Newsweek: “U.S. Government Planned False Flag Attacks to Start War”

Mainstream Media Admits that False Flags Are Real

Last month, Newsweek ran an article headlined (all caps in original Newsweek title):

U.S. GOVERNMENT PLANNED FALSE FLAG ATTACKS TO START WAR WITH SOVIET UNION, JFK DOCUMENTS SHOW

The article notes:

The U.S. government once wanted to plan false flag attacks with Soviet aircraft to justify war with the USSR or its allies, newly declassified documents surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy show.

 

***

 

False flag attacks are covert operations that make it look like an attack was carried out by another group than the group that actually carried them out.

The mainstream media is finally catching up with what historians have long documented ...

After all, influential royal advisors have been advocating false flag attacks for more than 2,000 years ... and false flag attacks are so common that U.S. officials commonly discuss them.

Indeed, there are now so many admissions by government officials of false flag terror that only the willfully ignorant still doubt the reality of the concept.

In The Past 50 Years, Americans Have Seldom Been "More Confident" Than Today

The Conference Board"s survey of Americans" Consumer Confidence surged to its highest since November 2000 in November, with both current and furture expectations spiking.

In th epast 50 years, Americans have - apparently - seldom been more confident than they are now...

Does that sound right?

Additionally, confidence in a soaring stock market is back near record highs...

The New American Dream: Work Longer, Live Sicker, Die Sooner

With stagnant wages, rising cost of living (see shelter inflation), and a lack of savings, Americans are retiring later than ever before (if at all). But in a double-whammy for seniors, whose health is declining, their lifespans are shrinking offering them little if any time to enjoy the end of the American Dream walking hand in hand into the sunset on a faraway beach...

As Bloomberg reports, data released last week suggest Americans’ health is declining and millions of middle-age workers face the prospect of shorter, and less active, retirements than their parents enjoyed.

Here are the stats:

The U.S. age-adjusted mortality rate - a measure of the number of deaths per year - rose 1.2 percent from 2014 to 2015, according to the Society of Actuaries.

That’s the first year-over-year increase since 2005, and only the second rise greater than 1 percent since 1980.

At the same time that Americans’ life expectancy is stalling, public policy and career tracks mean millions of U.S. workers are waiting longer to call it quits.

Almost one in three Americans age 65 to 69 is still working, along with almost one in five in their early 70s.

And finally, Americans in their late 50s already have more serious health problems than people at the same ages did 10 to 15 years ago, according to the journal Health Affairs.

Bloomberg"s Ben Steverman points out that researchers have offered many theories for why Americans’ health is getting worse. Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, a Nobel Prize winner, have argued that an epidemic of suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol abuse have caused a spike in death rates among middle-age whites.

Higher rates of obesity may also be taking their toll. And Americans may have already seen most of the benefits from previous positive developments that cut the death rate, such as a decline in smoking and medical advances like statins that fight cardiovascular disease.

So there you have it - The New American Dream: Work Longer, Live Sicker, Die Sooner...

There Are Large Parts Of America Being Left Behind...

Economic prosperity is concentrated in America"s elite zip codes, but in an interesting report on Distressed Communities, from The Economic Innovation Group, it is increasingly clear that economic stability outside of those communities is rapidly deteriorating.

As Axios noted, this isn"t a Republican or Democratic problem. At every level of government, both parties represent distressed areas. But the economic fortunes of the haves and have-nots have only helped to widen the political chasm between them, and it has yet to be addressed by substantial policy proposals on either side of the aisle.

Economic Prosperity Quintiles

As MishTalk.com"s Mike Shedlock writes below, the study notes:

“America’s elite zip codes are home to a spectacular degree of growth and prosperity. However, millions of Americans are stuck in places where what little economic stability exists is quickly eroding beneath their feet.”

Distress is based on an evaluation of seven metrics.

1. No high school diploma


2. Housing vacancy rate


3. Adults not working


4. Poverty rate


5. Median income ratio


6. Change in employment


7. Change in business establishments

Change in Distress Quintiles

Underwater vs. 2000

Percent Living in Distressed Areas

Performance Averages

Population Statistics

Key Findings

• Over half the population in distressed communities are minorities, compared to only about a quarter of the population in prosperous ones.


• Asians and whites are more likely to live in a prosperous zip code than any other type of community.


• Blacks and Native Americans are more likely to live in a distressed zip code than any other type of community, while Hispanics are most likely to reside in an at risk one.


• Blacks and Native Americans are three times more likely to live in a distressed community than a prosperous one.


