Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for March 16, 2025

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    MichaelAxelFleming  1 day ago

    The best way to rearrange the museum of fine art is to send in apes with sledgehammers.

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    lalapalooza Premium Member 1 day ago

    wOw and we have a new presidential symbol! … … ..well.. new pseudopresidential symbol.

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    Godfreydaniel  1 day ago

    What Queen Traitor Trump and King Musk are doing is definitely unconstitutional, if the Constitution means what it says about the separate responsibilities of the three branches of government.

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    thevideostoreguy  1 day ago

    …Universal is on line one. And Elon’s lawyers are on line two. I told them, “Sue Garry Trudeau, get what? A forty-year-old Pulitzer?” But they wouldn’t listen.

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    Godfreydaniel  1 day ago

    Of course, it would take a judge who was not an imbecile, nor a lunatic, or even just dishonest to his rotten core to make this correct ruling…..

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    Goose down  1 day ago

    Banana republic

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    DD Wiz  1 day ago

    Bill Clinton enacted his Reinventing Government package of streamlining restructuring (REIGO) in 1993, when he still held legislative majorities. It was passed by a margin of ONE VOTE. Al Gore was the one who actually drafted the plan in writing, which was published under the title Creating a Government that Works Better and Costs Less, by Al Gore (I still have a print edition of the book). All Republicans voted against it, along with several Southern Democrats who would soon re-register as Republicans.

    Republicans warned that it would explode the deficit and scared everyone into turning the government over to Newt Gingrich. Of course, the opposite happened. Deficits shrank each year until they crossed over into positive territory and then ran surpluses.

    Every year in his first term, Clinton reduced the annual budget deficits, by increasingly larger margins each year. In the first year of his second term, he passed a budget with a small annual budget SURPLUS, which increased in size each year of his second term.

    Only two presidents have achieved budget surpluses in the last 60 years — LBJ and Bill Clinton. And only two more president in that time has even reduced an annual budget deficit from one year to the next: Barack Obama, who reduced the budget deficits every year after his first, though he never got all the way to surplus, and Joe Biden, who has reduced the deficit each years he was in office though he also did not get all the way to zero (surplus) as LBJ (despite the costs of the Vietnam war, the Apollo moon program and trying to get a nascent “war on poverty” off the ground, which Nixon promptly crushed) and Clinton were able to accomplish. LBJ spent a lot of money, but his stimulus to the economy grew broad-based, widespread prosperity and a larger tax base; Clinton slashed government spending in this “Reinventing Government” (REIGO) program that not one single Republican voted for.

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    snsurone76  1 day ago

    Uh, could someone please explain the last panel? Are those supposed to be ICE agents? And who is “X”, with the sunglasses??

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    Baslim the Beggar Premium Member 1 day ago

    If you look at the number of Federal employees since about 1971, it has held near the level of 3,000,000. The largest number of Federal employees happened during the Reagan years. That shoots down some of the idiocy from the right.

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    The dude from FL  Premium Member 1 day ago

    I can’t add anything…tonight you magat cult can’t yell at me

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    Argythree  1 day ago

    Wish I could buy copies of just the last panel to send to my family members who voted for the orangeman…

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    braindead Premium Member 1 day ago

    Another cartoon that Trump Disciples will never understand.

    1. They would NEVER believe Democrats would reduce the size of government. As always, they will claim Fake News.

    2. They do not understand the concept of analysis and planning, followed by execution, since they have never witnessed it done. If you ask a magat WHERE to cut, they will mouth WF&A but cannot identify anything but political targets, like Planned Parenthood.

    3. Republicans have never even proposed cuts to the budget nor the size of the workforce. They would not know where to begin. The ONLY thing they know how to do is to scream at Democrats that THEY need to cut spending.

    4. They would have to take responsibility for the cuts. Republicans are terrified of taking responsibility. Even now, the cuts are being done, mostly illegally, by someone who holds NO government office. They all claim they have nothing to do with it.

