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The Massachusetts Senate special election is shaping up as a referendum on the health-care debate in Washington. And its outcome may well determine whether Massachusetts seniors get to keep the Medicare benefits they currently enjoy.     Alone among the American people, Massachusetts voters will have the chance to register their formal views on the proposed health-care overhaul before Congress votes on its final version.     Few stand to be more personally affected by that verdict than Massachusetts seniors.  This is particularly true for those enrolled in Medicare Advantage, the popular program that lets seniors receive their Medicare benefits...

Barack Obama should be thankful that the Wall Street crisis is dominating the news these days, because otherwise more people might notice that he has been uttering manifest falsehoods about John McCain's Social Security plan - in a bid to woo the potentially pivotal senior voters who remain cool to Obama's historic candidacy. While on the stump in Florida last weekend, Obama contended that McCain's talk of Social Security privatization could leave seniors destitute: "If my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would've had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this...

The personality is familiar to us all: the sweet old aunt, the loving grandfather or the generous widow down the street, each of them unfailingly kind toward friends and family but given to flights of shocking prejudice when the conversation turns toward ethnic groups to which they don't belong. Often the response is a nervous laugh, a wan smile or a hasty effort to change the subject. We assume that old people are the products of less-enlightened times; they're unlikely to change; and their comments, however ugly, are largely innocuous. Now, though, in the midst of the nation's first presidential...

After bashing the flyovers, the clingers, the hunters, the non-Ivy League, women, apparently the DUmmies now want to lose the "old people" vote (Edited for language, as is always necessary): OP:"Sometimes, I get pi$$ed off when I realize that older voters that are voting for McCain for all the wrong reasons (racism, age solidarity, etc.) are trying to create a terrible world that they won't have to live in. National debts are going to be passed on to their grandchildren. Having a warhawk in office will mean more young lives lost and possibly a draft or two. Overturning Roe v....

DAYTONA BEACH, Florida (AFP) — Democrat Barack Obama accused his White House foe John McCain Saturday of wanting to "gamble" away Americans' life savings by privatizing Social Security at a time of crisis on the markets. Neither of the campaigns had any immediate response to news reports that the US government wants permission from Congress to buy 700 billion dollars in troubled mortgages, according to a draft rescue plan for Wall Street. But Obama renewed his demand that any government bailout must protect ordinary Americans on "Main Street," as well as the busted financiers of New York, through another round...

If you want a sense of how elderly Jewish Americans are likely to vote this November, speak to the residents of Jerusalem's Ramat Tamir retirement community. Nestled in the city's northern hills is a collection of Jewish seniors in neat, well-maintained apartments, where most of the ambient conversational buzz is in English and American-accented Hebrew. Its American residents are people who seemingly could just as easily have retired to Florida. One of the residents, 105-year-old Miriam Pollak, is believed to be the oldest American voter living abroad. With five generations of descendants, she "stopped counting" how many great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren...

Belittling John McCain as a relic of the disco age, Democrat Barack Obama pushed his campaign Friday to a new level of counter-punching "on the issues that matter" and directed his running mate to be tougher on their Republican opponents. The changes come as national polls find McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, pulling ahead of Obama and Joe Biden, prompting some jittery Democrats to implore them to fight back harder, and Obama's camp to pledge "speed and ferocity" in that effort.

The most important voters in close races are the ones that candidates can count on to show up on Election Day – and seniors may just become the new "soccer moms" in this presidential election. Older Americans have the highest turnout rate of any age group – 69 percent in 2004. And they'll wield clout in this tight presidential contest because a number of the swing states, like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, have a lot of older residents. "Despite the media's focus on the youth vote, the most influential voters in the McCain-Obama matchup are likely to have some gray...

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...

Barack Obama has problems with Jewish seniors in Florida, say two Democratic lawmakers there. Florida state Sen. Nan Rich told JTA that Obama surrogates have been “shocked” by the hostility they have encountered at condominiums in her area aimed at their candidate. Steve Geller, who serves as the Democratic minority leader in the Florida state Senate and represents parts of Broward County, said he was nearly chased out of the "condos" -- shorthand for retirement communities -- when he said he backed Obama. "I've noticed almost a mob mentality," Geller said. "I can change people's minds in a group of...

Yesterday, Michelle, my Bell, Obama quoted her husband quoting the radical Marxist Saul Alinsky in his book "Rules for Radicals" (The book is dedicated to Satan) This didn't go unnoticed by the Geezers on AARP.

Democratic Base FissuresAlthough attention has been focused on McCain's problems with the GOP base, there are indications that some Democrats might defect if Obama is the party's nominee. Overall, 20% of white Democratic voters say they would vote for McCain if Obama is the Democratic nominee. That is twice the percentage of white Democrats who say they would support McCain in a Clinton-McCain matchup. Older Democrats (ages 65 and older), lower-income and less educated Democrats also would support McCain at higher levels if Obama rather than Clinton is the party's nominee. Read more at http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=398

Mr. Bush received support from 53 percent of voters 60 and over, compared to 46 percent for Kerry, according to CBS News exit polls. ...... CBS News National Exit Poll results are based on interviews with 13,531 voters. The sampling error is plus or minus 1 point.]

CNN) -- With two weeks to go until Americans go to the polls, President Bush and Sen. John Kerry concentrated their efforts on the campaign trail Tuesday in the showdown states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Bush addressed an enthusiastic crowd in St. Petersburg, Florida, Tuesday morning, repeating his catchphrase, "he can run, but he cannot hide," in reference to his opponent's record in the Senate. It was the first of three Bush events in the state. (CNN.com's Candidates Tracker) "As proven by his record and a series of contradictions in this campaign, my opponent will say anything he thinks...

WASHINGTON President Bush won't attend the annual convention of the A-A-R-P, although he'll be in Las Vegas at the same time as the group that helped him pass last year's Medicare prescription drug law. Laura Bush will speak to the A-A-R-P, instead. Bush will appear at a campaign rally. John Kerry, who opposed the Medicare law, has accepted an invitation to address the meeting of 25-thousand on Thursday. The attendees represent the group's 35 (m) million members. The A-A-R-P's backing of the controversial Medicare legislation prompted 60-thousand members to resign. Since then, the organization has campaigned for changes, such as...