We are spendiing more that we take in. The government is trying to balance debt in a neo-Keynesian manner. It did not work for Muldoon. It will not work now.

Today’s tender of Treasury bills by the Debt Management Office could hardly be characterised as a resounding success. $350 million was being offered in 3, 6 and 12 month bills and the DMO only filled $305 million and only got that much by accepting more than it was looking for in the 6 months, resulting in a relatively wide range of 7 bp on successful bids in that maturity.

via Latest Treasury bill tender not fully subscribed | interest.co.nz.

Half Sigma uses a class analysis on the tea party. He argues that it is indeed a Marxist movement responding to the proletariat or workers. I have quoted almost the entire post, but it is good. go read it.

The Tea Party movement is accused of being right-wing, and people are accustomed to associating Marxism with the left, so some will be surprised, even shocked, that the Tea Party is a Marxist movement.

We should be clear that the Tea Party is not promoting Communism (an idea which turned out to be really bad), but rather that the Tea Party movement represents the rising class consciousness of the Proletariat, as predicted by Marx.

The modern left doesn’t promote the interests of the Proletariat; it’s the Lumpenproletariat that the left is most concerned about. The Democratic Party relies upon the Lumpenproletariat to win elections, and once elected uses the power of government to advance its own moral agenda which is adverse to the interests of the Proletariat.

The people who write columns in newspapers opining how much they hate the Tea Party movement come from the class most closely analogous to what Marx called the Petit-Bourgeoisie

via Half Sigma: The Tea Party is a Marxist movement.

What half Sigma does not say is that an alliance of the underclasses with the elite and intellectual class will not be able to sustain a revolt by the workers and peasants. The workers and peasants are normally quite conservative on social issues. They do not like interference in their work and traditions. But… they won the US revolution, the French revolution (and then supported Napoleon to end it) the Soviet revolution (because they thought they would get the land) and both the Chinese revolutions (because they thought they would get their land).

Beck and Palin speak to these people in the US: Paul Henry speaks for them in NZ. Chris Trotter describes them — and states that the current progressive parties are seen by them as the enemy.  And I think Chris Trotter is correct in this assessment.

The SST has a long article about how the eevilll doctors are stopping them working. Now, the problem is, that they don’t say how they work.

And this is not how therapy research works. You describe your methods, including the talking therapy interventions. This is taken from a trial of internet based therapy for people who have post traumatic stress disorder: — and yes, the paper is publically available.

First Phase: self confrontation

At the beginning of the treatment, participants received psycho-education about the mechanisms of exposure. In the first phase, the therapists helped the patients to focus on the most painful images and thoughts and encouraged the patient to write about them. The patients were instructed to describe the traumatic event thoroughly including their intimate fears and thoughts concerning the traumatic experience. To increase the effect of the exposure, patients were asked to write in the first person and in present tense and to give detailed descriptions of all sensory details they had experienced during the traumatic event including olfactory, visual and auditory stimuli. Participants were explicitly asked not to concentrate on style, grammar, spelling, or the chronological order of their essays. The therapists checked whether patients explicitly addressed the traumatic event as described above. If needed the therapist supported the patient to address the avoided features more forcefully. The following is an example of a writing assignment for essays 3 and 4:

“For the next two texts, I would like to ask you to choose one moment of your traumatic event. One moment that you can hardly bear to think about, but that keeps intruding on your thoughts. Write down the most painful memories and emotions you have when you think about it and describe everything that you experience – every feeling, every thought and physical reaction.”

Second phase: Cognitive restructuring

During the second phase, patients received psycho-education about the principles of cognitive restructuring. The goal of this phase was to form a new perspective on the traumatic event and to regain a sense of control. Participants wrote a supportive letter to an imaginary friend who had been through the same experience. In this letter, the patient was instructed to reflect on the addressee’s feelings of guilt and shame, challenge dysfunctional automatic thinking and behaviour patterns, and correct unrealistic assumptions. Furthermore, patients were encouraged to consider potentially positive consequences of the traumatic event for that person’s life and the lessons to be learned from it. An example of an instruction for the first two essays in the second phase is as follows:

“Imagine you are writing a supportive letter to your friend Hanna, who experienced the same situation as you. Could she have foreseen what happened? Do you think she was responsible for this?”

Third Phase: Social sharing and farewell ritual

During the third phase, patients received psycho-education about the positive effects of social sharing. In a final letter, they then took symbolic leave of the traumatic event. Patients summarize what has happened to them, reflect on the therapeutic process and describe how they are going to cope now and in the future. Patients could address the letter either to themselves, to a close friend, or another significant person involved in the traumatic event. The letter did not ultimately have to be sent.