    “I don’t take responsibility for ANY of it!”

    5. Most magats do not know that their weather app and TV weather forecasts get their information from the National Weather Service.

    .

    How many magats still believe that tariffs are paid by other countries?

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    RobinHood  1 day ago

    I need a photo-opportunity

    I want a shot at redemption

    Don’t want to end up a cartoon

    In a cartoon graveyard"

    Bonedigger, Bonedigger

    Press in the moonlight

    Far away from my well-lit door

    Got a Beerbelly, Beerbelly

    Keep these dems away from me

    You know, I don’t find this stuff amusing anymore

    You can call me Al. Call me Al

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    admiree2  1 day ago

    I like the last panel but Trudeau could have identified which one is Bro Big Balls.

    It would have been a nice addition to see the Fat Orange Clown in the background riding through in a golf cart obliviously stuffing his face with junk food as MAGAts genuflect and rejoice.
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    chief tommy  1 day ago

    Brownshirts!!

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    Rich88865  1 day ago

    Trump is poison

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    markkahler52  1 day ago

    NAFTA….all I’m gonna say….

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    Hidden-in-the-Trees Premium Member 1 day ago

    Thank you DD Wiz…I knew that Clinton had achieved a surplus (which Dubya promptly blew through with tax cuts and a war based on lies), but I didn’t know that LBJ had done so. The R’s definitely demonstrate how beneficial it is to have a very effective political message machine because even though it’s all a lie, they still pretend to be the “party of fiscal responsibility”. (..well, until very recently. NOW they are the party of tearing up the Constitution and trashing the government.)

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    pasharuzam Premium Member 1 day ago

    Lost in the Musk-Trump administration’s indiscriminate firing-and-get-rid-of-federal-employee frenzy are salient facts, such as

    *the federal workforce constitutes less than 2% of the total workforce of the US, not counting the postal service, I believe. (see OPM data)

    *most of the federal workforce, 90.5%, are located in the states, and their wages contribute to the local economies and local communities in which they serve. The late Senator Byrd of West Virginia was especially known for bringing home the federal bacon to prop up his state’s economy.

    *the overwhelming majority of government employees, over 20 million, actually work for state and local governments,constituting over 13% of the total US workforce.

    *the rational legal bureaucracy is necessary in democratic societies because it is a guardrail against the traditional patrimonial form of government, based on personal loyalty and patronage, which is what the likes of Putin, Orban, Modi, Erdogan, and have resurrected and perfected, and what the Trump-Musk administration are trying to impose on what will soon be considered a once-great country. (See Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic).

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    maxiesmom2 Premium Member 1 day ago

    I think even the Minions would actually do a better job than Musk & his gang.

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    cdnalor  1 day ago

    We’ll see before too long how much of what “Trusk” are doing now gets rolled back or cancelled by congress or the courts. These are certainly interesting times, as described by an old Chinese curse.

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    mourdac Premium Member 1 day ago

    But…but…Dems are the party of fiscal irresponsibility….

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    Tim Stahmer Premium Member 1 day ago

    The brown shirts on the Minions is a nice touch, Mr Trudeau. :-)

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    Call me Ishmael  1 day ago

    Has anybody noticed the supreme irony that Bill Clinton was from Arkansas and Al Gore was from Tennessee? And that both were from Harvard?

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    Gandalf  1 day ago

    So, is Trudeau saying that trans indoctrination in our country and in foreign countries is ‘essential’? And DEI indoctrination? And the war against women, where the Democrats can’t even define the word, but support men beating on women and invading their privacy? So many questions…

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    MIAMIJAC12 Premium Member 1 day ago

    Thank you, Forgot Al’s work.

