Bad ideas never die, Parti Quebecois rises again

Founded in 1968, Parti Quebecois (PQ) has stood for Quebec's secession from Canada and setting itself up as an independent country. They held a referendum in 1980, which failed, and they tried a second time in 1995 which nearly won.  Parti Quebecois garnered 49.6% of the vote.  Just another fraction of a percent and they would have won, and the separation process would have been launched.
   After the 1995 referendum all outside observers (Americans) figured Canada was toast. They expected the PQ to go back, do some more organizing, hold another referendum, and win it.  Somehow, that never happened.  The third referendum was never held, and the PQ simmered down to being the provincial government of Quebec.  Probably the election of Pierre Trudeau to the premiership of Canada had something to do with it.  Quebecois figured a premier with a French name couldn't be all bad.  Anyhow the Quebec separation issue died down and little has been heard of it since the '90s.
  It's back.  Quebec held elections and PQ won.  Not quite enough to form a pure PQ provincial government, they will have to cut a deal the either the Liberal party or the Coalition Avenir Quebec to form a coalition government.  But, it's a big step up for PQ  from the last election.
  Just to start things off with a bang, a gunman showed up at the PQ victory party and shot two people, one fatally, and set fire to the building. We can expect more fireworks in the future.
   Speaking as an American, whose lights are lit by Quebec Hydro, and whose family came from Montreal, I'm not in favor of Quebec separatism. 
 

Inglourious Bastids

I skipped this movie when it came out, mostly 'cause of some really dreadful reviews.  But it was playing on cable last night and so I watched it.  It's a World War II movie, set in occupied France, with a plethora of nasty Nazi's, doing evil, and getting theirs in the end.  A bunch of really nasty resistance fighters cum OSS agents who are taking Nazi scalps.  A beautiful blond Frenchwoman in the Resistance, who is also Jewish with a mighty score to settle with the Nazis who shot her entire family before her eyes. A lot of of blood, shooting, double crossing, and mutilation, mixed with long and tedious scenes where the point is made in the first 30 seconds, but the scene drags on for 10 minutes of tedium.  A thin plot, too improbable to effect that "willing suspension of disbelief"
  The critics were right, this is a slasher film.  Don't take the children.

The Rain in Chicago also falls on Teachers

The Chicago Teachers Union is threatening a strike, starting Monday.  Just what Mayor Rahm Emmanuel needs to make his day.  However, Chicago has only 13.3 students per teacher.  Nearly as bad as Spain.  Rahm could threaten to lay off half the teachers and still have a student teacher ratio of 27 which is better than it was when I did elementary school. 

Fact Checkers on NHPR

This morning I heard the fact checkers had been checking on Kelly Ayotte (US Senator from NH).  At a town hall meeting Kelly compared Obama's deficit to Bush's deficit and gave numbers.  As we all know, Obama's deficit is horrendous, whereas Bush's was merely bad. 
  The "fact checker" admitted that Kelly's numbers were right on, but that she was misrepresenting the case because, "The deficit isn't Obama's fault." 
   And that's a fact, all checked and everything.  

The Rain in Spain, falls mainly on Teachers

The number of Spanish students K thru 12 is 6.2 million.  Up from 6.02 million last year.  The number of teachers is way down, to 525,078.  Oh woe.  That's only one teacher to each 11.84 students. Over work. 
Of course when I was in elementary school in the good old USA, we had 28 students per teacher.  I can remember parents rejoicing that 28 students in a grade was so much better than 32. 
   Spain is running a bad budget deficit, and no one will loan them money and it's all the fault of the Euro crisis, of German refusal to bail them out, or something, anything. Laying off half those teachers is just not to be talked about.  A 50% layoff would bring the student teacher ratio  up to (gasp) 24.   

DNC

So I watched it last night, on C-Span so as to see the speakers rather than network talking heads.  The dems put on a vast array of speakers,  most of them people I never heard of.  They all spoke with great enthusiasm.  Lot of talk about things in the past, some talk about things I didn't quite believe, such as Obama is responsible for the GI bill.  Some women talked long and passionately about the need for free birth control.  Some called for tax hikes. 
  Last speaker at ten o'clock was Michelle Obama.  She spoke well and at length about her husband's marvelous qualities and sterling work ethic. 
   Little talk about jobs, the economy, tax reform, oil exploration, Keystone XL, or the Federal debt.
   Somehow the atmosphere at the DNC wasn't as lively as it was last week at the RNC.
  

Whither Fannie and Freddie?

Fannie and Freddie are US government "deals" intended to make mortgage money more plentiful, to make house sales easier to do.  (No mortgage, no sale)  Real estate agents, builders, appliance makers, interior decorators, contractors, banks, mortgage insurers, and lawyers all approve of more cheap and easy mortgage money.  
  Trouble is, Fannie and Freddie caused Great Depression 2.0, then went bust, and are still being bailed out by US taxpayers to the tune of $142 billion.  That's worse than AIG or the GM/Chrysler bailout.  After doing all that damage, they ought to be closed down for good before they do anymore damage.
   For four years the Obama administration has done nothing.  They cannot make up their minds.  They have offered three  ideas for consideration.
1.  Government backs off from mortgage lending to merely guaranteeing mortgages via FHA. The Obama folks worry about mortgage rates rising and big banks driving local banks out of the business.
   This ain't all bad.  It would be better if the government got out of the mortgage guarantee business too.  Home mortgages are very sound and profitable deals, (safe as houses).  They don't need a government guarantee.
2. Government creates a "backstop mechanism" to pump out mortgage money during bad times. How this would work is not specified.
   Pretty vague, and they would declare bad times all the time, so the money pump would be on all the time.
3. The government could offer a guarantee on mortgage backed securities.
  This is an awful idea.  Mortgage backed securities are a scam on investors, because investors have no way of knowing if the mortgages doing the backing are any good or not.  Great Depression 2.0 broke when investors wised up and stopped buying mortgage backed securities.