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Execution UPDATE  UPDATE  UPDATE

President Trump has overruled our offensive Defense Secretary and says there will not be a publicly-broadcast of the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan.  He still will be shot to death but not with a worldwide audience watching.

While there are some parts of the world that think it’s a mistake not to make the execution public, most not only don’t want the death penalty at all.

The Death Penalty Information Center reports only 17 countries executed people last year, up from a record low fifteen in 2024.

Four countries (Japan, South Sudan, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates) resumed executions after a hiatus, while two countries (Oman and Syria) which carried out executions in 2024 did not in 2025. Of note, the United States was the only nation to execute people in the Americas for the 17th consecutive year.

In addition to Iran, which carried out at least 2,159 executions in 2025, significant increases were recorded in several other countries. Saudi Arabia carried out at least 356 executions, exceeding their historic high of 345 executions in 2024. Together, Iran and Saudi Arabia accounted for 93% of all executions worldwide. Egypt (13 to 23), Singapore (9 to 17), Yemen (38 to 51), and the United States (25 to 47) all approximately doubled their prior year execution totals, and Kuwait nearly tripled (6 to 17).

Paralleling global trends, the increase in the United States was attributable to a regional rise in executions in Florida, which accounted for nearly half of all executions. Amnesty International notes that this rise in U.S. executions occurred as “officials at the federal level and in some states promoted inflammatory and flawed narratives on the death penalty and its effect on crime, advocating for an increase in its use.”

Both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were global outliers in execution methods with the use of nitrogen gas asphyxiation and beheadings, respectively. As in previous years, the 2025 execution total does not include the thousands of executions estimated to be carried out annually in China, regarded as the world’s leading executioner. Both China and Vietnam classify data on the death penalty as a state secret. Restrictive state practices in North Korea, Laos, and Belarus also result in little to no information being available for those countries.

President Trump maintains Hasan deserves the several bullets that will be coming to him and admits to having some misgivings about cancelling the public event.  However,

“Nidal Malik Hasan, a former U.S. Army Major turned traitor, is a very bad and evil man, who killed 13 people, including a pregnant soldier, who died, along with her unborn son, and injured, very seriously, 32 more innocent people. Barack Hussein Obama’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) intercepted electronic communications between Hasan and the radical Yemeni-American cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki. When reviewed by his FBI terrorism task force, investigators concluded that Hasan’s emails were not a threat. This assessment of the Obama Administration’s actions was later considered to be a key intelligence failure. With all of that being said, I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device. He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed. That said, the execution may be viewed in person by the immediate families of the victims, if they so choose. They deserve to witness JUSTICE! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

Trump’s obsession with blaming President Obama (and his constant cheap shot mentions of his middle name) is well over-stated.

NPR’s Mark Memmott reported in November, 2009:

Author Jerome Corsi, who was among the group that “Swift Boated” Sen. John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election and more recently penned The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, has another eye-catching story at the conservative World Net Daily website.

The headline reads: “Shooter Advised Obama Transition; Fort Hood Triggerman Aided Team On Homeland Security Task Force.”

And the story begins with this:

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter in yesterday’s massacre at Fort Hood, played a homeland security advisory role in President Barack Obama’s transition into the White House, according to a key university policy institute document.

Here’s what NPR national security/intelligence correspondent Tom Gjelten tells us about Corsi’s conclusion:

This claim is so exaggerated as to be without merit.

Nidal Hasan was one of 308 people whose names appear on a list of “participants” in a series of public roundtable meetings organized by the “Presidential Transition Task Force,” a project of the Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) at George Washington University. Hasan was not himself a member of the Task Force.

Frank Cilluffo, the HSPI director, says the participants’ list, published as an appendix to the Task Force report, was no more than a tally of those people who RSVP’d to a notice of the roundtable meetings, which took place between June 2008 and February 2009. “Hasan joined as a member of the audience,” Cilluffo says.

When Cilluffo saw a picture of Hasan, he remembered him making a public comment during one of the roundtable meetings. “I had to cut him off, because he was going on too long,” Cilluffo says. He says he can not recall what Hasan was saying.

Corsi’s report, by the way, does something of a U-turn about midway through. “While the GWU task force participants included several members of government, including representatives of the Department of Justice and the U.S Department of Homeland Security,” he writes, “there is no indication in the document that the group played any formal role in the official Obama transition, other than to serve in a university-based advisory capacity.”

And an “editor’s note” attached to Corsi’s story after its publication says “Hasan is being reported as a participant in the GWU Homeland Security Policy Institute’s Presidential Transition Task Force, not as a member, noting the group was a university think-tank, not part of the Obama administration official transition team.”

So, he begins with a sure-to-shock conclusion — that Hasan played a “homeland security advisory role” in the transition. Then, at a point in the story that many readers won’t reach or hear about, Corsi reverses course.

NPR is not, as we all know, a source of information for our president.

Some cynics might be surprised Trump passed up a golden opportunity to market the Official Donald J. Trump Execution Rifle. As with the Trump Bible, it could be issued in various editions, one of which would be the “Pete Hegseth edition.”

The sad thing is that a lot of people would buy the things. We wonderful if one of the weapons that will be used someday will be on display in the Trump Liebrary and Museum.

At least we are spared the sad spectacle of this event being streamed into our homes and into too many children’s cell phones.

The Descent into Barbarism

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Two more stories about executions have made headlines in recent days for different reasons.

The story of the botched execution in Tennessee reminds us of a botched execution in Missouri. The other story is about plans for a public execution—the livestreaming of a firing squad carrying out a federal death sentence.

Before we get to the story of a botched Missouri execution, I have to get something off my chest about Pete Hegseth’s plans for a public firing squad for Fort Hood killer Nidal Hasan who murdered 13 people and wounded thirty others in the 2009 Fort Hood shootings. If Hegseth gets his way, the internet will show the public the firing squad execution at 1 p.m., our time, on December 3. Something to watch while we’re having lunch. President Trump has okayed the first military firing squad execution since the execution of Private Eddie Slovick in 1945 for desertion.

