Pretty ironic that seniors voted overwhelmingly for the party that wants to end Social Security

I thought people gained wisdom as they got older?


Guess not.

..to start refusing their SS checks, and to burn their Medicare cards NOW..

So that's kind of a problem. I forget how many Seniors believed the Death Panel thing - saw polling, it is a pretty large chunk.

group.

They've got theirs..

Of course, those who create the law have no idea how the laborers would be affected.

on the issue of raising retirement age. Almost every person, some manual worker types included were saying: okay well I know I'm going to work until I drop so whatever. I was the only one saying it's unfair.

collect unemployment checks for 10+ years until their pensions take effect? The thugs hate extended unemployment, too!

and they are most graciously helping that happen.

As long as they got theirs, they are willing to screw everyone else. Like with medicare. Many of the ones that are against government run health care understand that medicare is also government run. They are afraid that a system that lets everyone be covered will ruin what they have.

We are protective of what we have, but not all of us would cut off our kids and grandkids from eventually having SS and Medicare! I do think seniors as a group (as I know them, not a scientific poll!) are nervous about losing what benefits they do have. We are all scared of running out of money as we get more dependent on having medical care and have no forseeable way of increasing our income.

We should have a STRONGER safety net, covering MORE people, not a shrinking one...

as do most of her peers. She goes so far as to even resent "paying for the education of other people's children". My mother is a staunch Faux News watcher, bigot, rethug extraordinaire, and totally exemplary of her circle of friends.

It's nauseating. The greatest generation is now going to be tarnished with this travesty.

My dad, not retired yet, is the same way about having to pay school taxes. It completely baffles me - does he not remember he had 2 kids that went through the school system? :wtf:

She's the same. I can only attribute it to brainwashing from Faux News? I am really disgusted.

And was it the Republicans that made this promise?

We'll see how that works out, won't we?

would take effect immediately. I mean why not? No one is more responsible in general for the mess we have than the people that have cast the most votes over the last several decades.
If they can't survive on a fixed income if they lose benefits, younger people can't afford to keep paying out to provide something we aren't going to get.

"Like with medicare. Many of the ones that are against government run health care understand that medicare is also government run. They are afraid that a system that lets everyone be covered will ruin what they have."

That's one of the feel-good Hallmark myths we tell ourselves, but it just ain't so.

Wisdom is cultivated. It is an intentional act. If one doesn't cultivate wisdom, it doesn't magically appear, even in 300 years.

Yesterday is good evidence of that. Seniors voted themselves cat food. Obviously that wasn't too wise.

"Wisdom is cultivated. It is an intentional act."

That is what I told my kids as they were growing up. There is nothing more true than this. Just living a long time does not do it.

There really is no excuse for the ignorance in this country. All one has to do is try to be better but alas, we have told ourselves that we are just fine the way we are and there is no reason to worry about it.

2. Seniors know that their SS will be safe, it's only the younger generations that will be forced to take losses.

passing the buck on done. That is why there are tiers to pensions. New classifications at the union halls. School budgets that fail in election years.

In fact, more often than not, I find them feeble-minded, quick to scare, and resistant to progressive thinking...

The so-called "Silent" generation born between the Greatest Generation and the Boomers (Silent as in Nixon's "Silent Majority") make up the vast majority of living retirees. And collectively as a generation have have mostly succeeded in kicking the can of problems down the road untill it blew up in us younger folks' faces.

I think many GOP candidates used what Newsweek called the biggest misstatement of 2010 to scare the elderly. John Boozman used that in every TV ad I saw.


http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/26/the-biggest-misstatements-of-the-midterms.html

A common theme is that the law contains a $500 billion Medicare "cut" that will translate into less benefits, but that’s misleading. The law calls for reducing the future growth of Medicare spending over the next 10 years by about 7 percent. Plus, the law stipulates that guaranteed Medicare benefits won’t be reduced, and it adds some new benefits, such as improved coverage for pharmaceuticals.

Many seniors are scared that if gov't healthcare reform for all goes into effect, that it will decrease their medicare and ss benefits. So not ironic at all.

Linda McMahon because she likes her hairstyle !

Age and wisdom are not necessarily linked

WH is the enemy and should be punished. When they are in soup lines after the Repugs finish off the job that the Bernie Maddoffs started.....it's really sad to think about it like this but it is what it is.

how the process works to what those cuts mean for them to what the Constitution actually says and the importance of the Constitution.
The idiot nation in full bloom. It is sad.
When they are asked why they voted the way they did they repeat the talking points of "big Government", "big deficit", on and on and do not know what has been done or how it is accomplished and by whom.

They know they will be grandfathered in, so they don't give a shit.

...for all Republicans.

And, were Democrats pounding out messages to alert senior citizens?

Seniors aren't even organized in any way -- except thru AARP and insurance company!

ANY change to SS is "future-oriented"...like for people who are now in their 20s to 40s.

People who are collecting retirement benefits now are at least 62.

Any real change will have to "grandfather-in" people who are 50+, or it will not pass.

