HACKS LIKE US: In our view, this was ugly stuff!

TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 2023

It's peddled by Hacks Like Ours: Rachel Maddow spilled out of the clowncar at 9 o'clock last night.

It would be hard to create a dumber show than the one the cable star authored. This is the way it goes at times like these, when a red world authored by Hacks Like Theirs is countered by a blue tribal world constructed by Hacks Like Us.

According to experts, "it's all anthropology now;" it's nothing more than a referendum on Human Mental Functioning at Times of Tribal Conflict. This brings us back to the two-hour program staged last Friday by Nicolle Wallace, a popular blue tribe cable host who is being paid millions of dollars to offer us programs like this.

On the front page of Today's New York Times, a person can read this headline:

World Has Less Than a Decade to Stop Catastrophic Warming, U.N. Panel Says

Lucky for us, we blue tribe viewers won't hear about that on Wallace's "cable news" show.  In essence, we're going to hear about one favored topic. That glorious topic is this:

Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Jail!

This is the topic which brings us back, craving much much more. It explains the length of last Friday's opening segment—but also, it explains the ugliness of the highly selective presentation which came later on in the program's first hour.

How did Wallace start her program? How else! She began her program with a segment devoted to a topic the Times was reporting under this headline:

Judge Rules Trump Lawyer Must Testify in Documents Inquiry

The Times' news report dealt with a relatively minor part of the federal investigation into Donald J. Trump's handling of classified documents. 

In the next day's print editions, the relatively minor report appeared on page A16, five pages into the National section. On Deadline: White House, the judge's ruling triggered an uninterrupted opening segment which ran a full 24 minutes.

Every possible bit of legal minutia was frisked, giving viewers a chance to savor the possibility of Donald J. Trump being frog-marched off to jail. So it goes on blue "cable news," in which every other aspect of world and national news is disappeared in service to tribal longings.

(Are immigrant children currently working overnight shifts in dangerous factory settings? On blue cable programs like Wallace's, you haven't heard about that lately—and you can feel entirely sure that you'll never be asked to hear about it ever again!)

To our practiced eye and ear, Wallace has been getting angrier lately, even as indictment seems to be drawing near. Once again, she was tilling the fields this day, dreaming of Trump in jail. 

Today, we'll focus on an ugly segment which came in the second half of Friday's first hour. It began as she introduced Rep. Norma Torries (D-CA), a good and decent person (and a remarkable high achiever) who was way out over her skis on this unfortunate occasion.

Smiling her welcoming TV smile, Wallace welcomed Torres to the program. Each woman was wearing Kelly green—technically, a shade of chartreuse which is worn as a tribute to We Irish.

A visual had already announced the topic of this segment. The visual had featured this headline:

NBC NEWS
Republicans launch an investigation into the Jan. 6 committee that investigated the riot

For better or worse, the House GOP was going to stage an investigation of the work of the January 6 committee. Wallace and Torres could have discussed the wisdom of this plan, or they could have done what they did instead.

What did they do instead? Instead, they focused on an extremely serious charge which had been directed at Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), the chairman of the House committee which would conduct the probe.

(Torres is the top Democrat on the committee—the committee's "ranking member.")

On what extremely serious charge did Wallace choose to focus this day? Along with Torres herself, she focused on an ugly and poisonous claim—a claim which has long since been rejected by Capitol Police—about something Loudermilk did on the day before January 6.

Had Loudermilk tried to help the insurrectionists stage the January 6 riot? Poisonously, Wallace and Torres continued to advance this insinuation, absent-mindedly forgetting to mention the result of the much earlier official investigation into this poisonous charge.

For the record, we wouldn't vote for Loudermilk ourselves. As far as that goes, we'd be slow to vote for Torres after seeing her conduct this day.

Meanwhile, people like Wallace will always be with us, amassing millions of dollars by pleasing the hearts of us rubes. At one time, she focused on pleasing the red tribe's members. Today, she services rubes like us.

At any rate, Wallace absent-mindedly forgot to mention the fruit of that earlier investigation on this poisonous day. Below, you see part of the AP's news report concerning the results of that official probe into Loudermilk's conduct.

Had Loudermilk been helping the insurrectionists on January 5? What you see below is part of the AP's report about that poisonous charge, as published by The Hill in June 2022:

Police: Republican’s tour of Capitol complex not suspicious 

Police have determined there was nothing suspicious about a tour of two Capitol office buildings that a House Republican gave to about 15 people the day before Jan. 6, 2021, when rioting supporters of then-President Donald Trump attacked the Capitol.

