Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
President Obama needs a vacation — and a heart. In Texas yesterday to begin a “…two-day visit to the state for Democratic fundraising and an economic event,” he refused to visit the border with Mexico to view firsthand the humanitarian crisis of thousands Central American children seeking refuge in the United States, and most important, to meet with the refugees. He said, reports the Washington Post, he was…
…“not interested in photo ops” and challenging Congress to give him new authority to respond to the situation.
“Nothing has taken place down there that I’m not intimately aware of,” Obama said during a hastily arranged news conference….
And he doesn’t want to be photographed in the company of desperate brown children, some here illegally, and thus call attention to their plight and our responsibility to address it in a manner more humane than herding the little refugees into a bus bound for whence they came.
What the President did was stupid and cruel. Two Democratic U.S. Representatives in Congress from Texas delivered that message more diplomatically:
“If he had time, with all due respect, to have a beer and play pool like he did in Colorado last night, then I think after the fundraisers he should make time to go down there,” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.) told CNN.
Rep. Filemon Vela (D-Tex.) said in an interview that “if he’s not going today, he should go sometime very soon, and it’s not so much to see the facilities but to see the children.”
Time for a vacation, Mr. President. Rest. Regret. Repent.
Here are Joan Baez and Jackson Browne performing Los Companeros (also known as El Salvador) in the Ventura theatre in 1989. El Salvador is one of the places the refugee children are fleeing: