Rasmussen have released their latest poll findings on blogging and the internet, which interest us (delete as appropriate) 

• greatly
• not at all
• I’ve already got some

Annoyingly, 11% of Americans believe that the government should regulate the content of blogs. In contrast, 100% of bloggers known as TheEye believe that those Americans should gouge their eyeballs out with spoons and fill the still-bleeding sockets with fire-ants and shards of broken glass. So far, so fair.

Some 66% of adults oppose Federal Government regulation of blogs and 23% are too retarded to have an opinion. Support for regulation is higher among those 50 and older because they are statistically less likely to have a sense of humour.

The Federal Trade Commission this week released new guidelines requiring bloggers to disclose any gifts or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products, and Americans are more comfortable with that kind of regulation. 45% think such a requirement is a good idea, but 32% oppose it. Twenty-three percent 23% don’t care whether TheEye is paid in red wine to say nice things about random stuff.*

Just 10% of Americans say that they or a family member have their own blogsite on the Internet against 83% who don’t. The other 7% were too busy using low-level disk formatting tools at the time to respond.

20% of all adults say they regularly read blogsites for news and information. 77% do not, so it’s perfectly safe to be as rude about them as you like. They’ll never see it.

52% of all Americans say they go online and use the Internet every day or nearly every day, and most of those adults now find online reporting comparable to that in their local newspaper.

61% of Americans are confident that online and other news sources will make up the difference and report things people want to know about if many newspapers go out of business.

45% of Internet users say a plan by at least one major news organization to charge for online content is likely to hurt the newspapers in question financially.

….and finally 20% of Americans would buy a new car online. Come on, who would seriously buy a car without a test drive? Or without checking that it doesn’t handle like anything ever made by Honda?