The House committee investigating the 2021 insurrection examined whether rioters had been involved in reconnaissance and surveillance before the attack, and Democrats suggested some Republican members may have helped them. But there has been no public evidence of that.

Rep. Barry Loudermilk, a Republican from Georgia, was simply showing his constituents around, Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger in a letter sent Monday.

[...]

The Capitol complex includes 20 buildings and facilities, including House and Senate offices. Underground tunnels connect most of the buildings to the Capitol.

“At no time did the group appear in any tunnels that would have led them to the U.S. Capitol,” Manger wrote in the letter.

[...]

Capitol Police say the tour was thoroughly examined and there was nothing suspicious about it.

“There is no evidence that Representative Loudermilk entered the U.S. Capitol with this group on January 5, 2021,” Manger said. “We train our officers on being alert for people conducting surveillance or reconnaissance, and we do not consider any of the activities we observed as suspicious.”

So went the official probe way back in June of last year. Nine months later, on last Friday's Deadline: White House, Wallace and Torres forgot to mention these inconvenient facts as they conducted their poisonous conduct.

Almost surely, our blue tribe decoder rings will help us see that Chief Manger is just another part of the underground Proud Boys conspiracy. That said, we'll mention one flaw with the AP report as it appears above.

"Democrats suggested some Republican members may have helped" the rioters? Dearest darlings, please!

Back in the day, Democrats had aggressively advanced that remarkable accusation! Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) had been the leading grand inquisitor, as reported in January 2021 by her hometown publication, Northjersey.com

Here's what Rep. Sherrill said about Capitol 'reconnaissance' tours, investigation demand

Rep. Mikie Sherrill continued Thursday to push for an investigation into why she saw groups of people being given tours of the Capitol the day before an insurrection took place that resulted in members of Congress being rushed to safety, five deaths and a growing list of suspects charged with federal crimes.

Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot, also promised to push to rid Congress of any member who provided "aid and comfort to insurgents who attacked the Capitol," saying that "they can't be a part of this body. And I'm going to make sure they are not."

[...]

The concerns all stem from Sherrill and some of her colleagues who say they saw an "extremely high number of outside groups" touring the Capitol on Jan. 5. However, no direct link has been made between those tours and the insurrection the following day. That is what Sherrill wants investigated.

On Wednesday, Sherrill and more than two dozen of her colleagues submitted a letter demanding an immediate investigation to probe "suspicious behavior and access given to visitors to the Capitol Complex on Tuesday, January 5, 2021, the day before the attacks on the Capitol."

"There's just this sense from members of Congress that they had an inside understanding of the Capitol complex, which was chilling, that they had done some sort of reconnaissance, or had inside information about the layout," Sherrill said Thursday.

The "reconnaissance" tours of the Capitol first came to light on Wednesday when Sherill held a Facebook Live to discuss the events of the past week and the then-impending impeachment of President Donald Trump. About 12 minutes in, she revealed that she had seen tours being conducted the day before the insurrection.

Wisely or otherwise, Sherrill had been full of accusations back in real time. (Others had cheered her along.) 

Her accusations had arrived in the plural. She had referred to an "extremely high number of outside groups" spotted touring the Capitol Complex, or perhaps touring the Capitol, on January 5. 

She used the term "aid and comfort," a bit of a loaded term.

That's where this whole thing got started. By now, Hacks Like Us have been reduced to slimy insinuations about one (1) Republican member—a person who was cleared by Capitol Police roughly nine months ago.

As far as we know, Sherrill has never explained her initial sweeping claims. The gruesome Wallace, smiling her convincing mile, joined with Torres to continue what's left of this sliming on last Friday's show.

Please note: Part of the excitement in this matter stemmed from the slippery conflation of "the Capitol Complex" with "the Capitol." That said, Wallace played the role of Tailgunner Joe as she fed off Torres last week.

A few days ago, we noted similar behavior by a Democratic state rep in the battleground state of Florida. Anthropologists widely assure is that the human brain is wired this way—is wired to produce such conduct at times of tribal war.

We aren't going to transcribe the insinuations offered by Wallace and Torres on this ugly and poisonous day. (Presumably, MSNBC stopped creating transcripts last year to make it harder to discuss the things its tribunes say.)

We aren't going to execute a transcription. That said, if you want to observe the slimy behavior to which qwe refer, you can just click here for the Internet Archive, then search on "Loudermilk."

You'll be seeing ugly behavior by a self-described "political communicator" who should never have been put on the air by our own corporate channel. Concerning Loudermilk's alleged behavior of January 5, please note the way Wallace overstates even the most elementary facts contained in the original rejected charge.

