What’s Beshear doing besides talking?
Beshear should just call their bluff, and name a Democratic Senator. Force MAGA to sue to stop him, and then they’ll have to provide proof of life. If they do, then fine, Mitch is still breathing, so they win.
But if they can’t prove it, or choose not to, then Beshear’s pick stands, and we’ve got another Dem senator.
Go ahead, call their bluff. You know they’re lying, they’re ALWAYS lying.
Kentucky doesn’t allow appointments, it has to be a special election.
Quite the opposite. The state constitution says replacements are appointed. Recent legislation that has not (yet) been tested in court calls for a special election.
I think that a honest court would strike down the legislation, especially if McConnel is revealed to be a corpse. The GOP are malicious liars.
Honestly if he’s a fucking lich then at this point I wouldn’t even be surprised. Just tell us already, take the mask all the way off.
They have to pretend he’s alive until the 3rd. A Kentucky law passed in 2024 requires a special election to be held to fill vacant Senate seat. But that law doesn’t apply if the vacancy occurs within 90 days of the seat being up for election.
Mitch’s seat being empty is better for the fascists than the risk of a Democrat taking the seat in the leadup to an election the GOP plans on fucking with.
Lindsay Graham was his second to last horcrux, which is why je’s hanging on by a thread.
Did he speak back? Or just drool?
You do realize that the “author” of that tweet is dead, right?
I had indeed forgotten he died.
Reads like a tweet typed while held hostage at gunpoint from a script
You do realize that the “author” of that tweet is dead, right?
Nah I forgot Herman Cain died of Covid!
That would be precisely the case if this was any other job. But, apparently, Senate seats are ordained by God and are a divine right.
And get handed over to family members, as with Graham.
This one has a Democrat governor though unlike Graham’s state. That’s why they are fucking around.
Considering the Senate was meant to be a collection of representatives hand picked by the rich, you are not far off…
And what if he is incapable of resigning?
I always figured that if you didn’t show up to work for a few weeks, that was a resignation. We should treat him as if he’s already resigned.
where i come from if you don’t show up to work for 2-3 days, you’re fired. you’d think the snobby fucks lecturing every american about personal responsibility would be able to at least pretend that they’re maintaining a high standard.
why is this freeloader even getting free healthcare at this point?
wheel him out onto the street like the bum that he is and let god deal with it.
He’s passed on! This senator is no more! He has ceased to be! He’s expired and gone to meet his maker! He’s a stiff! Bereft of life, he rests in peace! If they hadn’t nailed him to the hospital bed he’d be pushing up the daisies! His metabolic processes are now history! He’s off the twig! He’s kicked the bucket, he’s shuffled off his mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible!! HE IS AN EX-SENATOR!!
well he’s probably pining for the fjords
Stop giving me false hope
I cant even miss work for 3 days in a row without a doctor note and this pos just doing w/e?
Conservatives tend to believe in different rules for different people. They don’t really believe in equality
Some pigs are more equal than other ones.
And you think that’s a good thing?
He’s dead ffs. They should be launching a police investigation into the missing McConnell
You know he isn’t going to resign, even if he is, somehow, still alive. Instead of pussyfooting about the matter like this, I’d rather they stop wasting time and explore avenues to expel him from Congress, unless McConnell can make an in person appearance and satisfy questions as to whether he is still fit to serve in his office. Instead, I can’t help but feel like this will be slow-walked until days before the deadline to determine if there will be a special election to replace him, and then we’ll get a week of Dems wringing their hands going “Oh, however were we meant to know we couldn’t complete a process that is guaranteed to be slowed down as much as possible by our Republican colleagues in Congress in just the 3 days we left ourselves before we started acting like we were taking this matter seriously?”
How many times are we going to see them run this same play, only for it to blow up in their faces when their master plan requires the Republicans to act with sincerity and honesty, even when it would be disadvantageous for the GOP to do so? We literally saw it play out with the very man in question being a two-faced shit as soon as he sniffed a chance to steal a Supreme Court nomination from the Obama administration? We saw it again with investigations into Trump’s criminal behavior that, honestly, should have had him already sentenced in multiple cases and serving time before he even had the chance to run for a second time. Just assume the Republicans are lying through their teeth, and go scorched earth with a campaign to forcefully oust McConnell from office. Or take them at their word and make stupid demands you know McConnell would ignore if he were alive, and just make it that much clearer for us all that the Democrats are not sincere in their opposition to the agenda of the GOP.
