Free Republic

Florida's senior citizens are leaning toward Democrat Barack Obama in a close presidential race, according to a poll conducted for the Sun Sentinel and the Florida Times-Union. The latest survey shows a slight swing toward the 47-year-old candidate by voters 60 and older. Obama, long the favorite of the youngest votes, now leads 72-year-old Republican John McCain by 7 percentage points among the 60-plus age group. The oldest voters were about equally divided in last month's poll.

LADY LAKE, Florida (CNN) – The Villages, which bills itself as “Florida’s premier active adult retirement community,” is a regular stopover for presidential candidates hunting for votes in this quadrennial electoral battleground. Sarah Palin chose this sprawling golf haven as the place to make her Florida debut on Saturday, just her fifth campaign event apart from John McCain since becoming the vice presidential nominee. It may have been a wise choice, if only for the optics — on the same day Barack Obama drew over 20,000 voters to an outdoor rally in North Carolina, Palin attracted tens of thousands...

Summary A new Obama ad characterizes the "Bush-McCain privatization plan" as "cutting Social Security Benefits in half." This is a falsehood sure to frighten seniors who rely on their Social Security checks. In truth, McCain does not propose to cut those checks at all. The ad refers to a Bush proposal from 2005 to hold down the growth of benefits for future retirees. Compared to the buying power of benefits paid to today's retirees, that would not have been a "cut" for anybody. It would have been a "cut" of half only in relation to benefits now promised to retirees...

The fact they even wrote this piece is sick. Who thinks of this stuff?

Official campaign ad is consistent with ageist hate speech hosted at My.Barackobama.comThis official advertisement, "Paid for by Obama for America" and approved by Barack Obama, continues his campaign's proud tradition of mocking and ridiculing senior citizens, and indeed people over 50. The ad opens with a mirror ball from a disco under the caption 1982, and then shows a clumsy portable phone and a Rubik's cube. Then it derides McCain for not knowing how to use a computer or send E-mail. It says, "Things have changed since then, but McCain hasn't." This ad was approved by Barack Obama, and it...

Britain is now home to more pensioners than children for the first time in the country's history, official population figures have disclosed There are 11.58 million pensioners - classed as men over 65 and women over 60 - compared to 11.52 million under-16s, according to the Office for National Statistics. In figures which illustrate how Britain's population is ageing rapidly, the ONS said that the number of people aged over 80 had almost doubled over the past three decades to 2.7 million. The over 80s are now the fastest growing age group as a result of medical advances and their...

LANSING, Mich. — AARP, the national advocacy group for older Americans, is being accused of age discrimination. Bonita Brady, a 63-year-old from Michigan, says the group passed her over for a series of jobs because she was too old, despite excellent job reviews. She joined AARP in Chicago in 1996 as a health representative. She also worked for AARP in Washington before moving to the Lansing office in 2007. Brady says she lost her job in a reorganization and was passed over for nine vacancies. She sued last week in federal court in Michigan and is seeking more than $25,000.

He's the most cowardly punk in New York. He chooses the weakest victims - the elderly - and attacks from behind, choking them until they crumble to the ground. From one fragile woman, he took a cane. From another, a Bible. Cops released disturbing surveillance video Monday of the thug who has terrorized at least a dozen Brooklyn seniors, stalking apartments in Crown Heights, Flatbush and Kensington all summer. "We are lucky he hasn't killed somebody," a police source said. "I would like to believe that people have more respect for the elderly." The heartless hoodlum choked 85-year-old Lillian France...

Hippies: Where are they now? 1968: Conscription 2008: Constipation 1968: Hell No We Won’t Go 2008: Hell No We Can’t Go 1968: Brown Acid 2008: Brown Fiber 1968: Bring Them Home Now 2008: I’m In A Home Now 1968: Free Love 2008: Free Clinic 1968: Denim 2008: Depends 1968: Rolling Stones 2008: Gall Stones 1968: Sex, Drugs & Rock n Roll 2008: Sex, Drugs & Geritol 1968: Bong Water 2008: Bottled Water 1968: Pot 2008: Prius

In a move that could lead to significant changes in medical care for older men, a national task force on Monday recommended that doctors stop screening men ages 75 and older for prostate cancer because the search for the disease in this group was causing more harm than good. The guidelines, issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, represent an abrupt policy change by an influential panel that had withheld any advice regarding screening for prostate cancer, citing a lack of reliable evidence. Though the task force still has not taken a stand on the value of screening in...