• Majority-minority zip codes are two times more likely to be distressed than the average zip code.

Political Distribution

• Republicans dominate at the very top of the distribution, representing nine of the 10 most prosperous congressional districts in the country. Most of these are suburban enclaves around fast-growing metropolitan areas, for example on the outskirts of Dallas, Denver, Houston, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and Washington, DC. Expanding to the entire top quintile, Republicans represent 63 percent of the country’s prosperous districts compared to Democrats’ 37 percent.


• Conversely, six of the country’s 10 most distressed congressional districts are represented by Democrats. Eight of the 10 are located in the South, with Ohio’s 11th (Cleveland) and Arizona’s 7th (Phoenix) as the two exceptions.

Report Conclusion

“It is fair to wonder whether a recovery that excludes tens of millions of Americans and thousands of communities deserves to be called a recovery at all.”

US Consumer Comfort Spikes To 16 Year Highs, But...

Great News Americans - According to Bloomberg"s latest Consumer Comfort survey, you are the most "comfortable" since 2001!

Despite slumping "hard" economic data, soaring stocks seem to reassure "Americans"...

• Sentiment among those earning $100,000 or more rose to the highest since March on the heels of elevated equity markets


• Comfort advanced in the Northeast to the highest since March 2007 and rose in the West


• Confidence among Republicans rose to an almost 10-year high, while comfort of political independents was strongest in more than 16 years


• Among married people, weekly sentiment reached the highest level since March 2001

That"s great news right!? Well, in reality it has had ZERO impact on what really matters...

The exuberant consumers are not consuming...

Source: @lizzie363

And that means companies are not earning...

Source: @lizzie363

But hey, if it keeps the utopian dream alive, go with it.

Here's How (Rich & Poor) Americans Spend Their Time

Today’s visualization comes from data scientist Henrik Lindberg, and it shows America’s favorite past-times based on the participation of people in different income brackets.

It uses data from the American Time Use Survey that is produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to break down these activities.

COMMON INTERESTS

As Visual Capitalist"s Jeff Desjardins notes, while activities are all over the map, it appears that some past-times are more common across all income groups.

Team sports and solo pursuits both are represented well in the center. In fact, reading for personal interest, dancing, computer use, hunting, hiking, walking, playing basketball, or playing baseball can all be found in the middle of the spectrum, appealing to Americans in every income group.

Closer to the top and bottom of the visualization, however, we see where income groups diverge in how they spend their time. It’s probably not surprising to see that people with higher incomes spend more time golfing, playing racket sports, attending performing arts, and doing yoga than average. On the flipside, lower income Americans spend more time watching television, listening to the radio, and listening to/playing music.

CURIOUS ANOMALIES

Every data set has its own peculiarities. Sometimes these things can be explained, and sometimes they are just aberrations created as a result of how data was collected (i.e. how a survey was worded, bias, or some other error).

Here are some of the stranger anomalies that appear in this data set. We won’t attempt to explain them here, but feel free to speculate in the comments section:

• Higher income Americans disproportionately enjoy softball – while baseball has more universal appeal across income groups.


• While activities like boating are typically associated with higher income levels, the activity of running is generally not. Yet, running is disproportionately enjoyed by higher income Americans, according to this survey.


• Despite playing baseball being fairly universal across the spectrum, watching baseball skews higher income.


• Writing for personal interest has an interesting distribution: it is enjoyed disproportionately by poorer and richer Americans, but is underrepresented in the middle class.

Can you find anything else that stands out as being an anomaly?

NY Fed Crashes Trump's Party, Slashes Q2 GDP Forecast

A day after President Trump proclaimed Q2 GDP "numbers are going to be shockingly good," The New York Fed has slashed its forecast for America"s growth to just 1.86%.

Wednesday...

"I think this quarter"s GDP numbers are going to be shockingly good given all the facts we"re seeing"

Thursday...

“I think some very good numbers are going to be announced, by the way, in the very near future, as to GDP,”

Friday...

Thanks to the collapse in housing data this morning, The New York Fed has slashed its growth expectations for Q2 GDP to just 1.86% (from 3% in March)...

NOTE - the factors weakening the forecast are "hard" data points (red squares) while the surveys are adding to GDP.

It is hardly surprising that both The Atlanta Fed (which cut its guess from 3.2% to a series low 2.878%) and New York Fed are cutting their expectations as US macro data disappoints gravely...

Given the plunge in US Macro data, we wonder if President Trump meant the GDP numbers are going to be "shocking."