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    Space_cat  1 day ago

    yes, by all means send in the Ham fisted clueless idiots who have absolutely no idea how to do something the right way, and have ZERO experience with how the federal offices of various agencies work. And completely fail to understand how COBOL II works, and assume there are civil war vet still collecting Social security, when clearly that is impossible. I didn’t for one seconc believe that any of these morons he is acting like a perverted scoutmaster with were actually smart.

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    CRUUNER  1 day ago

    Slick Willy, Obummer and Al “Climate Deranged” Gore all TALKED a good game 30 plus years ago, but that was all DEMONRAT lip~flapping as they did NOTHING to follow through, despite DD’s delusional ramblings above. Trump and his Dream Team are actually draining SWAMP and derailing Deep State Gravy Train Express, which explains daily Marxist/globalist meltdowns. I do SO enjoy watching LIEBERALS bawl, scream and stomp their little feet as their slush fund disappears!! MAGAMAHAMASA USA USA USA!!!

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    ladykat Premium Member 1 day ago

    You Americans (a great many of you, at least) are getting the government you wanted, voted for, and deserve. I feel very sorry for those caught in the fallout.

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    Redd Panda  1 day ago

    Latest casualty falling to musk the merciless?

    Donald Trump has signed an order to strip back the federally funded news organisation Voice of America , accusing it of being “anti-Trump” and “radical”.

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    grocks  1 day ago

    CRUUNER validates Lyman Elliott’s comment to Baslim the Beggar’s post.

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    oakie9531  1 day ago

    the minions would be doing a better job, than what we got now

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    RobinHood  1 day ago

    This weekend at USAID

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    Alverant  1 day ago

    Yep, having a plan and understanding what people do makes all the difference. Now it’s, “I don’t get it so I’m cutting it.” No accountants or analysts or even qualified programmers. Just a bunch of racist yes-men eager to cause pain because they can. Of course, the real President’s pet projects are untouched despite how wasteful they are.

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    Bruce1253  1 day ago

    This is all part of the Project 2025 plan to install an authoritarian government with Trump as King:

    *Fire massive numbers of federal employees and replace them with loyalists (Well underway).

    *Get Congress under Trump’s thumb (Accomplished, the caving in of Sen Schumer, was the confirmation).

    *Render the courts irrelevant (In Progress).

    *Emasculate the press (Well underway, Wapo, LA Times, AP smackdown).

    We are not headed for a Recession, we are headed for a Depression. Trump’s tariffs would get us to a recession all by themselves, add to that the deportation of our low skilled but necessary workforce, and the complete wreckage of the economy due to Trump’s very limited intellect and Dementia, and the large numbers of federal employees who are being dumped into the labor market at waaay to fast of a rate and we will be very lucky if we avoid a Depression.

    We were warned, but the powers that be thought they knew better. Now the question is, how long, how much damage do wel allow Trump to inflict on the nation and the world before he is removed as President and deported. Trump is PNG.

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    The Wolf In Your Midst  1 day ago

    But there’s a difference between reforming the government and destroying the government. Republicans want the latter, so that they can give huge tax cuts to the rich- which will be paid for with tariffs, which are a tax on purchases that mainly affect the poor.

    .

    Welcome to the Second Gilded Age!

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    Kymrsy  1 day ago

    Actually, yes, I did know that. And done properly; not slash and burn. AND, by doing so, they balanced the budget. Think DT’s gonna balance the budget? Ha! Think again.

    “The end of the Cold War, it turns out, and not Gore’s initiative, has probably had more to do with the scale-back than anything he had done. Almost all of the net federal workforce reduction from 1993 to 2000 occurred in the Defense Department, according to OMB and Pentagon figures — just as the U.S. military was massively scaling back its personnel from Cold War levels.”>

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    GojusJoe  1 day ago

    How could the voters turn against the Democratic party after 4 glorious years of Biden/Harris?

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    rs0204 Premium Member 1 day ago

    Red states and red state voters are going to be hurt the most by Trump and Musk, both of whom could care less about them. I sincerely hope it really stings.

