Agreed on all counts, but then there are government initiatives that have actually worked:
1. ban on smoking in bars and restaurants made us instantly healthier with no negative side effects (except for the nicotine addicts who refuse to admit that they have a problem)
2. internet
3. GPS

Deregulation has its own set of problems and I'm mystified why free-market purists like you consistently fail to acknowledge them. Remember the near-complete financial meltdown of '08? It was a purely free-market product caused by a combination of unbelievable greed (across all layers of society, not just top) and appalling lack of government intervention even when it was obvious we were headed for disaster.
Let's face it - minimal sensible governance can be good just like free markets can be good.

... to use public transportation. Go green!

Unless the healthcare system has unlimited capacity, someone somewhere's going to have to pull the plug on someone. That can be either optimized to improve lifespan, or to maximize insurance co profits.

Even in the standardized list, 12 countries come to within a fraction of a year from US, yet US spends what, 2x as much on healthcare?

Pray tell, how could the government make that distinction? Take as an example people who suffered misfortunes that led to depression and other mental disorders, whose symptoms are sometimes comfort over-eating, comfort spending, etc, which leads to poor health and maxed out credit cards. If you were to acquire such a mental disorder, can you be sure you would manage to keep up?

Can you see the vicious circle where lack of healthcare and education leads to new generations of poorly educated people with little access to healthcare? Alternately, can you explain how you would have done differently if you happened to be born to a single parent in those poor areas?

You missed a few questions:
<ul>
<li> Is the current resource consumption, especially that of energy, sustainable?</li>
<li> Does the money currently paid for energy support any counterproductive organizations and regimes?</li>
<li> Is the US too dependent on one particular type of energy so that variations in its price create massive ripple effects across the economy and essentially represent a single point of failure for the whole economy?</li>
</ul>

My general approach so far has been:
- Write a design document pretending that someone else of your skill level is supposed to implement the solution based on that document. It helps reveal holes in your design, or at least strengthens your confidence.
- Figure out the toughest/trickiest parts and prototype them first. That way you reduce the amount of last-minute surprises and can make a better estimate.
- UML or pseudo-UML can definitely help. Get a whiteboard and keep it updated. It helps you keep the big picture when you're deep in low-level code.

In any case, if it's by Microsoft I automatically hate it, and if it's for Linux I definitely love it.

... it wants its nonstandard markup back.

... some Nova documentaries. Nothing like spending an hour alongside some of the greatest scientific minds in history to inspire you to learn more.

... and they voted for the candidate who was demonstrating leadership skills by building up resentment between different parts of the country

I've been using Ubuntu as my primary desktop at work and at home for over 2 years and I'm not going back anytime soon. However, my wife and pretty much all non-geeks I know shy away from it because it doesn't have the equivalents of MS Office 2007 (which is by all accounts very neat) and such. So, let me restate "killer app" as the "mainstream desktop tools that non-geeks depend on".

... it still lacks the killer apps. People want MS Office and Quickbooks and such. I use OpenOffice but I can see why non-geeks wouldn't like it. We should put much more effort into this rather than into pure eye candy.

No, they use mittens to choke the victim