Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[Higgenbotham]

The liberal welfare state is collapsing. In the big picture Trump was just another liberal. He spent copious amounts of money and ran up copious amounts of debt, just less than the far left liberals. A conservative position would have been to issue shoot to kill orders for illegals crossing the border, not fund a wall. Bullets are cheap.

Poll: Americans favor Biden-McCarthy debt compromise, oppose far-right push for deeper cuts
Yahoo News
ANDREW ROMANO
Published May 31, 2023 at 3:11 PM

Just 17% of Americans agree with right-wing Republicans who insist Congress should let the U.S. default on its loans rather than raise the debt ceiling without deep spending cuts, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.

Instead, the public favors — by a 2-to-1 margin — the sort of bipartisan deal struck over the weekend by President Biden and GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. That deal, which includes smaller spending freezes and reductions in exchange for a two-year debt-ceiling hike, is now moving through Congress despite objections from the far-right House Freedom Caucus.

The Yahoo News/YouGov survey of 1,520 U.S. adults was conducted from May 25 to 30, both before and after Biden and McCarthy announced their agreement. As such, it inquired about Republicans’ initial demands for “deep cuts” — and subsequent negotiations over “smaller” cuts — rather than the specifics of the Biden-McCarthy plan.

When asked how they would feel about “President Biden and GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreeing to smaller spending cuts in order to raise the debt limit, which could be approved with a combination of Democratic and Republican votes,” a clear consensus emerges across party lines.

Overall, twice as many Americans say they would favor such a compromise (43%) as say they would oppose it (21%). And while Democrats were the most positive group (by a 54% to 17% margin), both independents (41% to 20%) and Republicans (43% to 28%) also expressed more support than opposition.

The survey shows similar results to follow-up questions about how House Republicans should react if Biden “refuses to accept deeper Republican spending cuts” (which is effectively what the president did after the House GOP passed its own spending bill last month). In response, a full 56% of Americans say Republicans should either agree to smaller cuts that can pass with Democratic and Republican votes (36%) or agree to raise the debt limit without any spending cuts at all (20%).

Minority favors default

Only a small minority (17%) say the GOP should let the U.S. default on its loans. Even among Republicans, just 27% would support a default in this scenario. Nearly twice as many would favor smaller cuts (41%) or a clean debt-limit hike without belt-tightening (9%).

https://www.aol.com/news/poll-americans ... 11995.html

In the big picture, the Republicans who struck the budget compromise with Biden are liberals, just not quite as far left as the Democrats. The news media is portraying "deep cuts" as a far-right position, but in reality it is a middle of the road position. Accordingly, if the poll is accurate, that places perhaps 80% of Americans in the liberal camp, with perhaps 20% as middle of the roaders, and an insignificant percentage as far right. It's reasonable to consider a balanced budget a middle of the road position, especially with government as bloated as it is currently.

[Higgenbotham]

"It is not that government has lacked information needed to fix the problem. It is institutionally incapable of bringing about the desired result, since the principles of profit and loss, private property and contract, enterprise and entrepreneurship, do not exist in government. Any Government operates with an eye to its own short-term survival, and those of its connected interest groups, and nothing else." Mises

I think Tiberius said it best.....
"Governing Rome is like holding a wolf by it's ears...."

aeden is correct that Tiberius is more accurate than Mises in describing the current situation. Let's say theoretically that a dictator were to consider seizing control of the US and instituting true conservative positions. How would he do that when there are no true conservatives left? It's hard enough to hold the wolf by the ears if you are slightly to the right of the far left.

I'll speak for myself and not others at this late date.

I would have to agree that if China is going to try to take Taiwan the best of two very bad choices is to make the choice that was made and go ahead and subsidize the foreign chip makers (and a few domestic ones like Micron as well).

This is not a true conservative position. I don't care to call myself a liberal but if someone did over this quote how could I object? Probably the last real shot we had at turning this thing around was in 1992 with Perot.

It has to collapse and this one is going to be a big one.

