269 Comments

Walter, it is a shame so many people had left (well it was a long day) as you delivered an outstanding speech for the conclusion of an inspiring day. Hats off to you.

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founding

hundreds of thousands of people watched on live stream so thankfully we have it for posterity.

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I did not know. Where was it streamed?

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Rescue the Republic website was streaming it live yesterday.

The entire video is on Rumble.

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Hi Deidre. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/live/cLhpZjBwDJI

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I caught it on Rumble.

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Yes. We must preserve Gfifter Con 2024.

May favorite part was Russell Brand praying. Solid gold.

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My only complaint about the entire rally is that they didn’t start it earlier, or do it on a Saturday when more people and their families could come. Otherwise it was a great day. And hundred of thousands of us were watching the livestream

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Start one in your own community. I think we all should.

It's not that hard. You rent a hall, or outdoor bandshell, or perhaps an outdoor picnic shelter.

Start with a small group. Maybe show these speeches?

The internet is not the only way.

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Oh yeah. If you book it, the people will come.

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Agree! Thanks to Rumble we can still watch all of the stream.

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Sorta like Hendrix at Woodstock.

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Because he closed it out & sent everyone away happy.

Nice!

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Refined ending, to a fine Day!

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You must be joking.

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You're quite perceptive.

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"For over 100 years, the U.S. government ‘tolerated’ freedom of speech because they virtually controlled the information that Americans received.

Whether it be from the government-controlled schools, or from watching one of the handful of ‘licensed’ TV stations, all Americans consumed the same pre-packaged “narratives.”

There was no threat to the government from Americans speaking freely, as long as the “narratives” were controlled.

But that monopoly has been shattered with the Internet.

We all choose our sources of information, who to follow and who to block, or just ignore.

While lies will always exist (both in and out of government) the American people actually have fighting chance to hear the truth!

It's now possible to hear/see/read the truth, and it can come from anywhere in the world, at any time.

Under these new circumstances, the government is finding freedom of speech intolerable, because their control over information is gone." - Ron Paul

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“Their control over information is gone.” We will overcome!

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And at the same time the internet is used to surveil, track, and manipulate at a granular level never before achievable with earlier technologies. Let us not be naive.

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We need to get to the last verse:

Well I’ve got a hammer

And I’ve got a bell

And I’ve got a song to sing

All over this land

It’s the hammer of justice

It’s the bell of freedom…

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Indeed. My second grade teacher used to bust out his guitar 2x a week for an hour and we’d sing along. It was the best part of the week. That was one of the songs we always sang. Now I understand…

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We did sing it in school. I had no idea and I’m sure the teachers didn’t either! We even sang this in youth group church services!!! OMgoodness! 🤯🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️

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🤣

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I hope they still sing in primary school. I loved sing-alongs from K through about second grade. My Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. O'Connor, played the piano very well. Remember "The Wheels on the Bus"? In fourth grade we brought our favorite records in to play during music class. I remember someone bringing in the LP Mr. Kirn refers to, Simon and Garfarkel's "Bridge over Ethel Waters."

Apologies for getting nostalgic.

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I remember, as a kid, I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to hammer out “morning”! lol.

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It is hammer in the morning

Hammer out danger

Hammer out warning

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OH! I tol don’t have it right! Dang! Lol. When did it get changed to justice and freedom???

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Only in the final verse.

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I must admit I only realized it was mourning when you spelled it out. 🫢

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I think it’s morning and then evening. So I doubt it’s mourning.

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I never believed that Peter, Paul, and Mary had a hammer or knew what they are for. Good song, though. If you want to hear our current situation, listen to their song Stewball. We have made some bad bets on the political races.

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PP&M's LP "A Song Will Rise" is the greatest pop-folk album of the era. My favorite track is a rendition of Dylan's "When the Ship Comes In," a song of righteous vengeance he wrote when miffed at his treatment by the staff of some hotel he was staying in with Joan Baez a Drink.

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Seeger, of course, was a Young Communist when young, a member of the Communist Party when older, but left some time after his service in WWII.

He was a lifelong socialist, and a fervent supporter of unions, workers' rights and the civil rights movement.

And, yes, it was strange that a young Republican mom had all those leftie protest songs on vinyl.

It's equally strange to see right wing populists pretending to take up the mantle of socialist protest against the capitalist war machine that is almost the defining feature of the right.

