This times 1000. Cynicism on the internet is at an all-time high lately. I wish I had enough left over each month to donate 5% but with student loans and other bills and saving for a house, its pretty hard.

Yea I thought the trend of hating on Bill Gates was over... it just reminds of young kids who hate stuff because its the cool thing to hate at the time. Truth be told Gates' company changed computing forever, and he made a fortune. He is giving tons of that away to try to better humanity. You can continue your pissing contests of "hes doing it for PR blah blah blah he sucks omgez" but at the end of the day the money he is donating is helping people, regardless. What % of your paychecks do you donate?

You are more stoic than I.

Its sad but true, everyone is so biased and has been so conditioned to be partisan that their side can't fail, and the other side's every tiny mistake a earth-shattering hide-yo-kids disaster. I'm sick of both sides and haven't been happy with the leadership in this country for a long long time now. I say leave them all behind.

Making excuses for him by saying "he was too busy dealing with X, Y, Z" (while not only stating asinine political comments) outed you as an Obama zealot. He spent a lot of time and effort on this project, forcing it down everyone's throats, and rearranging 16% of the US economy (which has global ramifications). You're damn straight he should have had time to make sure his project launched smoothly. Keep being a zealot and making excuses for people, all you're doing is enabling them and rewarding them for failing.

I think its different here in America because the politicians do not even pretend to represent their constituents and see us as a burden that pays them.

They're held to nothing. They get to walk around and be rude disrespectful thugs who harass people for no reason whenever they feel like. I think that sentence also describes the gangs they try to control. Who is the real gangs now?!

"You'd have to be a real low-life piece of shit to get involved in politics" - Frank Reynolds

Except in most private corporations, the roll out of a huge program like this would not be something that was forced upon the citizens of a whole country while also seizing control of 1/6 of its economy. You DO see a difference here between that a the new roll out and something optional right? Right?

Yeah truly, who actually trusts the government? I wouldn't trust them to make sure my toilet paper was safe, let alone any other part of my life.

I don't have kids yet but I was bullied in grades 7-8 (98-99) when I moved to a new town. My parents never condoned violence but they did not want me to be a punching bag and hated that I was getting bullied. I am not sure if it is the "right" way to help, but my father basically said "stand up for yourself, if you get suspended, I'll take you out to lunch". I think that was the green light... Anyways, kind of randomly in 8th grade art class (a frequent bullying time for me and one of my friends), I wound up and threw a huge punch at the lead bully's nose and completely connected. He never saw it coming either, it was when he was looking down at something. It knocked him out and broke his nose. Who cares if it was dirty, it showed him that I was not a benign punching bag and probably even more dangerously to his bullying mindset: I wasn't predictable anymore. We both got suspended and my parents weren't happy but they were proud that I stood up for myself. It felt really good to ruin that shitbags day, that's for sure. After that his whole group kept their distance and never physically bullied me. There were some verbal instances but it was laughable. I will probably offer the same advice to any children I have as it seemed to work out well for me. It is weird though, out of that group, one is in jail or dead, another is a townie with a beer gut and is balding (we're 27), I almost laugh when I see him, and the others I lost track of. But I still remember the feeling and would probably not give any of them the time of day still.

Your views on this government really align with mine, I thought I was the only one who thought this way. There should be no such thing as career politicians. They are exactly what is wrong with this country. Obamacare is also a train wreck for small businesses. I have seen this first hand.

Not only this (I'm in full agreement), but learning a little humility on an assembly line i.e. doing 'yer time is not a bad thing for people to learn. It builds character, something a lot of my fellow U.S. grads lack nowadays. Life is not all flying around in a corporate jet, wheeling and dealing. There is hard/boring/monotonous work to be done, and getting an appreciation for that is not a bad thing. God forbid the students learn some work ethic...

We're mad about all that stuff too but most people are too stupid to vote the way to fix it. More likely, there is no proper way that we can vote that will fix it. The parasites running the place are too entrenched (on both sides, both "parties" suck and should be culled). I think we are growing apathetic by the hopelessness of it all. I see the apathy in my generation at least.

You said the "Horn of Africa", which is most certainly not the size of the US. Horn of africa: ~2 million km^2, USA ~9.8 km^2. On the map you linked the whole continent of Africa does not look significantly wider than the US either. Flying from Maine to Cali or Maine looks about the same distance as flying coast to coast in the north of Africa.