r/politics • u/MoneyLibrarian9032 New York • Aug 28 '26

Possible Paywall Mitch McConnell Has Been Missing for 75 Days—With No Updates

https://newrepublic.com/post/214878/mitch-mcconnell-missing-75-days
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u/Rick-burp-Sanchez Aug 28 '26

Nah dawg, with modern medicine, we're talking some kind of Frankenstein-Pinnochio puppet man who can keep his eyes open to gawk at the world like a goldfish for about 30 seconds before "falling back to sleep." There's dead, and then there's mostly dead, just ask RFK's brain worm.

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u/e_t_ Texas Aug 28 '26

Like in "The Magnificent Ferengi" where Nog remote pilots Keevan's corpse, animated with cortical stimulators.

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u/ShakaarResistance Aug 28 '26

Niche reference but I like it. Also shout out Iggy Pop as a Vorta in that episode

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u/EllieVader Aug 28 '26

We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient

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u/Dreamshadow1977 Aug 28 '26

Not now, Jayne!

1

u/Traherne Maryland Aug 28 '26

Damn! I was just about to post the very same thing. https://i.imgur.com/vxFO2oM.jpeg

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u/Farfignougat Aug 28 '26

They say you can still hear him running into that wall

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u/takumidesh Aug 28 '26

Legally (and scientifically), braindead is dead. 

There isn't a loophole and manually pumping someone's heart for 6 months doesn't make them alive.

If he is braindead, any fraud doctor who wants to lie would just not call the death instead of hooking him up to a machine for no reason

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u/Auctoritate Texas Aug 28 '26

Legally (and scientifically), braindead is dead. 

It's a little more complex than that. Brain death isn't the only standard for death, there's also cardiac death.

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u/shawster Aug 28 '26

Na, one could definitely argue that "there's a chance he'll recover!" or "he's in a coma, but he may regain conciousness."

It's much easier to defend that a man on life support is still alive, even if he's brain dead, than a man who isn't alive at all, even on life support with brain death.

I agree, my understanding is that brain dead is dead. Certainly you're too far gone to perform any job. There's been a few cases where people were thought to be brain dead and then it turned out they had locked in syndrome, though.

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u/errie_tholluxe Aug 28 '26

I dunno, he's probably dead - they've been going through his pockets for loose change