Most people in the know, also know that SS is pretty much solvent until 2030something. Greedy oldsters (teaparty types) know they will probably be gone by then, so they don't give a shit about anyone else, as long as they can keep more right now..

won't effect them.

And ... I think some of them are angry about the civil rights movement and their inability to use the N-word. Many of them remember when blacks knew their place. Obama does not know his.

None I know Repug or Dem. Voted to give away their social security. One of the main reasons a lot of seniors came out to save it. At least the ones I talked to.

peeps!!!!!!

when taxes on the rich were at 90% and you didn't have to put yourself in tens or hundreds of thousands of debt to buy a house, car, or college education...that damn evil socialism.

That is what the GOP promotes -- selfishness.

completely selfish.. yes but not ironic at all.

From their childhood until their eighties, Uncle Sam has taken care of them through liberal programs. The FDIC that protects their money if their bank fails. The Medicare. The Social Security. They have sucked down public support and resent it for others.

Why are the children of today's poor less worthy than the children of the poor in the 1930s?

I honestly do not understand the people who lived through the Depression but harangue against "government programs" now. It's my parents' generation, and even though they all came from WPA families, you'd think they were all birthed by Ayn Rand with John Galt as the father.

The body of your post is so absurd in parts and in whole that the mind reels.

they will vote against their own interests every time.

finally found a group that you can kick around have ya?

Many seniors are alive and well on these boards. We have been fighting the good fight against what has been going on while you were still looking for a dark corner of sunset to park in on date nights.

Ungrateful little wretches. We realize that it will take some adjusting when mom and dad plus mom-in-law and dad-in-law moves in with you. Maybe it is that which scares us...lol.

I find that there is little wisdom and almost no common sense in this thread. Nice of you all to attack those who came before you and PAID YOUR FUCKING WAY to this point of your lives.

Were the boomers spoiled? Doubtful, but sacrifices had to be made and they were the generation that benefited from the end of WWII. New marriages, new babies, new homes, new cars, fancy radios, finally...tv, and a good start in life because jobs were plentiful...didn't pay a lot but a little cash went a long way. Education...there for everyone for very little--at least in California it was.

A single-payer National Health Plan was the target. We didn't get that did we?

Think about it for a bit...way this works you see, is that the older generation supports the younger until you can take over. Then the situation reverses and the younger supports the older. Been that way for centuries. Too good for most of you apparently.

Some of the comments on this thread are as nasty as any about any group ever attacked.

DOB: 1935, downsized 2 1/2 years ago and no jobs available. Worried about things? You bet many of us are.

I interpreted this thread to be against the tea baggers. Maybe I missed something.

I am frustrated with seniors (the same age as me!) who are voting against their own interest, but as far as I know they are not members of this forum.

... except working till I'm dead under the New Corporate Reich.

I'm in the demographic who thinks the healthcare reform law didn't go nearly far enough. Did I want single-payer? Yes.

However, go back in time and show me the final bill two days before it passed and ask me whether it would pass. Without question I woulda said "No way that will pass. Impossible."

That Obama passed what I thought was impossible, and politics is the art of the possible, I'm very please with healthcare reform as a start.

My congressman did a so-so job with this, but I live in a pretty blue district where he'd really have to fuck up big-time to lose.

I'm waiting for January, when Rand Paul filibusters raising the debt ceiling and seniors don't get their SS checks.

Wonder who they'll support then?

the kids of seniors who have moved back home because of loss of jobs--downsizing/offshoring will have to move back out into the street along with their parents.

And no, not all of them. But quite a lot of them.

our "colored" President. I've tried to stop her. She just doesn't give a shit.

22,000 voted for Rick Perry/6,000 voted for Bill White.
They ... at least in my area...feel they must go with the "Christian" party...nd simply do not respond to questions about medicare.They don't see it as an entitlement program...even though most of them were rural residents with farming,constrction or something along those lines.I don't get it,either.(Even my dad,an Eisenhower Republican,supported care for the sick,poor and elderly...this is the religious right..God will provide)

like the disabled, children whose parents died, etc.

you know what that sounds like to me? sounds like, "don't give my program and benefits to anyone else --ONLY ME."

and the actions of those voters described in the OP sound similar.

--very hard on this issue. Every single one of them ignored us, except Jim McDermott who was guaranteed re-election anyway.

bought into the right wing propaganda about death panels, etc.

The right uses that effectively. If I am to be denied social security and medicare, then I want the Republicans to deliver on their promise to end entitlements NOW rather than later. Deliver what they promise to those that brought them to power.

I swear I will sue the next idiot on a government paid-for scooter the runs into me at the grocery store.

but what's wrong with trying to improve it? Why not raise the age to 67? It was set at 65 when the average life expectancy was < 50. Now it's 70, what's wrong with raising the retirement age a little? There are Democrats talking about raising the age also.

I've never once heard from anybody they want to END Social Security.

--to poverty, homelessness, and even death.

They love that "cut taxes" mantra by the Republicans but they don't understand it will be the social safety net programs that will be decimated.

Who was it that put that mess together --hmmm?

who put everything on the table?