As an American, one thing that really annoys me about the rest of the world is that, even though we only have 5% of the world's population, everyone (esp. in th

As an American, one thing that really annoys me about the rest of the world is that, even though we only have 5% of the world's population, everyone (esp. in the rest of the industrialized nations) seems to expect us to be the leaders on everything, and then they get mad when we fail. If Canada/EU/Australia think stem cell and gene therapies are important, along with things like climate science and any other kind of science, and we in the US are failing on these things thanks to our crappy voting, then why can't you guys pick up the slack? Personally, I'm not at all happy about the prospect of what's going to happen to science funding here real soon. But that doesn't excuse all these other advanced economies from doing their part too. The rest of you should be trying to take the lead on these things, if not many more things, esp. when we so obviously screw up.