The hammer Seeger wanted and the hammer longed for by the American right, new, alt-, or otherwise, are different hammers.

Lay off our symbols, eh.

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Apparently you live in 1968. I don't blame you. The music was a lot better then.

I wouldn't recommend you time-travel til today. You wouldn't like it. You won't believe it, but the left of today loves Dick Cheney.

Like I said, best stay where you are.

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No, little dummy.

I live fully in 2024, aware of a whole world existing in 2024, unlike the provincial jingoballs that populate these threads.

Seeger was a lifelong socialist.

Now you can pretend that the gap-toothed halfwits and iron-pumping bros of the New Right/MAGAt Populists are inheritors of the old folkie left just as you can probably pretend that the millions of people killed by the American Capitalist War Machine were actually just killed by a soft ice cream machine gone loopy. That would be typical.

But "the left" doesn't love Dick Cheney. Your mirror image "America Fuck Yeah!" warpigs of the Democratic Party loves Dick Cheney.

The left loathes all of y'all.

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So, Harris/Waltz for you then?

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Michael is a Canadian Maoist, which explains a lot.

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I honestly think if I were American I wouldn't have voted after about 1976.

But these days I'd vote Trump just to watch the fucking shithole burn.

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And what glass house in what shithole do you infest, wise guy? I'm sure you're afraid to disclose it to avoid criticism.

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There are Rightists who prioritize the fundamental right of freedom. There are Leftists prioritizing equality/fairness in justifiable reaction to excesses of Rightists. And there are Totalitarians who prioritize themselves. Guess who runs the West?

The pro-democracy Left was hijacked long ago by pro-vanguard (Totalitarian) Marxists in order to upend the ideal of intranational diplomacy ("liberte, egalite, fraternite") in favor of war, until the Totalitarians achieved complete psychological and physical control. They did this by conducted war between classes until 1950s, when they began switching most of the effort to the harder boundaries of "identities". All their wars are deeply hybrid. So their path upward was paved with free speech (a big thing in the mid-20th century), but now that they have wide control, is now on the path to eradication.

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founding

I think you are stuck time traveling. Also think you’re conflating left and liberal. Dont worry you’ve got company in these threads. Must be a European thing?

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It wasn't me who decided that a 1960s protest song written and performed by a socialist and assorted other fellow-travelers was somehow related to a crowd of right wing yahoos howling for Democrat blood in the name of "free speech".

You do get that, right?

And I never conflate "left" (socialist, Marxist, materialist, pro-union, class-based) with "liberal" (capitalist, SJW, race-gender-whatholeyoufuckin obsessed, elite).

Americans, especially those on the right (like most of Matt's fans and followers), are always conflating the two: according to the morons, Kamala is a Communist and Obama was a socialist Muslim and transgender activists are Marxists.

Retarded doesn't begin to describe these people.

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I watched most of Rescue the Republic & didn't notice anyone "howling for Democrat blood." What I saw was a stream of speakers & singers pushing Free Speech. Walter Kirn correctly pointed out that John Kerry had recently wished that he had a hammer so he could create consensus, by eliminating "disinformation." Walter's use of his own childhood memories of protest songs worked perfectly in this context -- at least for those of us who aren't obsessed with communist imagery.

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Retarded does describe you, though.

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No, but it does describe people with an affinity for Mao Tse Tung.

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Maybe someday the true believers in socialism will read some history and realize that socialism never brings the hammer of justice or the bell of freedom. It brings only misery and destruction wherever it goes.

Jacobin France

Russian Revolution

Chinese Great Leap Forward

Cuba

Killing Fields of Cambodia

And most recently, Venezuela

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They're everybody's symbols, and you don't need to be a leftist to be a pacifist or enjoy folk music, you dick.

If you had a hammer, you'd mash your own thumb.

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As a wise man once said:

“Seeger, of course, was a Young Communist when young, a member of the Communist Party when older, but left some time after his service in WWII.

He was a lifelong socialist, and a fervent supporter of unions, workers' rights and the civil rights movement.

And, yes, it was strange that a young Republican mom had all those leftie protest songs on vinyl.

It's equally strange to see right wing populists pretending to take up the mantle of socialist protest against the capitalist war machine that is almost the defining feature of the right.

The hammer Seeger wanted and the hammer longed for by the American right, new, alt-, or otherwise, are different hammers.

Lay off our symbols, eh.”

