Free Republic

On a day when legislation benefiting women and black colleges and universities was signed with much pomp and circumstance, President Trump quietly followed through on his pledge to defend the Second Amendment by signing the repeal of Barack Obama’s Social Security gun ban. The U.S, House voted to repeal the ban on February 2 and the Senate voted to repeal it on February 15. The ban was fashioned behind closed doors in the summer of 2015 and Breitbart News reported: The specific details of the ban are unknown, as it is being put together “outside of public view.” But the...

They're wealthy and they are among the biggest age groups to fill movie theaters, but many seniors have had it with Hollywood's political hate speech and they are threatening a boycott if the Oscars, as expected, turn into a Trump bashing affair Sunday.

<p>The number of retirement-age Americans taking at least three psychiatric drugs more than doubled between 2004 and 2013, even though almost half of them had no mental health diagnosis on record, researchers reported on Monday.</p> <p>The new analysis, based on data from doctors’ office visits, suggests that inappropriate prescribing to older people is more common than previously thought. Office visits are a close, if not exact, estimate of underlying patient numbers. The paper appears in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.</p>

Marriage is sharing The old man placed an order for one hamburger, French fries and a drink. He unwrapped the plain hamburger and carefully cut it in half, placing one half in front of his wife. He then carefully counted out the French fries, dividing them into two piles and neatly placed one pile in front of his wife. He took a sip of the drink, his wife took a sip and then set the cup down between them. As he began to eat his few bites of hamburger, the people around them were looking over and whispering. Obviously they...

During the presidential campaign, Republican Donald Trump said he would not cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, but no matter. Sen. Chuck Schumer, the next Senate minority leader, on Tuesday warned that Republicans are “plotting a war on seniors.” The New York Democrat said he was “so disappointed” that Trump has nominated Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) to be his Health and Human Services secretary. “When it comes to issues like Medicare, the Affordable Care Act and Planned Parenthood, Congressman Price and the average American couldn’t be further apart,” Schumer told a news conference on Capitol Hill. …

Character actor Michael Shannon recently did an interview with the website Metro News about his new film that's coming out soon, but the interview is getting attention for a different reason. Shannon apparently thinks all Trump supporters should die -- especially the old ones. During the interview, the focus turned to the recent presidential election in which Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton. Shannon could not believe the outcome of the election and told Prigge that he “could use some vengeance right now.” But then, the interview turned into a mutual Trump-bashing party, during which Prigge asked Shannon, “How...

full title........The face of defeat: A weary-looking Hillary Clinton makes her first appearance since her concession, and admits that 'coming here wasn't the easiest thing for me' and she 'wanted to curl up and never leave the house again'......................A weary-looking Hillary Clinton said Wednesday evening at her first public appearance since she conceded to Donald Trump that she considered cancelling her speech to the children's advocacy group but kept the commitment out of respect for her mentor. 'I will admit coming here tonight wasn't the easiest thing for me,' she said at the Children's Defense Fund's gala in Washington, D.C....

The typical retiree's monthly Social Security check will get only $3.92 bigger next year. That amounts to an increase of just 0.3% -- the smallest ever put in place to help cover higher prices. That's still an improvement from this year, when the lack of inflation kept benefits from increasing at all. The average retiree's monthly benefit is currently $1,305.30. "Over the last five years, Social Security COLA's have remained small or nonexistent," said AARP. "Every cent can matter to beneficiaries and their families. After last year's zero COLA, this year's announcement doesn't offer much help to the millions of...

Few if any candidates for federal office will tell you that as a consequence of current federal law, young Americans are being screwed in two life-changing ways. First, under current law, every Social Security beneficiary under the age of 48 will have their promised benefits cut by a third. And second, every young person who works is contributing between $10,000 and $20,000 to the health care and retirement of those lucky Americans who are already drawing benefits under federal law. In some ways the second screwing is worse than the first. Young workers do not have the defined benefit retirement...

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 17, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Taking calcium supplements with the hope of keeping osteoporosis at bay may raise an older woman's risk of dementia, a new study suggests. And that seems particularly true if a woman has already sustained an event causing poor blood flow to the brain (cerebrovascular disease), such as from a stroke, researchers said. The study can't prove cause-and-effect. However, dementia risk was seven times higher in female stroke survivors who took calcium supplements, compared to women with a history of stroke who didn't use the supplements, the findings showed. The risk of dementia also...