Mick Jagger, the snake-hipped, rubber-lipped frontman of the Rolling Stones, celebrates his 65th birthday Saturday but shows no signs of slowing down, despite officially becoming an old age pensioner. At an age when most British men are retiring from work and claiming state pensions, Jagger is dating a woman some 25 years his junior -- stylist L'Wren Scott -- counting his millions after the Stones' record-grossing "Bigger Bang" tour and branching out into film production. His behaviour may not be as hellraising as that of fellow Stone Ronnie Wood, who last week entered rehab to receive treatment for alcohol abuse...

...The Schwab study describes this thinking in detail: A Distress Call from Retirement Limbo: Respondents are thinking about their retirement futures and say they will need to have saved at least $500,000 to live comfortably in retirement – which is twice the median net worth of today’s Boomer pre-retirees. Additionally, only a quarter of Americans say they clearly understand Social Security and how it works. Just 11 percent of Americans say they understand Medicare very clearly. A Coming Era of Financial Self-Reliance: Looking forward, survey participants identify a need for self-reliance in retirement. Low Grades for Likely Resources: Survey participants...

Chicago, IL (AHN) - A new University of Chicago study linked happiness with age, with older people apparently happier than the youth. The findings are based on a study by Yang Yang, a researcher of the university's General Social Survey, in which 50,000 Americans have been interviewed since 1972 repeatedly to check trends, make comparisons and trace changes in responses over time. Tom Smith, director of the General Social Survey, reportedly said the findings had results that were contrary to popular expectations.Despite the health problems of older people, the study found that they have lesser financial, interpersonal and crime problems...

Study: Baby Boomers Are Gloomiest Generation POSTED: 9:01 am EDT July 12, 2008 UPDATED: 9:42 am EDT July 12, 2008 NEW YORK -- A new study by the Pew Research Center found 66 percent of baby boomers find it harder to get ahead now than in 1998. It also found that 86 percent say it's harder to maintain their standard of living than just five years ago. We talked to boomers in Brooklyn. "There just seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel." As they approach their golden years, baby boomers like Ros Aaron are worried --...

The Senate has passed an 18-month Medicare physician payment bill that negates steep reductions in the Medicare physician payment rate for the remainder of this year and next year. The legislation now will go to President Bush."H.R. 6331" in the search box after selecting "Bill Number") maintains current Medicare payment levels for the rest of 2008 and provides a 1.1 percent increase in the Medicare payment rate in 2009, thus negating a 10.6 percent payment reduction that took effect on July 1 and an additional 5.4 percent reduction that was scheduled to take place in 2009. Bush has threatened to...

Plummeting Reimbursement Rates Have Some Doctors Looking for a Way Out By AUDREY GRAYSON ABC News Medical Unit RSS For the past four years, Dr. Heather Tipsword has owned a family practice clinic that primarily treats Medicaid and Medicare patients in Oklahoma City. As many of her friends and family were looking forward to Fourth of July celebrations this past weekend, Tipsword was anxiously looking forward to another event altogether: Congress' meeting on the Monday after the holiday weekend to discuss some kind of fix to the scheduled 10.6 percent Medicare reimbursement cut. For many doctors, low Medicare and Medicaid...