Fuckwits like you and all you “Love it or Leave It! America Fuck Yeah!” types used to throw things at the people singing those songs, dumbass.

Memory Hole or Shithole? Which America Matters?

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"Right wing populists [are] pretending to take up the mantle of socialist protest against the capitalist war machine that is almost the defining feature of the right"?

As if your "socialists" had a monopoly on protest. Besides, your hypocritical, morally retarded faction was co-opted by the identitarian left, who put their idiotic race-baiting, libertine, perverse agenda before your precious class struggle. The new coalition present at the "Rescue the Republic" gathering and the growing MAGA/MAHA base demonstrates that your fantasy of socialist activism among the working class is gone, I hope forever.

You need to face the fact that the working class you presume to speak for is behind Trump, and this new coalition of anti-establishment politicians (it remains to be seen if this is an oxymoron) has managed to set aside their ideological differences to identify and uproot the people running your "war machine," the unelected permanent party apparatchiks who occupy bureaucracies throughout DC, especially the Pentagon and the security-state Alphabet Agencies.

Your anti-capitalist act is worn thin. Nobody's buying it anymore, except maybe a few green college freshmen and sophomores who will set that horseshit aside once they get a taste of the real world and end up adopting their parents' politics anyway.

Things change. Are you aware that Trump has inspired a migration of the warmongering neoconservative contingent of the RP to the DP? Are you aware of the endorsements Harris has received from many of these neocons, among whom are the architects of the "capitalist war machine" you so self-righteously sneer at, most notably Dick Cheney and his wife?

Libertarianism is taking hold, and your pussy-ass green-haired socialists and communists are limping off to the tar pits where they belong. I suggest you either face facts and join them in their shambling rout-step to extinction or adopt a libertarian, live-and-let-live, free-enterprise outlook. We of the MAGA movement don't mind. We gladly accept apostates and converts because we want everyone with an inclination to do so to help defend and restore the liberty that's being eroded by your corrupted whorish incoherent left wing.

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"Things change. Are you aware that Trump has inspired a migration of the warmongering neoconservative contingent of the RP to the DP? Are you aware of the endorsements Harris has received from many of these neocons, among whom are the architects of the "capitalist war machine" you so self-righteously sneer at, most notably Dick Cheney and his wife?"

This is the defining feature of American political confusion/ignorance where the whole notion of "the left" is concerned. You think that a shift of corrupt warmongering shitbags from the Dems to the Repugs has "political" meaning. It doesn't.

I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of "anti-capitalism" and the American "left" in general.

Bottom line: you are pretty much all liberals of one variety or another. As Patrick Deneen argued very persuasively in Why Liberalism Failed, American "politics" takes place within a range from free market "economic" individualism (so called conservatives, libertarians, alt/new right) to "social" individualism (gay rights, women's rights, trans rights, civil rights, my right to identify as a parakeet and have sex by shoving Barbie dolls up my bum while listening to Madonna).

None of this is "left".

Both sides believe in capitalism. And capitalism, as we have witnessed for hundreds of years, requires a strong state to keep it humming. Anyone who actually believes that free markets occur naturally and can operate with minimal state involvement is hallucinating.

Of course, like the cliche "socialist" who when referred to the Soviet Union or the Cultural Revolution as examples of socialism says "But that wasn't really socialism" your free market libertarian will say of any particular period of capitalism's reality that "that isn't really capitalism".

The irony should be hilarious but ideologues' lack of a sense of humor is a defining characteristic of the ilk.

Capitalism, while an inarguably dynamic system for explosive economic growth, is not concerned with "freedom" for the helot class that goes beyond "shopping". As we see in the contemporary US, the bought and paid for corrupt fucks that you all elect to rule you will clamp down on free expression or any other freedom if there is a sense of threat to capital.

This New Right and its apparent drive to pull back from maintaining the empire through endless war will come up against the reality of capital's need to control resources around the globe, to dominate markets around the globe, and to have a lot of shit poor humans without any civil rights at all to work in whatever shit jobs capital needs done.

When Big Pharma stands to rake in billions you can't let yahoos speak out against the product, right? And morons blame the gubmint.

If enough of the world manages to pull out of the US dominated capitalist sphere (to set up their own version of course) and it begins to genuinely threaten the bottom line of western capital, there will be wars and if necessary a big fucking war.

