognitive dissonance. It’s irresponsible reporting. Mainstream media outlets don’t want to look partisan, so they ignore the BS hidden in plain sight, the hypocrisy and dishonesty that defines the modern Republican Party…..

…. we’re not supposed to be stenographers. As long as the media let an entire political party invent a new reality every day, it will keep on doing it. Every day.

Full post here

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David Firestone (NYT): Republicans reportedly laughed when they saw the Obama administration’s initial offer in the fiscal negotiations yesterday. The idea that President Obama might actually want to enact his campaign promises – tax hikes on the rich, modest Medicare cuts, investments in infrastructure – is apparently considered a joke to the party that has shown virtually no flexibility in the last four years.

But some of that laughter may contain nervousness, because there is more going on here than just a pathway to splitting the difference. The White House made clear yesterday that it is approaching these talks from a position of responsibility, and that it actually takes seriously the notion of old-fashioned bargaining. That’s something Republicans have refused to do — and now they realize they’ve been called out.

Full post here

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TPM – more at Salon and The Atlantic

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Deaniac (The People’s View): The president is in a fighting mood. Starting today, he’s barnstorming the country, getting the American people to pressure Congress to extend the middle class tax breaks, and to do so now. Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner presented the leaders of Congress with the Administration’s opening offer. That offer is heavy on revenue, tax fairness, and Medicare savings without affecting benefits. Here’s a short summary of what the president has proposed, from leaked details.

Full post here

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Liberal Librarian (The People’s View): Yesterday’s vote in the UN on Palestine has stirred a lot of emotions on the left; I’ve taken the time to read the responses across a few blogs this morning, and for the most part they’ve been considered and judicious. So here are my two pfennigs.

When the world’s three most powerful faiths declare a piece of real estate “holy”, that causes problems of a sort not found anywhere else. To the Jews, it is the “Promised Land”, vouchsafed to them by God unto the last generation. To Muslims, it’s holy because God walked in it with the Hebrew patriarchs, whom they consider earlier prophets; and, of course, they believe Muhammad made his Night Journey to heaven from the Temple Mount. To Christians, obviously, it was the land where Jesus lived, preached, and died. The deep emotional and religious attachments are not to be disregarded.

Full post here

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Kevin Drum (Mother Jones): There’s one particular strain of Republican reaction to their election loss that’s always given me the biggest chuckle, and today Paul Waldman highlights it: the absurd proposition that Mitt Romney never forthrightly defended conservative principles….

…. For months, conservatives yelled from the rooftops about how 2012 presented the sharpest choice ever in governing philosophies …. [they] claimed that this one was truly an ideological turning point, America’s last chance to choose what kind of country we should be. But literally within hours of defeat, they turned on a dime and insisted that the American people weren’t given a real chance to decide between two competing visions. And they’ve maintained this claim despite losing the popular vote in the House, the Senate, and the presidency, and despite the fact that demographic trends very clearly spell even further trouble in the future for their hardnosed brand of social intolerance and slavish dedication to the interests of the rich.

Full post here

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Two completely random pics:

catching up

Greg Sargent: ….. anyone who comes out against the proposal Obama outlined today will be asked a simple question: Are you saying that employers should dictate to female employees whether they should or shouldn’t have access to birth control coverage?

….  What kind of impact do you think GOP opposition to free contraception for female employees of these institutions will have on that gender gap?

….. a new poll came out just today illustrating how perilous this position may be ….. It found that a big majority, 61%, approve of “requiring employer health plans to cover birth control for women.” Only 34% disapproved. Independents approve 58-34; women, 67-29 …. The polling organization that published these findings? Fox News.

Full post here

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Amanda Marcotte (Slate): …. The fun part of this is that Obama just pulled a fast one on Republicans. He drew this out for two weeks, letting Republicans work themselves into a frenzy of anti-contraception rhetoric, all thinly disguised as concern for religious liberty, and then created a compromise that addressed their purported concerns but without actually reducing women’s access to contraception, which is what this has always been about.