Final point:

The January 6 committee's final report contains one very small, rather slimy reference to this matter. We won't be shocked if the probe of the committee's work comes up with a few decent points.

The committee's final report includes one tiny reference to the matter at hand. Needless to say, Wallace read it, vastly overstating its prominence. You can seek it out by clicking here, then searching on "Loudermilk.".

For our money, slimy behavior of that type popped up at various times as the January 6 committee pursued its investigation. At one time, we blue tribe members hated the Cheneys for their attraction to this sort of thing. 

Now, we love them when they do it! This is simply the way of the world, weeping top experts all say.

This afternoon: Rachel exits the car


35 comments:

  1. "According to experts, "it's all anthropology now;" it's nothing more than a referendum on Human Mental Functioning at Times of Tribal Conflict."

    Bill Maher is busily comparing our political divisions to those in Northern Ireland, ignoring all of the differences in time and place between their Troubles and our political divide. Similarly, Somerby glosses all of the specifics of the current political climate to pretend that conflict is conflict, no matter what is happening that may be unique to a situation. That is black-and-white thinking, lazy thinking. And it is wrong.

    We are nothing like Northern Ireland and we are nothing like previous anthropological peoples. Trump is not like past politicians and the right's tendency to think in conspiracy theories is nothing like the way the left thinks.

    Ask yourself why Somerby is so busily spreading this propaganda to the left. Then you might understand his purposes and why he is here telling lies. Why he so desperately wants us to believe that the left and right are alike when we couldn't be more different.

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    Replies
    1. I think Somerby is trying to get us to think more clearly.

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    2. Hector, you need to look into hectoring. It does not produce clear thought.

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    3. I am not anthropological.

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    4. Northern Ireland, like the whole of Ireland, was occupied by the British for hundreds of years. The people in the main part of Ireland conducted an ongoing insurgency against that occupation, which they ultimately won. Those supporting the English occupiers tended to be Protestant and fled to the Northern tip of Ireland, mainly Belfast, where they continued to occupy and oppress the native Irish (who were largely Catholic) using an occupying army and police force. The remaining Irish who wanted to unify the country started a terrorist campaign in England involving bombing and violent attacks. Meanwhile, the occupiers in Northern Ireland clamped down and became more oppressive, enacting their own random violence and targeting the opposition leadership (Sinn Fein and the IRA). Ultimately, the violence became intolerable and a peace was negotiated that involved greated home rule for Northern Ireland, less discrimination against the native, Catholic Irish, and greater representation in the British Parliament. Many Irish still want to be a unified country and had hopes that might occur under a unified EU, but Brexit stopped that and revived the tensions in Northern Ireland, arising because the main part of Ireland is part of the EU while the Northern British part is part of Great Britain, which is no longer part of the EU. So the struggles continue.

      This is nothing at all like what is happening the the USA. First, there is no long time occupying foreign power in either the red or blue states. Second, there is not a religious divide -- there are Christians in both the red and blue tribes. Third, this is not an economic struggle between the two factions, even though the red states are worse off than the blue ones. Fourth, Q-Anon, conspiracy theories, deep state are not comparable to anything in the Irish rebellion against occupation. Fifth, the scale of the violence and the scale of the repression are not at all comparable. Sixth, the Irish have their own language that is not English, something that is not true in the USA. Seventh, major supporters of the IRA are exiles who became American citizens yet still support their Irish causes. That may be comparable to Russian involvement, but there will be no negotiated peace between red and blue tribes that involves Russian -- Russia's goal is not to restore a unified Ireland but to dominate a weakened USA. Eighth, the ignorance and stupidity of the red tribe has no equal anywhere else in the world, and certainly not in Ireland, which is the birthplace of wit, humor, clever language play and a rich literature that has won many Nobel prizes, especially adjusted for the size of the nation and its population. Ninth, there is no comparable white supremacist movement in either part of Ireland, no racist history involving subjugation based on skin color, no fraught history of atrocity against indigenous people, and no ongoing caste system based on skin color. To ignore that is to fail to understand the red/blue divisions in our own country.

      Bill Maher is an idiot.

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    5. Cherry picking facts in order to spew out garbage like Somerby does daily, and then pushing misguided notions about anthropology - these are highly unlikely to lead to clearer thoughts.

      Anthropology tells us that for 95% of our existence we lived in communal and egalitarian societies; decidedly not tribal in the way Somerby suggests (he’s never bothered to crack a book on the subject).

      More recently, we humans transitioned to sedentary agricultural societies, which led to surpluses, commodifications, and private ownership of public resources; this is when we first really see the widespread obsession with dominance, which disrupted us in a way that led to our current state of non stop conflict between those seeking our natural state of equality and those seeking the emergent and troublesome trait of dominance.