<p>Last week, Barack Obama revealed his plan to shore up Social Security's shaky finances by raising the income level on which the payroll tax is applied. Currently, incomes above $102,000 are exempt, with that threshold rising every year indexed to wage inflation. Mr. Obama would keep that limit in place, but then assess payroll taxes on incomes above $250,000, which his campaign claims would apply to only the richest 3% of Americans.</p>

For More Americans, Retirement Can Wait By TED ROELOFS   Julie Johnson, 68, of Grand Rapids, Mich., has been helping a nonprofit to organize and fill new residential space for the homeless. (Photo by Emily Zoladz)     [Grand Rapids, MI] -- At age 68, Julie Johnson is something of a fixer for the Heartside neighborhood nonprofit housing agency in Grand Rapids, Mich. Give her a tough job, and she will find a way. "I like to get things done,'' said Johnson, a former community college administrator.As the American work force continues to gray, millions of workers are rewriting the...

New Jersey's public employee pension and health benefit system -- a program that covers about one in four adult workers -- is paying out benefits that critics say the state simply can't afford any more.For a look at the system, how it got this way and what some say should be done, read the following stories.N.J.'s pension system is stretched to limitYears of risky gambles put state in $25B bindLegislative deal would tighten rules on pensions

In a campaign year marked by flare-ups surrounding comments that have offended one group or another, John McCain and Barack Obama have moved on to the next sensitive battleground: the question of McCain’s advanced age. As some Republicans see it, Democrats are deliberately talking in code about the presumptive 71-year-old GOP nominee as part of an attempt to highlight his age.“It is code; there is no question it is,” Ed Rollins, a Republican strategist who helped lead President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign, said when age surfaced as an issue. “They are trying to raise doubts.”MSNBC host Joe Scarborough repeatedly...

LOS ANGELES - Ed McMahon, who for decades appeared as Johnny Carson's sidekick on "The Tonight Show," is fighting to avoid foreclosure on his multimillion-dollar Beverly Hills home, according to published reports. The former "Star Search" host was $644,000 behind on payments on $4.8 million in mortgage loans when a unit of Countrywide Financial Corp. filed a default notice Feb. 28 with the Los Angeles County Recorder's Office, The Wall Street Journal first reported late Tuesday. McMahon, 85, has been unable to work as a pitchman for various products since he broke his neck 18 months ago, said his spokesman,...

ALBANY — An actuary paid by public employee unions and yet relied upon by the State Legislature to determine the cost of proposals affecting New York City’s pension system underestimated their ultimate cost by at least $500 million, city documents and other records show. In the hundreds of bills for which he has provided estimates to lawmakers since 2000, the actuary, Jonathan Schwartz, said legislation adjusting the pensions of public employees would have no cost, or limited cost, to the city. But just 11 of the more than 50 bills vetted by Mr. Schwartz that have become law since 2000...

Extreme lefty Senator Lautenberg changes his commercial. The original attacks "big Oil" for wanting to drill off New Jerseys Coast. I guess now with $4 gas, he realizes that the public may like that idea. Api remains a pig!!!! the original: http://www.lautenbergfornj.com/multimedia/video?id=0005

In a political season in which Barack Obama has delighted in playing the age card—see "lost his bearings," "wander around," and multiple mentions of McCain's "half-century of service," Democrats are now demonstrating that they're even willing to use an opponent's superannuation on each other. There I was in my upstate NY home this evening, innocently watching the Yankee game, when this ad by Dem Rob Andrews, targeting primary opponent Dem Frank Lautenberg, the–very–senior senator from New Jersey, appeared . . . View video here.

With Age Comes A Sense Of Peace And Calm, Study Shows ScienceDaily (May 19, 2008) — Aging brings a sense of peace and calm, according to a new study from the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin. Starting at about age 60, participants reported more feelings of ease and contentment than their younger counterparts. Catherine Ross and John Mirowsky, professors of sociology, have published the findings in "Age and the Balance of Emotions" in the May 19 issue of Social Science and Medicine. The findings reveal aging is associated with more positive than negative emotions, and...

