i'd be more concerned with how people will deal with a hyphen in the URL than google. as long as your site is well built, well optimized, and full of useful content, you shouldn't have to worry about the SE's.
Typically you want to avoid hypens so it makes it easier for people to remember.As for the .us extension, i think .com's are typically viewed as more credible sites, but i don't know that there is any sort of penalization for those extensions.
Hope that helps.
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