[Higgenbotham]

I have learned over the years that the unbelievable maybe true, it is difficult to know what is or is not true, but it may be the missing piece of a puzzle.

The Internet has some advantages, though it is still difficult to know. As you said, the winners can rewrite the history, but it's harder for them to do it now. I was discussing the Ross Perot run in 1992 with someone today who was swallowing what those who have been rewriting history lately are putting out. I believe the Ross Perot run was a battle between the "New World Order" or the globalists and the nationalists being represented by Perot. The globalists won that round and now it seems they have been proceeding to rewrite history, proclaiming Perot as a minor candidate who acted as a spoiler to get Clinton elected. Why would they do that? Probably because they're scared to death of a strong third party candidate in 2016. Fact is, though, I don't have to dig through a stack of 25 year old newspapers or rely on my memory to get the facts now.
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/26/us/19 ... all&src=pm
http://www.dailypaul.com/25040/ross-perot
Did this stuff happen? Probably, because I've been a first hand witness to about half of these specific tactics. The general tactic being that if they do something bizarre enough to someone who then has the audacity to talk about it, they can pass them off as having mental problems. Oh, we didn't really tap his phone, or spread rumors that his engaged daughter is a lesbian, he was just hallucinating! Or secondarily they can create bonafide mental problems by threatening someone repeatedly and not really carrying out the act. This is done all the time. But it's a lot harder to convince the naive that isn't happening when the information is out there and can be cross checked from a couple dozen different sources using a search engine. So the veil is breaking down, much like the printing press broke down the veil of the church. Sometimes truth or what we can be pretty sure is truth is stranger than any fiction a sound mind can come up with because truth is created by psychopaths.

The links above are deleted or behind paywalls, but these contain the same information.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm ... story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... 32ca083e7/

PEROT LEADS FIELD IN POLL
By E.J. Dionne Jr. June 9, 1992

In a three-way race, Perot, who is expected to seek the presidency as an independent, was the choice of 36 percent of registered voters to 30 percent for Bush and 26 percent for Clinton, who has clinched the Democratic nomination. Among likely voters, Perot rises to 38 percent, while the percentages for Bush and Clinton stay the same. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

[aeden]

Just so you know what you are dealing with.
https://media.patriots.win/post/iDgTJ5bU.png
His boyfriends are unhappy.

Darkness is closer than you think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvMZDkv1xx0

[Higgenbotham]

I'm not ready to proclaim the end of the stock market rally.

This week has been like any other week as I try to be prepared for a move over 4200, if it comes. Scalping individual stocks, covering some shorts and re-establishing on rallies. I've cut my short position 5.5% from Friday. That piece of it won't go back on unless there is a new high for the year.

Today looks like a top on the S&P.

[aeden]

Your portfolio RiskGrade <1
Fire for effect H
32.96% from June 5, 2020 to June 1, 2023
70% Bonds 90tbills 30% Cash
Phase three is upon the lost.
Sigma four did not even wake them.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/ ... 2ec9&ei=38 for your addition to demographics

May 13, 1980 after I survived it and took a few hours to get home the deputy stopped me and said nothing is left.
Does not matter I live there, move. After the carnage a few tarps the house was secured, the rest was gone.
Fred had a problem putting some animals down. The dead animals where in the trees also so those not dead bleeding from
ears we shot to ease the misery, we sent Martha away. The next day we started over. A few days our customers came
from 8 to 80 and stacked and pulled every nail over days. They took nothing but our thanks. No water, food, nothing.
The futures contract was voided for that barn that vanished. Every contract was a hand shake for decades.
As mentioned 2019 we changed models for customer's needs and other observations. America is not dead. They are dying.
The people of the Book and Letter asked one thing. They are unable to comply.

water wheat weather

[Higgenbotham]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/ ... 2ec9&ei=38 for your addition to demographics

The US cares about the life expectancy of corporations only. Even our politicians who are running around increasing the life expectancy of corporations are sacrificing their own well-being to the extent that we have a mumbling half dead president and a semi-comatose senator in a wheelchair making sure they defend the life expectancy of corporations at all costs.

