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The report of the AARP convention booing Paul Ryan the other day made me just shake my head and smile wryly. These are the kind of fools who'd boo the man trying to save their bacon while they remain content to blindly follow a leftist leadership that has sold its organizational soul to liberal orthodoxy. Like millions of Americans, I received my courtesy membership to AARP upon nearing fifty, some two decades ago. At the time, this free milestone membership, available to all Americans of that age, was the source of much merriment among such new members' younger friends and...

Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)was not well received at a gathering held by the American Association of Retired Peoples on Friday. After Ryan said the first step to strengthening Medicare is to repeal President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the crowd erupted into boos. After promising to repeal “Obamacare,” the crowd jeered. “I had a feeling there would be mixed reactions,” said Ryan amid the chorus of booing. “It weakens Medicare for today’s seniors and puts it at risk for the next generation,” said Ryan to more booing. “You may not have heard this side of the...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Easier-to-chew foods, brighter lights in stores and bigger, clearer fonts on packaging: Those are a few of the changes marketers discussed at a conference Friday about how to sell to aging consumers. The retail innovation conference at Wake Forest University’s uptown Charlotte campus was sponsored by drugstore chain CVS Caremark. It was the first of what the school says will be an annual series. “There’s a silver tsunami coming as the baby boomer population moves into seniors," said professor Roger Beahm, executive director of the school’s Center for Retail Innovation. That tsunami is expected to change everything...

Two things about the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) are increasingly clear: (1) seniors have been singled out and forced to bear a disproportionate share of the cost of a new entitlement for young people and (2) the states are administratively just not ready to implement the new program in time for its January 1, 2014, start date. So here's a simple proposal that will not affect the federal deficit: Delay the scheduled cuts in Medicare spending by five years and pay for that expense by delaying the 2014 start date of ObamaCare by two years.That would give everyone time to...

Naming Paul Ryan as his running mate hasn’t given Mitt Romney a significant boost in the polls, but it doesn’t appear to have scared senior voters the way Democrats hoped and some Republicans feared. Ryan, the author of a Medicare overhaul plan that has fueled a furious messaging war between the presidential campaigns and their allies, makes his first visit as a vice presidential candidate to senior-heavy Florida Saturday.

A provision of ObamaCare is set to punish roughly two-thirds of U.S. hospitals evaluated by Medicare starting this fall over high readmission rates, according to an analysis by Kaiser Health News. Starting in October, Medicare will reduce reimbursements to hospitals with high 30-day readmission rates --which refers to patients who return within a month --by as much as 1 percent. The maximum penalty increases to 2 percent the following year and 3 percent in 2014. Doctors are concerned the penalty is unfair, since sometimes they have to accept patients more than once in a brief period of time but could...

SUMTER COUNTY, FL — Paul Ryan wanted to reassure the 50 thousand retirees here in The Villages that his big plans to reform Medicare will not have a negative impact on them. It was a ruckus crowd in friendly territory and vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan took to the stage with his mother in hand. His mission: to convince retirees both here and across the state that his plan to reform Medicare is good for them.

Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan is speaking at The Villages, northwest of Orlando.

Washington, DC Saturday, August 18, 2012 Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan will speak at a retirement community in Florida, Saturday. Ryan will be accompanied by his mother, Elizabeth “Betty” Ryan Douglas, when he speaks at The Villages, the world’s largest retirement community. His mother lives in Florida for part of the year and spend the rest of her time in Wisconsin.

At one point during Good Morning America's coverage of the presidential race this morning, co-host Dan Harris proclaimed that--"seven days into the newly minted Romney/Romney ticket, the snark and sniping is hitting new levels." He should know. The snarkiest snipe of the morning came from Harris's own co-host. Opening the show, co-host Bianna Golodryga declared that Paul Ryan's mother would be appearing on the campaign trail with him today "for a very calculated reason." Do you recall ABC or other MSM outlets depicting, say, Michelle Obama's frequent campaign stops—or politicking thinly-disguised as public service appearances—as "very calculated" or the like?...