I cringe even at giving you the time and date of Hegseth’s planned public spectacle.

I covered 22 executions.  All were accomplished with heavy overdoses of three drugs. Missouri now uses one giant overdose of just one drug, as has been used in recent botched executions in other states. It seems to have worked here.

It should be no surprise that Hegseth, an oily testosterone waving narcissist, wants a public execution. Apparently he thinks his self-righteous outrage about a man who killed thirteen members of the military should be displayed by letting ghoulish viewers see a man be shot to death.

It smacks of the old-time executions in the counties when large crowds gathered—some executions even sold tickets to them—with children to watch someone drop through a scaffold floor.  It was a social occasion, presumably an object lesson particularly for the children in the audience.

That’s what Hegseth wants with his sordid plan. He said on a television show last week that people need to see the execution because they have to understand serious crimes merit “serious consequences.” Is there anybody who does not understand that if you kill someone, you will not face “serious consequences?”

We suspect Hegseth wants a public execution to show how tough HE is. It’s an execution that is more about him than it is about the man who will die and his victims.  Death by testosterone.

If he’s so hot to have this done, why doesn’t he be part of the squad?  If our president thinks it’s such a great idea, why doesn’t he join him. After all, one is the commander in chief of all of our military forces and the other head the department that oversees all of them?

And just think how impressive President Trump’s weapon would look in his presidential iebrary.

Former Labor Secretary, now blogger and podcaster Robert Reich asks whether the firing squad will teach any watchers a lesson or will it “just degrade our sense of being human beings.?”  He refers to Hegseth’s plan as “cruel,” and “public sadism” and “barbarism.”

How excited do you think they would have been if they’d watched Christa Pike’s execution. Firing squad executions are over in an explosive second. Her struggle would have been a much better show.

Ultimately, public revulsion of public hanging carnivals led to Missouri and other states taking over executions from local jurisdictions  and holding them within prison walls with only the media, prison officials, and some friends of the person in the gas chamber or in the electric chair or on the gurney in the drug-execution chamber looking on.

The last public execution in this country is believed to have been a hanging in Kentucky in 1936.

Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber who murdered 167 people and injured 684 more with the 1995 blast at the Murrah Office Building died on a gurney at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana in 2001. Ten members of the media looked on as did some people he had invited to watch. Some survivors of the bombing saw it on closed circuit TV inside the prison because there wasn’t enough room in the citizen witness area.

McVeigh killed more than ten times more people than Hasan did yet died with as much dignity as an executed mass murderer could expect.

There are those who think Hasan’s public execution will put this country in the same category of two countries we consider cruel, barbaric, and cradles of terrorism. Amnesty International counted seventeen public executions last year. Eleven were in Iran.  Six more were Taliban events in Afghanistan.  Trump and Hegseth want to lower our nation to that level.

Death is not a circus. Executions are double tragedies.  The first is the death of the victim(s) and the grief of their families and friends, memories and longings that never completely disappear.  The second is the death of the killer, a recognition that a person threw away their life long before they threw away their future.

I sometimes caught myself wondering as I watched the drugs flow into the veins of those 22 men what turned that person on the gurney into what he became. When did he or she make the choice to live a life that turned out to be wasted, a life most remembered for its end than for its worth.

And then I watched them die and sometimes I wondered where they went at that instant.

In the end, they died alone. And no matter how awful their crimes, their death was not some kind of public spectacle nor should it ever be. Justice is too precious to be cheapened by people like Hegseth and Trump.  It is not a game show. It is not an ultimate firing.

Having seen as many executions as I have, do I believe in capital punishment? I am not alone in thinking some crimes are so heinous that the perpetrator forfeits his or her own right to life. But I also sometimes think spending every day waking up to the smell of Lysol or some similar disinfectant used in institutions, living among many who have nothing more to lose, going to a menial job every day, hearing a steel door lock behind you every night, never walking down a street, never having a beer with friends or seeing your grandson play a football game or your granddaughter being a bride, never seeing anything beyond an electrified fence, and eventually knowing the few family members you ever see all have died is better.

Christa Peck spent ninety percent of her thirty years in solitary confinement. Death was to be her only relief, her only escape.

I was interested in what my reaction would be when I watched my first execution.  My reaction was no reaction at all.  I watched a man go to sleep, went back to my motel and filed my stories for the next morning’s newscasts, and then I went to sleep, too, and I did not dream. The next morning I came back to my newsroom and went on with my life as if I had not been up most of the night in Potosi.

Reporters often report on things they wish they didn’t have to report about. Sometimes it’s the events of a life. Sometimes it’s the event of death. The plans of Trump and Hegseth might be the most despicable things this administration has thought up—-and that’s saying a great deal.

I think we’ll save the botched Missouri execution story for another entry. I’m not feeling too well after telling you these stories.

Sports:  Big Win, New Heart; New Bird and Are They or Aren’t They Tigers?

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(MIZFB)—No letdown for these Tigers, not last weekend.  Missouri stifled Texas A&M defensively and battered them with the running game in a 27-6 win that has moved them into 13th place in both the AP and the coaches polls.  Mississippi State, next weekend’s opponent is 19th and 16.

More important than that is this:

Only The Ohio State University Buckeyes have a tougher schedule ahead of them for the rest of the season than Missouri does. The gauntlet begins with Ole Miss Saturday night. The University of Mississippi is ranked ninth. After that it’s Texas, Georgia, Kentucky and Oklahoma. Only Oklahoma and Arkansas are unranked going into this weekend’s play.

Their only common opponent is Florida which won 52-28.  Missouri goes in with a statistical advantage. Mississippi’s top rusher is Kewan Lacey who has only 230 yards. Quarter backs are within a yard of each other passing.

Here’s another interesting statistic:  Missouri’s defense has recorded 13 sacks in the second half of the games, second best in the country. Offensively, Missouri is averaging 36 points a game, Mississippi is averaging 38.

