Why are Americans so fat—and getting fatter with every passing year? said Brian Stelter in The New York Times. Seventy percent of adults in the U.S. are either overweight or obese, and so are one third of children and teens. This week, HBO began airing a four-part documentary, The Weight of the Nation, that aims to serve as a “wake-up […]
Read more
There is an opioid epidemic in the US which has contributed to the deaths of Americans. Approximately 1.5% of Americans have died from opioid overdoses which is more than the 1% of Americans who died in the Vietnam War. In the late 1990’s pharmaceutical companies assured medical institutions that opioids would not become addictive. So, with this information the medical […]
Read more
Why are most mass shootings perpetrated by white males? asked Charlotte Childress and Harriet Childress. In the debate over why America suffers so many killing sprees, race and gender are “the elephant in the room.” At Newtown, Aurora, Tucson, Columbine— “month after month, year after year”—it is seething white men and teenagers who use guns to massacre scores of strangers. […]
Read more
The House of Representatives doesn’t represent America as it really is today, said Timothy Egan. The Republican-controlled House governs a “fantasy nation created in talk-radio land,” where black and gay people don’t exist, women remain subservient, and all gun-safety legislation is a step toward tyranny. Thanks to strategic redrawing of districts, Republicans managed to maintain a 33-seat advantage in the […]
Read more
How did the U.S. debt get so high? The crucial turning point came back in 2001, said Lori Montgomery. At the time, Uncle Sam was actually running surpluses, and “the outlook was so rosy” that forecasters were predicting the U.S. could pay back every dime it had ever borrowed. That’s when President George W. Bush made a pivotal decision: Rather […]
Read more
There is a deafening and horrific silence in the USA about the problem of gun control, Piers Morgan told the Today program, responding to US radio host Alex Jones’ defence of guns. “The product of this demented attitude is you have the worst gun crime of any of the advanced countries in the world,” said the British journalist. Mr Morgan […]
Read more
By the mid-1920s, the American government was at its wit’s end. The era’s strict Prohibition laws had proved futile. Americans were still drinking; they were just doing so on the sly, frequenting speakeasies and buying alcohol from crime syndicates. Gangs would steal large quantities of industrial alcohol—used for everything from fueling machines to sterilizing instruments— then redistill the hooch to […]
Read more
In the months before 9/11, said Kurt Eichenwald, George W. Bush was warned not once, but multiple times that al Qaida was preparing a major attack on U.S. soil. Everyone knows of the Aug. 6, 2001, intelligence briefing that Bush received at his Texas ranch, headed, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S.” Administration officials later dismissed that warning’s significance, insisting—implausibly—that […]
Read more
It’s not the greatest country in the world, professor, that’s my answer. And you’re going to tell students that America’s so star-spangled awesome that we’re the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom, Japan has freedom, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom. Two hundred seven sovereign states in the world, like 180 […]
Read more