AMERICA IS THE NEW SPAIN! Now that even Newsweek is admitting the United States is finished as a world leader of anything beyond nacho-cheese-sauce consumption and MySpace profiles of fat gals, who will bravely lead America’s decline and collapse? [Political Machine]

That 0.6% bit of economic growth in the first quarter of 2008 was just the pathetic result of $3.50-a-gallon gasoline, but there is one sector of the U.S. economy that’s truly booming: Desperate Americans are selling off their last possessions on Craigslist and other online flea-market sites, just so they can buy a little food and gas. MORE »

It may look like common D.C. traffic, but all those honking trucks around the Capitol today are actually part of a Ron Paul trucker protest because diesel costs like $5 a gallon and the truckers are all going broke, so they want John McCain to make diesel free, and he said okay because he is also a poor trucker. Fuel riots, food rationing, people thrown out of their homes by the millions … who knew 2008 would be so exciting? [Associated Press]

Hey America, you may have been too busy delighting in the fruits of our thousand-year Mesopotamian adventure and rolling around on piles of strong dollars to notice our nation’s crumbling infrastructure. But thanks to Popular Mechanics, you can now find out which massive highway interchange, bridge, dam or waterway near you is about to collapse! And guess which proud metropolitan area earns not one but two spots on this coveted Top Ten list? Shame on you, Barack Obama! MORE »

Chuck Norris recently and forcefully reminded us in a masculine manner that he would single-handedly turn Iraq into a manly democracy ruled by the iron fists of Chuck Norris. Now Bloomberg markets columnist Mark Gilbert has learned that Chuck Norris is also the brute-force answer to America’s collapsing economy, and here are a few examples: MORE »

Critics of our precious freedoms are constantly braying about America’s tragic decline and fall and how it’s just like the collapse of Rome’s Western Empire, and now another America Hater has joined that tired chorus: David M. Walker, comptroller general of the United States and chief of the federal Government Accountability Office. MORE »

Sad conservatives who pray every day for a terrible new 9/11-style attack on a big American city full of ethnics and gays sort of got their wish today, at least in a financial sense. The Federal Reserve has made three massive cash infusions in an attempt to stop the horrible August collapse that has already shaved some 800 points off the Dow Jones Industrial Average along with trillions of dollars of corporate and individual wealth. But the market keeps going south as one major lender after another announces that they’re broke because all their rotten mortgages are failing. MORE »

George W. Bush has boldly denounced congressional proposals to raise gas taxes enough to pay for fixing America’s thousands of bridges that are about to collapse, saying “That’s not the right way to prioritize the people’s money.” The American Society of Civil Engineers said in a recent report that fixing the United States’ crumbling infrastructure would cost $1.6 trillion — or roughly the amount of taxpayers’ money spent so far in Iraq to such great effect. MORE »

America’s news business is finally admitting what people trying to unload a house have known for the past year: The real-estate bubble has popped, and if you own a house today you might as well get comfortable there … assuming you can keep up with the adjustable-rate mortgage even as you fall into “negative equity.” MORE »

So you’re elevated to your current position because your predecessor got cancer, and every single official you represent is a thieving scumbag with 2% approval ratings, and the country is so crippled that Honduras could probably launch a successful invasion. What do you do, Dana Perino? You make Alex Trebek jokes, obviously:

MS. PERINO: Les.

Q Yes, thank you, Dana. Two questions on American business. In the -

MS. PERINO: American business for 200. (Laughter.) I’ve always wanted to be on that show. Go ahead, Les, I’m sorry.

But what was the question? Something about how America has been intentionally deindustrialized and wages have stagnated or dropped for all but the top 10% of earners and blue-collar union jobs have been eliminated leaving a vast working class with no hope for anything beyond lifelong credit-card debt and children who finish school unable to read?

Ha ha, of course not. Let’s run down the category JOURNALISTS ARE SELF-OBSESSED TWATS, after the jump.

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The bloodletting continues at the Post. Here’s all the bad news from the last quarter of 2006: MORE »