Democrat Barack Obama told seniors Sunday that Republican John McCain would threaten the Social Security that they and millions like them depend on because he supports privatizing the program.Obama turned to a bedrock, pocketbook issue as he spoke to about 130 people at an assisted living facility and sought to tie the GOP's presidential nominee-in-waiting to an unpopular President Bush on an issue that motivates seniors."Let me be clear, privatizing Social Security was a bad idea when George W. Bush proposed it, it's a bad idea today," Obama said. "That's why I stood up against this plan in the Senate...

Like movies about kids who spell or athletes in wheelchairs, a non-fiction film about old people who sing rock, funk, punk, and blues in a community chorus that has dazzled international audiences on concert tours comes formidably fortified by its ironclad charm factor. To be honest, I settled in skeptically, expecting to be gummed into submission. Two dozen or so amateur singers, based in Northampton, Mass., lend their group's name to Stephen Walker's surprisingly profound documentary.............................

WARSAW (AFP) — As life expectancy grows and birth rates slump across the EU, around one third of the bloc's population could be over the age of 65 by 2050, a social shift with the potential to transform the lives of Europeans. Only three years ago, just 16.5 percent of the inhabitants of the European Union's current 27 member states were over 65. The proportion is expected to grow to 18 percent by 2010, 25 percent by 2030 and 30 percent by 2050, according to recent forecasts from the EU's Eurostat data agency. The number of European residents over 65...

SAN FRANCISCO — When David Bunnell, a magazine publisher who lives in Berkeley, Calif., went to a FedEx store to send a package a few years ago, he suddenly drew a blank as he was filling out the forms. “I couldn’t remember my address,” said Mr. Bunnell, 60, with a measure of horror in his voice. “I knew where I lived, and I knew how to get there, but I didn’t know what the address was.” Mr. Bunnell is among tens of millions of baby boomers who are encountering the signs, by turns amusing and disconcerting, that accompany the decline...

Who’s too old now, Jack? The Tribune-Democrat Fri, May 02 2008 — Visitors to The Tribune-Democrat’s Web site were asked in a poll last week: “Is John McCain, 71, too old to serve as president of the United States, as Congressman John Murtha says?” With 556 votes cast during two days, the results were: No, 64.6 percent; Yes, 34.7 percent; and I don’t know: 0.7 percent.Murtha wasn’t the first person to weigh in on the John McCain age issue. He won’t be the last. But we wonder whether one day he’ll wish he hadn’t.“This one guy running is about...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Medicare is lurching toward disaster and it is too late for the Bush Administration and Congress to do anything about it, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said on Tuesday. He said the next administration will have to act to stop rising costs and get control of the $400 billion federal health insurance plan for the elderly, which now covers 44 million people. "Higher and higher costs are being borne by fewer and fewer people. Sooner or later, this formula implodes," Leavitt said in a speech to the right-leaning Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute...

Barack Obama’s difficulty attracting older voters now far exceeds Hillary Rodham Clinton’s own weaknesses with youth. Repeatedly during the tight race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama, who’s been defined in part by his popularity among young voters, has seen that strength undercut by his failings with seniors. In the Pennsylvania and Ohio primaries, Obama lost older whites by 30 percentage points, while Clinton split white voters under age 30 in both critical contests. Obama’s senior problem is even greater among Hispanics. The Illinois senator lost older Latinos by 40 to 60 percentage points in Texas, New Mexico and California....

America's aging citizens are facing a health care workforce too small and unprepared to meet their needs, according to a new report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) titled "Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce." The Gerontological Society of America (GSA), the nation's largest organization devoted to aging research, fully supports the publication's call for a labor pool of adequate size and competency to care for a rapidly increasing over-65 population. "This pivotal report lays out a much-needed strategy for developing a network of health professionals and frontline workers to avert a crisis in quality care...

GOP presidential candidate John McCain released his 2006 and 2007 tax returns Friday, showing he earned more than $740,396 in the last two years combined---$45,261 of which comes from Social Security. The forms are available to the public HERE. The Arizona senator also received $114,854 for his Navy pension. During those two years McCain paid $157,231 in federal taxes. McCain donates his royalties from books and Senate pay increases to charity, most of which has gone to the John and Cindy McCain Family Foundation. The royalties from his books have totaled more than $1.8 million since 1998 and those from...

