BIDEN IN TOWN:...President Drops In On Old Brownsville... Damns Republicans...Trump Upriver In Eagle Pass..."Photo Op" Time...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

BROWNSVILLE, Texas |...The falling local newspaper offered the obligatory write-up, as did Rio Grande Valley TV stations. Bloggers were no shows. One threw a bit about little league baseball back in the day, the other one offered a lame, softball interview of an elderly candidate for the Cameron County Commissioner's Court.

I know. Par for the course.

McAllen Mayor Javier Villalobos, a Republican, was among a few valley notables to welcome President Joe Biden to this city (see photo above), one that likes to think of itself as all-politics-all-the-time.

If only.

"Immigration continues to be a national concern," Villalobos wrote on his Facebook page. "Yesterday members of the South Texas Mayors Alliance joined President Biden on this subject.  We will continue to champion the issues that affect our region."

Well, yeah. Keep working. It's what's expected of you public servants. Nowhere in the photos we saw, however, were local Mayor John Cowen (a Republican?) and Harlingen Mayor Norma Sepulveda. Too bad. Surely, Cowen was there to welcome the president. Sepulveda, a gung ho supporter of downtown shopping, was probably at some coffee shop sipping her latte.

Upriver, Republican Donald J. Trump spent morning with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and a surprisingly large contingent of the U.S. military. What was that about, a show of political force? That Abbott. Always the punk.

Biden arrived to speak about the recent disaster in Congress that saw a Senate-proposed Border Bill addressing the issue die on the vine after the Republican-controlled House of Reps. booted the easy grounder.

And the word was that the House acted on orders from oft-indicted Trump that they not help the Biden reelection campaign by easing things along the country's southern border.

Well, okay. Always good to keep things on the front burner.

In the end, however, the visits by Democrat Biden and Republican Trump served only their "photo op" purposes. Too bad.

One of these days, the U.S. will stop bitching amongst itself and resolve the problem, only, well, it's really not that big of a problem.

What you see is a magnified issue, one made to seemingly be worse than it really is...

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