Family member Genna Florence

Events in 2012 and 20-7

Events in US in the birth year of Genna Florence

• Jan. 3: The Iowa caucuses kick off U.S. Presidential Election. President Barack Obama goes uncontested in the Democratic caucus. In the Republican caucus, at first, Mitt Romney is declared the winner over Rick Santorum by eight votes. Certified results in Iowa show that Rick Santorum narrowly beat Romney by 34 votes in the Jan. 3 caucus. However, since results from eight precincts could not be located for certification, Santorum and Romney officially tie and split the delegates in Iowa.
• Jan. 5: President Obama makes a rare appearance at the Pentagon briefing room to outline a new national defense strategy. The new strategy takes into account the Pentagon budget cuts, the end to the war in Iraq as well as new threats from Iran and China.
• Jan. 22: Representative Gabrielle Giffords, still recovering from the 2011 assassination attempt, announces that she is vacating her seat in the House of Representatives.
• Jan. 24: In his election-year State of the Union address, President Obama argues that the government should strive to bridge the gap between rich Americans and the rest of the U.S. by changing the tax code and other policies. In his speech, he says: "We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by, or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot."
• Feb. 7: A federal appeals court in California rejects the voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage passed in 2008. The court rules that the ban, known as Proposition 8, violates the constitution rights of gay men and lesbians in California.
• Feb. 9: The Pentagon announces that women will now be permanently assigned to battalions. Many women already serve in those battalions due to demand in Iraq and Afghanistan. The new ruling only makes these job assignments official and upholds the ban on women serving in combat.
• Feb. 10: President Obama announces a change to a recent rule requiring all health insurance plans, including those offered by Roman Catholic institutions, provide birth control coverage to female employees. The revision will require that insurance companies, not religious institutions, offer free contraceptive coverage.
• Feb. 13: Washington becomes the seventh state to legalize same-sex marriage as Gov. Christine Gregoire signs the legislation. Opponents are already working to block the bill and put the issue before voters in a referendum.
• Feb. 13: President Obama issues a budget plan for 2013. The plan includes job-creation initiatives for infrastructure as well as job-training. The proposal comes up short as far as the goal to cut the deficit in half by 2013. Republicans seize on this, calling it a broken promise in deficit reduction.
• March 6: In the Super Tuesday primaries, Mitt Romney wins six states, including a crucial victory in Ohio, Rick Santorum takes four states and Newt Gingrich Newt Gingrich wins one.
• March 26: The U.S. Supreme Court reviews the constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care Act. June 28: The Supreme Court upholds the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The ruling is a victory for President Obama and a loss for the twenty six states that sued over the individual mandate, which requires that individuals buy health insurance by 2014 or face a fine.
• April 10: Rick Santorum announces his decision to end his campaign for the Republican nomination. His decision comes after taking Easter weekend off from the campaign and after his youngest daughter, who suffers from a chromosomal disorder, was hospitalized again.
• April 3: Mitt Romney takes three more primaries, inching closer to the nomination. Romney wins Wisconsin, Maryland, and the District of Columbia where his main rival, Rick Santorum, is not on the ballot.
• May 8: North Carolina passes an amendment to ban gay marriage by a margin of more than twenty percent. By doing so, North Carolina becomes the 30th state in the U.S. to include an anti-gay marriage amendment in its constitution.
• May 9: During an interview at the White House with Robin Roberts, President Obama declares his support for gay marriage for the first time. Regarding the issue, he says, "For me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married." With the declaration, Obama becomes the first U.S. president to back gay marriage while in office.
• May 17: The Census Bureau releases data stating that over a 12-month period, which ended in July 2011, Asians, blacks, Hispanics and mixed races made up just over 50 percent of all births, becoming a majority for the first time in the history of the United States.
• June 5: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker easily wins a recall election against his 2010 opponent, Tom Barrett. Receiving 53 percent of the vote, Walker becomes the first governor in U.S. history to win a recall election. The win is a huge loss for Democrats and labor unions. Walker has been in the national spotlight for his ongoing battle with unions over his plan to trim the state budget by decreasing collective bargaining rights and benefits for public workers.
• June 12: Ron Barber, one of the top aides of Gabrielle Giffords, wins a special election to replace her in Congress. Also wounded in the 2011 shooting, Barber defeats Republican rival Jesse Kelly.
• June 25: The United States Supreme Court rules against all but one provision in the 2010 immigration law in Arizona. The one provision the Supreme Court upholds is the one which allows the Arizona police to check the immigration status for any person they arrest.
• July 20: During a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, a gunman opens fire on the crowded theater in a Denver suburb. Twelve people are killed and 58 others are wounded. Directly after the incident, James Holmes, age 24, is arrested in a parking lot behind the theater.
• Aug. 5: Wade Michael Page, age 40, opens fire in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, killing six people and wounding three others. Police shoot and kill Page, an Army veteran who had ties to the white supremacist movement.
• Aug. 11: Mitt Romney introduces Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan as his presidential running mate during an appearance in Norfolk, Virginia. The announcement immediately energizes the Romney campaign, which raises over a million dollars in just four hours after the announcement.
• Aug. 28: Due to Hurricane Isaac, major events at the Republican National Convention begin a day late. Held in Tampa, Florida, convention highlights include a keynote speech from Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and a personal address from Ann Romney who assured female voters that they can trust her husband.
• Sept. 5: Former U.S. President Bill Clinton gives a rousing speech which brings the audience at the Democratic National Convention to its feet as he officially nominates Barack Obama as the 2012 Democratic candidate for president. Like the Republican National Convention, the DNC has to work around bad weather. The convention, held in Charlotte, North Carolina, is moved indoors.
