Free Republic

Baby boomers face of what used to be called the retirement age are offering 70 million members strong market for the legions of companies, entrepreneurs and plastic surgeons willing to take advantage of their “forever young” mode think, either through wrinkle creams, face lifts or training schemes. That adds to the potential bonanza. Market research firm Global Industry Analysts projects that fuel the boom in consumer base, “seeking to keep the dreaded signs of aging at bay,” will drive the U.S. market anti-aging products for about $ 80 million today to more than $ 114 billion by 2015. The baby...

Generation Xers and Gen-Yers like me have a hard time showing interest in what goes on in Washington. But we had better end our apathy -- and soon -- or we'll spend the rest of our lives paying for it. Members of the generation that came before us -- the Baby Boomers -- are trying to pull a scam under the guise of "protecting" Social Security. If they succeed, we -- and our children -- will be the poorer for it. Everyone knows Social Security is in trouble (and President Bush's Commission to Strengthen Social Security released its report on...

Richard Ben Kramer’s seminal work on running for the presidency, What It Takes, introduced the idea of the ‘looking in the mirror’ moment. It was the second when an individual awoke, looked themselves in the eye, and decided that running the rigorous gauntlet of a campaign was worth it. I believe we as a country, and more specifically those of us in the Gen X cohort, are looking in the mirror today. The question facing us is essentially the same: do we have what it takes? Folks should be forgiven for asking, “For God’s sake, what’s next?” For any number...

My father suggested to me recently that it might be helpful to better explain what the term “neoconservative” means. “A lot of people don’t know,” he said. As usual, Dad was right. Though decades old, the mainstream use of the word neoconservative is relatively new. I mentally filed away my father’s suggestion agreeing that a layman’s explanation of “neoconservative” might be helpful when the time was right. The time is right—as the American intervention in Libya has drawn a clearer line between neoconservatives and conventional Republicans than any event in recent memory. The “neocons” believe American greatness is measured by...

Rochester, N.Y. – A busy Memorial Day evening at the beach ended abruptly when fights broke out among at least 100 youth. Monroe County Sheriff’s deputies shut down Ontario Beach Park, prompting a traffic jam. Large crowds of youth ran south on Lake Ave.　 Sheriff’s and Rochester police arrested 13 people on charges ranging from disorderly conduct to drug and alcohol offenses. Erica Blake, 34, allegedly assaulted a deputy who responded to the scene. She’s been charged with second-degree assault. Police say the deputy was scratched on the face as he was pulled into the fracas.　 Witnesses said there were...

Batman is ready for his closeup again. Shooting is now underway on Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures' The Dark Knight Rises, the third and presumably final chapter in director Christopher Nolan's epic trilogy on the Caped Crusader. Christian Bale once again reprises his role as Bruce Wayne and his gruff-voiced alterego. Joining him will be an all-star cast including newcomers Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle, better known by her meow de plume Catwoman, Tom Hardy as the villainous Bane, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Gotham City cop John Blake and Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate, a Wayne Enterprises boardmember who helps Bruce...

Glenn Beck, it turns out, was just a warm-up for Media Matters. This week, the progressive watchdog group launched a campaign targeting all companies that advertise on Beck's TV home, the Fox News Channel. Headquarters for the campaign is a website called DropFox.com that was unveiled Monday. Front and center at the site is the group's first targeted advertiser: Orbitz Worldwide. Next to the Orbitz logo on Wednesday was a photo of Beck above the tagline, "Buyer Beware: Why Advertisers Should Still Be Wary of Financially Supporting Fox News." Click Beck's photo and it takes you to charts and data...

The number of African Americans residing in the District plummeted by more than 11 percent during the past decade, with blacks on the verge of losing their majority status in the city for the first time in half a century. According to census statistics released Thursday, barely 50 percent of the District’s population was African American in 2010 — a remarkable shift in a place once nicknamed “Chocolate City.” The black population dropped by more than 39,000 over the decade, down to 301,000 of the city’s 601,700 residents. At the same time, the non-Hispanic white population skyrocketed by more than...

<p>Here's what's rich about the continuing back-and-forth between Karl Rove and Christine O'Donnell: The most significant concern about O'Donnell is the argument that conservatives should ignore qualifications and personal flaws as long as a candidate checks the right ideological boxes. Well, what candidate benefited from that calculus more than Rove's pet project George W. Bush?</p>

A Twenty-First-Century GOP Republicans need to win back tech-savvy, educated voters. Here’s how. With President Obama’s job-approval ratings in free fall, Republicans feel justifiably confident about the 2010 congressional elections. But even if the GOP has recovered some swagger, the party’s long-term political fortunes require it to recover something else: the votes of well-educated, well-compensated elites. Over the past decade and a half, Republicans have watched scientists, high-tech workers, doctors, financial leaders, and academics in engineering and business abandon the party in favor of the Democrats. This exodus has weakened the GOP politically and left it dependent on white evangelical...

