France won its second Men's World Cup yesterday, defeating a strong Croatian side 4-2. That's a lot of goals for a World Cup final, and some of them were just weird—especially the last one, with France and Tottehnam goalkeeper Hugo Lloris emulating Liverpool goalkeeper Loris Karius's boo-boo from the UEFA Champions League final, allowing Mario Mandžukić to make up for his unfortunate own-goal in the first half. (It has since been revealed that Karius was unknowingly playing through a concussion suffered earlier in the match.) The championship adds to the one from 1998, when France hosted the tournament. France will host next year's Women's World Cup, and I hope to travel there with my Francophile ladyfriend to catch the US Women in action (assuming that they qualify). I wasn't actually rooting for France, and I predicted that Belgium would emerge on top. But Kayleen had it right all along, so congratulations to her and Les Bleus. We watched the final yesterday morning, merely talking about making a drinking game out of Fox commentators' constantly reminding us that Kylian Mbappe is a teenager, but not actually drinking anything until we washed down our lunch with snifters of Chambourd. My inspiration for inserting all this France stuff into a Texas-focused weekly blogroll is the historical fact that France was among the few nations to recognize the newly minted Republic of Texas back in the 1830s. The two republics even had constructed makeshift embassies in each other's capitals; Houston was the capital of Texas at that time. Not that the short-lived Republic of Texas—or the way Anglo-Texians fought to make it slave territory—was anything for a Progressive like me to be proud of, but I do love this land that I've called home for most of my life. ============ This week's Texas Progressive Alliance roundup of lefty news and blog posts begin with two things that could happen that would improve the lives of Texans at large, and correspondingly Texas Democrats...which is why they won't. Stephen Young at the Dallas Observer sees one thing Texas Republicans could do that would give more than a million Texans some insurance coverage. Despite their elected officials' position, the majority of Texans support Medicaid expansion, according to a June poll from the same group that published Friday's report, the Kaiser Family Foundation. Sixty-four percent of Texans, according to the poll, believe that the state should accept federal cash to expand the low-income insurance program, with the same percentage agreeing that the state is "not doing enough to help low-income Texas adults get health care." This is one of those bullet-point posts, I'm afraid, because these thoughts don't add up to a single coherent theme.
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Blogging Sporadically since 2014Here you will find political campaign-related entries, as well as some about my literature, Houston underground arts, peace & justice, urban cycling, soccer, alt-religion, and other topics. Categories
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