[Higgenbotham]

This is all good stuff but I want to focus in on the underlined portion, which makes the point discussed in another thread recently. The author states his IQ is 156-163 and based on reading this post and scanning through his other posts, that is likely accurate in my opinion. Like I've stated, it seems to be only in the range of IQ at 150+ that people can consistently understand and apply these concepts. People in power at the government or even the corporate level cannot by definition because they have to be in the IQ range to be able to effectively communicate with and lead their subordinates.

Warren Dew
MIT graduate; IQ only 156-163 but know 3 people with IQ 170+
Author has 6.3K answers and 1.9M answer views 5y

There are several reasons why governments aren’t just paying highly intelligent people to solve the world’s problems.

First, governments are run by people who don’t generally care much about solving the world’s problems. What they usually care about is staying in power, and increasing that power. Any solving of the world’s problems is at best secondary, and if staying in power means making the world’s problems worse, they’ll do that too.

Second, cooperation between governmental leaders and the very high intelligence advisors might not be all that easy. In democratic governments, most elected leaders are probably within the 30 IQ point Hollingworth communication range of the average voters, so likely not much higher than 130 IQ at best. People above 160 IQ will be outside the Hollingworth range of the leaders, so it won’t be easy to communicate their recommendations to the leaders to implement. And even where the communication problems are solved, there may be differences in goals between leaders and experts. When government leaders hire someone really smart like Edward Snowden to help them spy on their citizens, and Snowden ends up sabotaging those efforts because he sympathizes with the citizens more than with the government, government leaders may think twice before again hiring people smarter than they are.

Third, top down techniques are economically inefficient: a small number of IQ 150+ people are not as “smart” as hundreds of millions of average individuals all making their own optimizations. That’s why free market systems are so much more productive than centrally planned economies. At best the think tank folks will need to figure out how to work with the free market effectively, which likely means giving the free market a lot of free rein. Indeed, there are already private think tanks that provide advice like that in the US, and the government sometimes wisely takes that advice.

But perhaps you’re not asking about a theoretical group of IQ 150+ people; perhaps you’re specifically asking about IQ 150+ people on Quora. In that case, the answer is that they provide the answers for free already, so why pay them?

https://www.quora.com/If-we-have-a-grou ... s-problems

Previous post.

I just don't know what I would do without all of the utterly stupid and constantly depressing beatings and shootings, stabbings, raping, kidnappings, assaults, baseball bat beatings,subway murders, mass shootings, bodies in dumpsters, trash cans, barrels, suitcases, plastic bags, people chopping up kids, neighbors shooting each other, home invasions, illegal immigrants, Mexican gangs, car jackings, smash and grab robberies, gas station shootings robberies and ransacking, high speed chases, Crips, Bloods, the list is bigger than the new book of pronouns... But hey thanks for letting me know.

I live in a large-ish metro area (therefore a LITTLE blue) in a very red state, sand I must say I don't see all those things around me. But I don't think the conservative news media makes up those things. If they do, they've got an incredible film crew, able to fake crowds at the border, unprovoked street assaults, etc. Rather than stop watching Fox news and other conservative outlets, I watch a balance of sources, but not in equal proportion, I stop as soon as I can discern what their bias is.

What I DO see around me, however, is (a relatively small number of) people who have adopted the woke mindset. Most alarmingly, some of them I know have high IQ's, but they have been to various degrees captured by the mass psychosis gripping the nation. I have resisted the urge to confront them, because I have to work with them, but I know from observation that they are not nearly as tolerant or open-minded as I am.

I often wonder what leads outwardly intelligent people to believe pure BS, when it is so clearly in conflict with reality and common sense. It would appear to be a fascinating area for psychologists to study - I haven't really researched that area, maybe they are studying it, or maybe it's too difficult / taboo. At any rate, at this point I have no reason to think there's any correlation between between susceptibility to mass psychosis and IQ, and I find that to be really alarming.

