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Mitch McConnell has not cast a roll call vote since June 11. He entered the hospital on June 14 after a fall, and his office told the public almost nothing for the next month.On July 12, a photo finally surfaced, McConnell in a hospital bed beside Elaine Chao, with word that a fall and mild pneumonia were behind it.Then silence again.Six weeks. A sitting United States senator absent from public view, while rumors moved from whispers to open speculation that he might not be alive at all.This cartoon is funny because McConnell has actually done it. Twice in the summer of 2023 he stopped mid-sentence on camera and stared into space, once for about 20 seconds at the Capitol until a colleague walked him off, and once for more than 30 seconds at an event in Covington.Three years ago tomorrow, to be exact. That statue on the wall is not a random gag. It is a callback.What is not funny is the cost. McConnell chairs the defense subcommittee on Appropriations, and without him the full committee sits deadlocked at 14 to 14. Government funding talks have been stalled for a month.He is also the second ranking Republican on Agriculture. Without him that panel sits 11 to 11, the farm bill has stopped moving, and the current one expires September 30.Kentucky farmers are paying for that right now. Four and a half million Kentuckians have one senator instead of two.Now sit with this. The question that froze him in Covington was whether he would run for re-election in 2026. It is now 2026, that seat is on the ballot November 3, and the man holding it has not been seen in six weeks.Federalist No. 62 defended the Senate's six year terms as the price of stability and accumulated wisdom, and No. 63 tied that power to responsibility, meaning officeholders who stay answerable to the people who sent them. Brutus warned of the opposite, that distance would teach officials to forget they answer to anyone.Whatever the truth is, it is coming out. It always does. Kentucky deserves to hear it from him first.