Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama said Tuesday that the idea of the country’s millionaires sharing more of the pain in terms of getting our financial house is “rather pathetic.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, moving to budget issues on the Senate floor, proposed a non-binding resolution that states: “It is the sense of the Senate that any agreement to reduce the budget deficit should require that those earning $1,000,000 or more per year make a more meaningful contribution to the deficit reduction effort.”
Citing statistics that say the median income of S&P 500 companies chief financial officers jumped $2.9 million last year alone, the resolution makes note of the fact that 20 percent of all income goes to the top 1% in the United States while median family income has declined by more than $2,500 in the last 10 years.
Sen. Sessions seemed to consider the resolution a delay to getting to the meat of the matter, which seems to be what major cuts can be made to the budget.
Sen. Reid’s spokesman Adam Jentleson made a statement saying “Apparently, nothing irritates Republicans more than the prospect that millionaires and billionaires might be asked to share in the burden of deficit reduction.”
A week later, while she was away from her nest for a minute I peeked in and saw she had two eggs in the nest. I was very careful not to disturb them or get too close.
Over night, the eggs hatched and the I got a picture of the baby birds from a distance.
We walk through our front courtyard all day going to the front office, and we always walk soooo slow and quietly so as to not upset or bother the mama bird. We’ve asked our gardener to not go in the courtyard for the time being. The courtyard is the mama’s.
Brad Pitt, exclusively to PEOPLE, on the recent legalization of same-sex marriage in New York State.
“It is encouraging that New York has joined the movement to grant equal marriage rights to its citizens. But it is each American’s Constitutional right to marry the person they love, no matter what state they inhabit. No state should decide who can marry and who cannot. Thanks to the tireless work of so many, someday soon this discrimination will end and every American will be able to enjoy their equal right to marriage.”
The star and marriage-equality activist, 47, once said in an interview that he and Angelina Jolie would not get married until everyone had the same right.
Reuters: A Florida jury on Tuesday found Casey Anthony not guilty of murder in the 2008 death of her 2-year-old daughter Caylee, a case that riveted millions since the child was first reported missing three summers ago.
The verdict spares the 25-year-old from facing the death penalty, which prosecutors planned to seek if Casey had been found guilty as charged of first-degree murder. She faces possible jail time after being found guilty of lying to police and will be sentenced on Thursday at 9 a.m. local time.
We celebrate July 4th – Independence Day – for the courage and sacrifice of those who stood up to say “enough – we are all equal.”
I’ve been trying to think of something to write, something that might matter.
And I came across the story of Andrew Wilfarht. A young man – a young gay man – who at the age of 29 decided to enlist in the army. A young man who mattered.
Who lobbied for gay rights in his high school and escaped the fists of football players when hockey players came to his rescue. Who had the courage to wear pink and green even after his car was spray-painted with “Go Home Fag!”
Andrew loved classical music, was a peace activist, and a math genius. He studied palindromes, maps, patterns, the U.S. Constitution, quantum physics.
At the age of 29, as a gay American, Andrew told his parents he was enlisting in the Army. Among the smartest to enlist, he scored a perfect score on his aptitude test.
When their son wound up in Afghanistan in July 2010, Jeff Wilfarht awoke early each day to Google “Kandahar.” He tracked every soldier killed in the far-off land.
Then, on February 27, 2011, at the same oak table where Andrew said he was joining up, the Wilfahrts learned their oldest child was gone.
Andrew’s infectious smile and confidence made him well liked among his comrades. So well liked that they named a combat outpost after him.
“Although close to my parents and siblings, I generally prefer solitude and introspection, and have but few close associates,” he wrote in an autobiography on his laptop.
“I have maintained ‘bachelor status’ with the strictest of discipline, and a discipline I secretly wish would be compromised by a charming beauty.”
Andrew didn’t have a significant other. If he had, the partner wouldn’t have been allowed to escort his body home from Dover Air Force Base, nor would he have received Andrew’s $100,000 death benefit.
Andrew never denied his sexuality. But like so many, he struggled with what it means to be gay in America. Especially a gay American soldier. Yet it was only one part of him. He was much more. His younger sister, Martha, says it’s the least interesting thing about him.
In his death, his parents have taken up the cause of gay rights. Andrew fought for his nation in a foreign land. His parents’ war is being waged in their home state of Minnesota. To them, it’s about defending the Constitution — protecting the rights of all citizens.