Based on my experience and research, it's only at IQs of about 150+ (or a frequency of less than 1 in 1000) that there is a marked bias away from woke, liberal thinking.

Hayek told them, but they refuse to listen.

If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants. There is danger in the exuberant feeling of ever-growing power which the advance of the physical sciences has engendered and which tempts man to try, "dizzy with success," to use a characteristic phrase of early communism, to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will. The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men's fatal striving to control society — a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.

Jerome Powell: (49:02)
After the financial crisis, we started a new whole division of the Fed to focus on financial stability. We look at it from every perspective. The FOMC gets briefed on a quarterly basis. At the board here, we talk about it more or less on an ongoing basis. So, it is something we monitor, but I don’t know that the connection between asset purchases and financial stability is a particularly tight one, but again we won’t be just assuming that; we’ll be checking carefully as we go. And by the way, the kinds of tools that we would use to address those sorts of things are not really monetary policy; it would be more tools that strengthen the financial system.


The first paragraph is 99.7th percentile thinking.

The second paragraph is 97th percentile thinking.

It seems to be a constant in human affairs that The 97th Percentile will refuse to listen to those who know better than them because The 97th Percentile thinks they are the smartest guys in the room.

I was surprised to find a link with extensive data which supports this view.

It's from an organization called the Triple Nine Society, which only admits people with IQs proven to be above the 99.9th percentile, and they did an extensive survey of political views among members. It turned out that their members support neither a Democrat nor Republican agenda, but rather lean strongly Libertarian toward very limited government. For example, 94% are in favor of gun ownership at the same time 60% are in favor of minimal restrictions on prostitution.

http://milesresearch.com/tns/summary.htm

So while it may be true that The 97th Percentile tends to support socialism and consider themselves qualified to tell the rest of society what is good for them, those rare individuals with IQs more than one standard deviation above The 97th Percentile do not support those views.

It should be noted, though, that about 150,000 adults in the US would be qualified to join this organization, but it only has about 350 members, so there could be some bias in the results due to the type of person among the high IQ population who would tend to join such an organization.

The majority of survey participants support the status quo for the Federal Reserve, but the survey was done in the early 2000s (October 2000) before the Fed went off the rails or, alternatively, didn't have an extensive history of having gone off the rails. Greenspan was a bit off the rails at the time.

65 __ Federal Reserve Board: Rate on a scale of 1-5
(1= Abolish the Fed, 3= Status quo, 5= Maximum control of interest rates, the money supply and other economic parameters)

Federal Reserve Board
1= 12%
2= 19%
3= 63%
4= 5%
5= 0%

Often the people as described below are intelligent. This person is probably in the 130 area. He has a PhD in Chemistry from Penn.

I said there are two opposite modes of living in the United States. The first is an expectation that you will spend your entire life in one area with other people who will spend their entire lives in that area. The second is an expectation that you will go to high school in one place, college in another place, then career in several places (no longer at one company) with sole focus on that. Everything else is something in between. The first mode engenders real connections while the second mode engenders transactional relationships. An example of a transactional relationship would be something like, "I have a buddy who is also 420 friendly. He finds me really good dope cheap and I fix all his computers." The best example of a transactional encounter I can think of is prostitution. Also, in a big city, encounters are briefer. That's not to say there isn't some overlap.

I told her in the second mode of living, people are taught from an early age to look to the next step in their progression and to primarily engage in transactional relationships as a means to get to that next step. A high school kid might be told to be friendly to the teachers because they will be writing college recommendations or whatever. They would not be encouraged to be friendly to teachers they genuinely like and not be friendly to teachers they genuinely do not like. And so on when the kid gets to college. I should add as an aside that girls are better at that than boys. I told her that while coping with the stress of getting from step to step, people who find themselves in the same boat will bond somewhat. But they know those bonds are likely temporary and will be broken when they get to the next step unless there is a practical reason to keep them. I also told her that people who have lived in transactional relationship mode for several generations do not even know how to live differently and can't. Many do not understand what a real connection is.