Tiger running back Jamal Roberts became only the third SEC running back in the last two decades to rush for 200 yards or more in two straight games last weekend.  He averaged better than six yards a carry.  In his last two games he has gained 433 yards.  His 828 yards puts him only seven yards behind the nation’s rushing leader, Dylan Riley of Boise State.  He had ten runs of seven yards or more.

The only two others were Derrick Henry from Alabama. and Leonard Fournette of LSU. Fornette’s NFL career was shortened to seven years with injuries. Henry is the only player to have run for 2,000 yards in high school, college, and in the NFL.

Missouri has led the SEC in rushing three of the last five years.

(MIZHEART)—One of the University of Missouri’s top signees this year probably will never play a down for the Tigers.  But he’ll be alive.

Johnnie “D. J.” Jones was diagnosed with a heart problem during freshman intake and last week suddenly was put on a transplant list.  A donor heart was located within a couple of days, and was implanted in an eight-hour operation in Columbia Wednesday night.

He went to Mizzou as a four-star prospect, 161st best player in the country, and number 16 at the offensive tackle position.

(MIZBB)—The Missouri Tigers basketball team plays its first game in ten days.  It’s an exhibition game in Manhattan, Kansas.  There’s a pretty big problem, though.

They don’t know who will be on their roster.  Two guys involved in lawsuits against the NCAA hope their eligibility for a fifth year will be granted.

The Tigers held their first Pro Day Sunday afternoon. Mark Mitchell and C. J. Gunn both took part although their lawsuits seeking eligibility for a fifth season are still in the courts.

Coach Dennis Gates wishes they had been able to decide on a fifth year as soon as last season ended but the rule that would have let them do it wasn’t made until they had moved on to pro development leagues. “My job is to make sure they’re developing and gaining the opportunity without knowing what tomorrow looks like, “said Gates.

Gunn will be in court this afternoon in Boone County asking for a permanent injunction allowing him to play this season.  Mitchell had filed earlier lawsuit in Kentucky but now has one in Boone County.

(CHIEFS)—The Chiefs had a bye week last weekend. They’ll face the Chargers in the late afternoon game Sunday. The Chargers remain winless in five games. The Chiefs are 5-1).

Kansas City has brought back wide receiver Justin Watson and have signed him to their practice squad. He was with the Chiefs for three seasons, played 50 regular seasons, caught 64 passes for 1,064 yards.

(BLUES)—Hockey season has crept onto the scene while we weren’t looking.  The St. Louis blues are 2-2-1 in their first five games. They play the Ottawa Senators tonight.

(CARDINALS)—We are gaining a new peculiar bird species in Missouri.  Joining the St. Louis Battlehawks, whatever they are, next year will be the Ozarks Springbirds, another species John James Audubon never painted.

The Cardinals Double-A affiliate says it’s making the change to reflect “our city, our region, and our birds.”  The new uniforms will look like these outfits modeled by obviously excited ballplayers.  The first time the new uniforms will be used in a game that counts is next April 2.

The people behind the name change say it identifies their region, their city, and the team whose minor league system includes them.

Changing Gears:

(NASCAR)—Kyle Larson has expanded his championship points lead although he finished sixth at Charlotte.  Instead of seeing his lead cut to thirty points by Christopher Bell, had Bell won, Larson nine points and is 49 points ahead with four races to go

Bell was despondent after finishing second to teammate Chase Briscoel, who picked up his second straight win and moved from sixth to fourth in the standings. Bell finished less than three-tenths of a second behind Brisco after running him down on the last lap and drawing even on the last turn when the two touched.

Bell has finished second eight time this year. NASCAR takes its show to Phoenix next weekend.

(Image credits: Roberts—Instagram; Jones— Threads; Springbirds—MLB;

 

Why She Woke Up Angry and Confused 

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Christa Pike woke up in a hospital shortly before she was declared brain dead and disconnected from life support.  Those in the room were shocked but none so shocked as Christa Pike. “Where am I?” she asked. “Who are you?”

She had not expected to wake up, at least not on this side of the mysterious curtain. When her gurney was wheeled into the Tennessee execution chamber she said, “I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life, and that is with love.  I’m at peace. I’m ready to be free.  This is a happy day.”

We do not know if she expected to wake up in Heaven but she woke up in the Hell of a continuing life, shackled to a bed, in pain from the drugs intended to kill her, damaged physically and perhaps mentally.

“I am at peace. I’m ready to be free,” she said in what she thought would have been the last minutes of her life—and that is why her confusion, but maybe mostly her anger, was immediately noticed.

Missouri prison officials always share the last words of inmates before their executions.  We always reported them. We never mentioned the last meal. That just seemed ghoulish to me.

But the last words—-I saved them because, well, what would be your last words?  Would they summarize your life or justify it or apologize for it?  If you had spent decades in prison, might you not see your death as your escape, your relief, your freedom? If a faith journey that began too late to alter your life’s journey had left you feeling ultimate forgiveness, would you not think about what comes after the drugs stop your heart?

Here are some of those last words, some as the entire last statements and some as excerpts.

Read them out loud. You might be surprised about your reaction when you do that.

James Johnson, Jan 9, 2002: “The news reports today will say Jim Johnson is dead, those reports will be untrue. Today I will meet the one who gave his life for my sins. The one who extended to me mercy. Today I shall meet Jesus my Lord and Savior face to face.  When the executioners have done their worst, God will be shown to have done his best.  May the God of all grace bring peace to your hearts.”

Ernest Lee Johnson,  October 5, 2021: “I am sorry and have remorse for what I do. I want to say that I love my family and friends, I am thankful of all that my lawer [sic] has done for me. They made me feel love as if I was family to them. I love them all, for all the people that has prayed for me I thank them from the bottom of my. I love the Lord with all my heard and soul. If I am executed I no were I am going to heaven. Becaus [sic] I ask him to forgive me.”

