Originally Posted by roadkill

Nucking fonsense. Check out Brad DeLong and his bookmarks as just one of millions.

Now you're making the opposite argument, that isolated examples of Americans who are not rightwingers no trend exists.

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Do we know that? Astroturf can look very real:

Let me introduce you Occams razor.

[URL="http://www.cpusa.org/"]

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Now you're making the opposite argument, that isolated examples of Americans who are not rightwingers no trend exists.

I'm not sure what this means, contra. Would you like to rephrase it.

If I make the heroic assumption that you mean that there are only isolated examples of Americans who are not rightwingers, that might be true from the perspective of someone who believes that all sources of wealth should be socialised and private property abolished, but that is not most people's definition of "not rightwing".

The Communist Party USA still exists. It does not disclose the size of its membership but its Facebook page has just under 3,000 people who "like" it. In a total US population of over 300 million it would be fair indeed to say that these people are "isolated examples".

My own experience has been that I have hardly ever disliked an American over here, whereas the ones over there seem mostly to be certifiable, and certainly not well informed about anything much. I've had this explained to me as being a result of the fact that Republicans seldom travel except for wars while their supporters are not well educated. Can this be true?

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Nox est perpetua una dormienda

First, broadband penetration here in the US is still only at almost a third of all households. Modem users on a site like TPM would die of frustration before they'd be able to load the page. And no, I don't think opinions expressed on internet forums reflect the general populace.

They're not "sheeple", they're just ordinary people who don't follow politics like it's the latest crack, and don't need so very much to be "right". Yes, I think most polling is more representative of the questioner than the general populace. Most polling is an attempt at wish fullfilment.

Iolo, that is because people have different strengths of opinion where it's dealt anonymously and targeted at groups, as opposed to in person and individuals.

Originally Posted by clownboy

Iolo, that is because people have different strengths of opinion where it's dealt anonymously and targeted at groups, as opposed to in person and individuals.

Interesting point. Bit like on here as opposed to at home maybe. Few people who read my posts would think I was famous for my beautiful nature!

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Nox est perpetua una dormienda

Originally Posted by Iolo

Interesting point. Bit like on here as opposed to at home maybe. Few people who read my posts would think I was famous for my beautiful nature!

Yeah, that's one aspect of it. Also, they say to feed the group, someone's oxen gets gored. Most folks are fine with that principle, until they meet the individual owner of the oxen and see that maybe he's a poor fellow barely able to feed his family. It's tough at that point for a lot of folks to apply the general principle, that works so well for the group, to this one individual.

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First, broadband penetration here in the US is still only at almost a third of all households.

How can that be? The US of A is supposed to be the best kick-ass nation on the planet. How can you be kick-ass on a 56 Kb dial-up line? The rest of us will have posted five jokes about you before you can deliver your first repost.

We get something above 12 Mb from a plain old telephone line with ADSL2+ (although many web servers can't deliver that fast and latency across the Pacific and thence to the Atlantic slows web access).

It costs us little more than our previous dial-up service when call charges are taken into account.

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Also, they say to feed the group, someone's oxen gets gored. Most folks are fine with that principle, until they meet the individual owner of the oxen

The answer is to breed more prolific oxen.