I would also add that high tech is making people more and more into transactions versus customers. Google is the best example I can think of.

I now want to describe what this second mode of living typically leads to by specific example. I have known this person since we were 5 years old.

His second mode of living profile is as follows:

1. Grew up in a suburb of a city. Father was a PhD research scientist at a corporation.
2. Moved to another city in the same state to go to college.
3. Moved to another state to go to graduate school and got a PhD in chemistry.
4. Moved to yet another state to work for a drug company (Boston suburb).
5. Moved to yet another state to work for a different drug company.
6. Moved to yet another state to work for the same drug company (Chicago suburb).

From his twitter account (he is on linkedin too):

Dale is an awesome scientist and a better human being!
#scienceRocks#EndtheNeglect

This refers to a coworker who joined a committee at the Gates Foundation. This tweet is what I call a transaction.

Also from his twitter account:

Oct 7, 2020
Kamala with the uppercut…

Nov 27, 2020
#DiaperDon needs a nap.

...a few dozen similar tweets and retweets...followed by the latest just 12 hours ago...

12h
Indeed

Alteño
@zwiitt
13h
Mike Pence has a greater chance of getting a blowjob than winning the presidency

His tweets also indicate support for Colin Kaepernick, BLM, etc.

My theory is that people who have adopted this second mode of living and engage in transactional relationships, particularly those who have done so for several generations, still have an innate need for real human connection and, in my opinion, are attempting to fill that void by voicing support for liberal causes and political candidates which ultimately get paid for out of funds that the government can no longer afford to provide. By doing so, they are continuing to engage in transactional relationships, which is all they know how to do.

That void would be better filled by finding individuals who are suffering and helping them directly (real human connection).

This will all end when the welfare state collapses.

[Higgenbotham]

John's response (underlined) is consistent with the ideas in the above post.

** 15-Dec-2021 World View: The multitude of guests

> Why can't the multitude of guests get a clue that we don't pay
> attention to their tripe precisely because they can't own anything
> they say or have a conversation with anyone else that has any
> clarity? All of their posts demonstrate just how stupid they are,
> and how we are right in not responding (for no reason,
> obviously).

> Agreed. If they can't even settle on a nick that at least lets us
> know it's the same person posting, why should I care what they
> say?

> I third that.

The three of you may be shocked and surprised to learn this, but the
collective knowledge about the world of the registered members of this
forum, including myself, is not very great. The "multitude of guests"
do us a great service by filling in some of the gaps, especially
during crises like the Korea crisis or the Russia crisis.

People with IQs at 130 (The 97th Percentile) generally think they know a lot.
People with IQs at 160 generally know that they don't know a lot.

Higgenbotham's PhD Thesis

The 97th Percentile: Smart Enough to Temporarily Enrich Themselves While At The Same Time Being Dangerous to Themselves and Others

The 97th percentile is only 2 standard deviations above the mean and, while stupid by absolute standards, is numerous enough to control the world. This has caused human civilization to come into being, yet never advance, always being condemned to collapse into a dark age. This time will be no different.

The End

Signed,
Higgenbotham

To: Higgenbotham
From: Harvard University

Higgenbotham, that was an excellent PhD Thesis. Please remit $265,000 and we will confer your Harvard Doctor of Philosophy degree and all of its lifetime benefits.

Signed,
The 97th Percentile

[Higgenbotham]

Your portfolio RiskGrade <1
Fire for effect H

They're pumping the secondary stocks hard, so maybe this is the last phase. When the S&P made its secondary top in May 08 they pumped the Russell all the way to June 08, then a double top on the Russell in August 08.

The run in the S&P from the March 08 Bear Stearns low to the secondary top was 44 TD, we are at 57 TD from the SVB low.

One of the 8 I follow has been calling for a June 2 high for several weeks. He has a Lindsay low low high from December to March to June 2 and a few other things.