Retirement used to be a time for people to enjoy life without a mortgage or high credit card bills, a time when heavy debts were mostly a thing of the past. Increasingly, that's no longer true. Some seniors are taking on debt in retirement to fund a trip they've always wanted to take. But a growing number are in debt because they have no choice, according to debt counselors and a growing body of research.
Soaring health care costs are hitting seniors at a time when more employers are cutting back on retiree medical and pension benefits. People are living longer. Yet many seniors subsist on fixed incomes and have little means to boost their incomes. For them, debt provides a temporary – and often costly – reprieve from unexpected expenses.
When our country was young, debt was seen as a sign of weakness. A good person normally didn't go into debt, unless he had no choice. Those days are gone. Debt is seen as a legitimate lifestyle choice, and now it's spreading into the older ranks, where people should know better. I realize medical costs are playing a role, but that's not the entire story. This is primarily just another chapter in the new American attitude: financing is good.
Mary Alice Jackson, an elder-law attorney in Sarasota, Fla., says, "We're at the tip of the iceberg. This generation will have no problem at all racking up debt and worrying about it later."
All sorts of vicious stuff going around about John Lennon's upbringing. Was his mother a slut? Was his puritanical guardian aunt a slut, too? Read about it here. I don't really care, but what's striking is this: it's all about sex. Illicit sex. Stroll down Sad Road and talk with the inhabitants. Most all of them will tell you stories that reveal illicit sex as a triggering cause of much suffering.
Pretty funny:
"I don't like fat people, I don't really like really ugly people, I don't like it when foreigners come into this country and they don't take on British culture and British values. I'm for the British Empire and things. I'm for slavery, but that's never going to come back."
That's some 18-year-old reality TV contestant in Britain. She has made a lot of people angry. Unfortunately, I assume it's just a put-on, kind of like those absolutely horrible American Idol contestants who are just trying to get on TV. Here's the concluding line from the story:
A Channel 4 spokesman said . . . "Those who continue to watch Shipwrecked will see, as the series progresses, Lucy's views change as she interacts and is challenged by other contestants"
Alright, I see. In two months she's going to be hugging transvestite orientals and wearing a burka.
Great article, I bet: Christopher Hitchens praising Mark Steyn. Unfortunately, I don't have time to read it all right now. Hitchens is normally a jerk (he attacked Mother Teresa, and most of his arguments were bogus), but he's a great writer with no tolerance for Muslims.
"Mike Judge's film 'Idiocracy' ... depicts a dystopian future where language has degenerated into a medley of ghetto/hillbilly/valley girl-speak and grunts. The film's conceit is simple: The smart and affluent people have ceased procreating -- whether because of their busy careers or plain selfishness -- leaving the field open for the ultra-fertile knuckledraggers, who tend to produce an overabundance of offspring with an endless string of partners, until there is no one left with an IQ over 80. . . .
It's the first time someone has called me an "ultra-fertile knuckledragger," but I like it. (For the record, incidentally, my wife is not pregnant. It's the longest she's gone without getting pregnant since we got married. The littlest turns two in March. You do the math.)
An Australian diver made an incredible escape after being partially swallowed - headfirst - by a great white shark.
Eric Nerhus, 41, suffered just a broken nose, cuts and bruising after fighting his way out of the man-eater's jaws, reports Sky News. . . .
"It was black. He didn't see it coming, but he felt the bite and then started getting shaken, and that's when he knew he was in the mouth of the shark," said local diver Michael Mashado.