David Zink, July 14, 2015: “For those who remain on death row, understand that everyone is going to die.  Statistically speaking, we have a much easier death than most, so I encourage you to embrace it and celebrate our true liberation before society figures it out and condemns us to life without parole and we too will die a lingering death.”

Michael Worthington, August 6, 2014: “I will finally get to live in peace with my true Father. I’ll no longer have to suffer. It’s really my beloved friends and family that will suffer. May God forgive those who call this justice. When in truth, it’s truly about politics and revenge. Amen and peace to unto you all.”

William Rousan, April 23, 2014: “My trials and transgressions have been many. But thanks be to my Lord and savior, Jesus Christ, I have a new home in his heavenly kingdom.”

Donald Jones, April 27, 2005: ” I’m finally free and I’m going home to grandmother now. I love you all and God bless.”

Jeffrey Sloan,  February 22, 1996: “I know I’m going to a better place.”

When you know there is no other way out, no escape, no hope of ever being free from the horrible life of a prison—-

—when you have reconciled yourself that you will die—

—whether you believed before you committed your terrible crime that brought you this sentence or whether you found God in those lonely and limited years, that you will awaken in a new life—

And then you wake up in Hell twice over because your death was botched, maybe you would be angry, too.  Certainly you’d be confused.  And then would settle about you the knowledge that the system is going to help you recover enough that you will have to go through it again.

Christa Pike was released from the hospital Saturday. What’s next for her is unknown. A commutation to life without parole?  She might be thinking that’s worse than death and that the executioners did her no favor.

She has gained a notoriety she never anticipated and of which she might not approve.

Christa Pike is the poster figure for those who want to eliminate the death penalty.  We wonder if she will consider it an honor—

–if her mind is capable of comprehending it.

Sports: Two Big Wins; Poll Vaults; Life and Death in the Fast Lane

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(MIZ)—Coach Drinkwitz wants to stay focused on the tasks ahead and not let himself or his players be distracted by transitory things such as rankings or past history.  He made it all clear in the press conference after the 25th (and hanging on by heir fingertips) Tigers crushed Florida Saturday in front of a delirious homecoming crowd.

The win brought him a national distinction: Coach of the Week.  We haven’t heard a comment from him about it but, based on his comments after the game, it’s no big deal in the larger picture for him and the team. It is his 50th win with the Tigers (50-30 now).

Drinkwitz already is the 4th winningest football coach in MU history (Pinkel 117, Faurot 101, Devine 93)

Fans can go a little nuts, however, by remembering that his Tigers had been 8-20 against top 25 teams before the big win. “This is about this game,” he said. “That’s just noise that people create on social media for no reason. Has nothing to do with anything…Nobody in our locker room could have cared less about that. I couldn’t have cared less about that. Again, that’s stuff for you all to tweet about and to make up stories about and try to create some sort of narrative about me or my program. I really couldn’t care less.”

We can’t basically disagree in terms of controlling the narrative you want to have your guys focus on in the locker room, the practice field, and the stadium turf. But the folks outside are kind of important too and they have to share those good things because they’re the ones who pack the stands and help buy the best players MU can buy and believe that a good major sports program represents the whole University—even the physics department—as a place to send your kids to.

“Every game has a life of its own. It’s people searching for crap to talk about, and it had nothing to do with this game. Each game has a life of its own, an opponent of its own, and we try to make up the best matchup that we can. And, you know, that’s the hot-take world right now. Try to find, what are things that you can poke holes in our program about? Great, that’s fine. Do what you want to do, but it doesn’t faze us any.”

No hole-poking here. Not after that game.  But the public is fickle and in one way or another has bought the right to poke holes when the promise seen in one game isn’t consistent.

Fans and players and coaches need a little time to luxuriate in what just happened—560 total yards against what was temporarily one of the ten best teams in the country while suffocating a Gators offense that was lighting up scoreboards by scoring at least 44 points in its games this year, holding the then-second leading running backs to 1.1 yards a carry. The coach for Florida, Jon Sumrall feeling “sick to my stomach with what we just did.”

(RANKINGS)—Florida still is above Missouri in two of the three big time rank outfits. ESPN has dopped Florida ten places to 15 and brought Missouri up seven slots to 18th. The Coaches poll shows Florida 15 and the Tigers 16th. The Associated Press ups Missour by eleven positions to 14 and drops Florda eight slots to 16th.

(TIGER BBALL)—The Missouri basketball team might not want to print Mark Mitchell’s jersey yet.  A Kentucky Appeals Court has dealt a setback to Mitchell and several other players who are hoping to get a fifth season on collegiate courts.

As of now, he’s out. He still can file a lawsuit in Missouri arguing he should be included in an NCAA rule adopted after the last season that players going forward will be allowed to have one. The policy excludes players who had played four seasons before the rule went into effect. Some of those involved in the Kentucky ruling already have seen some playing time for their college football team.

(CHIEFS)—The Chiefs remain undefeated after surviving Las Vegas and the Raiders 30-27 but they have some lineup juggling to do before their next game. Fortunately, they’ll have two weeks to get it done. That’s two weeks for Rashee Rice to get his tweaked hamstring back in playing shape and for the Chiefs to decide on a replacement for deep threat Tyquan Thorton, who could be out for the season with a badly broken ankle.

Rice and Thornton are the numbers one and three wide receivers on the squad.  Xavier Worthy is still healthy but behind him are Jalen Royals, Cyrus Allen, and Nicko Remigio. Royals has three catches for 17 yards and a touchdown this year. Allen is a rookie who has seen little action, and Remigio has a couple of receptions for ten years and a TD.

For weeks, maybe months, there’s been speculation the Chiefs might bring back Tyreek Hill, once Patrick Mahomes’ favorite “bombs away” target.  Hill has been stuck in the free agent market until somebody decides that his severe knee injury suffered last year while with the Dolphins is adequately healed.  Michael Silver with The Athletic has reported the Chiefs have contacted Hill’s agent. There are reports that the Chiefs have contacted Hill’s agent. Silver says Hill “remains well liked within the organization.”  Videos of Hill doing beach workouts have been posted on the internet.