“You wrote that you would like to address the letter to your mother. First, I would like to ask you to describe the circumstances of what happened. Which moments were so important that you would like to tell her about them? What meaning does this experience have in your life. What plans do you have for the future? Who is important in your life and who can support you in the future? It is important to give the past, the present and the future the same weight in this letter.”

At the beginning of each writing phase, patients proposed individual timetables as to when they planned to write. Halfway through and at the end of each treatment phase, patients received feedback and further writing instructions, which were based on the treatment manual but tailored to patients’ specific needs. Important aspects of this feedback were recognition and reinforcement of the patients’ independent work, positive feedback and motivation, as well as frequent summaries and encouraging patients to voice questions and doubts.

via BioMed Central | Full text | Internet-based treatment for PTSD reduces distress and facilitates the development of a strong therapeutic alliance: a randomized controlled trial.

And… as the researchers measured their effect they found a significant improvement with this. Over the internet. Without as much 1:1 time.

This is part of the dataset that ACC should be looking for

Today the ethos is let’s break the rules of logic. Firstly, the SST has an article about Felicity Goodyear-Smith, who has a 20 year research career on abuse invalidated because (thirty years ago) her husband was a member of a commune.

Sorry guys. She did not do this work alone. She had supervisors. Her research has been critiqued internally at the University of Auckland, and externally… and because her past was known, she had to deal with quite a bit of suspicion along the way. This ain’t a scandal. The ACC approach to trauma — requiring that you disclose, and using counsellors of variable (highly variable) quality is a scandal.

The second is a precious petal who is offended that the orca said about men who have sex with men. The Orca is a muckraker. He is abrasive, and at times scabrously funny. He also has problems that he is open about. To disavow what he says because of is problem is… illogical (nihil ad hominem) and bad tactics. Orcas bite.

Anyway, in the Sermon of the Mount there is this teaching.

Matthew 5.

11″Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

via Daily Lectionary Readings — Devotions and Readings — Ministries & Programs — GAMC.

We should thus be happy when people call us names. We have won the argument, and our reward awaits.

Topic is someone subvocalising comments: it is deemed impolite to say the truth out loud in Canukstan.

Some of us “mutter under our breath” because they want to be spared the fate of those like me who refuse to “mutter” and are thus singled out for castigation by our betters.

The thing is:

* Those “betters” are fewer in number and less powerful than you think. Their power is shrinking every moment of every day.

* Being “singled out for castigation” feels weird for about a minute and a half, but ultimately makes no actual difference to your quality of life — and in some cases, enhances it

* We almost always turn out to be right

The only thing we’re doing wrong is the muttering part.

via five feet of fury..

This applies to any capital in the Anglosphere. The political elite are acting to preserve their power.

One of my favorite quotes is from Joseph Schumpeter who said “everyone has elites the important thing is to change them from time to time.” Of course, this is what happens in a well functioning democracy. The problem today and the reason why the United States is on the verge of some sort of revolution (I believe it will manifest as a revolution of ideas and not an armed one) is that the election of Obama has proven to everyone watching with an unbiased eye that no matter who the President is they continue to prop up an elite at the top that has been running things into the ground for years. The appointment of Larry Summers and Tiny Turbo-Tax Timmy Geithner provided the most obvious sign that something was seriously not kosher. Then there was the reappointment of Ben Bernanke. While the Republicans like to simplify him as merely a socialist he represents something far worse.

Of course it is not just Obama. He is at the end of a long line of Presidents that think they have some sort of divine right of kings to rule. Think about the Presidency of the United States since 1988. Bush, Clinton, Bush…If Obama had not won the Democratic primary we would have ended up with President Hilary Clinton. Catch my drift? Something is not right here. This is the United States not some sort of petty monarchy. There is no divine right of any family or group of families to rule. When this starts to happen you get the disaster we are now faced with. That said, the bigger point is this. What Obama has attempted to do is to wipe a complete economic collapse under the rug and maintain the status quo so that the current elite class in the United States remains in control. The “people” see this ploy and are furious. Those that screwed up the United States economy should never make another important decision about it yet they remain firmly in control of policy. The important thing in any functioning democracy is the turnover of the elite class every now and again. Yet, EVERY single government policy has been geared to keeping that class in power and to pass legislation that gives the Federal government more power to then buttresses this power structure down the road. This is why Obama is so unpopular. Everything else is just noise to keep people divided and distracted.

via The Elites Have Lost The Right to Rule | zero hedge.