      Lesson over, Somerby, now here’s your pointy hat, go stand in the corner.

      Delete

  2. tl;dr, but thank you, dear Bob, for documenting this minor portion of the latest liberal atrocities.

    "According to experts, "it's all anthropology now;" it's nothing more than a referendum on Human Mental Functioning at Times of Tribal Conflict."

    Meh. It's all about your, dear Bob, liberal death cult now.

    ...so maybe it is anthropology? Nah, psychiatry, more like...

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  3. The Jan 6 committee was set up to present a fictionalized version of the riot. I expect the House to find many flaws in their work. However, I expect the mainstream media to downplay these findings.
    D in C

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    1. The J6 Committee was set up to present a narrative version of the riot, which is different from a fictionalized version.

      A narrative ignores certain facts and highlights others, to convey a story. Fiction makes facts up.

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    2. Yeah, but David, you were set up to lie and think you are better than black people.

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    3. David in Cal,
      Not enough about how Republican voters are a bunch of bigots, who threw a childish temper tantrum at the United States Capitol because black peoples votes counted in the 2020 Presidential election, for me too.

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    4. "fictional version"
      Did it say there is such a thing as a Republican voter who isn't a bigot?
      If so, it sounds more like fantasy, than fiction.

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    5. David in Cal,
      I will always appreciate you pointing out that police forces are nothing but protection rackets.

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    6. Jan 6 committee intended to describe the events and its antecedents in a way that would be instructive for society. To call that a narrative, is to put your thumb on the scale.

      Narratives frequently entail fictions; you can frequently find words defined in documents such as dictionaries…

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    7. "A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional or fictional."

      People think in terms of narrative because we experience time sequentially, with a beginning, a middle and an end, and with causal connections (events that happen first cause those that happen next). This is not a bad way to think (as Somerby pretends). It is the normal way to think and it organizes events with relation to time, giving structure to experience. Fiction is written in narrative form because nonfiction occurs that way. When authors play with a time line, such as using flashbacks, it annoys readers and makes it harder for them to understand what is going on.

      Delete
  4. So, Bob, full of ludicrous bile, goes nearly insane on the day that his hero will be busted or will have been shown to have gotten the day he will be busted on wrong. Well, the Capital Police, the ones not beaten or maimed, certainly are not to be questioned.
    Glad Bob found something about January
    6th he finds conclusive. As to the rest, it’s just something about shady black women moving boxes around.
    Bob is a toxic weirdo who can’t write.

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    Replies
    1. Trump won't be indicted today. There is still another witness scheduled to testify on Wednesday. This was Trump's attempt to stir up his followers. It isn't working.

      Delete
  5. Somerby blames Wallace for not talking about global warming. If Somerby had read the article itself in the NY Times he would know that it is the failure of leadership worldwide that is causing us to miss crucial milestones that might have kept us at 1.5 degrees of warming instead of the higher levels we are on track for. If Somerby were able to think about what he reads, he might understand that leadership is about our president and elected politicians which IS what Wallace talks about on cable news. Biden is the best we had available during our past election, the candidate most committed to climate goals. Trump certainly wasn't. And we did our best to elect Democratic party senators and House members, because they are the ones also committed to achieving climate goals. The Republicans certainly are not. To hear them campaign, they are obsessed with conspiracy theories and culture wars, not saving our planet, supporting science and doing what we can to change our dependence on fossil fuels.

    Does Somerby chastise the right and Republican voters over this? Of course not. He pretends that Wallace is the problem and that the left and right are alike in stoking our current conflicts. That is manifestly untrue.

    When was the last time you heard Somerby use the word bipartisan? When has he suggested that climate might be a common ground that could bring our people together? Never. And the last bipartisan vote was the one where Manchin joined the Republicans to oppose investing based on environmental progress, the bill pushed by Marjorie Taylor Greene that Biden just vetoed.

    And does Somerby mention any of that while ranting about Wallace? Not one little bit. And that's why Somerby references to climate change here are a fake attempt to use liberal issues to beat up on a cable news host, not a serious call for action to keep our planet from becoming uninhabitable. Somerby is a fraud.

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    Replies
    1. I admire your attempt to respond to Bob in a rational fashion. But we saw this coming. He is a fruitcake who has gone off the deep end and jumped the shark.

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    2. The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. Bob’s a good, decent person, but he’s a shark-jumping fruitcake.

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    3. Bob lost it, when he started to believe the Right cares about unborn children. Once you fall for that old chestnut, you can fall for anything.