…. what most people will remember is that Republicans picked a fight with Obama over contraception coverage and lost. This also gave Obama a chance to highlight this benefit and take full credit for it.

…. hijacking two weeks of the news cycle to send the message that he’s going to get you your birth control for free is a big win for him in that department … It’s all so perfect that I’m inclined to think this was Obama’s plan all along.

Full post here

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ThinkProgress

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Ed Kilgore: …. make no mistake: it just got an awful lot harder for conservatives to frame the mandate (as now formulated) as an assault on religious liberty that will drive Catholics back into the catacombs – or even affect the operations of Catholic hospitals and charities. Indeed, it will look a lot like one of those interminable disputes between “modern” and “traditionalist” Catholics – with the latter backing a church hierarchy with a rather notably reduced credibility these days – in which Catholic lay opinion is decisively, if often quietly, with people like Sister Keehan who actually do the charitable work of the church.

Full post here

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The Economist: …..For the past three years America has been walking softly, and it’s working very, very well. Ten years back, America often found itself isolated, struggling to pull together “coalitions of the willing” packed with small client states. Lately, we have been finding ourselves in the majority, along with the democratic world, while Russia and China front a dwindling coalition of the unwilling …. this reflects a smart, subtle foreign-policy presence in which we have done a vastly better job of looking at what other countries actually want, and seeing where our interests align, rather than trying to bully other countries into supporting our goals…

And to some extent, there’s a personal factor. Look through the Pew Global Attitudes project data on confidence in the US president. In almost every country, you’ll see a dramatic or startling increase in confidence between 2008 and 2011.

…. When Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice try to win backing for American positions at the UN, the exceptional popularity of the president they represent in other countries is obviously a factor ….

Full article here

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Don’t miss Liberal Librarian’s first post at The People’s View

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The Week

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Nice to see so much diversity at CPAC today:

Daylife

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Protesters from the Occupy movement and labor unions gather with an inflatable ‘fat cat’ outside the American Conservative Union’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference prior to an address by Mitt Romney

TPM: The awkward elements of Mitt Romney’s speech at CPAC Friday began even before the flailing GOP frontrunner opened his mouth.

….. he stood behind a pair of teleprompters and in front of a pair of fake Grecian columns … Just the other night, when he was giving his address amid the defeats in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado, Romney took a shot at the man he’s trying to oust from the White House for – well – using teleprompters and standing in front of fake columns.

More here

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You know, if the dog came with the sweater I’d buy it right now

afternoon all

The Capital Area Foodbank, Washington DC, Nov 23

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A gazillion thanks to those of you who provide links to posts on other blogs, really appreciate it, it makes it so easy for all of us to keep up with what’s worth reading.

Just a very, very polite request: please only include a few short extracts from the posts and then provide the link to the full piece. eg If it’s, say, a piece by Steve Benen that runs to about 10 paragraphs, just include about 2 or 3 paragraphs, or parts of 3 or 4, and then the link.

If we post most or all of the piece here then there’ll be no need for us to visit the blog itself, which isn’t fair on the author of the post in question. Thanks everyone.

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Mediaite

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Jon Hopwood (Yahoo): …. Barack Obama visited New Hampshire two days after Mitt Romney …. the events illustrated a substantial difference in style between two politicians….

… Obama’s appearance, in which the President displayed a fire-in-the-belly that was perfect for prime time and showed him in full campaign mode, was in sharp contrast to the more subdued political pitch made by Romney in Nashua. While Obama is cool, he can turn up the heat. The laid-back Romney, in contrast, comes across as cold….

Obama roused an enthusiastic crowd with his rhetoric. He was back at being the master of the campaign trail. Romney, in contrast, was rather flat …. Romney’s appearance brought to mind Clint Eastwood’s recent remarks about him: That if a movie-maker was looking for an actor to play the President, central casting would send over Mitt. Just what he stood for, Clint said, is anybody’s guess.

