The War on Competence

The War on CompetenceClarice Feldman – Decades ago, the Left played the class-war game. These days it’s a war on competence and achievement, hiding beyond claims of racial and sexual equity.

In Virginia, we are to believe that on their own, high school administrators in seventeen schools decided not to inform those of their students who had scored high enough on their scholastic aptitude tests to be named National Merit semi-finalists. Of course, it was not coincidental.

Two factors are involved: The spurious claim that schools can achieve the impossible — equal outcomes for all — a claim which must not be challenged by contrary facts; and prejudice against high-achieving students — most likely, given historical records, majority Asian and white. Hugh Hewitt thinks this was a clear violation of the students’ civil rights for which Faitfax County may end up paying heavy legal damages. Continue reading

A First Quarter Moon of Painful Circumstances and Sudden Illumination

focusHenry Seltzer – This dramatic First Quarter Moon, taking place early on Wednesday June 20th, at 29 plus degrees of Virgo, with the Sun in the same degree of Gemini, makes for an interesting lunation. The Sun and Moonmake close aspects to trickster Uranus and square and oppose Chiron, the Wounded Healer, located in the third degree of Aries. This involves a tight T-square to the Sun, from Moon and Chiron, or with a wider orb invoked, a grand cross that includes the presence of Saturn, in early Capricorn, opposite theSun. Additionally, Venus is opposite Mars and their opposition is aligned with the nodal axis.

What does all this focus on Chiron signify? Especially in the context of strong  Mars  and  Venus, the implication is that interpersonal relationships will be the proving grounds for our inner wounding to reveal itself in terms of misunderstandings, arrogant assumption of control, or reactivity that can release pent-up anger that is ready, like the Hawaiian volcano, to explode.

Even when less noticeably reactive, hurt feelings can fester and magnify to the point where they cause fault-lines within a normally smoothly functioning connection. That is, until and unless you are able to take the high road in all your dealings with others around you, and particularly with close partners. Continue reading

Intuition Is The Highest Form Of Intelligence

Intuition Bruce Kasanoff – Intuition, argues Gerd Gigerenzer, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, is less about suddenly “knowing” the right answer and more about instinctively understanding what information is unimportant and can thus be discarded.

Gigerenzer, author of the book Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious, says that he is both intuitive and rational. “In my scientific work, I have hunches. I can’t explain always why I think a certain path is the right way, but I need to trust it and go ahead. I also have the ability to check these hunches and find out what they are about. That’s the science part. Now, in private life, I rely on instinct. For instance, when I first met my wife, I didn’t do computations. Nor did she.”

I’m telling you this because recently one of my readers, Joy Boleda, posed a question that stopped me in my tracks: Continue reading

Your Forgetfulness May Be A Sign Of Extraordinary Intelligence

BrainAPost  – There are people who pride themselves on their excellent memories, which can certainly be useful in school or social situations. However, it is nearly impossible to remember every tiny detail of every situation, and it’s nearly as impossible to remember every fact that you learn in school, especially over a long period of time.

When you forget something, it often makes you feel a bit dumb. You don’t feel particularly intelligent standing in the middle of the grocery store trying to remember everything you need to get, nor do you feel exceptionally bright when you go from one room to another and forget why you made the trip.

You might wonder why these minor brain lapses occur, but you don’t really need to worry. Researchers Paul Frankland and Blake Richards from the University of Toronto found that old memories in the brain are literally “overwritten” by new memories. It is basically harder for us to remember the old impressions – or forget them completely.  Continue reading

Brennan Used FBI Agent Peter Strzok as Author For Intelligence Community Assessment and Placed Dossier Material into Obama’s Daily Briefing…

Sundance – Some major reporting today from Paul Sperry includes very interesting details about how President Obama’s intelligence community structured their Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) about Russian interference in the 2016 election – SEE HERE –

Intelligence In essence by following-up with various people involved in the construct of the ICA, journalist Paul Sperry outlines how CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, subverted their own intelligence guidelines in assembling the intelligence report.

While much of the background parallels our prior research, there are two very interesting aspects outlined by those with direct knowledge of the construct. First, that Brennan positioned FBI Agent Peter Strzok as the contact between the CIA analysis and the information flow to FBI Director James Comey:

[…]  A source close to the House investigation said Brennan himself selected the CIA and FBI analysts who worked on the ICA, and that they included former FBI counterespionage chief Peter Strzok. Continue reading