Keneth Walker is running for his second straight player of the month award from the NFL.  He ran for 177 yards against the Raiders including a 7-yard bolt in the third quarter, the NFL’s longest run so far, that put the Chiefs in a lead that they didn’t give up. There already are some folks thinking he might set a new NFL rushing record, breaking the 2,105 run up by Eric Dickerson forty-two years ago. He has accumulated the most yards in the first four games since Arian Foster had 539 for the Texans sixteen years ago (Foster led the NFL  with 1,616 rushing yards in 2010).

One of Walker’s more amazing stats is the number of broken tackles he’s had. 43 so far, fifteen more than Jahmyr Gibbs of the Lions has. He’s had six runs of 20 or more yards—double the number the Chiefs had in all of last year.

(BASEBALL)—Free agency doesn’t kick off until the World Series ends and the present labor contract will terminate about a month later, December 1.  One member of the labor committee is Royals CEO and President John Sherman who says “Everybody is working hard to make sure” a lockout doesn’t happen.  He says fans want revenue parity, payroll parity and competitive balance.  Major League Baseball is the only one of the four major sports without a salary cap.

He calls the Royals season “disappointing” and says he top priority is to rebuild the bullpen and stabilize the pitching rotation.

Moving right along to the people who move right along—

(NASCAR)—Chase Briscoe’s dominating win at Las Vegas has moved him into the top six in the championship points standings but Kyle Larson’s finish 1.4 seconds behind him as built is lead.

Briscoe was in charge for 175 of the 267 laps and he held Larson at bay down the stretch—as Larson had done to him the previous week at the Kansas Speedway.

Regular season points leader Denny Hamlin continued to struggle in the ten race run off. He finished 16 and trails Larson by forty points with only four races remaining in the season.

The racing next weekend will be on the Charlotte oval for the first time since 2017. Since then the fall race has been on the roval—the road course that combines an infield track with part of the oval.

(INDYCAR)—One of the biggest open rides in the series has been filled with Christian Lundgaard stepping into the Chip Ganassi car that Scott Dixon had for 24 years.

The number 9 won six championships with Dixon driving and the number also has been used for championship runs by Juan Pablo Montoya, Dario Franchitti, and for Alex Palou’s first of five championships.

Arrow McLaren had dropped Lundgaard because of his mediocre oval track record. It’s gotten better in each of his five years in the series and Ganassi.

Dixon is moving to Arrow McLaren after years of being sponsored by PNG Bank. A Missouri financial company will be his sponsor with his new team—Edward D. Jones, based in St. Louis.

(JOHNCOCK)—Two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Gordon Johncock has died at the age of 90. Johncock, a quiet buy with a lumber company in Michigan. He also won the series championship once.

Johncock won the race in 1973, a tragic year for the 500.  The race was stretched through three days by weather and a tragic accident. He was leading on the 133rd lap when the rain came again and the race was declared official (it becomes official with the 101st of 200 laps run).  During the race, one of his teammates—Swede Savage—was fatally injured in a violent crash at the head of the pits.  A pit crew member was hit and killed by an emergency vehicle speeding out to the crash scene. A second driver, Art Pollard, was killed in a crash on the first qualifying weekend.

On the day the race was scheduled to be run, the field dissolved into a  melee of crashes, one of which critically injured Salt Walther whose car wound up upside down with Walther’s feet hanging out of the front of the wreckage. Several spectators were injured. Rain washed out any competition that day and the next day, too, before the contest finally got underway on the third day. Johncock led 64 of the 133 laps on a day that saw only one-third of the 33-car field still running.

He got a win after the full 200 laps, fighting off Rick Mears in the last 40 laps and beating him to the checkered flag by 0.16 seconds, the closest 500 finish in history at that time.

When he left racing, he really left it.  He had his sawmill in Michigan, seldom returned to Indianapolis and once said racing was a previous life—“a job”—but he later said he had another job.

(Image credits:  Drinkwitz—Saturday Down South; Lundgaard—Bob Priddy at Indianapolis; Johncock—Instagram; Finish—IndyCar.com; Briscoe–Priddy, Indy25;  Walker—KC Chiefs)

The Reactions 

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The reactions to our junior senator’s monstrous gaffe last week as he thought he had skewered former special prosecutor Jack Smith have been creative, critical, mean, tough—

—and, frankly deserved.

There might not be a more popular way to express an opinion today and express it to everyone you see on the street, at eating places, at sporting events—you name it—than the t-shirt. Even in our smaller towns, there’s likely to be some one who makes t-shirts to order.  Our junior senator became instant t-shirt fodder last week when he became the “got” in “gotcha.”

I wonder if the company is going to sent one of these to the Senator.  He’s tall, about 6-7, and kind of husky. An XL, VL (very long) would probably cover the most territory although it won’t cover that part of his anatomy that was exposed at the hearing.

Social media has had a field day, of course. AI has added a new depth to the ridicule opportunities. Creative juices have become gushers on various platforms. This one showed up on our Facebook page.

These things get circulated around and I am afraid I don’t know who had the original thoughts so I can’t tell you the names of these creative people. These probably are just a small example of the images created in the wake of the implosion. Most of them also showed up on our Facebook page.

I wonder if the senator, to show that he has a sense of humor about himself, will fame a few of these and put them in his office in the Russell Senate Office Building near the Capitol. He hasn’t been able to admit he made a giant mistake that will haunt him for a long time. But if he won’t admit he did a lot of damage to his future political credibility, maybe he can regain some PR points by displaying how much fun he has allowed others to have at his expense.

Don’t you wish you could have been a mouse in the corner when he and his staff got back to the office and closed the door after that hearing?

