Wake Up, America, You're in Dangerous Decline

Rebuttal essay: Don't cherry-pick stats, look at the bigger picture

(NEWSER) - David von Drehle begs to differ with fellow Time writer Fareed Zakaria's gloomy view of America's future . These doomsayers have been around since the country was in diapers, and the modern ones love to "cherry-pick dismal statistics from here and there to create an overall image of decline," von Drehle writes in his rebuttal essay . "If you collect enough symptoms, you can make a strong-sounding case that the country is indeed quite sick. But fallen trees don't prove the forest is dying." He calls most of the commonly cited problems "overblown," including income inequality. That's more an "illusion" caused by changes in the tax code than anything else, he argues. More»

Demise 'could come far more quickly than anyone imagines'

(NEWSER) - The United States' power is declining, and its total demise as the global superpower could be here by 2025, asserts history professor and author Alfred W. McCoy. On Tom Dispatch , he offers four scenarios detailing how that could happen:

• Economic decline: Years and years of foreign wars swell the deficit, and "in 2020, as long expected, the US dollar finally loses its special status as the world's reserve currency," McCoy writes. As a result, Washington can't pay its bills and slashes the military budget, pulling back US forces, but it's "far too late": China, India, Iran, Russia, and others "challenge US dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace."

From reindeer fat ice cream to 2-foot-long hot dogs

(NEWSER) - Some states are pudgier than others—here's looking at you, Texas—but none escapes this list of beloved yet fat-filled dishes. Health.com tracked down the worst offender in each of the flabby 50:

• Alaska: Eskimo Ice Cream, a mix of blackberries and salmon berries—in reindeer fat and seal oil.
• Connecticut: The Hartford-area Doogie's hot dog joint serves one of the insanest franks known to man: a 2-foot-long pork and beef hot dog topped with a half-pound of chili, cheddar cheese sauce, bacon, and more.

(NEWSER) - Ben Stein loves Wal-Mart—just don’t put one smack-dab in the middle of a historic Civil War battlefield in Orange, Va. The 1864 Battle of the Wilderness was a turning point in the conflict, Stein writes in the American Spectator, and the “battlefield is incredibly important environmentally and historically and emotionally. It reeks of the blood of men fighting for causes they considered sacred.” More»

Sadr ally allegedly shoves speaker

(NEWSER) - Discussion of the security deal between the US and Iraq deteriorated into a shouting match between members of the Iraqi parliament today, the New York Times reports. Parliament is scheduled to vote on the measure next week, but could not get through a reading of the agreement today before an opposition lawmaker allegedly physically attacked the speaker. More»