      Delete
  6. So Bob gives us eight extra Trumps! today.
    Maybe his boy is going down.

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  7. "To our practiced eye and ear, Wallace has been getting angrier lately,"

    Talk about subjective! Angry women -- Somerby's worst nightmare. How dare women get angry about anything! And Somerby calls her out for doing a show explaining legal details about Trump's theft of classified documents, not about kids working in factories. If she did talk about abuse of labor laws protecting children, Somerby would blame her to not telling us the details of those investigations of Trump's crimes. Wallace cannot win, because whatever she talks about, Somerby will claim she should be discussing something else.

    Meanwhile, when has Somerby discussed child labor violations except to bash a cable news host? Does he care what happens to immigrant children? Not much, based on his failure to say anything about them when they were being kept in cages at the border, separated from parents and lost in the system. Somerby's only use for kids these days is to use them to bash female journalists.

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    1. It's an old Right-wing move.
      Remember when being against blowing $3 Trillion in Iraq meant we hated the troops, whose benefits Republicans cut when they became veterans?

      Delete
    2. I think Wallace has grown angrier.
      Since Trump attempted to use violence
      and intimidation to declare himself
      dictator for life, and came damn close
      to succeeding. A lot of people should
      be a damn sight angrier, Whatever,
      Bob should take a look at his own
      “sour” and juvenile attitude.
      He doesn’t seem to be even
      able to process anything unless
      It is exculpatory of Trump, or he
      can make some (often pathetic)
      attempt to twist it that way. The
      “but he’s innocent if he really
      believed it” tripe seems to have
      been laughed offstage for now,
      but Bob may bring it back.
      Al Franken has said “indicting
      Trump will be terrible. The only
      thing worse is not indicting him.”
      Bad precedents set to avoid
      bad feelings (and the wrath of
      bullies) has become a big
      problem in our time. Bob could
      never ponder Franken’s statement.
      He never put away childish things.

      Delete
  8. The possibility that Loudermilk and other Republicans led reconnaissance tours prior to 1/6 has not been conclusively investigated. Loudermilk got Tom Manger to write him a letter but Manger was not police chief when the riot took place. He took that job in July 2021.

    Given the circumstances, Somerby is way too sure that Wallace and her guest, Torres (who is on the investigating committee) are wrong, when there is no "public evidence" one way or the other, but plenty of partisan posturing. Somerby is willing to take Loudermilk's word for things. I am not. Meanwhile, Torres and Wallace are doing what they should be doing -- exploring such questions.

    We know that congressional Republicans helped the insurgents and Trump to try to stay in office. To this point, there has been little focus on their role in what happened on 1/6. I expect that will change and when it does, I expect Somerby's squeals to grow louder. But meanwhile, people like Loudermilk and the other Republicans who aided Trump are scrambling to cover their tracks. But why would those guys request pardons if they did nothing wrong? Somerby is mum on that question.

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  9. “a person who was cleared by Capitol Police roughly nine months ago.”

    The Capitol Police reviewed the video last year, and said it didn’t seem to show any suspicious activity. They did not do any kind of rigorous investigation into Loudermilk’s tour group. Loudermilk refused to testify to the January 6 committee, just as several other Republicans refused to testify. The committee never subpoenaed Loudermilk, but most likely he would’ve fought that subpoena just as others did. His story seems to have evolved over time, and he seems to have been uninterested in establishing the truth in a forum that was designed to elicit that.

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  10. Somerby says this is ugly stuff. Many of us believe that the things Trump did have been uglier stuff.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You don’t agree with Bob. Your viewpoint doesn’t count.,

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    2. And yet they let me cast a vote right alongside you.

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    3. Trump and Bob seem to be working to rectify that.

      Delete
  11. Verse 4

    And everybody wants to know who lives the phattest
    The black 850 representing my status

    Plus I got the baddest, House on the Hill (shit!)
    My bank account's full, but my soul's empty still

    ReplyDelete
  12. Some good news for Bob on this darkest of
    days. Todd Feilds, director of Tar, says he
    doesn’t think he will make another movie.
    He had only made 3. I think “In the Bedroom”
    the first, was the best.

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  13. Loudermilk is dirty.

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  14. Republicans are a subset of right wingers, who are people that seek dominance, mainly through oppression.

    Somerby has become a tool for Republicans. Regardless of whether he is bought and paid for or not, he is a right winger.

    Somerby and Republicans - right wingers, these are wounded lost souls; it’s tragic, yet they are the main cause of misery and suffering in the world. Fuck them.

    ReplyDelete