• Sept. 10: Twenty-six thousand public school teachers go on strike in Chicago to protest against proposed changes. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, has proposed a number of concessions, including that the school board revoke a promised four percent raise and that student test scores count more toward whether teachers receive tenure or not. Sept. 18: The strike ends when 800 union delegates vote to suspend the strike and agree on a contract. The contract gives annual raises to teachers, but evaluates them, in part, on student test scores. The contract also makes the school day longer.
• Sept. 17: Occupy Wall Street marks its one-year anniversary with a demonstration at the New York Stock Exchange. Protesters attempt to block access to the New York Stock Exchange and 185 arrests are made. Rallies are also held in other parts of New York City and in more than 30 cities around the world.
• Oct. 3: President Obama and Mitt Romney square off in the first debate. Romney and Obama come out aggressive on issues such as the tax policy, budget deficit, and the role of government. Romney has an energetic performance that provides a much needed boost to his campaign.
• Oct. 9: Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State football coach, is sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison for molesting young boys.
• Oct. 16: In the second presidential debate, both candidates are aggressive, often interrupting each other with accusations of lying. President Obama takes charge of the tone and terms of this debate with observations such as, "When he said behind closed doors that 47 percent of the country considers themselves victims who refuse personal responsibility think about who he was talking about."
• Oct. 22: President Obama continues to be aggressive in the third debate. In response to a comment from Mitt Romney about downsizing the U.S. military, Obama says, "You mentioned that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets. And so the question is not a game of Battleship."
• Oct. 24: Hurricane Sandy hits Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica. A category 2 hurricane, Sandy leaves 44 dead in the region. Oct. 26: Hurricane Sandy blows through the Bahamas. As it approaches Florida and the east coast of the United States, it is downgraded to a category 1. Oct. 27: Although it is downgraded, the storm picks up energy when it collides with a midlatitude trough. The storm system grows as it barrels up the East Coast, spreading to some 1,000 miles wide. Oct. 29: Hurricane Sandy makes landfall in Atlantic City, N.J., and is re-classified as a post-tropical cyclone. New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut are hardest hit by Sandy. Eight million people lose power as a result of the storm. Sandy has caused at least 132 deaths and an estimated 82 billion in damages, making it the second costliest hurricane in the United States, behind Katrina.
• Nov. 6: President Obama is re-elected, narrowly defeating Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Obama prevails in both the electoral college and the popular vote, buoyed largely by taking several crucial battle states, including Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
• Nov. 6: In the 2012 election, Democrats keep their majority in the Senate. Democrats take Republican Senate seats in Massachusetts and Indiana. Key victories for the Democrats also include a win for Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin. Her victory makes her the first openly gay candidate to capture a seat in the Senate. The Republicans keep the majority in the House of Representatives with 232 seats to 191 for the Democrats.
• Nov. 9: Former four-star general David Petraeus resigns as CIA director after the FBI uncovers evidence that he had an extramarital affair. Paula Broadwell is the woman with whom Petraeus had the affair. Broadwell is the author of "All In: The Education of General David Petraeus", a biography published in 2012.
• Nov. 29: The lame duck session of Congress faces the Bush-era tax cuts as well as the stimulus measures expiring on December 31, 2012. These measures and cuts are set to expire just as the government plans to severely cut federal spending, thus sending the U.S. economy over a fiscal cliff. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner presents the deficit reduction proposal from President Obama in a meeting with Speaker of the House John Boehner. The proposal asks for a $1.6 million tax increase over ten years, refinancing of home mortgages, an end to Congressional control over statutory borrowing limits, and $50 billion for immediate stimulus spending. Republicans react immediately to the proposal with very strong resistance. Dec. 3: Republicans make a deficit reduction proposal of their own. Their proposal is for a $2.2 trillion deficit decrease over the next ten years by cutting $1.2 trillion in spending and raising $800 billion in revenue. Dec. 4: President Obama rejects the proposal by Republicans to avoid the rapidly approaching fiscal cliff. He tells them he will not agree to any proposal that does not include increases on tax rates for the wealthy. Dec. 9: President Obama meets privately with House Speaker John Boehner in an attempt to hammer out a deal and avert a fiscal crisis. Republican Senator Bob Corker, of Tennessee, says in a TV interview that a growing number of Republicans are open to compromising on tax rates. Dec. 30: Republicans in the Senate back off on their demand that the deal has to include new inflation calculations for Social Security and other programs. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell works with Vice President Joe Biden into the late hours of the night finalizing a deal.
• Nov. 14: The case count for the meningitis outbreak continues to rise in the United States. Thirty-two people have died. More than 400 have been infected while 14,000 may have been exposed.
• Dec. 7: The U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear two cases that challenge federal and state laws over the issue that marriage is defined only as a union between a man and a woman. Decisions on the cases are expected no later than June 2013.
• Dec. 14: Adam Lanza, age 20, forces his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Connecticut, and kills 26 people, including 20 children between the ages of six and seven. Then Lanza takes his own life while still inside the school.

Birthday Genna Florence (20-7) in history

• Day 20-7 year 1810: Colombia declared its independence from Spanish domination.
• Day 20-7 year 1881: Fugitive Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull surrendered to federal troops.
• Day 20-7 year 1951: King Abdullah I of Jordan was assassinated.
• Day 20-7 year 1960: Sirima Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) became the world's first woman prime minister.
• Day 20-7 year 1969: Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong was the first man to walk on the Moon.
• Day 20-7 year 1985: Treasure hunters found the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha, which sank off the coast of Key West, Fla., in 1622 during a hurricane. The ship contained over $400 million in coins and silver ingots.