There was a botched execution yesterday in Tennessee. Now everyone is in an uproar. I’ll give you a little insight: She still should be executed and I have a way to verify we never botch another execution.
And Seattle’s policies have decimated business growth. So what does the council do? The same things. I don’t know if they will ever learn.
So? Do It Again!
According to Fox News:
Tennessee officials were unable to execute death row inmate Christa Pike on Wednesday night after she remained alive following two doses of a lethal injection drug, according to court filings from her attorneys.
The failed execution prompted Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to halt the state’s remaining scheduled execution this year and order “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.” Pike was taken to a hospital by ambulance for treatment, her attorneys said.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said it “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.”
But the execution did not proceed as expected. Pike remained awake and at one point raised her head, asking prison officials whether her arm was supposed to feel that way.
At 8:26 p.m. local time, witnesses said the executioners had “injected both syringes of lethal injection chemicals and Pike is still alive and snoring,” her lawyers said in a federal court filing, according to The Associated Press.
Pike’s attorneys said in emergency court filings that she “has not lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat,” arguing that the attempted execution was causing “unnecessary agony.”
What did she do? That seems to be buried to the very end of the article:
Pike, 50, was 18 in 1995 when she, her boyfriend and another person beat, kicked and stabbed their 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer to death in a brutal “satanic” attack that Pike claimed took between 30 minutes and an hour, according to court documents.
Pike and Slemmer knew each other through a vocational program in Knoxville called the Job Corps Center, the documents state.
Pike had accused Slemmer of “trying to get [her] boyfriend” and “running her mouth,” the case file shows. A day before the killing, she told another classmate she wanted to kill Slemmer because she “just felt mean that day,” according to the records. She was armed with a box cutter and a meat cleaver.
Pike and her accomplices lured Slemmer out, telling her they wanted to go to a music store and pick up some marijuana they’d hidden in a park nearby.
Pike attacked her, knocked her to the ground and hit her in the face with her knee and foot, according to court documents.
At one point, Slemmer broke away from Pike and tried to flee, but Pike’s boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, grabbed her and held her down while Pike slashed her with the box cutter. The victim begged for her life, but the attackers kept going. At some point, they gagged her with a hair tie.
Shipp also carved pentagrams into the victim’s face and chest.
At trial, forensic psychiatrist Dr. William Bernet testified that the crime had “satanic elements” but also appeared to involve “the phenomenon of collective aggression, in which a group of people become emotionally aroused and ‘the end result is that they engage in some kind of violent, extremely violent activity,'” court records show.
Dr. Eric Engum testified that Pike had been diagnosed with “very severe borderline personality disorder” in addition to showing signs of cannabis dependence and depression. However, he said, she had no symptoms of brain damage or insanity.
Pike took a piece of the victim’s crushed skull as a trophy and later showed it off in school, recounting that Slemmer had begged the trio to stop, according to court records. Pike told the friend she’d cut Slemmer’s throat a half-dozen times and then smashed her head with a rock. She showed off her bloodstained sneakers to another classmate and brought Slemmer’s skull fragment to breakfast the next morning.
Pike’s supporters counter that her defense did a poor job presenting mitigating factors before her sentencing, including untreated bipolar disorder and PTSD stemming from repeated domestic violence and sexual assaults. Just under 25,000 people had signed a petition to Gov. Bill Lee asking him to commute her death sentence to life in prison.
FAFO!
According to the New York Post:
Seattle is slated to increase its minimum wage to $22.14 an hour in 2027 as the broader metro area contends with a sharp drop in job openings and Seattle businesses face mounting cost pressures.
Beginning in 2025, all Seattle employers, including small businesses, were required to pay the same minimum wage, which is adjusted annually for inflation. Several Seattle restaurant owners who have since closed their businesses have cited rising labor costs among the financial pressures that contributed to their decisions.
During the first half of 2025, shortly after the wage hikes went into effect for all businesses, 450 Seattle restaurants — about 16% of the city’s total — closed. Restaurant and retail transactions fell by as much as 7% over the prior year in some business and shopping districts around Amazon and Microsoft campuses, according to Square data cited by The Wall Street Journal.
If no other jurisdictions increase their minimum wages to match or surpass Seattle, the Emerald City will have the highest minimum wage in the country next year. An individual working full-time on minimum wage in the city will make just over $46,000 annually.
“If the servers are making $20 an hour, then I gotta pay the cooks $35,” one Seattle restaurant owner said of the wage increases to Eater in 2024.
“Operators are making less money than ever and are charging more than ever,” Anthony Anton, CEO of the Washington Hospitality Association, said last year, according to The Center Square.
Later in the article:
From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 to 2023, about 500 local businesses closed, according to the Downtown Seattle Association. A year later, the association counted 543 vacant storefronts in the city. During this period, many business owners cited property crime as well as local economic factors as the reasoning behind their exits.
I Believe This
According to the New York Post:
Spouses who don’t share a last name get divorced far more often than those who do — and they split up sooner, data reveals.
Married couples with different surnames call it quits at a 50% higher rate and make it an average of just eight to 10 years before filing for divorce, according to an analysis from the Institute for Family Studies.
By contrast, couples with the same last name stick together about 12 years before divorce on average, according to the report, which analyzed 2023 Pew Research Center data and Texas divorce records.
“Couples who hold more things in common — from names to money — are more likely to take a ‘team-first approach to marriage life’ that reinforces cooperation, trust, and a sense of a common future,” writes the report’s author, Lyman Stone.
He also cites elopements and shotgun weddings as a possible factor.
“Obviously couples who do not share a last name will include some very thoughtful partners who are philosophically opposed to taking the husband’s last name — but it will also include a lot of couples who got married on the spur of the moment and who couldn’t be bothered to get their paperwork in order,” he suggested.
“Non-shared names may partly select for hasty, ill-considered weddings to begin with.”
Some women, however, may simply be staying married to avoid the massive paperwork headache of changing back to their maiden names, the report notes.
Overall, the report found that roughly 75-80% of married couples share surnames nationwide, and that conservative, white, and older women were more likely to take their spouse’s name.
This Is Going to Fail
According to the New York Post:
Here’s some good news for adults who “didn’t wanna grow up,” as the old ad jingle had it.
Toys “R” Us is kicking off its biggest expansion in nearly a decade, opening 120 stores amid surging demand from adult customers, the company said Thursday.
The retailer — whose 2017 bankruptcy devastated the toy industry — inked one-year leases across the country as toy sales notched their biggest spike since 2020, according to Circana, which tracks consumer data.
The new locales include Woodbury Commons and the Westchester in White Plains, NY, and the Mall at Short Hills in Millburn, NJ.z
Toy sales in the US grew 17% in the first half of the year – the strongest first-half performance in six years – largely fueled by adults who are snatching up trading cards and collectibles, according to Circana.
Adults now account for 55% of all toy sales, the researcher found.
Mall operators like having toy stores on premises, “so shoppers don’t feel like they have to leave the mall and go to Walmart or Target,” observed former Toys “R” Us chief executive Gerald Storch.
The new stores will offer some of the biggest brands, including LEGO, Barbie, Hot Wheels, Pokémon and KPop Demon Hunters – and some will have cafes and candy shops, according to the company.