I have a team of housekeepers who come every two weeks and they have for almost ten years.  They work for a woman who cleaned my house for 15 years before that and then set up her own business.  She taught these women well.  They do a great job.

Maria, who is the head of my team, is here on a green card.  Between her limited English and my limited Spanish, we communicate well.  Her daughter, who was born here, is coming back to Texas from a summer internship in Georgia.  She will graduate in December from the University of Houston with a degree in mechanical engineering.  Her other daughter is a senior in high school, and plays varsity baseball.  She’s hoping for a baseball scholarship to St Mary’s in San Antonio.

Maria is terrified.  She is terrified that ICE will pick her up based on the color of her skin alone.  She is terrified they will revoke her green card.  She is terrified that some fool will try to solve Trump’s immigration “problem”  with military weapons at her grocery store.

She asked me to please vote for Beto.  Apparently, Beto is all over Spanish news television, through no fault of his own.  The news coverage of El Paso is heavy on Spanish tv.  It is awaking something large in the Texas Hispanic community.

I have stayed pretty damn quiet about my choice for Presidentup until now.  The truth of the matter is that I currently know of at least five, and maybe six, candidates I could get behind in a big way.

Kirsten Gillibrand isn’t one of them.

In a desperation, she is now offering t-shirts in exchange for a $1.00 donation. It’s a frantic effort to meet the donor threshold for the next Democratic debate.

If you ask me, they are way overpriced.

And she’d have to pay me a whole lot more than a dollar to wear one.

So, Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is taking Trump’s immigration policy a little further than he probably – and I can only say probably because who knows anymore  – wanted to.

According to Cuccinelli, only people who were actually born on US soil can be citizens.

“No one has a right to become an American who isn’t born here as an American,” he said.

Bye, bye, Ted Cruz.  Sorry you gave us your Canadian citizenship.

I’m sure he said it by accident but let’s hold him to it.

Thanks to SGray for the heads up. 

Guys, on September 9th (keep your fingers crossed) Bubba and I are moving.  It’s only 1.3 miles away but there’s a mountain between here and there.  We are remodeling Bubba’s 1934 brick cottage (that has been his office) into a 2 bedroom home for just us.  Between now and then, we are downsizing from 3,500 square feet to 1,700 square feet.

We were lucky to sell our house right away.  But cleaning out of 35 years and three kids worth of crap is a major undertaking. And trying to oversee the remodeling. And oh my God I’m gonna pull out my hair.

So, or the next three weeks I may only post once a day.  If El Jefe and Primo get busy, too, I’ll try to leave an open thread a couple days a week.

I’m picking tile and packing art work today.

Just be patient, please, while I only wash my hair when I need to put the fire out.

The Washington Post this morning knows the one word that Trump hates, hates, hates.

Trump recently called himself “the least racist person anywhere in the world,” but his history is littered with racist and racially charged comments and actions.

He hates being called a racist simply because there is so much evidence that he is.

Watching him wiggle out of it is a hoot.

“Democrats seem to forget that Trump supporters include blacks, whites, Hispanics and other minority groups who simply love this country,” Mercedes Schlapp, a Trump campaign adviser, said in a text message. “Democrats have shown their absolute disdain for the president and now they have extended their disdain to half of America.”

Well, Honey, if you want to get technical about it, it’s less than half.  And, outside of Ben Carson, Diamond and Silk, and that one guy at all Trump’s rallies, exactly 2% of African American support him.

And even Evangelical are a tad pissed off.  Not because he’s racist, or mean, or dividing America, or worshiping money, or putting children in cages, or robbing social security, or any of those things, but …

They are mad because he used the Lord’s name in vain, which means he broke the last of the ten commandments.

The last major hold on Texas flipping is Tarrant County. Think Fort Worth.  Think Dallas without the culture, pleasing architecture, and JR Ewing.

Every other large Texas county has flipped.  Two years ago, Beto got more votes in Tarrant county than Ted Cruz. So, Republicans in Tarrant County have taken to the mattresses and got their game plan in order to keep Tarrant County red.

And here it is.

“We need Republicans who are calling for the deportation of all illegals, the DACA babies, the anchor babies, & more,” continued the July post that pointed at a recent Tarrant County vote to let sheriff’s deputies continue working as ICE agents. “We must allow AND give cover to those with more extreme views on the right wing of the party.”

The post calls for supporting an “American Nationalist party.”

The Fort Worth Star Telegram covered the story and didn’t get much push-back from “mainstream” Republicans.

“Let’s finish what Trump started and capitalize on the yearning for an American Nationalist party and put these Bolsheviks in their place,” it stated. “We must look to the future and not just offer criticisms, but offer the American people a strong vision of sanity for our increasingly insane country.”

Bolsheviks?  They’re calling us Russians? That’s fun.

I do like how they changed the name to American Nationalists instead of the preferred nomenclature White Nationalists.

Thanks to Randall for the heads up.