• ceenote@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    This whole thing is so stupid. The rule is not that he gets replaced when he dies, it’s that he gets replaced when he’s unable to do the job, which he clearly is.

    • tempest@lemmy.ca
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      14 days ago

      Yeah he’s likely still alive.

      My bet is a stroke or something equally debilitating.

      • Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net
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        14 days ago

        The ghoul is braindead and being kept alive through artificial support. Although, regardless of the specific condition, we can infer with near certainty that he is a vegetable.

        If he wasn’t, they would have at the very least put him on a video call interview to show that he is alive, awake, and coherent.

      • FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca
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        14 days ago

        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!!

        • heartSagan5@lemmy.zip
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          13 days ago

          Then, my “vision” if you that’s what it is, is he’s in limbo and he’s only getting out when he says a message I gave him.

    • Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus
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      14 days ago

      Yep, if he had a stroke and a few hours passed before they found him there is no way he will ever work anything more than what he does with his therapists to preserve whatever capabilities he has left.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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      13 days ago

      And the pussy ass Dem governor could have just replaced McConnell and made them prove otherwise in court. But he didn’t.

  • dohpaz42@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    Now would be such a beautiful time for Dems to make a call for a Return to Work order for good ol’ Mitch.

      • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        That is flatly incorrect for floor votes, only for committee business. While there are three different methods for the US Senate to take a vote, all three require the physical presence of the senator to do so. These rules have remained unchanged since 1798.

        Unanimous consent is technically another, but it requires actual unanimous consent, so it is rarely used for anything of importance.

        McConnell himself was one of the people being hardline about forbidding proxy/non-physical voting during covid, and the reason there is no absentee voting in the Senate when it came up again, which it does from time to time.

        I never thought I’d be grateful, but I guess it’s a good thing they never allowed the Herman Cain crowd to perform official acts.

        • Lasherz@lemmy.worldM
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          4 days ago

          I should have specified that the voting on his behalf is occurring in committee votes, which is still highly screwed up, but Johnson could just fill in his spot at any time anyways.

          • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            That is . . . questionable. A committee has a certain number of chairs; whether or not that chair gets an acting substitute is at the discretion of the committee rules and more often than not, the committee chair. Keep in mind that committee and subcommittee assignments are worked toward for years, over the span of multiple elections, and McConnell’s own seats are among the most powerful and highly coveted, like Rules, which he chairs.

            So sometimes they just sit open, and in this particular case McConnell is one of the most powerful senators in Congress who has friends that are rabidly guarding his assignments, not just for his sake but for purposes of control, with an eye to who will get them if/when an actual vacancy becomes real in legal terms. (They’re all lawyers anyway, now turned lawmakers, so it really is all about the letter of the law with them.)

            Also, just as a friendly reminder, in the US we have a bicameral (two houses) form of government legislature and Mike Johnson can’t do shit in the Senate (the higher house). He’s Speaker of the House of Representatives (the lower house). The Senate has different rules and different leaders. Technically it’s JD Vance, the vice president of the US, and Chuck Grassley, president pro tempore, but they don’t actually have much to do with regular leadership. For leadership in actual day to day business it’s the Majority Leader, John Thune, one of McConnell’s besties and one of the Republican legislators swearing to have spent 20 minutes on the phone with him after his hospitalization.

            Apologies, I know a detailed correction is probably not what you wanted to get back in terms of a reply, but it’s worth understanding how the power flows in practice.

            Can you tell me where you’re getting your information that someone is voting for McConnell in committee? I’d like to know more.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      14 days ago

      Like most rules, it’s almost certain that the fascists make an “unless WE want to” exception.

      If the turtle’s still alive, that is.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      13 days ago

      I think they’re waiting for the fossilization process to complete. Expect an update in about 250 million years, only then will they admit that maybe he might be dead. But they still won’t confirm anything.

      • GladiusB@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        I don’t think he’s officially dead yet. Or they couldn’t hide it. He’s probably a vegetable.

  • D_C@sh.itjust.works
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    13 days ago

    Other than making the world a worse place for decades then what work did the horrible tortoise actually do that warrants a statement about a corpse working from home?

  • heartSagan5@lemmy.zip
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    13 days ago

    Wild part is I think he’s in limbo, but I don’t know if he’s on life support or sans body because they keep playing Weekend at Bernies with him. I guess we’ll see if he ever makes a video conference to prove him living.

    Kentuckians should be clamoring for a successor because they may not be receiving the best representation, or any at all.