This year, Lori and Jeff attended the Twin Cities Gay Pride parade for the first time. “It’s new for us” Lori says.
In a state that has produced GOP presidential hopefuls Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty — who have made careers fighting gay marriage and LGBT equality — these parents of an American hero are prepared to take their battle to the Supreme Court, if that’s what it takes. To the Wilfahrts, denying gays the right to marry is discrimination against a group to which their son belonged.
Lori and Jeff Wilfarht at their son’s gravesite
Jeff had never spoken much publicly before eulogizing his son. He began by telling the crowd, “If I hold my finger up, I’m gonna be crying. When you see that, I need to pause.” A few minutes later, he lifted his finger and his speech halted. His voice wavered. “I challenge the one-man, one-woman champions to define manliness or womanhood. I hope my son didn’t die for human beings, for Americans, for Minnesotans who would deny him civil rights.”
Jeff says his greatest regret is not hugging his son when Andrew first told him he was gay. “This is how it is for an old fool of a man. This moment is the burden I carry.”
Andrew was just two days from leave when he was killed. “With luck, I’ll be home as soon as the 6th,” he said in the last sentence he ever wrote his father. Instead of greeting their son with hugs on March 6, Lori and Jeff buried their son.
In the family library are Andrew’s six medals, including the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.
His final resting spot is among thousands of others at Fort Snelling National Cemetery, a place where Jeff and Lori now come for solitude.
The two stare at the headstone.
They want people to know their son wasn’t a “gay soldier.” He was a great soldier who happened to be gay. Above all, he was a citizen.
We all owe our “independence” to men like Andrew. Men who served our country. But Andrew served the United States while living without equal rights. I don’t know how many ‘Andrews’ there have been in our history. But I know it’s too many.
A remarkable man, his epitaph reads. Remarkable, and independent.
That was really funny. I don’t know HOW anyone could ever have the balls to act that way at work. To throw such a tantrum… I’d have been fired. Bill? He just kept moving on…
A revamped version of George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess,” starring Audra McDonald, Norm Lewis and David Alan Grier, will go to Broadway soon after it completes its run, previously announced, at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass.
Producers announced on Wednesday that the show — which plays down its roots as an opera and features a reworked book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks and new arrangements by Diedre Murray — will open at the Richard Rodgers Theater on Jan. 12, with previews beginning on Dec. 17.
Diane Paulus, the artistic director at the A.R.T., will direct “Porgy and Bess.” Kicking off the company’s season, the show is slated to run from Aug. 17 to Oct. 2, with an opening night on Aug. 31.
The casting of Ms. McDonald as Bess, Mr. Lewis (“Sondheim on Sondheim”) as Porgy, Mr. Grier (“Race”) as Sportin’ Life, and Joshua Henry (“The Scottsboro Boys”) as Jake made clear this was unlikely to be just a short regional run. And the producers, Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel, expressed optimism about Broadway after workshops and a developmental performance for investors in May.
Mitt Romney denies he said (over and over and over again) that Obama made the recession worse.
Somewhere he is being screamed at by his campaign manager asking why he would say such a thing when it can’t possibly be “spun” into something else?
This man flips on everything he says. And I’m guessing he thinks those boxes in people’s hands must be presents and not cameras – THAT RECORD WHAT HE SAYS.
30 years ago today, in an article in the New York Times, a rare cancer was written about that would eventually lead researchers to learn about and identify AIDS.
Doctors in New York and California have diagnosed among homosexual men 41 cases of a rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer. Eight of the victims died less than 24 months after the diagnosis was made.
Dr. Friedman-Kien said he had tested nine of the victims and found severe defects in their immunological systems. The patients had serious malfunctions of two types of cells called T and B cell lymphocytes, which have important roles in fighting infections and cancer.
More than 60 million people were infected with HIV, and more than 30 million people lost their life to the AIDS virus. At its peak in 1996, an estimated 2.6 million people became infected with HIV.
An estimated 34 million people are currently living with HIV — including nearly 1.2 million in the U.S. — and stigma continues to prove as deadly as the disease itself, keeping people from getting tested and treated for HIV/AIDS.
30 years later, immeasurable fundraising and research behind and ahead of us, no cure has been found.
The NY Times article was featured in the trailer for the film “Longtime Companion.”
