AARP got burned very badly in the Medicare "reform" discussions.

They sent bales of mail to their constituents, hailing the Bushmed bill
as the greatest thing since viagara or denture adhesive and urging the
members to lobby their local representitives to support Bushmed.

Of course once the bill passed and people realized that the primary
result was that prescription drugs were going to cost a *lot* more,
(the government was suddenly prohibited from negotiating drug purchase
prices with the major pro-Bush pharmco's) and drugs could no longer be
legally purchased in Canada, the AARP members were extremely unhappy
with the organization's political stance.

After dementia begins its gradual advance, most old folks become
Republicans. AARP probably thought they were preaching to the choir by
asking their largely Republican membership to
support Bushmed. Oops.

I think AARP will be more sensitive to the concerns of its constituency
and less eager to help pull the Bushtrain over the pass on the SS
issue.

The commment by the Bush apologist pointing out that AARP sells mutual
funds to its own members is a hoot! Nobody from any party or group has
proposed that we outlaw private investment for retirement, or the many
existing
tax- advantaged government programs that encourage such savings. It
seems that only the RW kool aid drinkers are buying into the idea that
we cannot individually save for retirement unless we gut the existing
social security program.

The more they repeat the absurdity, the greater number of people will
eventually buy into it. It worked with the idea that "Folks who don't
endorse invading Iraq are all hoping that every one of our troops willl
be killed there", so why not use it on "People who don't want to divert
the money going into Social Security to the stock brokers on Wall
Street are hoping the system will fail and that
granny will be kicked out of her nursing home...."

The logical disconnect is a laugh. Notice that in many of these
propaganda blitzes the opposition is painted as the group that is
promoting the negative consequences that are most likely going to be
associated with the program itself.

In the Iraq example, it was never the people who clamored in favor of
the invasion of Iraq who were putting our troops at risk of death and
injury- it was the people who favored keeping our troops out of harm's
way entirely and solving the problem
by other means.

In the SS example, it isn't the people who want to divert 25% of the
current income to Social Security to private stock brokerages who are
putting the program at risk, it's the group who believes that solving
our retirement funding problems can and should be done without ripping
the IV tube out of an ailing SS program.