A Republican Congresswoman who has been “missing” for the past six months has finally been found.
Rep. Kay Granger has served as the representative for Texas’s 12th Congressional District since 1997.
However, she suddenly disappeared from the public eye around July this year, when she cast her final vote against an amendment to reduce the salary of Deputy Assistant Administrator for Pesticide Programs to $1.
A curious reporter at the local Dallas Express newspaper did some digging on Granger’s whereabouts and has finally been able to give her constituents some answers.
[…]We then received a tip from a Granger constituent who shared that the Congresswoman has been residing at a local memory care and assisted living home for some time after having been found wandering lost and confused in her former Cultural District/West 7th neighborhood.
The Dallas Express team visited the facility to confirm whether Granger was residing there and to inquire about how she planned to vote on the spending bill. Upon arrival, two employees confirmed that Granger is indeed living at the facility.
How the fuck does a Senator go missing for SIXTH FUCKING MONTHS and no one bothers looking for them.
She is in Congress, not the Senate - so there’s a couple hundred more of them in general, and not all of them turn up to work every day… so it’s not hard to lose one for 6 months and not notice.
Especially when they’re Republicans, since they do sweet fuck all most days anyway.
She apparently did make at least one appearance during the sixth months for whatever that’s worth (sourced from her Wikipedia page)
Her aids were probably running the show for years. What happens with these congress critters is that they create a support network around themselves to do the real work while they campaign for the next election. It gets to the point that the congress member themselves becomes superfluous. If it goes on long they fall into dementia, but the aids don’t want to start over again with someone new and they just tote their boss around from time to time like Weekend at Burnie’s. It happened with Dianne Feinstein. It’s probably happening with Mitch McConnell.
She’s only 81, which is kind of young to be suffering that level of dementia. She has been diagnosed with Covid at least once. I wonder if that is related.
My dad died of dementia when he was 83. He was in a nursing home for a year before he died.
It was before COVID.
Glad she’s in a place that helps her. Her family did well.
Except for hiding her condition from her constituents. Do you want her voting on the Spending Bill when she doesn’t even remember where she is?
(To be fair, it would be hard to tell you’re not in Congress when you’re surrounded by your fellow Alzheimer’s patients.)
That might be what he meant, good on her family for seeing she has dementia and getting her away from her job
To be fair, dementia is not much of a hindrance for making GOP policies.
It’s not a hindrance for either party. Did you watch the first presidential debate?
Don’t get mad at me. I’m not the one who fielded a brain-damaged presidential candidate.
I’m not sure if the people downvoting you didn’t watch the debate or are so tribal that they’re offended by legitimate criticism of Biden
It’s not even criticism, really.
It’s just an observation, no different than looking up and saying the sky is blue.
Truthfully, though, this is a criticism of both parties. Trump is clearly brain-damaged too, and he showed is several times during the campaign. The difference is he’s still able to behave as expected, more-or-less, where Biden is not.
I’ve encountered 90 year olds that can walk, maybe even run circles around 50-60 year olds, mentally and physically.
That said, this is something we keep seeing. Feinstein was painful to see, and a clear example of what should never be allowed to happen. We need an age cap.
A policy like that is also ethically sound in that, and I’ve heard this floated before in multiple places, in that the politician will then have to sit back as an outsider and look at the impact of what they did.
As is, our politicians are free from that in being able to die in office or retire to dementia care instead of FEELING the impact of what they’ve done, or pointedly not done, while in office.
Age cap: 70. Done. You can run if you’re going to turn 70 in office, let’s be generous, but once you’re over 70 you can no longer run for an office.
Enforced retirement of judges for the same reason. Hit 70, you finish or transfer the cases you’re working on and when that’s done you’re done. Who knows how much inertia is fueling a waxing/waning cusp of Dementia judge when there’s no real focus on this across the many courtrooms of the country.
But I’ll probably be accused of ageism here. It’s a nice way to solve ethics problems, infirmity problems, and add in a soft cap term limitation.
I got accused of ageism before for saying the same that there should be mandatory retirement for public officials. However, the most convincing argument I heard for letting elders to still run for public office is that their accumulated experience, knowledge and wisdom could still be of great dispense for the public. Noam Chomsky is still doing well despite in his 90’s, for example.
But Chomsky did not get it right with his genocide denialism on Cambodia and Yugoslavia. He may have great insights, but his ego seems to have been entrenched on downplaying atrocities of other anti-Western countries simply because they are anti-America. And then there is also the time when Chomsky basically brushed aside his association with Jeffrey Epstein, by telling the interviewer to mind his business. It’s not a proof in and of itself, but it’s very suspicious.
You can share your wisdom and be of great value to the public without being in public office.
At some point, though, you’ve gone from useful adult into honored elder, and while I’m not suggesting we put them all on ice floes, they shouldn’t be running the country, especially since more than a few of them clearly don’t even know which country they’re in, let alone how to run it.
If you can’t walk, are having strokes, have developed dementia, and generally just sit around staring at the wall like my cat, perhaps it’s time to gracefully retire and go spend the rest of your life doing conferences and speaking engagements and whatever the hell else you want, not trying to legislate.
There’s also a common problem of no career path for politicians after holding some of the higher offices. It’s either be reelected or elected to a higher position. I think it’s more or less present in most countries.
It’s especially obvious with US presidents, none of them held any other office after being president. Even previous younger ones.
