Texas Progressives wonder when the Xi Jinping honeymoon by leftists will end, along with the gunz honeymoon by wingnuts

The Roundup this week begins with gun nuts and ends with Xi Jinping Thought nuts.

Only in AmeriKKKa does a 95-year-old man resident in an assisted living center have a gun .... and kill someone with it.

And, only in Tex-ass does a dog shoot its owner.

Related to this other gun nuttery? SocraticGadfly talks about the bogus claims of new NRA Pander Bear Drew Springer.

That leads us to other Texas news in the Roundup.

Texas

Fracking lovers, including Gov. Strangeabbott, worry about nuclear fuels waste contaminating the Permian. That said, when you have a company like Holtec, even more sleazy than frackers?

Now that more and more Dems are voting by mail, Strange wants to extend GOP vote suppression efforts to that, picking up with last year's battles with Harris County and elsewhere. The same piece notes Abbott trying to separate himself from nutbar state party leader Allen West. The Texas GOP fired one staffer who was at the Capitol insurrection.

Off the Kuff discusses a recent poll of Texas political attitudes.

Is JC Penney doomed to continue to follow Sears into zombieland? I don't see it recovering, or even holding on to what it's now holding on to.

 

 

National

Josh Marshall is wrong: QAnon IS a conspiracy theory. Doesn't stop it from ALSO being a political movement. See "Native American Party." This is philosophy of language, or set theory, 101. These are not mutually exclusive items.

So, with executive privilege eventually prove thicker than seditionist blood, on the possibility of the Biden Administration trying to block House Dems' access to Trump's tax returns?

Nevada wants to let large tech companies who relocate to the Silver State to form their own counties. No, really, and for the love of god, why? The gov claims it's to replace economic development money.

The average age of an arrested seditionist is 40, per a George Washington University database. Many have a lot to lose from being arrested for something, that contra Josh, is a conspiracy theory as well as a political movement — and a cult, arguably. The Atlantic has additional details; 2/3 are over 35, 40 percent are small-biz owners. Contra Rod Dreher (not linking to the piece I have in mind) were in in a position to need to do business with the type of business they owned and could deliberately not do business with their company and be visible about it? I'd be there.

The Texas Signal profiles Solar Winds, the Austin company in the middle of that giant Russian hack.

 

Therese Odell attempts to explain The Watchmen and Avengers: Endgame to Ted Cruz. 

 

Grits for Breakfast dives into the data provided by the 2017 Sandra Bland Act.

 

The TSTA Blog wants to know what Greg Abbott will do for teachers in this legislative session.

Global

Globally, no, Chinese Maximum Leader Xi Jinping isn't telling new lies about the origins of COVID-19.

Rather, Uyghur women are telling the newest truth, it would seem, about how Xi's China has treated them: rape cases, along with sexualized torture and other claims. It's a long read, and a must-read. Too bad the likes of Howie Hawkins and Margaret Flowers of the Green Party, Rainier Shea of the People's Republic of Humboldt Bay, and Max Blumenthal of East Chinastan Daily News will try to poo-poo it. (Actually, Flowers already tried, and failed, on related material about Chinese police surveillance in Xinjiang; had she made one more response to me on Twitter, I would have easily and willingly gone Godwin's Law on her, with pleasure.)