Since the AI bot that used to fill the first few paragraphs of my entries on this here blog with suggested related links, and then link to related external blog posts and news stories, is dead, fuck it! I am doing this one for the sheer teachability of it.
I am happy, and not surprised, that the Golden State Warriors triumphed over LeBron and the Cavs last night, and I would not be surprised if the Dubs take the series, although I am guaranteeing nothing here. Yes, LeBron is the Wayne Gretzky of basketball. He is also, by all accounts, certainly by what thems on TSN 690 have been saying, a massive EGOwho has gotten other players, and even coaches and GM's, fired. LeBron plays for team LeBron. That makes the Cavs less than efficient. The Dubs, on the other hand, are a TEAM. Stats-wise, Steph Curry does not match LeBron. This does not matter. Steph Curry's strength is not only in his technical skills. Steph Curry's strength is also in his dedication to teamwork above all else, an ethos in which he is entirely backed by the Dubs office. In contrast to the two books I linked to in the previous sentence, there are any number of books about how LeBron "saved" Cleveland, as if he was Bob's gift to the city, as well as to the NBA. I was not happy to see the scuffles break out in last night's game--this is, after all, the NBA, not that bunch of MMA/WWE wannabes that is the NHL--, but damn, I would not have been unhappy if Steph had cold-cocked LeBron after LeBron got all up in Steph's grill.
This is material to the main point of this second entry of the day. There are thems who say the private sector is invariably better than the public sector because the private sector, driven by the profit motive, has an incentive to succeed whereas the highly tenured/seniority-driven public sector does not. There are thems who say that the public sector is invariably better than the private sector, since the public sector is, by nature, more humane since it has no profit motive.
Both set of thems above are imbibers of the Kool-Aid. I m going to give an anecdote showing why. Before I do, let me admit that this is an anecdote, one based on the shithole that is Québec, and that, therefore, its results may not be extrpolable to places like New York or Britain. Québec, truth be told, is not all bad. It is nowhere near as bad as, say South Armagh, the Falls, East End Glasgow or New York City, but it is certainly in no danger of ever being mistaken for Portadown, the Shankill, Govan or Strasbourg either.
Let me also, by way of preamble, openly admit that I am not without biases myself. Of the inhabitants most populous in numbers where I live, I prefer dealing with Italians, English-speaking French-Canadians and Blacks/Africans. Throughout my life, I have always gotten along with Italians. When I was in New York, Italians were my natural allies against the Roman Catholic racists who comprised the majority of the population of where I live, so, I am not surprised that I get along best with the Italians of Montréal, so much so that I hate the Godfather, Joyzey Sho' and Suckranofranchises which are all an insult to Italians the way mentions of certain foods and vehicular adornments are to other groups. There are also good French-Canadians who speak English fluently and who behave like Admiral Brodeur and Ambassadors Pierre and Michel Dupuy instead of like François Legault, Patrick Huard, Jean-Louis Houde, Guy A. Lepage and Mariloup Wolfe. It is just that, in my area, these kinds of French-Canadians, in proportion to the amount of Gaspesians in the area, can be counted as being numerically in between single-digit multiples of my dick and single-digit multiples of my balls, the difference between good French-Canadians and Gaspesians being generally the same as the differences between "-as" and "-ers" used as suffixes to describe other groups. Finally, there are the Blacks/Africans. These overwhelmingly, but not always, tend to make for far better Frenchmen than do Gaspesians.
Another necessary explanatory note. Some may have read the fact that I counted Italians as allies against Roman Catholics in the above paragraph and thought they needed to adjust their monitors as a result. They/you do not. When I say "Roman Catholic," I most emphatically do NOTmean each and every single person born to Catholic parents, or who is a good Catholic on Sunday and a good American the other six days of the week. Rather, I use the term "Roman Catholic" synonymously with Sinn Fein-IRA/Septic FC/Hibs FC/the SNP. In this way, Italians, although a large number of them hang up their hats in Catholic churches on Sunday, logically do constitute natural allies against Roman Catholics.
Okay, let's begin. I have been not well as of late. This has necessitated help from the health care system of Québec, which, contrary to popular mythology, has both public and private aspects to it. The public aspect tends to be the inpatient side, which is predominantly Gaspesian. The private aspect tends to be outpatient home care service, which the public side subcontracts out to private sector companies which are--take a deep breath here, Friedmanites and Rothbardists--just as shit and fucking damn near useless as the public sector. Neither the public nor private components of the health care industry in Québec are OPSC-qualified (see previous entry.) The private component of the health care industry in Québec, at least in my area, has one thing in common with the non-Uber taxi industry and many retail clerks. It is dominated, not by Gaspesians, not by Blacks/Africans, not by Italians, but rather by an amorphous lot who tend to speak NEITHEREnglish NORFrench with any reasonable degree of competence, which I call the "ni-nis" (as in "ni français ni anglais/neither French nor English.) Near as I can tell, this lot seem to be mostly Ostlegionen, or non-Russian former Soviet, types, since their behaviour matches to a T that of those causing all kinds of immediate post-war outrage at Lienz as described by Graf von Tolstoy in Victims of Yalta.
These Otslegionen compensate for the fact that they simply cannot effectively communicate in either French or English by a) speaking as loudly as they can, b) trying to be your fucking friend, c) whinging on and on semi-coherently about how they were this Nobel Prize-winning scientist in their country but have to take a menial job here because their credentials are not recognised. It is as if they plain and simply do not understand that my money, direct or via taxes in the case of subcontractors, pays for them to deliver me a SERVICEand NOTtheir fucking life's story, which is most likely better termed, their self-published hagiography.
I loathe white nationalists like François Legault and Jean-François Lisée, who are simply Richard Spencer, Mike Enoch and Mark Collett saying "OSTY DE COWLIS DE TABARNAK!" with every breath. But the damned Ostlegionen types seemed determined to prove Legault and Lisée's every point by being as arrogantly self-absorbed as they can be, their pieholes so eternally active that, if you were able to completely cut out the audio, you would mistake them for François Legault and Patrick Huard in terms of the extreme and incessant barrages of verbosity.
Québec has lots of Gaspesians in the public component of its health care industry and lots of Ostlegionen in the private component of this and other industries. Both components are just plain shit. So, it is not a matter of public versus private, which is better? It is a matter of larnin' the turds in BOTHsectors how to be top-notch OPSC-qualified professionals.
And, now, I want to end with a couple of plugs.
I first heard of this group on TSN 690. They are called Hockey Helps The Homeless, and they raise money for homeless people by hosting hockey tournaments featuring National Hockey League players and ordinary civilians.
McLaren alumni Sergio "Checo" Perez is collecting money for the victims of the recent earthquakes in Mexico through his foundation.
Puerto Rico has been devastated by Hurricane Maria. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has set up The Empire State Relief And Recovery Effort For Puerto Rico.
On the subject of Puerto Rico, Los Angeles Chef José Andrés has set up an organisation, called World Central Kitchen, to help feed the hungry, not only in Puerto Rico, but in other bad-off places in the world. Please donate or help if you can.
I also want to plug the Patreons of a couple of superb folks. First, there is Jordan Owen, superb musician and content creator. Then, there is Sunny Megatron, Sex Educator and Podcaster. And there is also director extraordinaire and podcaster Holly Randall. They are, all three, highly entertaining to watch. They have the charm and magnetic charisma of The Kylie Ireland Show podcast of a decade ago, starring the legendary, one and only Kylie Ireland and Eli Cross.