Here is what happens when a bag of political dirt explodes in your face.  Your faithful observer knows from some non-political experience of dropping the bag while emptying the canister of our whole house vacuuming system. My dirt, however, washed off fairly quickly.  The Schmitt dirt will require a huge amount of scrubbing, and even then—–

Maybe someone was thinking a song from a Stephen Sondheim musical, A Little Night Music—

Isn’t it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground
You in mid-air
Send in the clowns

Isn’t it bliss?
Don’t you approve?
One who keeps tearing around
One who can’t move
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns

Just when I’d stopped opening doors
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours
Making my entrance again with my usual flair
Sure of my lines
No one is there

Don’t you love farce?
My fault, I fear
I thought that you’d want what I want

Sorry, my dear
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns
Don’t bother, they’re here

Isn’t it rich?
Isn’t it queer?
Losing my timing this late in my career
And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns
Well, maybe next year

Our president might be able to straighten things out the way he straightens out a lot of things—by renaming them.

Chris Clark and Kyle Cheney headlined their story on Politico, “Eric Schmitt pins down Jack Smith — as a Caitlin Clark fan” and went on: “Sen. Eric Schmitt thought he caught Jack Smith in a lie. Instead, he outed him as a fan of former Iowa Hawkeyes star Caitlin Clark.”

Perhaps we should lighten up on our junior senator a bit.  A long time ago I was in doing some research at the University of Iowa and during a lunch break I went past a t-shirt store that featured one kind of like this

Self deprecating humor can lower the temperature a bit.  I had a t-shirt that I bought in Columbia that read: “Missouri.  It’s not that bad.”  So far there has been no such humor from our junior senator, though.

Senator Schmitt isn’t the only prominent Missourian whose dreams of national importance went up in smoke in an instant because of an ill-timed word or an ill-timed action or something that wasn’t supposed to become public but did.  We’ve seen it happen several times on our political turf in Jefferson City.

However, as rocky as our political history is, we have not reached the level of my home state where I once saw a t-shirt such as this one.

About eighty percent of the license plates issued in this country are made by prison inmates. Missouri is one of the states that has that system. We understand our inmates could make license plates for other states, as some other states do. But we know of no public record indicating them do.

There are some states who get their plates made in Canada. So far, license plates have escaped Trump tariffs.

I think this is probably enough for a while about Senator Schmitt. Already, he’s old news.  And I imagine he hopes to stay that way for a while.

 

The Dirtbag

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The Eric Schmitt we saw a couple of days ago making a fool of himself in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing grilling former special counsel Jack Smith is not the Eric Schmitt I remember from my days covering the Missouri Senate.  That Eric Schmitt was intelligent, respectful of the rules and of other senators on both sides of the aisle and knew what he was talking about.

He was elected State Treasurer and when Attorney General Josh Hawley went to Washington, Schmitt was appointed to move across the street to replace him.  He caught whatever political virus Hawley left behind.  I’ve said before that he left the best part of himself in the Capitol.

He apparently now bathes in Trump Kool-Aid.  The day that a prominent Republican consulting firm tried to start a boomlet for him as J.D. Vance’s running mate in two years, Schmitt turned his inner attack dog loose and in a matter of minutes proved why we do not need to see him one breath away from the presidency, assuming fellow Kool-Air bather Vance is picked to head the ticket.

You’ve undoubtedly seen the video of his smug, misguided attack of Smith and his charge that Smith had gone to Atlanta to meet with Fulton County Prosecutor who had admitted she and one of her associates had been associating too closely, a relationship that eventually led to the dismissal of 13 co-conspiracy charges she had filed against Donald Trump.  He’d even gone to an Atlanta Hawks NBA game while he was there, said Schmitt.

Smith said he recalled going to a University of Maryland women’s basketball game to see Caitlin Clark and her Iowa Hawkeyes. And Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, whose staff rapidly learned there had, indeed, been a game in Maryland that night, quickly suggested that Schmitt didn’t know the difference between the Atlanta Hawks and the Iowa Hawkeyes.  It was one of the greatest political takedowns in memory, a “My Cousin Vinnie” moment for real.

Republicans on the committee wanted to get Smith to admit he had behaved unethically and illegally by meeting with Fani Willis on the day her affair was revealed.

When Schmitt found himself waist deep in it, he refused to back down. He slogged ahead and accused Smith of perjury and showed an incredible lack of maturity for a U. S. Senator by calling Smith “a total dirtbag.”

At the end day, Trumpist GOPers had failed to ruffle Smith enough to get him to make him admit what they wanted him to admit—that he had meddled in Willis’ affairs, more legal than personal, and had weaponized the Justice Department. And if anybody should know about weaponizing the Justice Department, it’s Republicans.

The Republican witch hunters spent the day beating up on Smith but in the end none of the hunters disputed his findings.  Their efforts to undermine his professionalism in securing indictments against the president were an embarrassing failure. It might be said they never laid a glove on him.

“The didn’t even talk about the report,” observed California Congressman Ted Lieu.  “They didn’t dispute that Donald Trump engaged in a conspiracy to try to get fake electors and fake documents to overturn this election.”  He called the stuff Republicans were saying, “idiotic.”

Did Schmitt, caught with his political pants entangling his ankles, apologize for his mistake.  Oh, no.  Later he told CNN he had not made a mistake. “Who knew Jack Smith was a Caitlin Clark fan?” he blithely deferred.

When another interviewer told him there was television footage showing Smith at the game in Maryland, he retorted, “Great. Well, then, he was at the Hawkeyes game.” But he wouldn’t admit he was wrong in the hearing.

On the “Charlie Kirk Show” later, host Andrew Kolvet praised Schmitt, who responded, “Here’s the thing — my job is to ask the questions. He’s already — and if that’s what his answer is — then that’s what his answer is….The purpose of today is just to get him to answer a bunch of questions.”

Bee  Ess.  His job, the committee’s job, was to get facts.

Smith had them and spoke them and he made our junior senator a fool. Schmitt claimed Smith perjured himself. He didn’t. His description of Smith as “a total dirtbag,” a startling act of discourtesy and juvenile behavior.  He shouldn’t stay up so late at night taking name-calling lessons from our president.