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    sueb1863  1 day ago

    If Musk had actually wanted to reduce government waste and fraud, he would have brought in accountants and auditors who would have carefully gone over the records and done thorough investigations before making recommendations.

    But he really was just there to punish agencies Trump doesn’t like, so he brought in hackers who are in the process of destroying our systemic framework to make it easier for Trump to seize total control. Which he’s already pretty much done.

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    mindjob  1 day ago

    Too bad they went right bad to bloating the bureaucracy the second you were gone, AL

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    halvincobbes Premium Member 1 day ago

    Eh, it wasn’t so great then. Signed, former federal worker.

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    SavannahJim Premium Member 1 day ago

    Fox News: “Oh yeah? Well, TARRIFS!”

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    shawnc1959  1 day ago

    Elon Musk and his Teenage Mutant Ninja Incels.

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    rs0204 Premium Member 1 day ago

    NYTimes 3/16/25: “The countermeasures (tariffs) are aimed at industries that employ roughly 7.75 million people across the United States. The bulk of those — 4.48 million — are in counties that voted for Mr. Trump in the last election, compared with 3.26 million jobs in counties that voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris, according to a calculation by The Times that included examining retaliatory tariffs on more than 4,000 product categories.”

    What this means is that the average Trump voter is going to be hurt more than the average Harris voter. I consider that a sweet irony.

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    Mel-T-Pass Premium Member 1 day ago

    Minions. Perfect.

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    Egjen Skis Premium Member 1 day ago

    @Garry Trudeau, Thank you for this important retrospective.

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    tpcox928  about 24 hours ago

    Thanks, as always, DD. It is amazing that this history is actually out there, yet the GOP is still able to fool most of the people most of the time. As Yogi Berra once said, “You could look it up!” But, when one party spends 40 years trying to weaken public education…. And, come to think of it, if a middle school or high school student with MAGA parents came home and recited the above, stating his/her teacher showed them charts and graphs in school that day, the next school board meeting would be over-run with people demanding the teacher’s ouster and the end of DEI and Fake News.

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    rs0204 Premium Member about 24 hours ago

    Musk is hated so much that people actually pay for eggs to throw at his cars in the dealerships.

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    moondog42 Premium Member about 23 hours ago

    The ultimate punch line here is that Clinton/Gore took on this “reorganization” process in an attempt to get republicans to like them, and republicans rewarded them by mocking the whole thing and talking about ashtrays and hammers and stupid stuff like that.

    35 years later, the modern Democratic Party has STILL refused to learn the lesson that appealing to republicans is a political dead end.

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    Saurischia  about 23 hours ago

    We need new names for our parties – the destructive Fascist Party (formerly, Republicans) and the ineffective Conservative Party (formerly, Democrats). I think the fascists are waiting for a big demonstration so they can declare martial law. It will be interesting to see whether the military takes their oath to defend the constitution seriously. If not, in my opinion, we are totally screwed. There is going to be violence; I really cannot see any way around it and those with the guns will win.

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    Redd Panda  about 22 hours ago

    If you’d like another depression … send prices up, send confidence down, and remind the workers “You may have a job today, tomorrow? We’ll see how that goes.”

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    Richard S Russell Premium Member about 21 hours ago

    Whatever happened to the ordinary past tense “shrank”? Also flang, sprang, stang, drank, sank, slang, slank, stank, and swang?

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    amaryllis2 Premium Member about 20 hours ago

    Shrank, not shrunk, no matter what the name of that movie was years ago (should have been “Honey I Shrank the Kids.”) Shrank!

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    Fuzzy Kombu  about 20 hours ago

    Shame, shame! on Garry Trudeau, who slanders my heroes, the Minions! They couldn’t possibly work for DOGE — they’re busy working for Putin.

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    bunrabbit99  about 20 hours ago

    these cartoons are so tiring…preaching to the choir never changed any thing/minds.

