So, who is Tyler Robinson? A memelord? A groyper? Bit of both?

For starters, I don't think either Ken Klippenstein or Jeff St. Clair is totally right. 

On Wednesday, Ken dropped a piece about Robinson's Discord gaming server chats. And, although his may be an "exclusive" on actually publishing the chats, per old MSM The Guardian, the analysis is not, with its link to a piece at the Garbageday Substack have them picking up the "extremely online" nature of Robinson already last week Friday, in "Charlie Kirk was killed by a meme." They, in turn, take this back to the New Zealand mass murderer of 2019.

On him not fitting other profiles? At least Ken is open enough to print a comment from a Robinson friend that, IMO, undercuts the "he's not a loner" claim:

“Everyone who knew him liked him and he was always nice, a little quiet and kept to himself mostly but wasn't a recluse,” the childhood friend said.

There you go, and with that, St. Clair. 

The Counterpunch supremo said last week that he essentially thoughts Robinson DID "fit a profile." And, although I didn't post all 8 points on my quote-tweet of Klipp's Substack, I will here, because they show he's not totally right, either. He says Robinson was:

1. White 

2. Male 

3. Loner 

4. Smart but alienated 

5. Withdrawn 

6. Lived in fantasy/gamer world 

7. Access to guns, trained how to use them  

8. Incel 

Given that Garbageday and Klipp and all over the interwebz reports Robinson had a transgender partner of some sort (sexual? just a roommate? roommates with benefits?) and Klipp talks about bisexuality (perhaps without warrant, as sexual relationship identity, ie gay/straight/bi etc is NOT the same as gender identity, ie transgender, and gender is not the same as sex, before we forget), in any case, the "incel" is out of line, and potentially libelous I would think.

But, per Garbageday, the rest of the stuff is spot-on, if their speculative analysis is right.

But the conflicting tone of the bullet casings’ inscriptions may also point to a connection with the Com network and the 764 terror cell offshoot. We’ve covered these groups several times on Panic World. They primarily exist inside of Discord and Telegram group chats. They recruit vulnerable young people around the internet, including inside of multiplayer games like Minecraft and Roblox. They encourage their members to commit horrible crimes with the promise of internet clout, intentionally using conflicting political messages to obscure any larger motive besides inspiring other members of the group to do the same. A month after a school shooter made an “OK” hand sign post, mentioned above, another teenager in Nashville made the exact same joke before allegedly shooting classmates at their high school. ProPublica found they crossed paths several times in these online communities, and the Nashville shooter was making a deliberate reference to his fellow community member. Which is what is so existentially terrifying about our current political moment.

There you go. 

In addition, Ken, since he had multiple Discord accounts, how do you know you're seeing everything, or even a fairly representative amount of everything, that Robinson had on Discord? "Multiple" sounds like more than two, and two is as many as Ken cites.

For that matter, Ken, how do you know you're not being used in some way?

In addition, Garbageday talks about Tyler Robinson's possible links to Nick Fuentes and the groyper movement. Discussion about this, including quote-tweets of the alt-racist himself, were trending on Shitter Thursday evening. 

Hell, a couple of days after Ken, NPR was going deeper on the gaming culture with a story focused on Robinson engaging in "performative violence." 

==

Via Garbageday, to pivot back to Kirk, "shock me," given the reaction of conservative younger Catholics in my area, that he first launched to stardom, or whatever, at Benedictine University. 

Back to Robinson. That piece, as well as the previous one, wonders if, transgender roommate or whatever and all, if he didn't really have Nick Fuentes-type animus against Kirk. 

And, if the Utah County DA isn't lying out his ass, and Tyler does NOT have Fuentes-type animus against Kirk, it looks like his parents are throwing him halfway under the bus. 

So with that all in mind, my header punning on edgelord. 

And also thinking Klipp didn't dive deep, and may have been used. 

Texas Progressives talk candidates, radio, more

Off the Kuff did an interview with one of the plaintiffs in the redistricting litigation to find out what that experience is like.

SocraticGadfly is not that impressed with James Talarico's Senate run announcement; as part of that, he — like many others — awaits Talarico's stance on one big foreign policy issue, and on a few other things.

An AI-driven Panopticon-type surveillance tower in greater Juarez should be concerning on both sides of the border. The Observer has details both of it and the over-the-top Chihuahua state governor behind it. 

Baylor as well as Trump whacked funding for NPR radio in Waco, which could go off the air. The Trib also reports on NPR and PBS struggles statewide, focusing on more sparsely populated West Texas.

Shock me that a state museum named after the last statewide ConservaDem sweeps slavery under the rug. (Per a link in the piece, friend Chris Tomlinson called the Bullock "a propaganda outlet.") 

Is Houston's claim to be "Space City" doomed? The Monthly investigates. 

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said Mayor Whitmire’s conception of order is muted opposition to wrong actions. He is wrong.

Franklin Strong shows the negative effect recent legislation is having on the classroom libraries that teachers create for their students.

The Eyewall reviews the lessons of the 1900 Galveston hurricane, which made landfall 125 years ago this past week.

Your Local Epidemiologist looks at what can actually be done about pharmaceutical ads.

Houstonia lauds the restaurants that treat their employees well.

New Mexico potentially faces a Texas-sized state oil well cleanup bill; some legislators are sounding the alarm. 