Based on his leaked emails, it seems a safe assumption that Colin Powell will not endorse or vote for Hillary Clinton. After Democratic megadonor Jeffrey Leeds emailed Powell on July 24, 2014, to tell him he’d gotten Rudy Giuliani to admit that President Obama is a “decent man” and that Hillary Clinton is “not stoppable” for the 2016 election, Powell confessed: “I would rather not have to vote for her, although she is a friend I respect.” He noted that she is a 70-year-old person with “long track record,” but is hampered by being “greedy, not transformational, with a husband...

I have seen the best minds of my generation, to steal a phrase from the late Allen Ginsberg, driven to heights of self-absorption, advocating policies that assure the failure of the next. Nothing so suggests the failure of my generation — the boomers — than its two representatives running for president. What Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump reflect are two sides of the same nasty boomer coin. On one side, there are aging boomers embracing Trump, an icon of materialistic obsession and a lack of concern for “losers.” On the other is a control-freak determination to tell everyone how to...

"...Now many in that class are turning 58 years old, and Butler is a shell of what it was four decades ago, with the mills long-since shuttered or shrunk — casualties of the globalized steel industry — taking most of the jobs and that old sense of security with them. People here are approaching their golden years with a sense of bitterness about the new, unforgiving economy and foreboding about what they will have to show for this life. Something their parents could count on — a comfortable retirement, debt-free and maybe in a warmer place — seems out of...

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. — Former president Bill Clinton delivered a long, rambling speech at the Democratic convention Tuesday night, apparently failing to consistently fire up the crowd despite his reputation as a great orator.

Congressman Steve King of Iowa violated the greatest taboo in mainstream American politics. He defended White people, and said their contributions to civilization were greater than other groups. His remarks were in response to a leftist political commentator, Charlie Pierce, who said that Republicans should stop being the party of old White people. Here is a story on the controversy: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rep-steve-king-clarifies-remarks-white-people-civilization/story?id=40687050

FILE - In this July 4, 2015 file photo, Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones performs at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Ind. Jagger's representatives say the rock legend is expecting his eighth child. The representatives confirmed a report by People magazine and other media outlets that Jagger's girlfriend, Melanie Hamrick, 29, is pregnant. Mick Jagger’s representatives say the rock legend is expecting his eighth child. The representatives confirmed a report by People magazine and other media outlets that Jagger’s girlfriend, Melanie Hamrick, 29, is pregnant. Jagger, the 72-year-old frontman of the Rolling Stones, already has seven children —...

This is funny as hell, Trump is the ultimate unifier! Via the Daily Bail: LIFELONG DEMOCRAT TELLS AMERICA HOW SHE FEELS This is awesome. C-Span's morning call-in show is a daily feast of beautiful Americana. Yesterday Alicia from Pennsylvania was slightly confused about which line to call, but there was no confusion about her thoughts on Hillary Clinton, George Bush, Trump, and uninformed American voters. 'I would never vote for Hillary Clinton. She should have been out with Bush. We don't need a crook. She's just like her husband.' (C-Span Video at link)Very funny!

Phone Scam ‘Onslaught’ Has Authorities Scrambling 5/27/2016 Telephone scammers posing as tech support, lottery reps or even government officials are inundating U.S. homes as cheap technology and the rapid rise in Internet access globally makes it easier to set up ..

Four Harvard University students won the annual Econometrics World Championship (also known as the Econometric Game) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The annual event is organized by the University of Amsterdam and the VSAE (Association of Actuarial, Econometrics and Operational Research Students), involving up to thirty universities from across the world. The competition had 120 students participate in this iteration of the event. Using European socio-economic data from 2004-2013, the team from Harvard concluded that more government intervention will improve low-income senior citizens' health outcomes. One of the attending representatives from the event's sponsors said: "This is a remarkable and important...

More than a quarter of a million truckers, retirees and their families could soon see their pension benefits severely cut — even though their pension fund is still years away from running out of money. Within the next few weeks, the Treasury Department is expected to announce a crucial decision on whether it will approve reductions to one of the country’s largest multi-employer pension plans. The potential cuts are possible under legislation passed by Congress in 2014 that for the first time allowed financially distressed multi-employer plans to reduce benefits for retirees if it would improve the solvency of the...