CHICAGO (AP) — Newsflash for rock stars and teenagers: It turns out everything doesn't go downhill as we age — the golden years really are golden.That's according to eye-opening research that found the happiest Americans are the oldest, and older adults are more socially active than the stereotype of the lonely senior suggests.The two go hand-in-hand — being social can help keep away the blues."The good news is that with age comes happiness," said study author Yang Yang, a University of Chicago sociologist. "Life gets better in one's perception as one ages."A certain amount of distress in old age is...

Getting Forgetful? Then Blueberries May Hold The Key ScienceDaily (Apr. 12, 2008) — If you are getting forgetful as you get older, then a research team from the University of Reading and the Peninsula Medical School in the Southwest of England may have good news for you They have found that phytochemical-rich foods, such as blueberries, are effective at reversing age-related deficits in memory, according to a study soon to be published in the science journal Free Radical Biology and Medicine. The researchers working at the Schools of Food Biosciences and Psychology in Reading and the Institute of Biomedical and...

PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y. (MarketWatch) -- Reports that the Social Security system will soon run out of money have been greatly exaggerated. As sure as day follows night, the annual report from the board of trustees of the OASDI fund (Old Age Survivors and Disability Insurance otherwise known as Social Security) has brought forth alarms that the fund will run out of money in the not-too-distant future. Although flush with cash now and over at least the next 10 years, the Social Security system is expected to gradually begin paying out more in benefits than it takes in from payroll taxes...

For a brief moment this week, the housing crisis took a back seat to another once hot-button economic issue: the financial health of Social Security. The Social Security trustees issued their annual report Tuesday, and it showed how soon the system will run into trouble. The problem is well-known: Funded by taxes on workers' wages, the Social Security system currently takes in more funds than it has promised to pay out to retirees. And the federal government has been borrowing those surplus funds over the years. But that surplus is shrinking, and eventually the system won't be able to pay...

When I hear my fellow baby boomers gleefully talk about their elaborate plans to retire ASAP, head for the Tuscan hills, or otherwise continue their lifelong quest for "self-actualization," I have to bite my tongue. It's not that I'm all work and no play. But there's just something - make that lots of things - wrong, in general, with retiring at 55, 62 or even 65. I would go so far as to call it profoundly selfish and unpatriotic. However, if Americans retired later, either staying in their current jobs or taking up "encore careers" - what Marc Freedman of...

The No-Name Generation By BENJAMIN MANASTER March 25, 2008 "The young need old men. They need men who are not ashamed of age, not pathetic imitations of themselves." -- Peter Ustinov Once upon a time there was a no-name generation that went about its business and did not call attention to itself. While the Greatest moved offstage and the Boomers ran amuck, it raised and educated families, laying the groundwork for a prosperous future. Overlooked, ignored by those who followed it, and alone among its peers, this generation may soon see one of its members become president. Of course, the...

The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a federal policy that allows employers to reduce their health insurance expenses for retired workers once they turn 65 and qualify for Medicare. The justices turned down an appeal by the 39-million-member AARP to undo a rule that essentially allows employers to treat retirees differently depending on their age. The rules were put into place by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, with the support of labor unions and other groups. They worried that employers would greatly reduce or eliminate health benefits for millions of retirees if they could not take Medicare into...

The common perception among economists is that the current housing bubble will be a relatively short-term affair that should see a return to normal within the next few years. But according to a study by two University of Southern California researchers, a bubble of even more monumental proportions lies just ahead. They call it the "generational housing bubble," and maintain that it will be fueled by the same Baby Boomers who have been bidding up prices since 1970 as they moved higher and higher on the housing ladder. Now, though, the 78 million Boomers are about to enter the years...

