For those of us who haunt the halls of the internet, JU and other blog sites, we sometimes lose focus on the fact that the vast majority of people do not sit around all day beefing about politics and politicians.  You are not going to see the nightly news opening with a story "3 People did not protest today because they were not motivated to fear the latest....."

The INternet is a great tool, and invaluable these days for finding the truth out.  But most people in the real world use it for one thing only - email to family and friends.  I think the "divide" that you reported on is more pronounced on the internet, but not really pronounced in AMerica.  You are going to have your loons - on both sides - always.  The difference is now they have a place to voice their lunacy, whereas before all they could do was stand on street corners and shout at passer bys.

p.s.  Arianna Huffington is a perfect example of the latter.  Would anyone know about her without her blog site?  Does anyone really care?

Another awesome quote by Dr Guy...

i find it bizzare how pacified americans are and how they DON'T fight over such fundamental issues. Than again, nobody killed hitler on his rise to power, people are sheep. Well, not exactly, they have an opinion, and they will be quick to vocalize it if given the freedom to do so, but will not actually try to fight the wolves or prevent the herd from walking over that cliff.

Some cannot differentiate reality from the internet.  They start out being civilized, realize they do not have to be on the internet, and then forget that all of life is not the internet.  There has always been nasty people.  They are just not as inhibited now.

You are an idiot who can not read. Iraq did NOT fund al quida who did sep 11th attack as you say... it did however fund the most prolific anti american terrorist orignization, one which instigated over 3 times as many attacks against the USA as al quida, and killed over 2000 americans in those many attacks (with each attack claiming only a few individual american lives, instead of thousands each).

The crude oil barrels are sold to distilleries which process them into gasoline... the price takes 2 months to fluctuate. As such the price should go down more over the next month, and if not, well... it is THEIR oil... you don't HAVE to buy it... however since it is a key to the economy some intervension might have been in order.

the whole REASON the price per barrel dropped (and consequently gas price) is because people stopped using it, they stopped driving as much and stopped filling up on gas. So oil companies are cutting prices to sell more to make more money. supply and demand.

The democrats passed laws deregulating the home lending industries as well as sued banks and passed more laws forcing banks to lend to sub par creditors... what does sub par means? it means that looking at their income, property, and credit history the chance of them paying back the lown is so low that they are actually gonna lose money on them. (everyone has a chance to not pay back a lown, but usually not that high). As a result the "poor" got lown for homes they could not afford, which they then stopped paying, which made the banks lose money by law (city bank tried to bypass that, obama persoanlly sued them for "discrimination"). Business are not "the rich", business are economic entities that make money for the stock holders... who owns the stock? some rich people, some poor people... every person with a 401K plan (how would you like it if the money in your 401K suddenly disappeared because banks went under? are you rich?)

Personally I opposed it at first, until I understood how wide spread the problem was, and how it was NOT bad business that are suffering, but key parts of the economy and they are suffering because of bad regulation, which was warned about, again and again. (1999 clinton deregulates the sub par market. obama later sues city bank... 2003 bush tries to pass a law to regulate it, fails. 2005, mccain cosponsors a bill to regulate it, it fails. 2006, banks are in critical state, collapse begins, 2008, total collapse, breaking news).

Except this time we have elected representatives, not kings... we do have representation, it is just that some of them are stupid.

Taltimir and Dr Guy are the very sheep I was refering to, they get behind a key board and pontificate as though they actually 'knew' something.

WHO, exactly, are you defending with your BS......... ??

these folks are PROBABLY wanna b republicans (you know what I mean..having a 15 yr. old auto or p/u paid off and now have more than 100 dollars in a savings acct.  hahahahaha and tiltman controls 7 shares of stock in Marathon Oil hahahahaha)  can you say  ba baaah ?

Anyone who takes exception to my post is an unpatriotic, unAmerican dead-head that can ONLY quote the propaganda ministers on the 'Evening Nerws'.

If either tiltmir or dr gay had an ORIGINAL thought, I'm sure they would have responded in an INTELLIGENT manner.  Notice how tiltman assumes that only a "KING" can be a tyrant? hahahahahahahahaha   notice also, dr guy uses a SPECIFIC occurance to apply to a much larger premis (one of the 'fundamental flaws of reasoning') hahahahaha to you both.........or should I say  Baaaaaaaaah ?

i find it extremely ironic that you accuse us of being incapable of responding in an intelligent manner, and then you go ahead and call him GAY, and other immature name calling (instead of addressing any of the arguments).

Thank you, JOA for writing such a wonderful, thought provoking article.

ALARMING....me too and the reason is it's not just one or two issues from which we are so divided....it seems to be pretty much  across the board. Liberalism gains by division not unity...black vs white, rich vs. poor, gay vs straight, etc.

I think when Obama's presidency gets into gear, we're going to see that division get even deeper....some blogs are discussing a civil war.  He's promised to repeal all of Bush's pro-life policies and make pro-life activism illegal....that's not going to happen without a fight becasue we still have the moral duty to make the best out of a bad situation (and BHO's power is a bad situation) to the extent that we are able.

He's gonna support outlawing homeschooling, the Fairness Doctrine, stifle free speech, socialize healthcare and involve the federal government even more directly in early (4 year old) childhood edcuation....which means a whole new generation of Brown Shirts! Get em indoctrinated while they are young.  Mark my words, if he has his way, we may be saying good-bye to our guns, too.  The writing is on the wall if we take seriously what he's been saying and put that together with what little we actually know about him. Can you say Fourth Reich?

Now Biden's warning that he will be tested (just as GWB was on 9/11) is something to take into consideration when thinking about exactly how united we are....people do tend to work together when under attack. We'll see. To me, it's not a matter of ifi it happens, but when.