Any company would have likely fired the guy for not showing up by now unless he submitted FMLA paperwork. This is one of the differences between regular working people and these government officials.
2012 was like “where’s his birth certificate?” 2026 is like “where’s his death certificate?”
One was racism, the other is something people genuinely need to know.
Is he MIA, DIA, or DOA? Whatever it is, he’s No call no show.
He could have a five minute phone conversation with a respected journalist and instantly kill all of these rumours. The fact that he hasn’t done so indicates he’s either dead or at minimum no longer of sound mind.
Honey corpses can’t respond to congressional mandates
One minute beyond the deadline they will announce, “mitch was visiting the ole’ Kentucky explosion factory today, not being a closeted homosexual, and in a freak accident, he exploded. So we’re all super bummed that there can’t be an autopsy now… Even if there could be of course, the results would just say he was definitely straight, and he was not dead for a month before his
corpseliving body wasdeliberatelyaccidentally exploded.”Need age caps – or at the very least – a rigorous cognitive and physical assessment from a panel of independent medical experts after retirement age that is made COMPLETELY public (because you’re a public servant, after all), annually.
It’s too much of a national security risk to have these geriatrics in office. I mean they’re easily-scammed by phishing emails and scam phone calls. Dementia is a high risk at that age. Sudden strokes, heart attacks, or sudden aneurysms as in Graham’s case are too much of a liability.
The problem isn’t age, it’s entrenchment and corruption. Being old in office is a side effect, not the main problem.
We need term limits for Congress. If we had term limits, the only way an old person could get into office is if they were voted in when they were old. Being old doesn’t necessarily make one incompetent.
Congress makes national policy that affects all of us, but only a few people in each state vote for or against them. There should be some safeguard against them remaining in office for decades.
Term limits for Congress.
Many US states have term limits already. Their positive impact on governance has been nil. They just shift more power to the party apparatchiks, lobbyists and the civil service (someone has to have institutional knowledge, and it there’s a revolving door, the elected people never have time to acquire it). And when someone’s about to be termed out, their final year in office is a scramble to find their next political post.
The problem is that there are multiple problems, and some of the solutions aren’t close to the root cause. I’ll try my best to explain.
One can say that age alone isn’t the problem; it’s corruption. I’d personally say the problem isn’t term-limits; it’s the ignorance of the electorate in discerning who is ready to go.
Yes, Sanders is an outlier that proves that old age isn’t always a problem; but he’s also proof that term-limits have negative consequence – for he has been an exceptional Statesman for decades, and we would’ve lost him long ago, if we had term limits.
So in my opinion in terms of corruption, we are chasing symptoms instead of the root cause, which is helping the electorate identify when a politician is useless. Examples of this: Kentucky for McConnell, California for Feinstein, New York for Schumer, and Maine for Collins.
Independent of corruption, old age is certainly an issue though. But even from a corruption standpoint, these senile geriatrics know they’re not long for this world and have little stake in the long-term future of the country, or even being worried about being held accountable and spending years in prison. That alone matters.
I’d personally say the problem isn’t term-limits; it’s the ignorance of the electorate
I’d say that it’s disenfranchisement and the fact that elections arent mandatory. That makes it more advantageous for the non-working class to spend time at townhalls and at voting booths.
A man working 2 jobs 12 hours a day to support his family simply isn’t going to have the same kind of presence as a business owner who makes his own hohrs or retirees who no longee work full time. And that applies even to voting. So guess how the voter skews?
But mandatory voting isn’t even in the conversion right now. Term limits are and has precedent. We gotta try something.
Mandatory voting means more low-information voters who will vote reactively. I don’t see how that will help.
Australia has mandatory voting and its politics are just as broken as the UK’s (which has a similar parliamentary system) and nearly as hosed as the US.
My view is that the root cause is money in politics, which drives corruption. Everything else that’s being discussed is just displacement activity, “quick fixes” that are easier than dealing with the real problem, but don’t actually accomplish anything.
We need to enforce mandatory disclosure of all non-legislative income, to shut down legislators having side jobs at all, insider trading by legislators, prevent them taking cushy fake jobs when they leave office, shut down the current Citizens United system of institutionalized bribery, further control agents of foreign influence interfering in our politics, and brutally punish anything remotely approaching Trump levels of corruption. It’s hard and will require constant vigilance, but band-aids don’t help.
more low-information voters who will vote reactively. I don’t see how that will help.
