Rolling Stone: Dianne Feinstein Is Mentally Unable to Serve as Senator; It Is Her Aides Who Actually Make All of "Her" Policy, Not Feinstein Herself; This Has Been Going On For a Long While, and "Journalists" Have Conspired to Cover It Up

Usually I'd say "don't trust Rolling Stone" but in this case, they certainly have leftwing sources and they're acting against their typical partisan interest. (Of course, their current partisan interest is to drive Feinstein out of the pretense of holding office so that a real c0cksvcker can be appointed to fill her seat, like Adam Schiff.)

This is grim stuff. Her handlers are basically playing Congressional Weekend at Bernie's just so they don't have to update their resumes.

Dianne Feinstein, 89, returned to Congress this week, ending an almost three-month medical absence that highlighted her advanced age and deteriorating health. But her decline, and the problems it entails for American democracy, date back farther and go deeper than has been publicly known.

Multiple sources tell Rolling Stone that in recent years Feinstein's office had an on-call system -- unbeknownst to Feinstein herself -- to prevent the senator from ever walking around the Capitol on her own. At any given moment there was a staff member ready to jump up and stroll alongside the senator if she left her office, worried about what she'd say to reporters if left unsupervised. The system has been in place for years.

"They will not let her leave by herself, but she doesn't even know it," says Jamarcus Purley, a former staffer.

Senators juggle a heavy schedule of votes, hearings and meetings on a wide range of subjects. Momentary lapses and mixups about a topic are far from unheard of. But over the last several years, interviews with Feinstein devolved into confusion on a near-daily basis. A familiar pattern would emerge: Feinstein would make an unexpected stance on a bill or policy position, only for her staff to quickly follow up by email to correct the record. It got to the point where reporters would pause before rushing to publish an otherwise-newsworthy declaration because of the inevitability of staff reversing her statement.

What a surprise -- "journalists" were in on the conspiracy to hide very important information from the public. They knew that Feinstein was demented and would issue statements that her handlers -- elected by nobody -- would then veto.

Instead of reporting that fact, they just stopped reporting her statements until the staffers gave them the Staffers' Consensus Position.

Again, no one elected her staffers to do anything, to make statements, take positions, or decide on how to vote.

But that's what's going on.

Feinstein once notably seemed to forget she had relinquished her role as third in line to the presidency. As the longest-serving member of the Senate majority, she would traditionally serve as president pro tempore, behind only the vice president and speaker of the House in the line of succession. Feinstein announced last October via a written statement she would voluntarily give up the title. But when asked about it three weeks later she told a reporter she was still considering what to do. The staffer quickly corrected the Senator.

Again: The staffers who nobody elected actually made this decision. The demented Feinstein knew nothing about it.

...

Feinstein's office did not respond to a request for comment.

Her staffers didn't want to comment on their illegal usurpation of the power of an elected senator.

They also, I imagine, failed to tell Feinstein about this inquiry into their illegal usurpation of the power of an elected senator.

Amid questions about her health last summer, Feinstein's office released a statement saying she has had a hard time adjusting to the death of her husband but remains heavily engaged in legislating, including fighting to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, introducing the Respect For Marriage Act, and contributing to gun safety legislation. "I've remained committed to achieving results for my state and I would put my record up against anyone's," she said via the statement.

LOL. She wrote that, right?

In April of last year, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that some of Feinstein's colleagues had begun to question her ability to fulfill the duties of her office, bringing new scrutiny to the senator. But as her health struggles played out in public, behind the scenes, staff tried to uphold the illusion of a normal, functional office while she displayed clear signs of cognitive decline.

Purley described office meetings where an issue would be discussed for several minutes, only for Feinstein to bring up the same topic later in the same meeting. Senior staff would then run through the whole conversation again as if they were saying it for the first time, to the discomfort of everyone in the room except for Feinstein. Another witness corroborated this account.

...
One person who did not want to be named recounted Feinstein asking a staffer for a memo, then responding with bewilderment when the memo was turned in the next day. These issues are longstanding: last summer, almost a year ago, one person who had worked with her and asked not to be named said "her days are all bad days now." Feinstein's acuity gets worse as the day goes on, multiple people told Rolling Stone, and staff have long tried to avoid her having any engagements after mid-afternoon.

Another sundowner.

I don't want to mock Alzheimer's and general dementia but we expect people to retire when their minds start to go. We do not keep them as the top-ranking senator and president of the United States.

Purley said Feinstein's office began noticeably restructuring around her mental limitations in 2019. He said that year formerly large staff meetings were cut down to only senior staff and people working on legislative issues. "Junior staff were making jokes about her cognitive decline. Interns were noticing it," he said.

...

In a healthier political system, an incapacitated person may be gently removed from a role crucial to the governance of the nation. That's harder to do in Washington, DC, which is designed to be run by the elderly.

Full article here.

Thanks to nurse ratched.

posted by Ace at 01:40 PM

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