Has Jim Bunning's Alzheimer's Made It Impossible For Him To Function?

Jim Bunning pauses to try to remember his name... fails

It wasn't even a month ago that Kentucky and national Republican leaders were desperately trying to persuade KY Secretary of State Trey Grayson to mount a primary campaign against unpopular and severely senile extremist Jim Bunning. Grayson says he'd like to run in the general but won't move against the doddering Bunning who many think is likely to either die or be declared incompetent because of his dementia before the 2010 election. Bunning was unable to campaign at all in 2004 and barely managed to retain his seat. Recent polls show him losing by a substantial margin in 2010. He has been gambling on a 100% obstructionist course and is hoping that Obama and not GOP policies will be blamed for a continuing economic downturn in America. But with Bunning digging in his heals and directing a hissy fit towards McConnell and Cornyn-- the two who are most eager to push him into retirement-- the GOP has turned to Kentucky's state Senate president, an ambitious and extremist maniac named David Williams. Williams barely got a third of the vote when he ran against incumbent Senator Wendell Ford in 1992.

Although Bunning bristles when people bring up his increasing derangement and fragile physical, mental and emotional health, on Saturday he publicly declared that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would die of cancer within 9 months, causing more people to question his mental well-being. His point was not necessarily to celebrate the progressive justice's death but to point out that he could somehow make sure she is replaced by a conservative. "Ruth Bader Ginsburg… has cancer. Bad cancer. The kind that you don't get better from," he told a crowd of voters.

"Even though she was operated on, usually, nine months is the longest that anybody would live after (being diagnosed) with pancreatic cancer," he said.

Ginsburg, who is 75, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer earlier this month and surgeons removed a small tumor that had not spread. Doctors termed it a "Stage 1" cancer, meaning they found it in the early stages when it is most curable.

According to the American Cancer Society, people diagnosed with Stage 1 pancreatic cancer have between a 21 and 37 percent chance of living for more than five years with the disease.

Only about 20 percent of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer live for more than a year, but that's because the cancer is difficult to detect and generally is found in later stages.

Once a staffer told him that his remarks were reported by the press, his office issued a typically insincere apology this morning... misspelling her name.

Because Bunning is considered among the walking dead-- politically and physically-- he has been unable to raise any money. Increasingly frustrated, he lashed out insanely at NRSC chairman John Cornyn, a right wing extremist like himself, accusing him of starving the wingnut incumbents-- himself, DeMint, Coburn and Vitter-- while lavishing campaign cash on hated moderates Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe. Speaking on condition of anonymity a Snowe staffer explained that the wildly popular Maine senator won't be facing voters for another three-and-a-half years and that everyone in her office feels badly about Bunning's mental deterioration and inability to cope with the fast pace of the modern world.


UPDATE: MORE REPUBLICANS CALL ON BUNNING TO HANG UP HIS CLEATS

Republican strategist Phil Musser told MSNBC yestreday that although Bunning was "a great baseball player," his time is up and the Republicans should get a primary opponent to get his embarrassing dead ass out of the Senate. "We need a Grand New Party; we need a new generation of leadership... He's increasingly erratic. His public statements are an embarrassment." Meanwhile, Bunning says he'll sue Cornyn and the NRSC if they try to replace him.