Arran's Alley

Watch what they do, not what they say.

Mick Arran

Mick Arran
Location
Savannah, Georgia, USA
Bio
I've done everything from recycling to teaching in a pre-school. Most recently I was for 10 years an acting and theater teacher as well as a pallet builder. I read a lot and I'm an old man who remembers the distant past with somewhat more clarity than this morning's breakfast. I've been blogging for a decade and I don't do "light". If you're looking for recipes, self-promoting displays of items made for sale, titillating stories about how I was a pimp for an afternoon, or the beauties of toasters, you've come to the wrong place. Check the Front Page.

MY RECENT POSTS

APRIL 9, 2010 3:29PM

Aunt Harriet's Revenge: Episode 6

 

wheels within wheels

by Ponsonby Q Braithwaite 

 

My efforts to talk her out of this madness were about as effective as burning banana skins to cure cancer. She was determined that I was going to tramp along forthwith to the wilds of the Upper Hudson, brave the dagger-like teeth… Read full post »

The signs have been around for quite a while that Corporate America, Wall Street, and the Investor Class were all going to work together to use the massive Bush deficit as an excuse to cut back and then kill Social Security. Recently Pres Obama joined the killers by first making

Read full post »
APRIL 7, 2010 5:37PM

It's the Greed, Stupid

Alabama has been a reliably conservative, even ultraconservative, state for decades. Pro-business, pro-privatization, anti-regulatory, anti-tax. In Northport, the McDonalds where Ronnie Rayguns stopped for a Big Mac is a major tourist attraction. Maybe the only one. Its two wingnut Senators, Di/

Read full post »

It is important to remember as you read what follows that the Democrat healthcare "Reform" bill is based on the model Massachusetts adopted in '06. It has the same weaknesses and flaws. That makes it a viable predictor of our future as a nation with regard to health insurance except

Read full post »

OK, so Krugman isn't wild about Dodd's banking reform bill. Nevertheless he is bending over backwards to make it sound better than it is.

[H]ow good is the legislation on the table, the bill put together by Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut?

Not good enough. It's a good-faith effort to

Read full post »

Investors depend on ratings sercvices to give them timely warning if a stock or bond isn't really worth the price being asked for it. The biggest and most prestigious bond-rating service in the country is (or was before last year's revelations) Moody's. Prior to, say, the Enron fiasco, most people

Read full post »
 
of knockers, trophies, and dinosaurs
 
by Ponsonby Q Braithwaite 
 

She snorted. “Kuala Lumpur, my sainted butt. Want to try again?”

I sighed in abject surrender. My ammunition dump was empty. “Alright, Auntie, lay it on me. But I’m making no promises to

Read full post »

Have you no sense of decency, madam, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

Having reworked that famous accusation for Teh Cuda, I might add that you can never have something "left" when you didn't have it to begin with.sarahpalin.jpg

As in: it appears that Sarahcuda's time

Read full post »

The NYT, WaPo, Bloomberg, everybody is breaking their journalistic arms slapping Wall Street Timmy on the back for his decision to sell Citigroup for what he - and they - are calling a significant "profit". Pay attention to that word.… Read full post »

MARCH 29, 2010 5:46PM

Report on Project Free Labor

From the Desk of: PS Winterhalter, Dir Worker Management

To: John Engler, Pres & CEO, National Association of Manufacturers

Re: Update Report on Project Free Labor

Dear John:

The latest statistics are in from our most recent study and I am pleased to report that Project Free Labor has takenRead full post »

I was going to write a post on Obama's latest attempt to force reluctant banks to honor the Honor System Law about re-aligning underwater mortgages and saving people's homes but it turns out Saturn Smith already did it, probably better than I would have. Go read it.

Instead, I decided to start… Read full post »


 kuala lumpur, here i come

by Ponsonby Q Braithwaite 

 She recovered quickly.

“Schemes, Nephew?” she asked, scowling in disbelief. “Was that the word I heard you use?”

Whenever she calls me “Nephew” I know I should be on my way to the neares

Read full post »

Mike Konczal at Rortybomb is still looking at Dodd's Senate Banking Reform Bill. In comparing it to Barney Frank's House version, he finds a few significant differences. One of them is the way they handle prevention: Barney's does (barely), Dodd's doesn't.

Picture if you had a woodsh

Read full post »

You may remember not too long ago when the Masters of the Universe were insisting that they just had to have their bonuses and their GIGANTIC salaries because otherwise they just wouldn't be able to work in banking any more, or get anybody else

Read full post »

As carefully choreographed as it was, there was still some slight fear in the insurance community that healthcare "reform" might actually end up reforming something. This morning the NYT Business section was crowing with delight that insurers had dodged a bullet… Read full post »

 
godzilla wears a black tailored suit
 
by Ponsonby Q Braithwaite
 

Aunt Hariet on a bad day

  

The door burst open with a thud and Aunt Harriet strode into my suddenly diminutive abode like Godzilla looking for a village to stomp. The fact that she was smiling as she did it sent shivers

Read full post »

There are 3 huge bills in the pipeline now, and what they all have in common is that none of them - NOT ONE - is going to change much of anything. It's important to remember that.

Healthcare "Reform"Read full post »

The pressure building up in Congressional liberals who've been asked to swallow Bushian policies by the barrelful in the name of "party unity" is beginning to reach critical mass, it seems. When economist Christina Romer, chair of the president's Council of… Read full post »

The path to passage of the financial "reform" bill is fraught with characteristic obstacles provided by the usual suspects. The bankers don't want to be regulated and the BD/GOP wants whatever the bankers want. Now that the two bills, Barney Frank's… Read full post »

old new lefty, an ex-teacher, thinks Obama's education plan (TBA tomorrow) presages Obama finally finding his feet as a progressive.

I know that many...have given up hope on President Obama. Yes, we are all disappointed in

Read full post »

There's a meme going around the left side of the blogosphere that has spread so far it sometimes even makes the corporate-conservative MSM, and that is that the GOP concentrates on kill-all obstructionism because it's completely barren intellectually and doesn't have… Read full post »

 

 a flock of trouble this way comes

aunt harriet in a hurry

  by Ponsonby Q Braithewaite

In the pantheon of Aunts Who Plague Me, Aunt Harriet barely merits Honorable Mention. In fact, she’s fairly mellow as Braithwaite Aunts go. She doesn’t yell or threaten to haul platoons of exorcists t… Read full post »

Barack Obama’s Blue Dog Presidency took another step toward Bushist crackpottery yesterday when he actively and enthusiastically reached out to Bushist crackpots by embracing a theme almost as close to their dear little paranoid hearts as voter fraud and SocSec fraud: the supposedly massivRead full post »

Of course it might turn out to be nothing but a new wrinkle in the old shadow dance but it's just barely possible that some lib-Dems are not only awake to the conservative menace in their own party, never mind the suicidal GoOPers, but… Read full post »

Well, it appears to be official: the financial industry's highly paid lobbyists have managed to remove all financial reform from the financial reform bill. We have this on the good authority of the Washington Post, which was crowing about it on Sunday. (No, I… Read full post »