April D. Ryan

President Obama travels to Philadelphia mid-week all in efforts to spur economic growth and create jobs in the bad economy.  Philadelphia currently faces a 12 percent unemployment rate.  Pennsylvania Congressman Chaka Fattah welcomes the Obama plan, he feels will help his residents in the areas of innovation and a green economy.  Fattah says this is what the demand for the future will be and people must educare themselves with a college degrees and some sort of gradute studies degee to compete.

Egyptian TV said that over 3,200 people had been detained following widespread demonstrations and looting in major cities across Egypt over the past week.  

The State Department is prepared to evacuate thousands of U.S. citizens from Egypt on chartered planes, but is relying largely on friends and families in the U.S. to relay that information to stranded Americans.

Assistant Secretary of State Janice Jacobs told reporters Sunday that she expects it will take several flights over the coming days to handle the number of Americans who want to leave Egypt.
Jacobs acknowledged that Internet interruptions in Egypt are making it difficult for Americans there to get information about the evacuations. But she said they have been able to get information from people in the United States who do have access to State Department and embassy websites.

The charters will begin Monday from Cairo and will fly to Europe. Jacobs said the U.S. is looking at Athens, Greece; Istanbul, Turkey; and Nicosia, Cyprus as destinations. So far, she said, Americans have been able to get taxis, but she said people should wait until tomorrow before they try to go to the airport to get one of the charter flights.

Jacobs, who’s in charge of consular affairs, said the U.S. will have enough flights to take out all American citizens and dependents who want to leave. And the U.S. may also send charter planes to other cities in Egypt, such as Luxor, if there are a number of Americans stranded there. She said Americans with tickets on commercial airlines should first contact those carriers about getting out.

Americans taking the charter will be billed for the cost of the flight and will need to make their own travel arrangements home after arriving in Europe.

According to the State Department there are about 52,000 Americans registered with the embassy in Cairo. Officials noted, however, that many people don’t register (or de-register when they leave) and some Americans in Egypt may not want to leave.
Americans looking for information on the flights should monitor the State Department and embassy websites or send an e-mail to egyptemergencyusc@state.gov. They can also call toll-free, 1-888-407-4747, from within the U.S. and Canada. From outside the U.S. and Canada people can call 1-202-501-4444.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki dispatched his presidential plane to Egypt to pick up Iraqi citizens, and the transport ministry ordered free transportation for Iraqis living in Egypt on Iraqi Airways planes, a ministry spokesman said.

Witnesses reported scenes of chaos at Cairo Airport, as people, including Egyptians, tried to catch a decreasing number of flights.

For those Egyptians who had no hope of getting out, the increasing danger was lawlessness and looting.

POLITICO

Moving forward looking at the next two years, the President is focusing on competitiveness and the global economy.

For the past few weeks The White House has been working on themes of the President’s State of the Union speech set for Tuesday at 9 pm.  Friday in New York President Obama carried some of the themes of the State of the Union. Sources contend the president will discuss Health Care and competativeness that translates into the economy with education, sciences and technology.  The President  will address Gabby Giffords and the Ariozona shooting.  Tones of civility and bipartisonship and finding common ground will have a major emphasis.

 By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Erica Werner, Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Translation mix-ups led to some confusion at Wednesday’s White House news conference with President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Obama initially thought his responses were being translated simultaneously into Chinese for Hu. But they weren’t, and so the Chinese-language translator had to embark on a lengthy translation following Obama’s response to the first question he was asked, on human rights.

“I apologize, I thought we had simultaneous translation there,” Obama said after he realized what had happened. “So I would have broken up the answer into smaller bites.”

The human rights question also was directed at Hu, but the Chinese president didn’t answer it, initially causing the impression that he was avoiding the touchy topic. When the question was repeated to Hu later in the news conference he willingly discussed China’s human rights issues, explaining that he hadn’t heard the question the first time around “because of the technical translation and interpretation problem.” The White House said the first question had in fact been translated for Hu.

Later in the news conference, a Chinese reporter provoked laughter when he raised the translation issue and asked the Chinese-language translator “to interpret my two questions correctly and accurately.”

It wasn’t clear what caused the confusion, though the White House said that the Chinese had asked for consecutive - not simultaneous - translation. At various points, both Hu and Obama fiddled with their earpieces.

Meanwhile, English-language networks going live with the news conference were at some points on-air with stretches of Mandarin most viewers would have been unable to comprehend.

ROBERT GIBBS ANSWERS RUSSIAN REPORTERS QUESTIONS ON AMERICAN FREEDOMS IN THE WAKE OF THE ARIZONA SHOOTING

Thursday’s White House press briefing, produced something never seen or heard before.   ITAR-TASS Russian correspondent Andrei Sitov questioned White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about whether the shootings in Tucson, Ariz. were the “reverse side of freedom,” and whether the “freedom of a deranged mind to react in a violent way” was quintessentially American. As you might expect, Gibbs objected to this characterization.

Transcript of the conversation

  Q First my condolences to all the Americans, especially obviously to the victims. But second as to why — it does not seem all that incomprehensible, at least from the outside. It’s the reverse side of freedom. Unless you want restrictions, unless you want a bigger role for the government –

MR. GIBBS: Well, let me do this — because, look, I think there’s a — there’s an investigation that’s going to go on — there’s a –

Q No –

MR. GIBBS: Hold on, let me — let me take my time back just for a second. I think there’s an investigation that’s going to go on. I think there are — I think as it goes on, we will learn more and more about what happened.