…. Romney was paired with the tall and also good-looking Kelly Ayotte. But there was something uncanny about the pair, something not quite human. Rather than fashion models, they struck me as two mannequins that had miraculously come to life and had escaped from Macy’s. There was a plastic quality about both, and for a candidate for President of the United States going up against one of the great campaigners of modern times, Barack Obama, this could prove fatal.

Full article here

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Thanks amk 😉

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ThinkProgress: Romney in Des Moines, Iowa today said that he isn’t “trying to put money in people’s pockets. That’s the other party.”

Thanks desertflower

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‘david sirota and the white leftist version of racism’

Deaniac (The People’s View): It’s kind of funny when you think about it, but silver-pen David Sirota thinks he’s got a better grip on race than the founding director of the Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South at Tulane University, Melissa Harris-Perry.

After Professor Harris-Perry’s piece in The Nation chiding white Leftist electoral racism of double standards against a black president received acclaim and attention, Sirota, a renowned fantasy-land pretend-Leftist, decided that he was going to take on Professor Harris Perry, by being too cute by half.

Sirota’s argument, on the surface, is that the elite white Leftist class – who overlap with the Professional Left about 90% – is really mad at the president not out of some double standard they set for a black president, but on the basis of policy. Or as David calls it, policy betrayals. Clever. Because we have never seen the attempt to hide denial of race-privilege behind a thin veil of policy criticism ever before, right?

…. the first African American president is not treated with the same level of respect by the white Leftist elite, nor do his accomplishments enjoy among them the same praise had those same accomplishments come from a white president. And this part of the thesis, unfortunately, is not at all difficult to prove, either: See post for detailed examples

… The racist undertone is also present in the latent expectation that once you have elected a black president, he needs to be a magician and magically begin a utopia according to your likings …. The truth of liberal white elitism and racism is based on true observations, and is not much better than that from the Republicans: that the black guy, who’s working day and night to keep the car from slipping back into the ditch and move forward is not pushing it hard enough or the right way, and so on and so forth.

Full post here

deaniac

Deaniac83 (The People’s View): …. Paul Krugman is a political rookie compared to Barack Obama. He is either unwilling or unable to actually look at the deal that was announced and realize what just happened: Barack Obama ate John Boehner’s lunch, and then he turned Boehner out to go preach to his conservative colleagues that this eating of the lunch by Obama is actually politically good for them.

I am not kidding. Nor exaggerating. I will show you exactly how that happened if you bear with me a little bit. But first, let’s get some details of the deal out of the way so that everyone has an idea what we’re talking about.

See the details here

…. Now let’s get to the fun part: the triggers. The more than half-a-trillion in defense and security spending cut “trigger” for the Republicans will hardly earn a mention on the Firebagger Lefty blogosphere. Hell, it’s a trigger supposedly for the Republicans, and of course, there’s always It’sNotEnough-ism to cover it.

No, the loudest screeching noise you hear coming from Krugman and the ideologue Left is, of course, Medicare. Oh, no, the President is agreeing to a Medicare trigger!!! Oh noes!!! Everybody freak out right now! But let’s look at the deal again, shall we? From the White House fact sheet, here is what the President actually agreed to:

Consistent With Past Practice, Sequester Would Be Divided Equally Between Defense and Non-Defense Programs and Exempt Social Security, Medicaid, and Low-Income Programs: Consistent with the bipartisan precedents established in the 1980s and 1990s, the sequester would be divided equally between defense and non-defense program, and it would exempt Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, programs for low-income families, and civilian and military retirement. Likewise, any cuts to Medicare would be capped and limited to the provider side.

Read that again. That’s what the media and the whiners are not telling you. The President agreed to no Medicare benefit cuts in the “trigger”. None….

…. As it turns out, if you look at the details, the President essentially gave up almost nothing in the triggers. John Boehner, as usual, put himself between two triggers (three, if you count the clock ticking on the Bush tax cuts), both bad for his party. McConnell is basically trying to sell his surrender pig with a little lipstick on. And Boehner went dancing to his conservative House morons about how great this deal is for them. But then by now, we should all have learned that John Boehner is very bad at his job, and that President Obama always eats his lunch, and leaves him there holding the teabag.

