Okay, so we have a problem in Texas.

Within a two-year period between 2010 and 2012, the rate of pregnant women dying in Texas doubled – and it’s not entirely clear why.

Well, here, let me wipe off your glasses.

In 2011, the state Legislature cut Texas’ family planning and women’s health program, which provide care and routine screenings for low-income women. Lawmakers slashed its budget by two-thirds—and kicked out women’s health providers that also provide abortions.

Okay, so we cut funds for women’s health care and everybody is stumped, just completely stumped, why the mother mortality rate doubled.

Researches are stumped because they “didn’t see this in other states.”

Look at a damn map, researchers.  Texas is big, real big.  If the clinic closes in your town, it’s not like you can jump on the metro and go to the next town.  It can be a ten hour drive to the next clinic.

Our right-to-life state legislators decided that their religion was more more important than women’s deaths.  Period.

Women who do not get pre-natal care die at a higher rate than those who do.  Period.  That’s the cause.

But, and you’re gonna love this part of the research, women a expendable.

“It’s a great concern,” she says. “Maternal deaths are deaths of young women that have families. They probably have other children they have husbands. The ripple effect is huge for these deaths.”

So, our worth is determined by our husbands or other children.  How about not killing off women because they are human beings?

Okay, I’ll put away the soap box.  But I know where I put it and I can get it out again.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

A recent gush-y article in People spoke of how Ivanka Trump dumped her three kids including the newborn on her nanny and is palling around Eastern Europe with Wendy Deng Murdoch. Let’s review Wendy’s rise in the world.

In 1987, she met Jake and Joyce Cherry and their two kids, who were in Deng’s native China for Jake to build a refrigerator factory. Joyce Cherry tutored her in English, then returned to California with her kids. Jake later called and talked Joyce into sponsoring a student visa for Deng, whom he then brought home with him. Shortly thereafter, Joyce kicked Deng out of the house for banging Jake, who is thirty years older than she is. Jake moved in with Deng, and they got married, which gained Deng her green card. But when Jake couldn’t pay for graduate school, the marriage ended.

Not to worry! Deng later got a job in Hong Kong for a news corp, where she ended up in a relationship with one of her bosses, a fellow named Rupert Murdoch, who is Chairman and CEO of something or other. Murdoch divorced his wife and then married Deng three weeks later. She bore two of Murdoch’s spawn, then he dumped her for having an affair with Tony Blair, who was once Prime Minister of something or other, and also married at the time, and still is.

Since then, she’s been in a much-whispered-about but fairly low-key relationship with Vladimir Putin, who divorced his own wife around the same time, and who is President of something or other.

So basically, Deng has spent the last 20 years sleeping her way up a ladder of rich, powerful daddy-figures, marrying those who would leave their wives, and moving on when the next best thing offered.

This is yet another strand in the web entangling the Trump campaign, the Trump corporations and the Trump family with people in the orbit of Vladimir Putin and his Russian friends, supporters, funders, puppet states and shadow allies. But it also raises a more serious question:

Is Wendy Deng Cherry Murdoch quasi-Blair semi-Putin going to be Ivanka’s next step-mommy?

(Pro-Tip: THAT’S sarcasm, Donnie.)

Y’all, just when you thought North Carolina was hopeless, along comes the transforming power of Donald Trump.

With Hillary Clinton pouring resources into North Carolina for her presidential campaign, and more likely Democratic voters registering in the state, Democrats say North Carolina is becoming a real Senate battleground.

The incumbent Republican senator, Richard Burr, is being challenged by Democratic former state representative Deborah Ross.

Clinton is ahead by 9 points in North Carolina, a state that has gone off the deep end every election since 1976, with the exception of 2008 when Obama carried it, but very narrowly.

Latest polling numbers show Ross up by 2 points.  Last month, she was behind by 7 points.  Then Burr started campaigning with Trump. Honey, he might as well have wrapped a fifty pound sinker around his ankle.

Now, with the Clinton campaign pouring money into North Carolina, Ross will pick up even more Democratic base turnout.

Ross (typo corrected)  is the former director of the North Carolina ACLU, a fact that giving Burr heart congestion and irritable bowel syndrome.

Indeed, there is not.

I’m sure you all remember about the mess of money-grubbing and fancy pants horse thievery going on with the Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Republican Sid ByGawd Miller.

Ole Sid is using taxpayer money to fund his rodeo addiction, overeating, and weird-butt pain relievers.

The [Houston] Chronicle reported that Miller had spent $1,120 in taxpayer money on the February 2015 trip to Oklahoma and that his office had said the trip was for meetings that in reality never took place. The Chronicle also reported that Miller had used state and campaign money on a trip to Mississippi in which he competed in a rodeo and won $880 in prize money.

He also charged the taxpayers for his “Jesus shot” painkiller in Oklahoma.

Well ….

The Travis County District Attorney’s Office has begun reviewing the findings of a criminal investigation into Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller’s travel, a top prosecutor said Friday.

“We received the investigation (from the Texas Department of Public Safety) earlier this week,” said the prosecutor, Gregg Cox, the head of Travis County’s Public Integrity Unit. “It is under review.”

Here’s how this works.  He gets indicted. He screams that the “liberal” Travis County DA is picking on him. He goes to trial. He loses. He screams that the liberal Travis County jury did this awful thing to him because he loves Jesus. He appeals.  The conservative appeals court grants the appeal after about 3 years. Meanwhile, Sid stays in office because he’s a conservative legend because liberals are picking on him.

And that right there is Texas justice!

In the midst of all the hoopla over Hillary Clinton’s new poll numbers, there is a small hidden gem.

Ted Cruz is sinking, fast.

As of today, 61.4% of Texans view Ted Cruz either somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable.

NOTE:  “The results include 448 Republicans, 305 Democrats and 265 others. It has a 3.1 percent margin of error and a 95 percent confidence level.”

The poll showed Joaquin Castro as running neck and neck with him, even though there’s 150 more Republicans than Democrats being polled.  .

Thanks, Trump.

Y’all, the Federal Elections Commission is picking on Louie Gohmert.

In their latest letter to him about his campaign finance report, they say …