FOLLOWING THE FLOCK of other retirees to warmer climes may seem like the best way to spend one's golden years. But it may not be the smartest — especially during economic downturns. "A retiree always needs to be careful about where he or she chooses to spend retirement, but with economic conditions changing so quickly it's even more important to make a good choice," says Warren R. Bland, author of "Retire in Style: 60 Outstanding Places Across the USA and Canada." Not all places are created equal when it comes to weathering economic woes like the current real estate slump,...

A financial bubble is a market aberration manufactured by government, finance, and industry, a shared speculative hallucination and then a crash, followed by depression. Bubbles were once very rare—one every hundred years or so was enough to motivate politicians, bearing the post-bubble ire of their newly destitute citizenry, to enact legislation that would prevent subsequent occurrences... Nowadays we barely pause between such bouts of insanity. The dot-com crash of the early 2000s should have been followed by decades of soul-searching; instead, even before the old bubble had fully deflated, a new mania began to take hold on the foundation of...

Empty Nest Syndrome May Not Be Bad After All, Study Finds ScienceDaily (Feb. 21, 2008) — One day they are crawling, the next day they are driving and then suddenly they aren’t kids anymore. As children reach adulthood, the parent-child relationship changes as parents learn to adapt to newly independent children. A new study by a University of Missouri professor explored the differences in how mothers and fathers interacted with their young adult children. She found there were few differences in the way mothers and fathers felt and that many of the changes were positive, despite the perception that mothers...

Older People Are Happy: Life Begins At 40 And 50 And 60 ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2008) — Growing old is a happier experience than many of us imagine - that’s according to the findings of a study conducted at Queen’s University, Belfast, on behalf of the Changing Ageing Partnership (CAP). The study, which was conducted by Dr John Garry from Queen’s University, looked at young people’s attitudes to happiness in old age and how these attitudes affect their current health-related behaviour. Dr Garry said: “We have all heard the saying ‘life begins at forty’. But it seems that many people,...

Direct Deposit Expected To Be More Common VERO BEACH, Fla. -- The nation's first baby boomer received her first Social Security retirement benefit Tuesday in Vero Beach, Fla., local station station WPBF is reporting. Kathleen Casey-Kirschling was born one second after midnight on Jan. 1, 1946. The 62-year-old retired teacher who lives in Earleville, Md., and Vero Beach applied for her benefits online, and received her payment by direct deposit. "Like many of her fellow boomers, Kathy leads a full and busy life," said Jim Courtney, Social Security deputy commissioner for communications. "By choosing direct deposit, Kathy's benefit is safely...

On Feb 6, 2008 I wrote a letter to AARP regarding their repeated TV commercials. The letter follows and explains my concerns with the commercial and with AARP. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Your commericial illustrates the Red vs. Blue, Left vs. Right, Liberal vs. Conservative struggle that exists within the US and hopes to solve the problem by uniting. You even create a mascot of a unified Donkiphant . . . or something. But then you propose that everyone unite behind the liberals idea for solving Americas problems. You have a wrong understanding of conservatives. You think that conservatives agree that government must...

With VFW Members Dwindling, Posts Shutting Their Doors By JEFF BARR   Members of the Mendon VFW Post 4898 from left, Merlin Huff, Morris Ballman, L.D. Ballman, Vernon Yeomans, Sharon Buchner and Ted Talbot are upset their post is closing. (Photo by Jonathon Gruenke)     MENDON, Mich. — Powder-blue paint peels from the surface of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 4898. The brick-and-wood building sits next to a farmer's field gone barren for the winter and, like the adjacent acreage, it sits empty.The Mendon post, located south of Kalamazoo, was ordered closed Nov. 24 — 62 years to the...

THE LAST WORD Anna Quindlen How Old Is Too Old? Race, gender—they're both up for grabs in this presidential election. It's age that has become the new taboo in a vitality culture.Here's my unscientific theory about the presidency: it ages a person in dog years. Each year in office is roughly equivalent to seven years in the life of an ordinary citizen. I base this on before-and-after photographs of the occupants of the Oval Office, who frequently look as though they've spent their time in captivity, being beaten with sticks. Which may help explain why 71-year-old John McCain, who actually...