He’s going to be a star on Saturday Night Live this week.

Some might think the dirtbag was not the one at the witness table.

Columbia Missourian editorial cartoonist John Darkow—-the best of his kind in Missouri and among the best in the whole country jumped on Facebook with his commemoration of the great inquisition.

Don’t expect any apologies from Senator Eric Schmitt. There are plenty of sycophants who will pat him on the back for becoming the class clown at that hearing. It takes some doing to make Josh Hawley look like the grownup in our senatorial delegation.  But for that one day, Schmitt rose, or sank, to the occasion.

Even when Klobuchar proved  Schmitt didn’t know what he was talking about, he snarled, “I stand by that statement.”

We should all hope the rest of the people in our country don’t judge Missourians on the basis of our Senators. Really, we should assure them, we normally are intelligent beings.

I want to know who kidnapped the Eric Schmitt that I knew and replaced him with someone that I don’t recognize.

(Picture Credit—some clever person on the internet. It’s not the only one mocking Schmitt; Darkow on Facebook.)

Sunshine Patriots and Summer Soldiers

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There is only one way the average citizen can stand up to Donald Trump and his increasingly repressive acts:

Vote against any candidate who either supports his administration or who lacks the courage to speak against it.

We will lose some good Republican office holders in November not because they are incompetent but because they are silent.  As Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense in 1776:

Voters should evaluate their candidates with much greater thought and care this time, more than any time we have experienced. They and the state and the nation will be well-served by allowing their inner Independent to emerge and evaluate each candidate on both sides of the ballot with thought and concern.

We do not advocate wholesale rejection of the Republicans.  A Democrat might have less to offer to voters and should not be elected solely because that candidate has a D above their column. Likewise, individual Republicans should not be solely evaluated because of voter hostility toward the President. Think. Evaluate.

At the same time, this is no time to be a summer soldier and a sunshine patriot.  There must be a strong message from the citizens of this country that blind loyalty to Donald Trump carries a cost.

We have lived through the completely unnecessary election disaster that his demand for another Republican congressional district has caused with the Secretary of State turning himself into a pretzel trying to defend his actions and his party’s decisions supporting Trump’s wishes.

If I was a Republican candidate for the General Assembly, whether as a new person running for a House seat or a House member hoping move up to the Senate, I would look at the overwhelming rejection of two GOP amendments in August, the dropping survey figures for the President and for our Governor, the furor over congressional districts, and sense that approval of Republican proposals on the November ballot might not go well and I would carefully consider what kind of lawmaker I will promise to be—

—and then hope I get a chance to keep that promise, knowing that in just two years as a State Representative I will have a record no matter what I say I am for in this election.

This is a time for candidates on both sides of the aisle to honestly evaluate who they are. It is not enough for a Democrat to run on the concept that he or she is not a Republican.  It is not enough for a Republican to remain silent about current times and issues or to deny what they have done to contribute to them.

This is a time to start over for some, perhaps many, of our lawmakers to convincingly promise not to be who they have been and for others to be specific about what they want to do that will be better than what has been done.

It is not true that in politics a leopard cannot change his spots. Whether that leopard can be convincing in trying to do so is for voters to decide.

It is American to vote back and forth on the ballot.  We are living the danger of determining fitness of office only on the basis of an R or a D.  Do not be afraid to cross party lines. Your vote is secret. Only you will know. Voters must exercise their conscience when their party’s candidate will not exercise his.

Whether voters realize it or not, the future of our state is very much in their hands in November.

We voters should keep in mind the words of Lincoln in his address to a joint session of Congress in 1862:

“We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us.”  What was good  advice for Congress at the start of the Civil War is good advice for the electorate today. These are dangerous, historic, times and we must remember, as Lincoln also said 164 years ago, “We cannot escape history.”

For generations we have failed to recognize the value of what we have obtained too cheaply and esteemed too lightly.

A President who has no loyalty to this nation and its people but only to himself is an albatross around the necks of many candidates who have not or will not stand apart from him and in their silence sanction the evil that he is and that he does.

Our preachers tells us it is never to late to repent and it is never too late to respect the truly penitent. That’s a good point to think about in the voting booth.

History will measure us severely by the choices we make in November.

(Image credit: libquotes.com)

Snipers and Drones?

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Building a triumphal arch overlooking Arlington Cemetery is not enough of an abomination. Our President has not surprisingly found a way to make it worse.

Snipers???  It will house snipers????

Drones?????

Ammunition stockpiles???

What the Hell has prompted him to turn his arch celebrating military triumphs into a mini-fortress or, as he has put it, “a top grade Military Complex.”

He says it’s being done as a matter of national security (which is his excuse for a lot of stuff, isn’t it?) and after a “strong request” from the military.  Could we know who in the military made this strong request?

Will he have ICE snipers up there picking off suspected illegal immigrants as they cross the Arlington Memorial Bridge?  Will drones launched from his arch blend harmoniously into the routes of airliners on their final landing approach to Reagan International Airport?

We wonder when his demented mind will realize the arch would be a good checkpoint to make sure only American citizens of at least three generations are allowed in or out of Washington.  Additionally, officers could block anyone crossing the bridge into the city if there are signs in the back seat or trunk protesting his ongoing fevered dream of defiling the Kennedy Center by putting his name on it. That number might even be much larger these days than the number of dead legal or illegal immigrants.

If it also is to serve as Fortress Trump, perhaps it would be better located at Outpost Hegseth, the Pentagon, and where appropriately the new Hegseth Boulevard could pass through it.

The National Park Service, which one might suspect in normal times would object strongly to this idiocy, instead is equivocating.  It says the arch would affect several historic sites near Arlington National Cemetery including the cemetery’s historic district, the Washington and Lincoln monuments, the Jefferson Memorial the Capitol Mall, and others.