Full post here

‘how dan choi hurts the lgbt movement’

Deaniac (The People’s View): At Netroots Nation, Dan Choi was approached by OFA volunteer Nick Tschida, an organizer at one of Minnesota’s legislative districts who is working hard against a proposed state constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriages that will be up for a popular vote in 2012. So instead of giving this man kudos and shoring up support in favor of the effort to defeat the ban, Dan Choi insulted and humiliated the OFA volunteer by ripping up his Obama flyer and yelling at him. The problem? Nick Tschida mentioned that he wasn’t sure he supported full marriage equality.

….Someone like that deserves our gratitude, not the smug, condescending attitude that Dan Choi displayed. And if someone like that has to be nudged in the right direction on marriage equality, that is something those who claim to be leaders in the LGBT movement should be doing – and doing it with understanding, not humiliation.

….While Choi was badmouthing the President and his supporters, did he take a moment and flash through even a few of the accomplishments of this President for LGBT equality? As he sat on the panel, crassly titled “What to do when the President is not just that into you,” Choi provided every reason why not only the President but anyone who wants to make progress on major issues, including equality, should not be into people like these hotheads who beat up on those who support us.

….I am ashamed at the behavior of Dan Choi. And Nick, I apologize to you for Dan Choi’s behavior. I hope that you will continue to work for equality. Dan Choi does not represent gay activists. Dan Choi does not speak for me….

….Apparently, Dan Choi won’t vote for Obama if he does not endorse marriage equality. Fine. But I am here to tell you, Lt. Choi, that you cannot do worse damage to the LGBT rights movement than to help elect a Republican, which is where your rhetoric and scorched earth attitude, if successful, will lead. But I am also here to tell you that you will fail in that effort …. I will not let you hurt our movement and my brothers and sisters. You got yourself a challenge, buddy.

Read the full post here

Thank you sherijr

‘purity politics’

The People’s View: So Friday night, a government shutdown was averted. And already, you have people in some big orange “progressive” places melting themselves down over how that aversion was a loss for progressives and how President Obama gave in to billions more in cuts. So let’s look at what we know about the deal, what Barack Obama’s negotiating skills gave us…

Let’s start looking at it from the perspective of core Democratic values … the Republicans’ effort to defund family planning blew up in their faces, and President Obama and the Democrats protected this much needed service for poor and middle class women and families….

… The Republicans wanted to block any money from going to implement health care reform, and guess what? They didn’t get that either. And that is a big deal. Although probably the likes of Uygur would have liked health reform to be defunded (so they could claim Pyhrric victory over the failure of an un-implemented law that did not carry his favorite pony item)…

…What else? The environment. Democrats have successfully kept the Republican “EPA riders” out of the budget deal. You know, the same riders that would have told the EPA, in essence, “Carbon di-oxide is not a pollutant, you can’t regulate it!” Politico calls this a major victory for Democrats…

…Not bad, I’ll say. Three pretty big progressive policy initiatives were saved from the Republican axe. Remind me why some of the people who claim to be progressives are whining about this again? …

….how about the screaming idiots on the professional left didn’t take dumps all over the President’s initiatives in the first two years, under the guise of purity politics? How about they hadn’t helped along a depressed Democratic turnout? How about if they had actually helped do proper analysis and sell the benefits of health reform, financial reform, credit card reform, student loan reform, women’s pay legislation, among a myriad of other things? How about they didn’t help turn the House over to the Republicans wholesale?…

…we are laying in a bed that the whiny Left made for us together with the teabagging Right. It’s their own making. What we are looking for are solutions within that framework now. It didn’t have to be this way, but it is. What President Obama needs is for progressives to get his back when he’s fighting for our environment, for women, and for health care in a toxic, hostile Washington, DC…

So please, before you go off the rail with Daily Kos, FDL, Ed Schultz or Cenk Uygur, please do some thinking, and some fact finding. Cool the nerves. Calm down. And read. Then make your own judgments. I think you’ll be more pleased than you think.

Please read the full post here – it’s magnificent

Thank you Rita for the link