I think as the President was clear last night, we may never know fully why or how. We may never have an understanding of why, as the President said, in the dark recesses of someone’s mind, a violent person’s mind, do actions like this spring forward. I don’t want to surmise or think in the future of what some of that might be.

But I think it’s important to understand that, as I said earlier, the event that was happening that day was the exercise of some very important, very foundational freedoms to this country: the freedom of speech; the freedom to assemble; the freedom to petition your government; democracy or a form of self-government that is of, by and for the people — all of — all very quintessential American values that have been on display along with the tremendous courage and resilience of those in that community and throughout this country that have had to deal with this tragedy.

Yes.

Q Exactly, Robert. But this is what I was talking about — exactly this. This is America, the democracy, the freedom of speech, the freedom of assembly, the freedom to petition your government. And many people outside would also say — and the quote, unquote “freedom” of a deranged mind to react in a violent way is also American. How do you respond to that?

MR. GIBBS: I’m sorry. What’s the last part?

Q The quote, unquote “freedom” of the deranged mind to respect — to react violently to that, it is also American.

Q No, it’s not.

MR. GIBBS: No, no, I would disagree vehemently with that. There are — there is nothing in the values of our country, there’s nothing on the many laws on our books that would provide for somebody to impugn and impede on the very freedoms that you began with by exercising the actions that that individual took on that day. That is not American.

There are — I think there’s agreement on all sides of the political spectrum: Violence is never, ever acceptable. We had people that died. We had people whose lives will be changed forever because of the deranged actions of a madman. Those are not American. Those are not in keeping with the important bedrock values by which this country was founded and by which its citizens live each and every day of their lives in hopes of something better for those that are here.

Thank you.

By JULIE PACE and BEN FELLER, Associated Press Julie Pace And Ben Feller, Associated Press - Wed Jan 12,

TUCSON, Ariz. - President Barack Obama flew to Arizona Wednesday and headed straight to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ bedside to pay his respects to the wounded lawmaker as he sought to unify a mourning nation.

Obama and his wife, Michelle, were visiting privately at University Medical Center with Giffords and other victims of the weekend shootings that killed six people and wounded 13. He was then meeting with family members of those killed before speaking at a nighttime memorial service in Tucson.

“The president wanted to begin this solemn trip by stopping first at the hospital where Congresswoman Giffords and others continue to recuperate,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters traveling with the president. Giffords was the target of the first assassination attempt on a member of Congress in decades.

By Anne E. Kornblut and Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 11, 2011; A09 

In the aftermath of the Arizona shootings, President Obama ordered that American flags be flown at half-staff and called for a national moment of silence, which he and first lady Michelle Obama observed on the South Lawn of the White House at 11 a.m. Monday. 

Silence was the easy part. Now the question becomes, when Obama next addresses the nation, what he will say. 

White House officials are weighing their options. Obama will travel to Tucson on Wednesday to attend and address a memorial service for the victims of Saturday’s shootings. 

The service is set for 8 p.m. Eastern time at the University of Arizona’s basketball arena, the school said. It will include a Native American blessing, a moment of silence, a poetry reading and the presentation of a chain featuring messages from members of the public, the school announced. 

Obama is likely to deliver a speech about tolerance, a theme that could also be featured in his State of the Union address on Jan. 25. 

However, with liberals and conservatives assuming their assigned battle stations over whether gun laws and partisan rhetoric are to blame, the White House is undecided about the exact message the president will send. 

It is not clear whether ideology motivated the alleged shooter, Jared Loughner, and Obama’s advisers may conclude it unwise for the president to lecture the nation on mutual respect - which could leave him open to criticism that he is using the tragedy for political gain. 

Obama canceled plans to travel to Schenectady, N.Y., on Tuesday to give an economic speech. Few events were on his calendar this week: He met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the White House on Monday, and he is set to attend the funeral of U.S. ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke in Washington on Friday. 

The president will settle in this week with part of his newly formed West Wing team, as Chief of Staff William Daley and senior adviser David Plouffe take on their new roles. 

Daley happened to be at the White House on Saturday when news of the shootings broke. He was whisked into his first Situation Room meeting with the president before his official duties had even begun. His next task may be helping shape the president’s Arizona message. 

The words that commanders in chief choose in times of national distress can define their presidencies. Historians cite Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg in 1863; Ronald Reagan after the 1986 Challenger disaster; Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995; and George W. Bush’s National Cathedral speech in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as examples of presidential speeches that transcended politics and united the country, however briefly. 

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, calls such addresses “national eulogies” and said Obama has an opportunity to deliver one in the days ahead. 

“The challenge for a president is trying to make meaning out of something that’s not easy to understand - something that looks to be a hugely disrupting act,” Jamieson said. “A president is trying to provide a framework for how we are going to understand it.” 

But there are also reasons for a president to pause before weighing in at such a moment. Investigators are still gathering evidence about the shooter’s motives. Before discussing the attack in the context of inciting political rhetoric, the proliferation of guns, or a lack of care for the mentally ill, Jamieson said, Obama should collect as much information as possible about what happened and why. 

Reagan delivered his moving remarks about the Challenger explosion only hours after it occurred, largely because what happened was clear. 

Clinton, by contrast, waited four days before traveling to Oklahoma City to deliver remarks at a prayer service for the victims. Until then, he participated in other commemorative events.