Increasing inequality in income distribution in this country has broader policy implications, and there is also the growing problem of perverse incentives that result from executives receiving grossly disproportionate compensation based on decisions they themselves take.

Before this learning experience, I had assumed that with regard to programs that sought to help people out of poverty, the political world was essentially divided into two camps: conservatives who opposed these for a variety of reasons, and liberals who supported them.

While I was pleasantly surprised by the relatively high number of jobs created in April, the fact is that job creation during this recovery period has significantly lagged both historical experience in recovery, and the projections of the Bush Administration.

The left and the right live in parallel universes. The right listens to talk radio, the left's on the Internet and they just reinforce one another. They have no sense of reality. I have now one ambition: to retire before it becomes essential to tweet.

My mom was a professional fitness competitor, so I go into the gym with her. I train with my dad and mother. It's embarrassing, because she's really strong.

Soon after joining the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia, I was called upon as part of team to respond to a malaria outbreak. My team was dispatched to a village in southwestern Ethiopia, where I not only observed the malaria epidemic's shocking effects on adults and children but also experienced it first-hand.

My two grandmothers both died of cancer, so I understand how painful and difficult this disease is on the entire family. My first grandmother passed away from bone cancer when I was about 10. It was really horrible. I remember the whole process like it was yesterday.

I think that some of our soldiers die in the battlefield and some come home to bad health and die prematurely, just by the nature of the kind of business they're in.