And the first people to shout and parade and encourage someone's children to get out there and fight will be "the right" no matter what its demagogues were telling them 5 minutes before the sirens go off.

When what you think you are defending is one thing and what you are actually defending is rich pigfuckers you find it extremely difficult to face that particular reality.

And that is why America and its culture/society have become more and more the kind of insane clown world that Taibbi so eloquently evokes in his best work.

Shame that he partakes of the disease when he can't see what "I'm American, Motherfucker" really means.

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Another dupe who tries to weasel out of the "left" because he doesn't like where it went, leaving him high and dry with their prattle about race and the bizarre medical experiments they call "trans." Go grovel at the feet of the French and the Frankfurt/Frankenstein School.

Begone, troll, I'm done with thee.

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Those were our songs in that era-we loved them in spite of the protest.

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your left right paradigm blinds you

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Hardly.

As someone posted in Notes earlier:

"American rightists no matter how much esoteric literature they read will always, at heart, be evangelical j.p morganite bootstrapists who’d rather die of a common cold than share a single dollar with their community"

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Michael the misanthrope, Michael the nihilist, the only reason you claim to be a person of the left is because you love the prospect of dishing out pain and suffering. "The Left" is not a program so much as it is an ideology to cloak your psychopathic and sociopathic tendencies. Those tendencies are not a bug, they are the main feature.

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lol... William the right wing bastard who thinks wanting better things for people other than himself and his family (?) is a form of mental illness?

You fucks are all the same.

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Ahhhhh. Thanks for the knowledge

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I like Trini Lopez's version best.

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Funny though- the original song posted here says;”I’d hammer out danger, I’d hammer out ‘mourning’. Yes? When did the lyrics change because I remember “justice “ and “freedom” too. But that’s not here in the original.

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Hmm I remember mourning and danger. Only

Strange. Perhaps someone did their own remix?

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Had to be a remix. I guess.

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Nothing was changed. Hammer out danger, hammer out warning.

The last stanza It's the hammer of justice

It's the bell of freedom

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Walter Kirn is a national treasure!

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To borrow his own words, he is the best we have.

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Walter, you be a subtle Mofo…

I didn’t know where you were going with that until you pulled five strings together and wrapped it up like a present.

Now, I made a quick joke earlier about changing Racket News to Hammer Communications, but you make me think it’s a better idea than I realized.

Tell Taibbi I’ll pay for a new sign.

Congratulations on a great 5-minute speech.

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Is “Hammer Time” too on the nose?

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I like it!

It's stronger and less cynical than "Racket News"....

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I never get to work this into a comment, but Racket always reminds me of my favorite line from all of Fawlty Towers:

Sybil Fawlty: “Turn down that racket!”

Basil: “Racket!?! Racket!?! This is Brahms! Brahms third Racket!!”

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😅😂🤣

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Both Walter and Matt stood tall for the 1st Amendment and uncensored freedom of expression.

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If I had a hammer, I would board up John Kerry's mouth.

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bestuvall

just now

When I think of Kerry I think of Bang Bang Maxwells hammer came down upon his head. bang bang Maxwells hammer made sure he was dead. lalallala

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🤣 good one!

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Bang, bang maxwell’s hammer made sure that he was 😵 ☠️

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Now now, we're for free speech, remember?

I'd let him say it but use the hammer to nail up a sign behind him everywhere he goes reporting for duty that says "Fascist"

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2 legit 2 quit.

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I wish I’d had his talent for marrying money.

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If it weren't for Elon Musk buying Twitter, I would not think we could have a hammer anymore.

More people have the hammer every day now.

Let freedom ring!

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I'm down to hammer ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL over this land.

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WALTER IS THE HAMMER!!!

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He shall henceforth be known as Walter "The Hammer" Kirn

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Walter rules!

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I'm so proud to be a Racket subscriber, to have Matt and Walter standing up for us and with us!

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Well done Walter! Laughed out loud with "If they had a hammer they'd hammer out disinformation, if they had a hammer they'd hammer out vaccine hesitancy. They'd hammer out Kennedy, they'd hammer out Matt Taibbi" 🎶👏🏻

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I was hoping Walter would add "and they'd hammer out all of YOU [pointing to the audiance]". A splendid speech nonetheless.

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Walter! You rock!

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Pretty sure Walter whipped this up the day of...

And what a gem it was!!!

Salute!

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Refuse. Resist. 🔨

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Deny. Defy.

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