Disenfranchisement runs on the idea that most people would vote left if everyone voted. That’s why the right tries so hard to suppress rather than invigorate more people to vote. Mandatory voting doesn’t literally mean “everyone has to vote”. It punishes institutions who try to obstruct voting much heavier than a voter who refuses (for that voter, it’s usually an easy excuse or like, 20 bucks fine. It’s not trying to punish them).
But sure. There’s a no zero chance we get an influx of low information voters who just go with whatever narrative is popular. Or votes in a candidate with no political presence but is a well known name. I’d wager the average voter is aware enough to at least know the two big national candidates for president or their senate, though. Ideally, it creates a culture where there’s time to get informed for you ballot, since it usually includes a holiday to allow for voting.
My view is that the root cause is money in politics, which drives corruption
Okay. I agree with all your points. How do you drive that out? You need votes. Votes to get people in who aren’t corrupt and votes to regulate it. If someone wants to take a bribe, they should be scared for their life of that being a campaign-ending, if not career-ending, move.
Primary turnouts especially are absolutely pathetic. Things would be very different if candidates weren’t betting on 20% turnout.
Yeah I’m amicable to term limits as one method of helping solve this, I just have concerns and will have to do more of a deep dive on the pros and cons. Sadly the issue with so many of these good ideas is that it still puts the cart before the horse. We know what needs to be done, but since the likes of term limits require literal Constitutional Amendments, that requires both widespread public consensus, and an ability to vote together and for legitimate representatives willing to play ball – which, naturally, is the very problem we’re trying to fix in the first place.
So we have the 3rd and 4th step… But how do we get there from here?
really hard to say. We first need to stop breaking our government and get adults back in the room. Then we need chains of actions that rebuilds trust amongst all of us, or enough of the apathetic to rule out the inevtiable MAGA propoganda. It’s not impossible because term limits are generally a positive topic (very few people like the idea of career politicians to begin with), but still an uphill battle
Alternatively, we could somehow garner massive support that even Trump can’t ignore. But that’s a harder order than the above.
Term limits are a double edged sword. You lose experience when you kick people out just because they have experience, not to mention taking away voter choice.
It might be better to limit consecutive terms to a low number, based on the length of the term of office. For example, no more than 2 consecutive terms as a US Senator, or something.
I agree with you that there’s a problem that needs solving.
These ghouls do their dardnest to make sure remove voter choice as is.
Besides, term limits don’t need to be 8 years. Make it 3-4 terms for Senate and 10 for House. The main idea isn’t a revolving door, but to make sure fossils older than my dead grandpa aren’t still in Congress controlling my (theoretical) kids future.
Well, that’s a different take than the one I responded to. You seem focused on age limits, which are not the same as term limits.
As the other person noted, term limits won’t keep old people from being elected, if they’re old when they’re first elected.
Not that they both can’t be problems worth addressing, but we should take care to define what it is we’re trying to solve, and solve it as directly as possible.
ahh. I might have mixed up threads.
Yeah, the age thing doesn’t matter as much. You can technically be 30 and still be seriously hospitalized like this. You can be 80 and genuinely have the best interst for the country. it’s just more likely at 80 that you end up this way, on tubes and bitter at the world. T
he issues here is that represenatives have no incentive to actually do their job, or at least have minimum accountability from not doing their job as long as they are “the right people”. I beleive other countries have either recall processes for situations like this, or require X days per quarter in session before special elections can be triggered.
We should have multiple forms of accountability. Recalls, age and term limits, a cap on recesses and vacations, backup representatives when people go on vacation, requirements to attend town halls, and so forth.
Why not both age and term limits? The way I see it, they act as filtering layers that help remove problems. If one fails, the other might do the trick.
I disagree with the the former, it’s too easy to exploit, and also people are living with cognisance and clarity and good health for much longer than they used to, with no signs of a stop coming to that trend yet.
I vehemently agree with the latter though, but it should be as something hard to exploit, cause GOP could use it as a weapon against their enemies
Sorry, can you clarify – disagree with blanket age caps as we already have age mins, or disagree with a cognitive/physical annual assessment as we often as private employees are subject to already?
Former means “the first one”
Of course; though contextually that could’ve meant the latter paragraph, too. I was slightly thrown off as I don’t know how one would exploit hard age limits, but instead it also seemed exploiting the cognitive assessments would be an easier thing to exploit.
Either way, something must be done of course. Hopefully consensus continues to rise on this.
Anything that can be exploited likely will be
