Why the United States rules

Just a short list... I'll have to add to it when I get some time...

Yosemite National Park · The Simpsons · Idaho potatoes + Maine lobsters · Major League Baseball · The Doors · Coca-Cola · Glacier Bay · John Wayne · the Internet · Wall Drug · Playboy · Martin Luther King, Jr. · the laser · Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard · 40-oz. malt liquor beverages · Yellowstone National Park · Mississippi paddleboats · electric light · The Shawshank Redemption · The Dirty Dozen · Orville and Wilbur Wright · Bruce Springsteen · ESPN · Spam™ · people who don't know you but smile and say "Hi!" anyway · Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey · Grand Funk Railroad · NFL football · Ernest Hemingway · Tyra Banks · Muhammed Ali · La Brea Tar Pits · Sour Patch Kids · Devils Tower National Monument · Rachael Leigh Cook · Countrytime Lemonade · Jim Thorpe · United States Postal Service · Jimi Hendrix · Grand Teton National Park · the HomeGen 7000 fuel cell power generator from General Electric · Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. · The Super Bowl · The Grand Canyon · Reese Witherspoon · The RHIC at Brookhaven · North By Northwest · Everclear · Store 24 · Denis Leary · The Hunt For Red October · James Dean · Zion National Park · Jesse Owens · The Usual Suspects · the transistor · Mark Twain · the seven-calendar roadside diner · Frank Lloyd Wright · GPS · Hoover Dam · Sojourner Truth · Michael Jordan · The Apollo Space Program · Rebecca Romijn · Herman Melville · Morse code · Georgia O'Keefe · John Steinbeck · Eisenhower Interstate System · Marilyn Monroe · John Glenn · Omaha Beach · Mount Rushmore · Elvis Presley · South Of The Border · The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue · Niagara Falls · Harriet Beecher Stowe · The GNU Project and the FSF · Snapple · Rodgers And Hammerstein · Powerpuff Girls · The Godfather · Fenway Franks · curvy highways in wide-open spaces · Kevin Spacey · Skittles Bite-Sized Candies · Babe Ruth · Boston Harbor Islands National Park · backyard barbeques on the 4th of July · Montana · Star Trek · bowl games · The Grand Canyon · The Constitution · jazz · Jewel · Jim Beam · huge, pointless, cool-looking sculptures in the middle of cities · Reservoir Dogs · First in Flight · Cameron Diaz dancing around in Spiderman Underoos · Tang · The Everglades · Tennessee Williams · Zion National Park · Frederick Law Olmsted · velcro, teflon, and kevlar · cheap domestic beer · Casablanca · The World Wrestling Federation · The Appalachian Trail · bald eagles · Calvin & Hobbes · Leonard, Part 6 (OK, that was a joke) · The Dandy Warhols · Gatorade · It's A Wonderful Life · thick, juicy steaks with A-1 sauce · Ted Williams · A Tribe Called Quest, Jurassic 5, and The Roots · Rodger Young · Harrison Ford · baby back ribs · Ben & Jerry's · Frank Sinatra · The Star Wars Trilogy (can we disown Episode I?) · Tori Amos · Bruce Willis action movies · Fenway Park and Wrigley Field · South Dakota girls with cornsilk hair · little pink houses for you and me...

Oh yeah, and we let you drive from state to state... no papers

Why does America rule?

• Because we spend 50% of our federal budget on the military, so if anyone that disagrees with us, we can simply blow their head off.
• Because our treasured free speech rights are consistently trampled on by the DMCA and the MPAA and obscenity laws
• Because our treasured right to peaceably assemble is consistently trampled on by police who surround protesters and then order them to disperse
• Because our treasured right to presumption of innocence and due process of law is constently trampled on by drug forfeiture laws
• Because our treasured right to run our own lives is consistently trampled on by drug laws, sex laws, and other means of protecting citizens from themselves
• Because our treasured right to bear arms has been loosely interpreted into the right to blow anyone's head off at whim
• Because our treasured democracy is so strongly supported financially (yeah, that's it, sure...) by the large companies of our country
• Because our treasured, hard-won 40 hour work week has been completely abandoned
• Because over 2 million Americans are in prison, a higher rate than any other country in the world
• Because if crime, bad schools, drugs, and apathy don't manage to catch all of them, a scant few of the 20% of the children who are poor in this country will be able to become millionaires

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But before I get too cynical, though, I must also remember that the United States is also the home of:

• Apple Computer
• Perhaps one of the best postal systems in the world (Fast, cheap, and underrated)
• The Columbia Gorge
• Thanksgiving
• Gary Larson
• San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Portland, OR, and Omaha
• LSD (popularization thereof)
• They Might be Giants

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I live in one crazy, fucked up, beautiful, awesome, fun, horrible, wonderful, and above all amazing country.

Liberal comedian and pundit Bill Maher can say this about President George W. Bush - the leader of his country:

"The people who were defending him were saying, 'well, he's just inarticulate.' But inarticulate doesn't explain foreign policy. I mean, it's not that complicated. The man is a rube. He is a dolt. He is a yokel on the world stage. He is a Gilligan who cannot find his ass with two hands. He is a vain half-wit who interrupts one incoherent sentence with another incoherent sentence."

And not only is Bill still alive the next day, he is also free, and still has his job.*†

* While appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on February 20, 2007, discussing Joe Scarborough's week-long panel discussions on whether Bush was an idiot or not.

† I realize this does not make the United States of America unique, there are several other nations where you can get away with this, but there are many - too many - where you cannot. And the USA is one of the first nations where you could.