Tony K's Blog

Tucker Carlson demonstrates once again that he is a hack . He is first, claiming that Democrats are saying Trump deserved to catch COVID, which may be true in some cases, but in a very limited way. Then he says this is like blaming a woman who dresses provocatively for being raped. Victim blaming is a difficult subject because two things can be true at the same time. The woman dressed provocatively, walking in a bad neighborhood is being foolish or naive at best. At the same time, many other people walk in that neighborhood all the time, there are laws that punish people who assault others, and there are police patrolling the street.  A presumption of safety is naive, but our human and societal values say that she SHOULD be safe to walk in that neighborhood. Now look at COVID. We have been warned for months of the imprudence of not distancing and using a mask. We would like to be able to assume that we can do otherwise, but COVID is not human. It doesn't follow human laws. NOr can ...

The FBI, CIA, NSA, the special counsel, and the Republican-controlled senate have all stated that Russia meddled in our elections in 2016 to benefit Trump. They all agree that the Russians are at it again. On top of it, the intelligence community is unanimous that white supremacist terror groups pose a clear danger. So logically, supporters of the president have re-evaluated their position and decided to vote American. Uh uh. Instead, the president is focusing on a group of African Americans with a clear grievance. Who held protests after a horrific murder as being enemies of the state and planning a coup. This is the same president who tried to sow fear about caravans of brown people invading our nation. He claimed it was such a dire threat that he called out the military. Of course, there was no threat, but you believed him. If you believed the invasion was real, and you believe that BLM is a dangerous insurrection movement, you are choosing to believe the single man, who surrounded ...

I have alienated most of my right-leaning friends, now I’ll work on the other side. I’m a bipartisan kind of guy.   Let’s talk climate change, specifically wildfire. We all agree that for wildfires to burn hot, spread, and be destructive you need to have fuel as well as generally warm and dry conditions. This is why there are seldom wildfires in the desert. Although conditions are hot and dry, there is little fuel, because it is hot and dry. The fuel needed for a wildfire never reaches a critical mass. So let’s look at the recent fires in California. People make a case that they are driven by climate change/global warming. I believe there is some truth in that. The August lightning storms that came through California were unusual. I have never seen that kind of weather in summer in California. Of course, if you attribute a weather event to climate change, it is disingenuous to say that other weather events are only weather—such as unseasonable snowstorms. If you do, you have an unf...

Several weeks ago the CDC announced some new COVID statistics. They said that of all the 190k or so COVID deaths only 9500 did not ha e co-morbidities. The Trump administration and apologists have jumped on this claiming that COVID is a hoax and that Trump did great, etc. The first obvious issue has to do with death attribution. Let’s say some dude has a heart attack calls an ambulance and dies after they reach the emergency room. They do their post-Mortem stuff and discover that he also had controlled diabetes. What did he die of? Of course a heart attack. The apologists are effectively claiming it wasn’t the heart attack. Get over it. "Hospitals are slapping COVID onto as many cases as they can so they can make more money" is another thing I’m still hearing. First, is this actually a thing? Do hospitals get extra for treating COVID? Second, doing so is a crime. It’s called fraud. The poor sucker who writes COVID on the car crams victim death certificate has committed a crim...