Zorro
Zorro's JournalDemocrats denounce GOP 'pinata' comment on Supreme Court
Source: AP
Democrats accused Republicans on Tuesday of taking their cues from Donald Trump after the Senate's No. 2 Republican said President Barack Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court should expect to be treated like a "piñata."
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said Republicans were "acting like big, tough people threatening to destroy the reputation of a Supreme Court nominee they haven't even met yet."
Reid and other Democrats denounced a comment by Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, who told reporters late Monday that anyone nominated by Obama to the high court "will bear some resemblance to a piñata."
Reid called the comment beneath the dignity of the Senate and said it was a threat in the mode of insults and bullying by Trump, the GOP front-runner for president.
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/senate-democrats-meet-iowa-challenger-grassley-202924050--election.html
That's Republican leadership for ya.
Frustrated GOP lawmakers weigh move to impeach top judges
Source: AP
Republican lawmakers in Kansas, weary of conflicts with a judiciary that has been pushing for more school spending, are beginning to act on a measure to expand the legal grounds for impeaching judges.
The move is part of an intensified effort in red states to reshape courts still dominated by moderate judges from earlier administrations.
A committee in the GOP-controlled Senate plans to vote Tuesday on a bill that would make "attempting to usurp the power" of the Legislature or the executive branch grounds for impeachment.
Impeachment has "been a little-used tool" to challenge judges who strike down new legislation, said Republican Sen. Dennis Pyle, a sponsor of the measure. "Maybe it needs to be oiled up a little bit or sharpened a little bit."
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/frustrated-gop-lawmakers-weigh-move-impeach-top-judges-193740406.html
I'm glad I don't live in Kansas. My condolences to those who do.
How 401(k)s have failed most American workers
Today, many Americans rely on savings in 401(k)-type accounts to supplement Social Security in retirement. This is a pronounced shift from a few decades ago, when many retirees could count on predictable, constant streams of income from traditional pensions (see “Types of retirement plans,” below). This chartbook assesses the impact of the shift from pensions to individual savings by examining disparities in retirement preparedness and outcomes by income, race, ethnicity, education, gender, and marital status.
The first section of the chartbook looks at retirement-plan participation and retirement account savings of working-age families. The charts in this section focus on families headed by someone age 32–61, a 30-year period before the Social Security early eligibility age of 62 when most families should be accumulating pension benefits and retirement savings. The second section looks at income sources for seniors. Since many workers transition to retirement between Social Security’s early eligibility age and the program’s normal retirement age (currently 66, formerly 65), the charts in the second section focus on retirement outcomes of people age 65 and older.
http://www.epi.org/publication/retirement-in-america
Well worth the read. It's disturbing.
Atheist lawmaker's prayer sets off Arizona House dispute
An atheist member of the Arizona House denied the chance to deliver the chamber's opening prayer by majority Republican leaders last month got the opportunity Thursday, only to see leaders rule his prayer didn't pass muster and call up a Christian pastor.
The opening prayer by Democrat Juan Mendez included a call to work to help the state and its residents flourish and to "honor the Constitution and the secular equality it brings." But he didn't pray to any deity, which infuriated some Republicans who are Christians.
Mendez said before the session that he had been invited to deliver the opening prayer by majority Republican leaders and that he didn't plan to invoke God.
After his prayer, House Majority Leader Steve Montenegro said Mendez's decision not to pray to God didn't meet House rules he issued earlier this year for the opening prayer. Speaker David Gowan then said "point of order well taken" and called on a Baptist minister on hand in an apparently planned response.
http://news.yahoo.com/atheist-lawmakers-prayer-sets-off-arizona-house-dispute-225757784.html
Colombia re-authorizes FARC leader visits to rebel troops
Colombia's government has re-authorized visits by rebel peace negotiators from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to guerrilla encampments in the country, the government's negotiating team said on Thursday.
The government suspended visits by rebel leaders two weeks ago after it said FARC negotiators violated the terms under which they were allowed to return from Havana, where peace talks have been taking place since 2012.
The rebels will only be allowed to meet with their own troops for the purpose of explaining progress at the talks, the government negotiating team tweeted.
"The protocols signed by the two sides do not allow events with the civilian population or the presence of the media," the team said. "For security reasons the locations of visits will not be revealed."
http://news.yahoo.com/colombia-authorizes-farc-leader-visits-rebel-troops-161425209.html
How severe is the retirement crisis? These six charts spell it out.
It has become fashionable in some quarters to pooh-pooh the very idea of a "retirement crisis" facing millions of Americans. The skepticism tends to come from economists and pundits whose retirement security is not in doubt, thanks to handsome retirement plans and high-income jobs that enabled them to assemble healthy nest eggs. They're scarcely fazed by the discovery that some of their claims are based on arithmetic errors, as happened just last month.
Economist Monique Morrissey of the progressive Economic Policy Institute on Thursday delivered some hard evidence of the problems facing the average American retiree with release of her updated Economic Inequality Chartbook: 32 interactive graphs that show how the shift from defined benefit pensions to 401(k)'s "has failed the majority of workers." This shift, which relieves much of the burden and risk of saving for retirement from employers and places it on employees' shoulders, has increased wealth inequality for older workers and left them on average with meager resources, even as their periods of retirement grow longer.
