It is helpful to have a sense of proportion. The biggest tickets in the budget are non-discretionary (grandma and grandpa are expensive, so are their children who are disabled), and defense. The former is roughly $2.4 Trillion, the latter is roughly $600 Billion and of that last, about $240 Billion is personnel costs. NSF's 2014 budget was roughly $7 billion, out of an approx $3.6 Trillion total budget. The main expenditure are direct transfer payments to...Americans.

Put quickly, your "observation" is bogus.

If they get fossilized and buried for millennia, then its art. You did have them fossilized, yes?

Bird don't know any better, people do yet they still think it is acceptable to act as thought they had the brain the size of a peanut. Wait until your airliner goes down because of one of these.

I rather think the problem is that too many assholes can't figure out flying around airports (or over 400 feet) was a bad idea. Just look at the number of assholes who cannot figure out shining lasers at airliners on approach or leaving airports is a bad idea, yet they still do it; now why would that be....why, why, why?

Please explain you philosophy to Putin and ISIS. I'm sure they'll listen to you.

Nah, you are thinking rap.

Shoot, Biden was dead before he was ever in office, his senate career shows it.

Hmmm...how about social security and medicare, should that be handled by the states so that poor states get shafted...well, their older citizens will. That will cause a migration to a few states and leave rest to the wilderness. How about OSHA and workplace safety regulations? Each state is going to produce their own? FDA? Each state will have its own? The list goes on. We have these government agencies to regulate those well-adjusted nice companies that will cut grannies throat if they thought they could increase their profit by doing so. A collection of polyglot regulatory agencies is how we got the current insurance industry. These are those nice, well-meaning companies that want to cherry pick the healthy people and only insure them.

So your libertarian utopia is an academic exercise in futility.

We have a sense of perspective and don't pull facts out of our ass.

Yes, but power companies have local monopolies, so there is no super capitalism there unless you equate super capitalism with monopolies. In this person's case, it is probably that his power company is an REMC, Rural Electric Membership Cooperative, they are state chartered and receive federal subsidies. They are also run by people who cut their teeth in electric power about 50 years ago. Being a cooperative and rural, they do not have the ability to raise rates very easily. They compensate by stiffing care and upkeep. So they do not go around cutting down trees near their line except if absolutely necessary. Also being rural, they have a lot of ground to cover and a lot of trees to clear. The easy consequence is that storms frequently topple trees onto their lines. Ice storms really kill them because they have so much ground to cover and now all the lines on that ground stand to receive ice and tree damage.

Comparing the U.S. the little toy countries in Europe is silly. They are about the size of one of our states. It is much easier given their pop. density to keep their little toy grids up and running. It is also easier to run the lines underground because there is much less distance to cross. The pop. density also makes it easier to spread the cost which is much greater than running lines above ground. It is impossible for the U.S. to run its rural lines underground given the cost.
 

"Windows 8 UI"??? I don't think we need to bring Satan into this.

Really? Allowing Chiang Kai-shek to fight the Japanese while he kept his forces in reserve so he could conquer China after the war did exactly what for the Chinese? Gave them another 20 million dead, that's what. Stalin is a similar story. He did nothing for the Soviet Union, even his deal with Hitler blew up in his face.

Millions died solely as a result of their actions, nothing else.

"Stupidity" is paint it with a euphemistic brush, "excuses" is more to the point.

Yes, it is a shame the rest of the world equates Americans with Texans.

As opposed to the Europeans who, now that Putin is acting like a Tsar, appear to have rediscovered the value of military power...not that it will make them defend themselves yet. When they realize the U.S. cannot do it for them, I expect it will change...or Putin's little toy government collapses and the Europeans will go back to sleep until....

The MidEast crazies decide they're entitled to making Europe the cesspool that is the MidEast. The regular pop. is too scared of the nutjobs to instill law and order, and when they do, it comes out like Egypt which sees an Islamist behind every grain of sand...which echos the Saudis thinking about the Iranians. And after Iran get the Bomb, the rest of those well-adjusted countries will decide they need one as well.

India is mire of corruption and presumably they will last the century without getting nuked by the Pakistanis, who are in the process of turning their country into nutjob central.

China is doing wonders...in fouling their environment so that one cannot even see more than a mile in Beijing on a good day. Japan is into their 20th year of failed economics, when they aren't hiding from the few foreigners they've so graciously allowed in to work for them.

Africa still cannot produce a stable democracy except in a few small nations. The economic problems will only get worse now that China had decided to export any economic progress they were making.

Yep, compared to the rest of the world, the U.S. is ignorant and shallow and these other countries are beacons of enlightenment.