But NPS says it’s okay to go ahead with the arch as long as there are “mitigations,” such as an archaeological investigation before any digging is done. vibration monitoring near the bridge, and a plan so that funerals and wreath-laying ceremonies will not be disrupted—and some new interpretive web pages would help, including one that discusses “the history and significance of triumphal arches.”

We heard last week the digging had started. Forget any archaeological investigations.

There goes the idea of putting it at Outpost Hegseth.

The arch is to have three golden statutes on top of it. A big statue of Lady Liberty will be flanked by two gold eagles that are to represent national pride and strength.

At least the big statue is not of himself.

I really hope these entries are never read to him by anybody. I hate to think I would give him the idea.

The urge to suggest the eagles be replaced by Loons is something I am repressing.

Oops.

The Ban Won’t Work

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(This entry has been updated by events today.)

I have walked under this arch more times than I can count. The words engraved on it are a derivation from the third verse of the 12th chapter of the Old Testament book of Daniel.  It’s the University of Missouri School of Journalism arch connecting the two buildings that have been the heart of the school for decades, the places where I learned the responsibilities of being a journalist.

William F. Woo, the then-editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, wrote in 1996 that Walter Williams, the founder of the nation’s oldest journalism school, and Joseph Pulitzer, who joined two 19th century St. Louis newspapers together were partners in stating the journalism ideal.

Williams wrote The Journalist’s Creed that begins, “I believe in the profession of journalism.  I believe that the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of their responsibility, trustees for the public; that acceptance of a lesser service than the public service is betrayal of this trust…I believe that suppression of the news, for any consideration other than the welfare of society, is indefensible.”

Pulitzer’s platform, still published every day in his newspaper, says: “Never tolerate injustice or corruption; always fight demagogues of all parties; never belong to any party; always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers; never lack sympathy with the poor; always remain devoted to the public welfare: never be satisfied with merely printing news; always be drastically independent; never be afraid to attack wrong whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.”

It is not easy to live those noble words.  Many professions have statements of standards and it’s no easier for practitioners of those professions to live up to those highest standards either. As Woo said, the challenge is “how to successfully work through the matters of our day that are pressing but in fact peripheral and concentrate, with clarity and determination, on the great public purpose that endures.”

Sometimes it’s hard to see those noble words in practice when they bring reporters into angry confrontations with their subjects. In our experience, the worst confrontations have been caused by a search for the truth from someone who is less than zealous about telling it or having it revealed.

Tolerating President Trump from this distance is relatively easy when compared with those who have to put up with him every day, especially when he spends so much time insulting reporters and news organizations that challenge him when he lies—which seems to be most of the time—or shows no interest in telling the truth.

Thus we have his banning of reporters from three organizations from the White House. Not just the White House but from the press area set aside on the west wing lawn.  Reporters for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico—a Capitol Hill political news organization—learned Saturday morning when checking through the security gate that Trump had cancelled their credentials.

We watched some of them report on the street side of the fence.

He also has hinted these three might not be the last news organizations banned from the White House, the press room, and the yard.

There’s a simple way to end what he thinks is constant hostile reporting.

He can quit constantly lying.

Washington Post fact checkers caught him in 30,573 lies in his first term. We haven’t been able to find a running total for the second term but the independent The Cap Times, the Madison, Wisconsin version of our Missouri Independent,  reported a week after his second inaugural, “Trump’s Lie Meter Runing Full Time.”

Comedian and social commentator John Stewart has suggested Trump might be doing an injustice to himself.  Huff Post quotes him saying, “I actually think he needs them more than they need him.”  He says the media might want to think about ignoring him instead of reporting everything he does or says. Press conferences, he says, are “designed for his personal performance” that “serves no purpose in terms of public value. It’s just another platform for him to spew.”  A press pool that ignores him, he says, “would deny him the thing that he craves the most,” being the center of attention.

He has a point.  But it isn’t realistic.  Donald Trump is the crash scene you have to look at as you slowly drive by, muttering about how slow the traffic is ahead of you because others are doing the same thing.

Unfortunately for Trump, it is journalistically impossible to ignore his rolling wreck.  There is an obligation to report on his tantrums, his prevarications, his lack of decency, his bullying, his complete lack of responsibility for what he is doing and has done to individuals, the nation, and the world..

“I believe that suppression of the news, for any consideration other than the welfare of society, is indefensible,” said Williams 118 years ago.

The welfare of society is at risk when there is no one to hold someone like Donald Trump accountable.  And being held accountable is something he can’t tolerate which is why he bans reporters from Air Force One and from the White House and why he rants about news organizations and specific news reporters.

Banning some reporters never works.  Colleagues ask their questions for them. Colleagues demand their answers.  He can roar all that he wants. He will never escape the scrutiny of the press.  He can have his favorite network lap dogs but they won’t keep the public from knowing more of the truth than he would ever tell.

After announcing the ban on the three news agencies, Trump said he was tired of all of the negative reporting correspondents had been doing about him.  “They’re fake news,” he said.  “You get so tired of reading and seeing fake news. You get sick of it.”

There’s an old saying that politicians should not get into a war of words with people who buy ink by the barrel.  He can throw out reporters but he can’t hide from the news.

Donald Trump IS the fake news and the polls indicate a lot of people are “sick of it.” Journalists are just exposing him to the public as he is. The public is seeing the light. And an increased percentage of the public also is “sick of it.”

Banning reporters is an act of cowardice by a man who resents the fact that the image he creates for himself is being truthfully reported.

One way or another, he—not the press—will be the loser.

(UPDATE)—Most of the major television news organizations announced today—Monday—that they would no longer provide their cameras for the White House TV pool. News divisions from ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, and NBC have taken steps that effectively cuts off coverage of the Trump White House.  The move was led by FOX News Washington Bureau Chief Bryan Boughton, the chair of the White House TV Pool.  The five networks put out a joint statement: “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”

Trump and his loyal followers are not reacting positively, as you might expect, to the press pool effectively agreeing with John Stewart.)  

Photo Credit: (Sheila Scarborough)