My Titans Take

Tennessee will be pecked to death by the Ravens today. Lamar Jackson is better than Cam Ward, more athletic and with vast experience. Tony Pollard is a solid NFL starting running back, but Derrick Henry is arguably the best at that position in a generation, well above the ability that the Titan rusher possesses. I would say the only place in the starting offense or defense where Tennessee has the edge is Jeffery Simmons will be the best lineman on the field on either side of the ball for either team, but that will not stop Baltimore from a dominant victory over my hometown pro football franchise, that is sadly among the worst in the League.  

Our Evil Tinkerbell

It would be hard to argue that at points in her life Christa Pike was not bad beyond redemption, as when she participated in the murder of another young woman also in her late teens, and when she and a fellow inmate tried to kill another offender imprisoned with them. That being said, I do not think the moral compass of my home state should be guided by vengeance alone, but also must be tempered with mercy. I think Governor Lee, if he has any decency at all, should now commute Pike's sentence to spare her any future second attempt at execution. If she survives the effects of the two lethal doses she was administered (that in my mind became cruel and unusual punishment), she should be left to live out the course of her natural life without fear of further torture. Pike, if she lives through this at all, will likely face profound and lifelong damage and disability from what was already done to her, with cognitive and motor impairment almost certain. She has been made to suffer too much already, and our term-limited Governor must take this into account and not keep a sword of Damocles over her head, if she somehow emerges alive from hospitalization and rehabilitation from the State's clumsy attempt at killing her. 

Capital Punishment Reform

If the state is going to kill someone, they should do it quickly, efficiently, and with as little pain as possible inflicted on the offender. I knew one of the wardens who electrocuted murderers at our state prison. Warden Neal said the process was not torturous, and he believed the inmate felt little if any pain because the current moved faster than the neurons that convey pain signals to the brain. We still have a functioning electric chair in Nashville. I do not think firing squads are necessary to terminate those sentenced to die. The Communist Chinese use a single shot to the base of the skull where it connects to the neck, and is almost always quickly fatal. That is messy to the condemned and those who witness it, but there is a speed and certainty to it. I do not think Christa Pike is among the worst of the worst, just a woman who was under the influence of drugs and at only eighteen when she participated in a brutal murder, too young to have her cerebral cortex fully developed to make fully rational decisions that an older person likely might have. I am not saying Pike is an exemplary or even decent person, but she did NOT deserve to be tortured relentlessly by my homestate acting in my name, but against my conscience. 

Sanctions Against Israel?

The tiny beleaguered nation whose intelligence services help keep the world safe from terrorism is being sanctioned by numerous countries that have let in and loosed a raping foreign horde on the women who live those places benighted by Jew-hate going back to the Holocaust or even before the Nazis attacked their countries. Not only do these Jew-haters not defend those vulnerable to Muslim rape gangs, they threaten people who bring in goods from certain parts of Israel with prison, when it is the Israelis who have often put them on alert and saved them from jihadist violence. 

Double the Shame

If the stakes of torture in an attempt at killing were not so consequential, I would say my home state of Tennessee just beclowned itself, They could have had a street thug with an aluminum bat do a better job of finishing off poor Christa Pike than a so-called "doctor" and "highly-trained" execution team did. I do not know how this "physician" is allowed to remain in his metier after two botched attempts to kill inmates this year, that this fool was so incompetent at that his efforts bear the hallmarks of sadism, Beyond that, is deliberately participating in the taking of the life of a "patient" not a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, even if one is so clumsy that the effort fails and the agonized "victim" survives?  

For Shame Tennessee

My home state is scheduled to execute Christa Pike later today who participated in killing another girl over three decades back. Pike was raped and abused as a child with no access to counseling after these horrific events warped her. She by definition had ineffective lawyers, or she would never have had a death sentence imposed. I will not feel any more safe in my Nashville home after the authorities terminate a mentally ill middle aged woman for what she did in the 1990's while under the influence of drugs and with PTSD from her hellish childhood few could even imagine. If it becomes a jejune concept to want to protect womanhood in a society, then we need to start anew where men are protectors of women and girls and not their executioners.  

Eagles Not Powerhouse

While I will give Philadelphia their props for being the most obnoxious and confrontational fans in American sports, I have to say their football team is overrated this season. Yes, while they did defeat my hometown's woeful Titans (in a game I suffered through in the scorching stadium), they had their heads handed to them by the Bears being led by a career backup quarterback, who was not even drafted when he signed as a free agent over a decade back. Philadelphia does not look like a Super Bowl contender, but Chicago continues to shine even without their superstar starting QB in the mix.