USA Today used this headline: "'Second-tier' country: As vote nears, France confronts decline"

and then notes this:

Optimists take heart from the fact that, while most French tell pollsters their children will grow up worse off than they did, they also make more babies than most other Europeans. And although the French work fewer hours than many, their productivity is on par with America's. France's health services are so good that the British cross the English Channel for treatment...

and France also designed the largest plane in the world and the fastest train (of it's type) in the world.

so, is this just USA Today smacking France?

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“We’re enlisting more dropouts, people with more law violations, lower test scores, more moral issues,” said a senior noncommissioned officer involved in Army personnel and recruiting. “We’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get people to join.” (Army officials agreed to discuss the issue on the condition that they not be quoted by name.)

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