Once again, the latest news on how climate change is accelerating. Remember that while Rethuglicans are generally denialist or minimizer on climate change, plenty of Democraps are minimizers to some fair degree themselves; so are some neoliberal academics, the Michael Manns of the world. 

Bye, Lina Hidalgo

And, better luck telling the truth next time.

If you did indeed say in 2018 that you would only seek two terms in office as Harris County judge, per what you told the Trib, then why hadn't you formally bowed out long ago?

I'm sure she'll land some consultancy or lobbying job, but she's self-damaged goods in electoral politics. She cheesed off way too many people, even if many of them were ConservaDems like Kim Ogg who had cheesed off other Democrats themselves. 

As for who will replace her? On the Dem side, it's identitarian former Helltown mayor Annise Parker and a bunch of nobodies, it looks like. 

As for Parker, beyond the above? Her push for Houston to pass Chicago in population, and talking about that as mayor, ran into the climate-change world of Hurricane Harvey, and even non-hurricane weather systems. Unless some company forced you to, who would want to move to Helltown? It's LA with skeeters and more road construction, I've long said. She probably thinks an Ike Dike would solve everything, when not much could be further from the truth.

The Observer fellates Kendall Scudder

And the fellating comes from editor-in-chief Gus Bova himself. Gack.

Bova lets Scudder proclaim himself as a "pergressuve" when he's really not, and in any case, the word has become almost as vacuous as "librul," as the Congressional Pergressuve Cucks have repeatedly demonstrated. 

The interview is vacuous, with Scudder, after correctly stating he will address nuts-and-bolts organizational issues for rural Tex-ass Democraps as new state party chair (I wrote about his election at the time), otherwise going for a lowest common denominator version of what being a Tex-ass Democrap will be.

As a ConservaDem of many years standing himself (other than identitarian politics derived from family of origin history), Scudder certainly exemplifies that. 

GOP non-MAGAt McCaul leaving Congress

The Trib's story about Congresscritter Michael McCaul announcing he won't run for re-election doesn't say why, but the announcement, or even more, his backstory, is interesting.

Not only is McCaul NOT a MAGAt, after the 2016 election, he was one of a very small number of Republicans of name nationally stating that Republican National Committee computers had been hacked earlier that year as well as Democratic National Committee ones.

Of importance? Of course!

Per my hugely detailed piece on the issue, it was one part in blowing away deliberately made-up conspiracy theories that some "Forensicator" had hacked only DNC files and that this hack was in some way connnected to Julian Assange because of his hatred of the Clintons. Rather, it showed that this was indeed a Russian government operation — if at a step removed by actually being done by one of Yevgeny Prigozhin's organizations. Green Party 2020 prez nominee Howie Hawkins got the overall background story half right, and got flamed for it by many Greens, one more step in me becoming a non-Green, but yet, still very much a non-duopoly skeptical leftist. (Howie himself writing blank checks to Xi Jinping at the same time was an even bigger step.)

Texas outlets fluff Charles Perry's Proposition 4 instead of saying "vote no"

Proposition 4 is the constitutional amendment to create a permanent state water fund, with an automatic $1 billion per year diverted from state sales taxes into that fund.

Wingnuts, at least some, hate it because, at least for a decade, it establishes permanent funding without legislative approval, and other issues. 

The Trib, Lone Star Left, and presumably other librulz are lining up to kiss it.

Lone Star "Left," per Cactus Ed Abbey, seems to believe in growth for growth's sake without admitting that's the theology of the cancer cell.

Also wrong is is the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, clearly proving itself to still be Gang Green neoliberals in the environmental organization world, in an official support with no real analysis.  

I mean, that piece even admits voters are being offered a pig in a poke:

At least 50% of the annual allocations must go toward the New Water Supply for Texas Fund and the State Water Implementation Fund for Texas (SWIFT). The New Water Supply for Texas Fund supports various projects - some of which are highly controversial - that add to the total volume of water available to Texans, such as reservoir construction, seawater desalination, reuse of oil and gas wastewater (“produced water”), a statewide water conveyance system, acquisition of water from out of state, water and wastewater reuse, and aquifer storage and recovery. 

The focus of the SWIFT is solely on water infrastructure projects identified in the State Water Plan. This is an important accountability measure because it means there must be some level of support for the project locally for it to appear in the State Water Plan. However, there is no requirement for how this part of the funding must be split between the New Water Supply for Texas Fund and SWIFT.

But still says vote yes. 

The Texas branch of League of Women Voters is also wrong. 

Leftists for sure, and more clear-eyed liberals, should not. But for different reasons than wingnuts.

First, as I noted several weeks ago, even before state Sen. Charles Perry expanded his ideas to constitutional amendment level, it's a boondoggle. That was based on reporting by the Monthly, where Forrest Wilder said Perry was trying to revive "a failed 1960s solution."

Second, because the whole idea is the brainchild of a Texas wingnut, it takes climate change into zero account. Nor does it support conservation. But it DOES back environmentally destructive desalinization. And the "reuse" of old "produced" water from fracking.

On all of this, the media in general know it. Lone Star "Left" sure as hell knows, or should know, all of this. Hence "left" in scare quotes.

It also doesn't regulate groundwater pumping. And, Perry lives above the Ogallala Aquifer and knows it's running dry. (Maybe he's hoping to make a buck selling some of its water to East Texas.)

Let the state increase TCEQ grants and low-interest loans for local water infrastructure and get rid of the rest.

I didn't like Perry speaking question-free and interview-free at the Texas Press Association state convention, either.