Morrissey also shows how Social Security has become more important to the average worker over time, giving strength to the argument that this all-important program should be expanded and its funding spread over a larger proportion of the population. Under the existing payroll tax system, which covers only earned income up to an inflation-adjusted $118,500 (this year), higher-income wage-earners and those who collect income mostly from capital gains, dividends and other unearned income pay a lower rate.
We've selected six especially telling charts from Morrissey's collection.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-six-charts-on-the-retirement-crisis-20160302-column.html
It's quite unsettling to see that there are so many workers near retirement age with so little saved.
Romney calling Trump 'phony,' urging Republicans to shun him
Source: AP
Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney is charging into the increasingly divisive White House race with a verbal lashing of Donald Trump and a plea for fellow Republicans to shun the front-runner for the good of country and party.
Romney is branding the billionaire businessman as "a phony, a fraud" whose "promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University," according to a speech Romney planned to give at the University of Utah on Thursday morning. The Associated Press obtained excerpts of his remarks in advance.
Trump, in turn, dismissed Romney as "a stiff" who "didn't know what he was doing" as the party's candidate in 2012 and blew a chance to beat President Barack Obama. "People are energized by what I'm saying" in the campaign and turning out in remarkable numbers to vote, Trump told NBC's "Today."
In ratcheting up the rhetoric, Romney cast his lot with a growing chorus of anxious Republican leaders — people many Trump supporters view as establishment figures — in trying to slow the New York real estate mogul's momentum.
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/gop-sees-options-stopping-trump-not-good-ones-082019626--election.html
The slapfest continues!
Venezuelan students clash with police over court ruling
Source: AFP
Venezuelan students threw Molotov cocktails and stones at police Wednesday in a protest against a Supreme Court ruling curbing the opposition-held legislature's powers, authorities said.
Wearing masks in the colors of the Venezuelan flag, the demonstrators set up roadblocks in the western city of San Cristobal, the cradle of anti-government protests that shook the country in 2014.
The new protest was against a ruling by the high court Tuesday that stripped the National Assembly's power to remove justices from the bench, which voided the opposition's bid to undo what it calls unconstitutional court-packing by President Nicolas Maduro.
Governor Jose Vielma Mora said on Twitter that student protesters from Catholic University attacked police with stones and petrol bombs.
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/venezuelan-students-clash-police-over-court-ruling-231938059.html
GOP Statisticians Develop New Branch Of Math To Formulate Scenarios In Which Trump Doesn’t Win Nom
In an effort to counter the real estate magnate’s rapidly growing lead in the delegate count, GOP statisticians announced Wednesday they had successfully developed an entirely new branch of mathematics for formulating scenarios in which Donald Trump does not win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.
“By expanding on pioneering work in the fields of applied statistics, higher-order logic, and number theory, we’ve arrived at a new branch of mathematics that provides for a multitude of feasible outcomes in which Donald Trump is not the 2016 GOP nominee,” said Dr. Jeffrey Larson, who has led a team of more than 30 statisticians who have been working around the clock at RNC headquarters to establish new mathematical properties since the wealthy businessman won the New Hampshire primary by a 20-point margin.
“The new field required several breakthroughs on the manipulation of Boole’s inequality principle, and some of our models are still only predictive within certain artificial stochastic conditions. However, this new discipline of Nonlinear Computational Probability finally establishes a practicable methodology by which there exist possible paths to the nomination for Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz.”
At press time, Larson announced the team had devised a new method of abstraction and mathematical induction in which lower numbers have a greater numerical value than their higher counterparts.
http://www.theonion.com/article/gop-statisticians-develop-new-branch-math-formulat-52463
Smiling Nation Takes Moment To Enjoy Thought Of What RNC Headquarters Like Right Now
Smiling as they imagined dozens of flustered, shouting GOP operatives frantically strategizing ways to get a hold on their political party, citizens nationwide took a brief moment Wednesday to stop and really savor the thought of what the Republican National Committee headquarters must look like right now, sources confirmed.
“Oh, man, just think of all the panicked meetings that are happening as we speak, and all the party officials who are probably clutching at their aching heads as they field irate phone calls from major donors—it’s so great,” said Tucson, AZ resident Melanie Berkley, just one of hundreds of millions of beaming citizens who reported feeling an intense sense of delight when picturing a conference room full of sleep-deprived campaign consultants yelling over one another about which candidate needs to drop out and when in order for the 162-year-old political party to remain intact.
“You know there’s got to be at least one angry executive chewing everyone out about Marco Rubio losing Virginia right now, and probably a whole table of officials shooting each other terrified looks after someone angrily asks ‘Well, what do we do now?’ God, it’s such a wonderful thought. It really is a nice pick-me-up.”
Berkley later reported that her reverie had been completely ruined by the thought of how smug everyone at the DNC headquarters must be right now.
http://www.theonion.com/article/smiling-nation-takes-moment-enjoy-thought-what-rnc-52467
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