By Bob Gaydos

A firing squad execution live on Tv?

   Dollars to donuts, the dotard wants to show up to witness the firing squad execution in Fort Hood. Pure spectacle. Violence. He loves it. Also, no one‘s talking about the illegal war he started in Iran that has wreaked havoc with the economy or the Epstein files which detail his involvement with sex trafficking and raping of young girls. Just saying.

    Back to death. With much of the nation, never mind government officials in Tennessee, still trying to figure out how that state’s prison system managed to botch the (twice) the execution of a 50-year-old woman sentenced to death 30 years ago for a brutal murder, Pete Hegseth, the chronically over-stimulated “war” Secretary, announced that the Army would carry out the first firing squad execution in this country in 65 years at Fort Hood. Don’t worry if you’re not invited. Your government plans to livestream it for your viewing pleasure. The ultimate reality show.

      And that’s how we decide these days what is the appropriate way for the government to deal with capital punishment, if at all. Trump reinstitutes firing squads, calls Hegseth and says, hey, Pete, get out those rifles. Pete’s hormones flare and he sets it up, including the streaming. And so discussing the pros and cons of televising live executions is moot. Unless the guest of honor’s lawyers go to court.

     The target of the execution is Nidal Malik Hasan, an army psychiatrist who killed 13 people and injured 32 more in a mass shooting at the military base in 2009. He said he did it in an effort to prevent the United States from sending troops to Afghanistan to kill other Muslims. He represented himself at trial, saw the killings as a holy mission. He would probably welcome the firing squad as an apt ending, making him a martyr for his cause.

      But public executions are against international law. Amnesty International reported in 2025 that it knew of 17 public executions, 11 in Iran and six in Afghanistan. 

     Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, condemned the decision to livestream the execution. In a written statement, he said, “It is with shock and great sorrow that I have learned of the Department of War’s decision to publicly livestream the execution of Nidal Hassan. Our God is the God of life. In no way can Hassan’s actions be condoned, but this decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered.”

      The firing squad would probably be more efficient than the bungled lethal injections in Tennessee, but it’s doubtful that’s behind Trump’s promotion of them. For him, it’s always about the spectacle, looking “strong,” no matter how it may impact the nation as a whole. The archbishop’s use of the words “barbaric” and “culture of death” ring true for the Trump regime.

    Christa Pike was released from the hospital in Tennessee yesterday after her double failed executions. Her lawyers said she was back in prison, walking haltingly and was still somewhat confused. They have asked that she be allowed to live out the rest of her life in prison.

    Hasan, who has waited 17 years for his death sentence to be carried out, may be toying with going out a martyr at the hands of a firing squad. On live television.

    Neither of these killers deserves any sympathy, but why do I have the feeling that millions of innocent Americans are being negatively impacted by the clumsy, impulsive ways their punishment is being handled? It says much about us as a nation right now and a lot of it is not positive.

    Also, lest we forget with all this talk about the proper way to kill killers, Trump’s illegal war with Iran that has created chaos with economies around the world continues, as does the FBI‘s failure to release the Epstein files, which detail Trump‘s alleged involvement in the sex trafficking and rape of young girls.

   And, as I continue to say, the Republican Party, which controls Congress, bears full responsibility for all of this for allowing it to continue. Remember that on Election Day.

By Bob Gaydos

People viewing — and smelling — the corpse flower (titan arum) in Washington, D.C.

There was a distinct stench of decay in the nation’s capital last week and thousands of visitors showed up to get a whiff — heck, a full, deep inhalation — of it. What’s that? No, no, this had nothing to do with the White House or Congress … stick with me. The odor emanated from, of all things, a flower.

The corpse flower. These large malodorous plants are not for sale at your local garden store. For one thing, they’re huge — this one is 8 feet tall — and bloom rarely. Unpredictably, really. And then for only two days at most. This makes such occasions an excuse for people to line up around the block, as they did at the U.S. Botanic Garden Conservatory, to look and smell.

A plant scientist who is public programs manager at the U.S. Botanic Garden, told the website LiveScience “… once you get into that room, it really hits you pretty hard. It reminded me of a dead deer on the side of the road in the Florida Everglades with a big pile of really soggy, moldy laundry next to it. It was really, really unpleasant.”

I think I know what the man is talking about. In my neck of the woods in upstate New York, about 75 miles from New York City, some farmers have taken to spreading what they say is fertilizer on their land, but which, to noses familiar and comfortable with normal fertilizer, smells like dead deer times ten. Death smell, we call it. Really unpleasant. The farmers never said it was the corpse flower, though. Duck eggs is the story they’re going with.

Unlike the corpse flower, no one around here lined up to take a good, deep whiff. You really only had to drive by to get it. A lot of people did complain to public officials, however, and that may have stopped the practice. Lately, it’s just been good, old-fashioned cow manure.

In Washington, though, Amorphophallus titanum was holding forth last week to no apparent purpose. While it rarely blooms and no one can say when one will bloom, the plant can be long-lived and botanists say the blooming has a specific purpose. Get this: The corpse plant uses its death smell to attract flesh-eating bugs such as beetles and flies that will carry its pollen to cross pollinate other corpse flowers.

So its purpose is simply to perpetuate itself apparently. Thank you, Mother Nature. One bloomed in the Bronx last August, but the plant is native to the rain forests of Sumatra and I suppose it makes sense in the ecological framework of western Indonesia. As for the D.C. transplant, I’m not certain.

This particular plant, which blossomed for the first time, is said to have grown from 4 feet tall to 8 feet tall just in the time it was put on display in the greenhouse — less than a week-and-a-half. It reeked of death for a couple of days then withered.

The folks at the Botanical Garden said this particular plant was the first corpse flower to bloom in Washington, D.C., since 2007. So for eight years — from 2008 to 2016 — there was no call to line up for the smell of death in the nation’s capital. This year — bloom!

Hmmm. Maybe I was wrong about the plant’s purpose. Maybe it’s trying to tell us something. Let’s see … what blooms big and garish without warning for no purpose other than to promote itself, attracts a crowd, appeals to flesh-eating bugs, stinks to hell for a brief period and then withers and goes away for a long time?

Maybe they’ll have a clue at the White House.

rjgaydos@gmail.com