(Sept. 16) -- Tuesday night, Delaware, New Hampshire and New York joined Nevada, Colorado, Florida and Kentucky in the ranks of states where establishment Republican candidates have fallen to GOP outsiders in this year's primaries -- evidence, some pundits suggest, that voters are likely in store for more, not less, partisan politics inside the Beltway next year. If true, America's current trend flies in the face of the philosophy espoused by Irish statesman and political theorist Edmund Burke more than 200 years ago: "All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on...

President Barack Obama's policies are propelling the nation toward "hard-core socialism or worse," best-selling author Robert J. Ringer warns, adding that the "real terrorists" threatening the nation are progressives in Congress who are "subverting the Constitution." In an exclusive Newsmax.TV interview, Ringer talked about his new book, “Restoring the American Dream: The Defining Voice in the Movement of Liberty.” It's an updated version, co-authored with The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore, of a 1979 book titled “Restoring the American Dream” — a work that introduced many Americans to libertarian ideas. Ringer says the new edition reflects his own evolution toward...

As they prepare to leave the stage, even Boomers themselves concede that things have not exactly gone according to script. Generalizations about generations are often foolish. Who’s to say when one generation ends and the next one starts? And people are individuals: any characteristic intended to describe almost 80 million people will be inaccurate in most individual cases. But the Baby Boom generation is more real than most. It had a clear starting point: 1946, just long enough after the end of World War II and the return home of American soldiers. (Its end point is set as 1964, although...

One of the origins of human society can be traced to slavery. Yes, it is the physical ability of one part of society to order another part of it to “do what the rulers want to be done.” Only a language can explain well to another human being what he or she is expected to do. Slavery thus originated at a certain level of mental development: that of conversation in a mutually understood human tongue. This level of human development made it possible for humans to wage wars instead of pursuing and killing animals. Gradually, there originated fortresses and fortifications...

Normally, I spend all week researching on the Internet to fact-check data I'll include in my weekly column. Unfortunately, my router/modem died on me and while I'm awaiting delivery of a new one, I've decided to write this week's essay on a subject that needs no research. It's simply an essay I've written in my head over and over and plan to include it in my future memoir, if I ever get around to it. I'm a child of the '60s but more of a critic because I found the Age of Aquarius to be one big lie. I well...

Just 65 years ago, David Livermore's paternal grandmother died following an operation to remove her appendix. It didn't go well, but it was not the surgery that killed her. She succumbed to a series of infections that the pre-penicillin world had no drugs to treat. Welcome to the future. The era of antibiotics is coming to a close. In just a couple of generations, what once appeared to be miracle medicines have been beaten into ineffectiveness by the bacteria they were designed to knock out. Once, scientists hailed the end of infectious diseases. Now, the post-antibiotic apocalypse is within sight....

The baby boomers. Born between 1945 and 1955, they are busy ignoring the biblical calculus that a man's span is three score years and 10. Having enjoyed a life of free love, free school meals, free universities, defined benefit pensions, mainly full employment and a 40-year-long housing boom, they are bequeathing their children sky-high house prices, debts and shrivelled pensions. A 60-year-old in 2010 is a very privileged and lucky human being – an object of resentment as much as admiration. I'm at the heart of all of it – guilty as charged. Born 21 May 1950, I'm the quintessential...

America's baby boomers—those born between 1946 and 1964—face a problem that could weigh on the economy for years to come: The longer it takes for the economy to recover, the less money they'll have to spend in retirement. Policy makers have long worried that Americans aren't saving enough for old age. And lately, current and prospective retirees have been hit on many fronts at once: They have less money, they earn less on what they have, their houses aren't rising in value and the prospect of working longer to make up the shortfall has dimmed significantly in a lousy job...

Of all the offspring of presidents in recent memory, Chelsea Clinton was the best first child, according to Secret Service agents. “In my career, Chelsea Clinton did it the best,” says an agent familiar with both her detail and the Bush twins’ details. “Treated the detail right, told them what was going on, never gave problems that I knew of.” Agents describe what the first families have been like in my book “In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect,” out this week in paperback with a new...

Nov. 3: DAVID ROBERTS, GRIST: It’s all I can do not to start bawling. LUKE MITCHELL, HARPER’S: I’m picturing something like VJ Day in Times Square. Seriously! JOHN BLEVINS, SOUTH TEXAS COLLEGE OF LAW: It’s all I can do to hold it together. Nov. 4: MOIRA WHELAN, NATIONAL SECURITY NETWORK: I’m looking across the street at my polling place, and the line is wrapped around the block. I nearly burst into tears when I saw it. I’m feeling like today is closing the door on a terrible era, and opening another. I’m glad you started this thread because I was...