At about 1 minute into the video... "Benefits to seniors actually increase under Obamacare which reduces payments to providers in exchange for more people covered by insurance." In other words... "Seniors get more when health providers are told they will be paid less to work harder and faster"

In a swipe at the GOP presidential ticket, senior Obama adviser David Axelrod on Tuesday defended President Barack Obama’s handling of Medicare. “The president … took away subsidies, unwarranted subsidies, to insurance companies, and he used that money to help lengthen the life of Medicare by nearly a decade,” Axelrod said on CNN’s Starting Point, referencing a provision of the new health care law. “So when Gov. Romney says he doesn’t support that, obviously … that’s problematical.” …

Betty Ryan Douglas, who turned 78 last week, lives at least part time in Lauderdale-By-The-Sea in Broward County. A Republican, she has been registered to vote in Florida since 1997...... ....It was Paul Ryan’s mother who helped push him off the ski slopes and into politics. From Wisconsin Interest magazine: “Upon graduation, he headed to Oxford, Ohio, to attend Miami University. (Twenty-three years later, he would return to give the commencement speech.) His junior year, Ryan took an internship with Wisconsin Sen. Bob Kasten’s foreign affairs advisor. Ryan says he spent more time opening mail than working on the study...

Americans split nearly evenly on Paul Ryan’s selection as Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate, a divided response that nonetheless represents a sharp gain for Ryan compared with the negative tilt that preceded his pick, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll has found. In weekend interviews 38 percent responded favorably to Ryan joining the Republican ticket, up from 23 percent in pre-selection interviews last week. Positive views rose among independents as well as among Republicans, and among women. And Ryan was notably well-received among senior citizens – a group of interest given his plan to reshape Medicare. At the same...

Paul Ryan is committed to radically changing Medicare into a voucher program, and Democrats are hoping that they can turn this fact into an issue that destroys Romney's chances in Florida, a state filled with entitlement-happy seniors that is a must win for the Republican. But if Florida seniors were thinking rationally and self-interestedly, this Democratic attack would flop. Paul Ryan is proposing no changes to Medicare for another 10 years, so anyone currently 55 or older wouldn't be affected at all. And if you assume that the law won't get passed for a couple years, you can safely assume...

The news that Mitt Romney picked Rep. Paul Ryan, who has suggested changing Medicare, as his running mate sparked worries over the weekend among some residents at the Stella Maris retirement community in Miami Beach—concerns that could reverberate among seniors nationwide. Nancy Scarchilli, a 92-year-old registered Democrat who is undecided this year, said Medicare "just paid a beautiful penny for my hospitalization" for heart failure, adding that she likes the program "the way it is." Gisela Adán, another resident of the Stella Maris retirement community, said Saturday she relies on Social Security and Medicare but was unfamiliar with the details...

The media has talked about Paul Ryan's budget as an albatross that would hang from Mitt Romney's neck with or without Ryan on the ticket, and the assumption has been that Ryan himself will also be a net negative for the GOP in November. Democrats tried to proactively damage Ryan's standing with voters by depicting him pushing an elderly woman off of a cliff in May 2011, when Ryan first proposed his comprehensive, long-term budget reform package in May 2011. Rasmussen Reports has reminds us that a July survey showed Ryan's favorability as mainly positive, albeit with a significant number...

Despite repeated attempts to paint Republicans as bad for Medicare and Social Security, President Obama and Sen. Bill Nelson are essentially tied with their Republican rivals when it comes to Florida retirees and baby boomers, a new AARP poll shows.

Despite repeated attempts to paint Republicans as bad for Medicare and Social Security, President Obama and Sen. Bill Nelson are essentially tied with their Republican rivals when it comes to Florida retirees and baby boomers, a new AARP poll shows. Obama garners 44 percent of the vote to Mitt Romney's 46 percent and Nelson trails Republican Rep. Connie Mack by a 42-39 split. The Republican leads are well within the 4.4 percent error margin for the poll of the 503 registered voters surveyed by Hart Research Associates.** Indeed, the Nelson-Mack race might be even tighter, with 19 percent of voters...

Former U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on Monday threw her political weight behind former West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel’s bid for Congress. In a scheduled visit to the Veranda Club, an assisted-living facility in Boca Raton, the Democratic leader briefly spoke to a small crowd of mostly seniors about her admiration for Frankel as a “woman of courage.” She then launched into a familiar speech on Medicare.