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    Richard S Russell Premium Member about 19 hours ago

    Years ago, when people who were actually IN the government wanted to ensure that it wasn’t subject to waste, fraud, and abuse, they did something about it. They created multiple offices of inspector generals in each of the major departments. Anyone who sincerely wanted to clean up waste, fraud, and abuse would’ve started by reviewing what they’d found over the ensuing years and seeing where a few more screws might need to be tightened. Instead, what did Disaster Pumpkin and his wrecking crew do? They fired all the inspector generals. Shrewd move, ässholes!

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    David Huie Green LikeNobody'sEverSeen  about 19 hours ago

    Elon IS a lot like The Minions isn’t he?

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    christelisbetty  about 19 hours ago

    Since Trump wouldn’t answer this question’ if the Minions bothered to ask, WHY did those businesses move to other countries ? Is it so they didn’t have to pay taxes ? I’d like to know which countries have lower tax rates for businesses.If any businesses do come back, are they going to pay higher wages? Are they going to bring back pension plans ? Provide Health Care ? Profit Sharing ? When are your lower taxes gonna kick on ?

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    richardclayton1000  about 19 hours ago

    “Shrank,” not “shrunk.”

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    Richard S Russell Premium Member about 18 hours ago

    A word to the wise (or at least the sane): Replying to trolls (you know who they are) doesn’t convince them, doesn’t open their minds, doesn’t provide them with facts that they give two hoots in hell about, in fact doesn’t do anything beyond rewarding them for having succeeded in annoying you. In short, you make their day every time you waste YOUR time responding to them. Resolve today to starve the trolls of their favorite food in the future. They may not die off completely, but they’ll graze here less often.

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    braindead Premium Member about 18 hours ago

    Jim Wright nails it again….

    I just spent two weeks in Midwest farm country.

    I ate breakfast every morning in this sh*tty little town diner surrounded by farmers. Literally farmers, the descendants of generations of farmers. Some with actual fresh cow sh*t on their boots. They say the smell of manure is the smell of money here and they are not wrong. That’s how rural and farm country this place is. Here it’s soybeans and dairy mostly.

    They are the exact demographic most impacted by Trump’s idiotic manufactured trade war.

    They are decent people, mostly, or at least they think of themselves that way. And they ARE mostly decent, nice people. But they are also the exact demographic who believes Dr*g Qu**ns are coming for their children, school kids are getting gender change operations from the school nurse without their parents’ permission, and that every 14-year-girl will end up with at least one abortion per year if she doesn’t go to church every Sunday. They’ve never watched anything other than Fox News and they miss the hell out of Rush Limbaugh.

    For certain reasons, I visit this place every few months, or more often. I’m from here, originally. I could have been one of these people, if I hadn’t left for distant horizons as soon as I was able 40 years ago.

    When I was here under Biden, the farmers were all cheerful, optimistic, happy, and raucously hating the hell out of “Joe and the Ho.”

    continued….

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  63. Albert einstein brain i6
    braindead Premium Member about 18 hours ago

    …continued

    Now?

    Now, they’re all grim and somber, scared, sitting there talking in hushed tones over their eggs that cost $3 more per plate than they did last year — and $3 is a lot, this is a place where coffee is still .50 a cup. They have no idea what they’re going to do if this trade war continues. No one wants to say it out loud for fear of starting a panic, but they might lose the family farm. They’re all thinking it, you can see it in their weathered tan faces.

    But, hey, thank Gawd for Trump, right?

    And the only time they take their MAGA hats off is to praise Jesus and Elon Musk.

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    HodgeElmwood  about 15 hours ago

    It’s always the same. A Democrat president has to fix the mess left by the last Republican president, because of this truth: Republicans cannot govern. And they don’t want to. They want to RULE. It’s not the same, and as you can currently see, they are incompetent at everything except chaos.

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    Blueskyfox  about 4 hours ago

    Uh-oh! Where’s March 17th?

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